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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the answer is (a) Green New Deal. Basically just rebuild the whole infrastructure - no tinkering around the edges, just replace the lot.

Start with engineering courses, bringing on new talent. Spin up hundreds of solar farms, battery factories etc

My question is are there real innovations to be made - do we need to rely on concrete and steel ? Are new homes possible in flat packs?

I would rather packet it into small parcels (10-100M) that explore the phase space of possible than think a quick government report can define infrastructure for a century

On top of which we should heed the strong town lesson - only build what we need, and cost in the car externalities in our cities.

Just thinking out loud ...

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One of the problems with New Deal-like projects is what do you do with new engineering and construction talent once the projects are complete? China is pushing OBOR onto developing countries to make use of its excess construction capacity, with limited success. I don't think that's feasible with high-cost US labor.

Export it, if you have such a deal you will become a leading research and development center for it, it can become a feedback loop.

You will still need engineers for improving the technology, you will be on the bleeding edge. You will still need maintenance crews, the constructors are the ones that know the most about what they built, why not train them to maintain it as well?

By this time, there will be a demand for the development of space resources.

I'm sorry to disagree with this.

First - 'Green New Deal' is a slogan, not anything material that helps fix underlying operational problems.

Second - we don't need to 'rebuild' most things, we need to fix, maintain.

Third - this is not an issue with 'green' or 'innovation' in the technical sense - it's about the efficiency of the bureaucracy.

Fourth - 'All the wasted money' is going into the pockets of seriously powerful vested interests - they are not interested in reform.

Are you ready for the political cost of taking on the Unions? Esp. public sector unions? They may not have their fingers in the pot, but they still likely a massive barrier.

What about exposing the fact that a ton of workers in infrastructure are in the country illegally? Who's going to 'clamp down' on that and pay the political price?

What about the fact that all these firms are massive political donors to the powers that be? How do we solve that one?

And fighting entities: SF is a tiny city. So is Palo Alto. So is Oakland. The 'Bay Area' needs coordination and nobody really wants to give up their little fiefdoms of power. So there are a lot of problems like that.

The issues are complex and a lot of it has to do with vested interests and power, not 'technology' or anything like that.

>Third - this is not an issue with 'green' or 'innovation' in the technical sense - it's about the efficiency of the bureaucracy.

The entire discussion has been how this isn't the major driving factor of the cost of building. So why bring this up at all?

> Are you ready for the political cost of taking on the Unions? Esp. public sector unions? They may not have their fingers in the pot, but they still likely a massive barrier.

> What about exposing the fact that a ton of workers in infrastructure are in the country illegally? Who's going to 'clamp down' on that and pay the political price?

Unions are going to clamp down and pay the political price of squashing illegal labor. That's their whole purpose of existing! Anti-union sentiment in America reflects significant cognitive dissonance on this issue.

Public unions are a different matter. They're entrenched largely because private sector unions have disappeared. With greater private sector unionization public employees wouldn't dominate union lobbying as much as they do, and politicians wouldn't feel as obliged to protect them if there existed a larger pool of well paying, stable private sector jobs for the working class.

In 50 years do we come to the same point in the road with different infrastructure?

That would still be a better outcome than if in 50 years we came to the same point in the road with World War 2 infrastructure.

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