This was great, thank you for sharing. A couple things I was hoping to see but didn't so I'll share my entirely uneducated opinion as we're supposed to do in a comment section.
First, for all of the decline that you mentioned with regards to engineering, you left out what Americans lead the world in these days: whining & complaining! We love to complain about anything and everything but the minute solutions are proposed we start whining. Until Americans are led to believe that solutions are their best interest, all of this is just going to get worse.
Second is greed. I think there's a bit of that spread out through the piece but not specifically called out. The corporate greed has killed both innovation and in some cases the environment. We're going to be stuck with quick, cheaply built apartments for the foreseeable future.
You're totally right about the complaining—we've turned it into our national pastime! We should've included that as America's number one infrastructure achievement these days.
I should've highlighted greed throughout this piece because that's what drives these things. That consultant racket I mentioned? Corporate greed. These companies realized that they make more money studying problems than fixing them.
Those cheap apartments going up while the roads fall apart? You got it exactly right - quick profits, who cares about the rest. Developers make their money and leave everyone else stuck in traffic.
It's a sad story how the advance of capitalism has hollowed out our communities. Your research tells a story of disintegration.
Added to the list of the failure to fund new and important infrastructure should be congressional favoritism and favor swapping in funding new projects by both parties.
I haven't done the research but adding another culprit here. The laws of nature apply to capitalism and money flows in the path of least resistance: leveraged buy outs and sell offs, sucking the vitality out of communities.
Getting people who have a social consciousness into Congress who are not beholden to the Democrat party is a big critical step. We must not replace oligarchical dominance with corporate dominance. We need to keep the drum beating on electing progressives. Thank you for keeping that focus up front.
Let's also jump in at the local levels and begin actually running our government in our states and communities. Having good people as local commissioners keeping a watch on where contracts are going, and pushing to upgrade our grids would be a big progressive step. And for gods sake, get on the school boards and bring the good literature back into our schools.
“We can't fix bridges, roads, or power grids unless we first fix our politics.” Yes, and to do that and address political corruption, we must get big money out.
Things began to change rapidly during the Reagan administration, as he famously said “Government IS the problem.” He shifted tax policy to focus on corporate profits with a “trickle-down” lie. Gone were the huge signs at construction sites saying, “Your tax dollars at work.” No wonder so many people lost trust or faith in government.
This well-written article is similar to ones I wrote about American health care 10-15 years ago. One of them started with, “Fixing our broken healthcare system, reducing costs, and improving care all comes down to getting the objectives and health incentives right.” (MHealthTalk.com/incentives)
Similarly, it spoke of political corruption and called for getting big money out. It also promoted public-private partnerships and embraced the contrast between business incentives (like ROI, quarterly profit, and payback period) and public sector incentives that have different objectives and measure success differently.
I reckon we can't fix any of the underlying causes without the political movement I'm describing. Whether it's money in politics, corruption, declining capacity, or the revolving door—whatever we figure the root cause of our dysfunction is—the only way out is through a political revolution. That's my underlying thesis, which is why I put it in the postscript of every post I put up here.
Another factor to add to the list of causes (for the infeasibility of large-scale projects) can be stated in three words: Capitalism versus Socialism. In the latter, a public agency sees a need to be filled and uses public workers to fill it. In contrast, under capitalism, dozens of private agencies are involved, at all levels from mining to manufacture. Each one of these has to make a profit - and ideally, as much profit as possible. So OF COURSE the costs are going to go up exponentially - to the point where the project simply cannot be done. (I no longer have the source, but I’d seen a report that California high-speed rail was projected to cost one billion dollars per mile.)
There is probably no “-ism” that represents a perfect system, but clearly one whose primary goal is profit for shareholders rather than good for the country and its people, is ultimately destined to fail.
Yes, and I think the analysis needs to go further. While Ezra correctly identifies the problem, understanding the full picture requires recognizing that businesses and their C-suites have been the primary drivers of these barriers. They've deliberately weaponized bureaucratic processes against the public interest.
The solution isn't just about cutting red tape - it's about restoring a power dynamic where government serves people rather than corporate interests. This requires strengthening democratic institutions while avoiding authoritarianism - a balance Ezra touches on but doesn't fully explore.
Thanks Corbin. I'm really happy to see that you take the abundance argument seriously, and also understand how it's business priorities as much as any progressive ones that lead to regulatory bloat. I really think that combining this approach with M4A and tax the rich is a platform that we can build a broad coalition around.
I like your passion but still don’t see through to the answers. No mention of climate change. No mention of how. Most of America is now owned. How do you accomplish land acquisition in the face of that? And re climate, do we just keep on building, building, building? Millions of tons of concrete. The continued destruction of the environment. Bulldoze through everything. Burn baby, burn. More roads? More cars? Yes, with the congressional will we could achieve miracles. I just don’t see it happening in an America that has just elected a criminal fantasist to the presidency. A supreme court that is emboldening him and undermining labour. I’m 85. I’m with Bernie and AOC but honestly, do we still need more of everything?
I hear you, John. I try to keep my posts to a readable length so I can't talk about it all every time. I realize climate change is an existential threat. I think we can solve it with either the Jetsons or the Flintstones approach - and the Flintstones version is going to be more painful and deadly.
When I was working on the Green New Deal, I envisioned it as a path to innovate and work our way out of the crisis. I still do. I'm trying to describe the need for a political and electoral mass movement. That's why this Substack is so focused on the depths of the problems - so we can see the scale of the solutions needed.
Vision is critical to change. We can't achieve what we can't imagine. We can't fix what we don't know is broken. When I worked with AOC, I advocated for relaunching a "world's fair" type of event. I pushed for a visual that became the video "A Message from the Future." I think it's critical that we inspire our imaginations.
And yes, I think there is more building to do - more discovery. More understanding of how to live in comfort but also harmony with our planet. This is one piece I've written - about 20 so far. Another dealt with privatization and ownership of the nation:
There was a change in the US after the 60s. We had optimism then. We put a man on the moon! We were going to end poverty! Perhaps it started with Nixon/Kissinger’s plan to fund the military build up of Iran (then, later, Iraq) as the US enforcer in the Middle East by encouraging the oil-rich Arab states to collude to raise oil prices, rather than raise money through taxation. Perhaps it had to do with the backlash against Civil Rights by people willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, voting against programs that would have helped them in order to punish black uppityness. Maybe it was Watergate and Nixon’s subsequent pardon. Maybe it was Reagan, with his “government is the problem” line of BS. Maybe it was the endless stream of infomercials and books telling us that only fools worked for a living and smart people developed “passive income streams” in real estate, investing, and MLM. Maybe it was the assassinations of JFK, MLK, & RFK.
Or a shift in popular entertainment from the lead characters being upholders of decency (think The Waltons) and the rise of the anti-heroes (think Dallas).
Almost forgot: unions, which used to be for protecting workers from abuse & getting them a fair shake, became protection for laziness & incompetence. Workers, who once understood the concept of standing together, became got the “I’m in it for me” attitude and voted to screw other workers in contract negotiations.
As the wife & sister in law of factory workers, I’ve got stories. (Yes, not all workers.)
You definitely make some good points, but I do feel the need to remind folks that a lot of regulation is there for a reason. I work in making sure large infrastructure meets those regulations, so I believe I'm one of the compliance workers in your list of bloat.
As they say, regulations are written in blood. Nearly every issue I'm checking new projects for is checked because of a catastrophic failure we agreed should never happen again. There is certainly room for more efficiency, but I'd ask lay people to avoid being hasty when eliminating "red tape". It's important we build and improve on our infrastructure, but we need to do it safely or lived will be lost. Generally, just training wore skilled workers and engineers would allow us to ensure these projects are safe on a quicker timeline seems a better solution to me. I know my industry has been operating in a labor deficit for my whole career.
IMHO all politics is local, therefore the solution begins with local offices. the GOP has been gerrymandering and cheating to take over local politics for decades but some Democrats in red states are beginning to fight back by talking to their neighbors and organizing as well as running for office even if they lose; that gives them more opportunities to talk about local issues and has helped narrow the losses. No one really wins when GOP candidates run unopposed.
I agree with everything else said here, spot on...
You're right that local efforts matter, and groups like Run for Something are doing important work. I totally support those efforts. But I also think Democrats have a real branding problem at the national level, and when your national brand is terrible, it makes local races that much harder.
The other thing is, some of the problems I outlined in this piece just can't be solved locally. The Interstate Highway System, NASA, railroads, subways, high-speed rail - these aren't local projects. It's like comparing a national library system to those little "take a book, leave a book" boxes on wooden posts. Both have value, but they operate at completely different scales.
Yes, all politics comes down to local elections in some ways, but the solutions we need often have to be bigger than that. We need both - strong local organizing AND a coherent national vision.
Thanks for bringing this up - it's a crucial part of the conversation.
Interesting perspective. When you mentioned the cost of railroad building, was it just dollars, or was there a factor about the cheap labor of immigrants?
If you draft all Americans into military service and teach them engineering and other trade skills and set them all out of military at relatively the same time with free college and free houses and you can't forget this: The rest of the world must be in ruins so that the American economy and dollar are the only stable things then you can recreate the same economy. Remember: non whites don't get the free college and the free houses so whites will support this "socialism." Maybe that's what it will take to create a "scandinavian" style "socialist" economy in the usa again.
I don't understand why we can't describe the regulations that have been implemented by capitalism for capitalism. There are a ton of these - when I was going to culinary school in New York I saw it in the small dairy sector where people were trying to start these really small farm based dairies producing cheese and milk and various other things but the cost of doing so were nearly unbearable and that was in large part to what you might call big dairy. There are barriers that are placed to entry, there are barriers that are placed to production, there are barriers that are placed to create scarcity when there should not be any.
So I don't understand why we can't hold two thoughts in our head at the same time. Regulation that stops people from dumping chemicals in lakes and rivers or on the ground - obviously good. Regulation that keeps people from working people too much or not paying them for overtime - obviously good. Regulations organizing to protect workers rights - obviously good. But some of this shit is really bad and serves no purpose other than protecting corporate profits.
That's what I'm talking about. Not all regulation - the regulation that corporations put in place to protect themselves from competition while pretending it's about safety.
Hi Corbin. Small is Beautiful. We cannot survive a science fiction future where new grease on old wheels re-creates a Camelot that never was. The massive build out during my lifetime - I am 76 - created a heat sink in the air and a garbage dump on the ground and an acid stew in the water. Bigger is better is the ancient theme of corporate hegemony - get in line or get crushed.
No thank you, no more. That we need something constructive to do with our lives, I absolutely agree. Everyday when I go to town for materials or errands I encounter an unbelievable number of cars driving around. Is everyone like me - quasi-retired and just fixing up a few things - or are most people actually not employed. It takes weeks or months to get a skilled professional in the trades to come and estimate or repair something above my pay grade. Meanwhile, the roads crumble, the weeds grow, fixing a street or a county road or a drainage issue or a traffic issue or reducing the loss of energy while nothing important gets energized, continues at a high rate of speed.
It is the paradigm of the dualistic fantasy of humans seen as separate from the confusion they create/experience that has steamrolled society over the edge of failure and into the abyss of dysfunction you outline so well. We cannot and must not go back. It will only hasten the demise already baked into the cake. We could employ every able body all the time for the next 100 years just rescuing, recovering and renewing the environments we live in and depend on. But it will never happen. Why? The toxic stew of democracy + corporate disaster capitalism kills everything while it builds nothing but lifeless confusion, the ones you outline. We worship materialism and private ownership beliefs while 50 percent of citizens have only 2.5 percent of real wealth, the next 40 percent have 40 percent and the top 10 have more than 50 percent.
Wealth should be the valuable energy saved and stored for future needs. It is not. It is just more excess junk meant to puff up narcissistic self-aggrandizement that requires constant maintenance or else it just breaks in a few days, weeks or months and is hauled to the toxic landfill. Our future is either buried in landfills or junkyards or pumped into the soil, air and water and is now killing us and all that lives.
Our govt. AND our corporate empire do not work, they destroy. Only psychic and spiritual revolution will find a way forward, out of this nihilistic mess. We have a shield - our military and defense might - that should allow us to look inward and fix our mess if we destroy the disaster capitalism cabal that cares nothing for us our our home. Self-governance is a trainwreck inside a myth right now. We are owned, and politics as usual and business as usual will finish off the last outliers of support we need. War? We are already at war, with ourselves and our planet, and we are all losing, big time.
Hey Mick, I largely agree with what you're talking about here and definitely see the critiques of building for building's sake. That's why I'm supporting efforts like the Green New Deal or the Mission for America, and why I've spent my time working for candidates and recruiting candidates that I think embodied that vision. I would love to spend the next 100 years - not me personally but the society - rescuing, recovering, or renewing our environment.
I just, I guess I don't believe that it will never happen. I think that there's - one of the things that we miss is the capacity to understand or believe that we have agency, that we can determine a future, that it doesn't just happen. I think that's from a lot of different reasons - there's a lot of effort to make people feel powerless, individual, and isolated. But I think that's what a political movement could potentially do - is to make people feel unified and powerful. And if we can ever find that mix, sort of the antithesis of the toxic stew you described, the antidote to that toxic stew, then I feel like we can have something beautiful.
I mean, you know, I feel like we should always be striving for utopia. Obviously I think we'll never get there, but if we're shooting for something big, something like the stars, then we can at least get into orbit. I mean, and that's just sort of the theory of which I work from. I think religious folks do this too - like, you know, Christians ostensibly live to try to be more Christ-like, and the theory there is that if you endeavor to be more Christ-like, then you will improve yourself, though the goal, the outcome, is never something you can achieve in their mind. It's still something you should strive for because it will lead to improvements.
And I think in my life I've seen something similar. When we did Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats and we wanted to recruit hundreds of candidates to replace a lot of incumbents, we recruited a dozen, only one of which won the first time - that was AOC. And I think that was a situation where we got very lucky and she had more impact than anybody thought possible. But by shooting for something huge, we accomplished something useful, I think, to some degree. And then the next cycle, a couple more folks won - unfortunately it got muted and didn't continue, but the point is that if our goals are huge and we believe that we have agency towards reaching them, then we can make a world that's better, a country that's better. That's all I'm saying, and that's what I believe, and I hope to continue believing that because the alternative is very depressing.
A Mr. LaPointe notes-it's all about the Benjamins. Greed begets poverty - of the pocket and the soul. My parents, children of the Depression and WW2 and Korea, built a house with a mortgage payment of $110 a month. They raised 3 kids on a salesman salary(Mom raised us at home, with no need for a second income just to feed us) and sent us to top end colleges. The U of Chicago cost $3000 a year.
A consumer based economy, which has led the U.S. to maintain the Reserve Currency and economic leadership of the world, has created a populace of desirous, shallow materialists whose children's children have no goals because 3 generations from the Greatest Generation they have no hope of living the "American Consumerist Dream". And AOC (a political lightweight) and Bernie (a failed Communist) are too late to the game to ever have any noticeable effect. Their Congressional partners are in it for the dough (see Pelosi's stock picks) and every Congressional district has a Department of Defense corporate recipient of weapons systems largesse.( You forgot to note that the one industry that leads the world in expertise and quality work-except Boeing- are defense contractors).
Sadly the only likely way out of this soul crushing crisis is war. If not the 30 year Neocon dream of taking over Russia via the Ukraine debacle(BlackRock already has the contract to rebuild the rubble that will be left there), then China will eventually overcome us economically as they pattern their economy on the US model, if they don't first economically crush us in a protracted war.
Wow. This is a fascinating mix of things I agree with and things I couldn't disagree with more strongly. I actually wrote about what you're describing - how people used to be able to build lives on one income - in this piece https://www.americasundoing.com/p/a-massive-american-pay-cut
But then you call AOC a political lightweight, which has been proven false by her effectiveness in Congress, and Bernie a "failed Communist" when he's really more of a democratic socialist who's achieved remarkable things. I do agree with your assessment of Pelosi and many other House members - both Democrat and Republican. And yes, the military industrial complex was incredibly strategic in positioning themselves across congressional districts.
Where I disagree is on military products and technology. I don't think we're still producing the best - we're starting to get beaten there too.
But the biggest disagreement? That war is the only way out of this crisis. That's the path unthoughtful leaders might take. Sure, there's appeal in using war to unite the country and build an economy, but it's not the only way. The Green New Deal was essentially mobilizing on a wartime footing without building bombs.
Glad to see you engaging with these ideas, even if we see some things very differently.
This was great, thank you for sharing. A couple things I was hoping to see but didn't so I'll share my entirely uneducated opinion as we're supposed to do in a comment section.
First, for all of the decline that you mentioned with regards to engineering, you left out what Americans lead the world in these days: whining & complaining! We love to complain about anything and everything but the minute solutions are proposed we start whining. Until Americans are led to believe that solutions are their best interest, all of this is just going to get worse.
Second is greed. I think there's a bit of that spread out through the piece but not specifically called out. The corporate greed has killed both innovation and in some cases the environment. We're going to be stuck with quick, cheaply built apartments for the foreseeable future.
Thanks again, Corbin. All the best.
You're totally right about the complaining—we've turned it into our national pastime! We should've included that as America's number one infrastructure achievement these days.
I should've highlighted greed throughout this piece because that's what drives these things. That consultant racket I mentioned? Corporate greed. These companies realized that they make more money studying problems than fixing them.
Those cheap apartments going up while the roads fall apart? You got it exactly right - quick profits, who cares about the rest. Developers make their money and leave everyone else stuck in traffic.
Appreciate you reading and commenting.
-Corbin
It's a sad story how the advance of capitalism has hollowed out our communities. Your research tells a story of disintegration.
Added to the list of the failure to fund new and important infrastructure should be congressional favoritism and favor swapping in funding new projects by both parties.
I haven't done the research but adding another culprit here. The laws of nature apply to capitalism and money flows in the path of least resistance: leveraged buy outs and sell offs, sucking the vitality out of communities.
Getting people who have a social consciousness into Congress who are not beholden to the Democrat party is a big critical step. We must not replace oligarchical dominance with corporate dominance. We need to keep the drum beating on electing progressives. Thank you for keeping that focus up front.
Let's also jump in at the local levels and begin actually running our government in our states and communities. Having good people as local commissioners keeping a watch on where contracts are going, and pushing to upgrade our grids would be a big progressive step. And for gods sake, get on the school boards and bring the good literature back into our schools.
“We can't fix bridges, roads, or power grids unless we first fix our politics.” Yes, and to do that and address political corruption, we must get big money out.
Things began to change rapidly during the Reagan administration, as he famously said “Government IS the problem.” He shifted tax policy to focus on corporate profits with a “trickle-down” lie. Gone were the huge signs at construction sites saying, “Your tax dollars at work.” No wonder so many people lost trust or faith in government.
This well-written article is similar to ones I wrote about American health care 10-15 years ago. One of them started with, “Fixing our broken healthcare system, reducing costs, and improving care all comes down to getting the objectives and health incentives right.” (MHealthTalk.com/incentives)
Similarly, it spoke of political corruption and called for getting big money out. It also promoted public-private partnerships and embraced the contrast between business incentives (like ROI, quarterly profit, and payback period) and public sector incentives that have different objectives and measure success differently.
I reckon we can't fix any of the underlying causes without the political movement I'm describing. Whether it's money in politics, corruption, declining capacity, or the revolving door—whatever we figure the root cause of our dysfunction is—the only way out is through a political revolution. That's my underlying thesis, which is why I put it in the postscript of every post I put up here.
Another factor to add to the list of causes (for the infeasibility of large-scale projects) can be stated in three words: Capitalism versus Socialism. In the latter, a public agency sees a need to be filled and uses public workers to fill it. In contrast, under capitalism, dozens of private agencies are involved, at all levels from mining to manufacture. Each one of these has to make a profit - and ideally, as much profit as possible. So OF COURSE the costs are going to go up exponentially - to the point where the project simply cannot be done. (I no longer have the source, but I’d seen a report that California high-speed rail was projected to cost one billion dollars per mile.)
There is probably no “-ism” that represents a perfect system, but clearly one whose primary goal is profit for shareholders rather than good for the country and its people, is ultimately destined to fail.
I'd like to know how this overlaps with the abundance approach Ezra Klein wrote about.
Yes, and I think the analysis needs to go further. While Ezra correctly identifies the problem, understanding the full picture requires recognizing that businesses and their C-suites have been the primary drivers of these barriers. They've deliberately weaponized bureaucratic processes against the public interest.
The solution isn't just about cutting red tape - it's about restoring a power dynamic where government serves people rather than corporate interests. This requires strengthening democratic institutions while avoiding authoritarianism - a balance Ezra touches on but doesn't fully explore.
Thanks Corbin. I'm really happy to see that you take the abundance argument seriously, and also understand how it's business priorities as much as any progressive ones that lead to regulatory bloat. I really think that combining this approach with M4A and tax the rich is a platform that we can build a broad coalition around.
I like your passion but still don’t see through to the answers. No mention of climate change. No mention of how. Most of America is now owned. How do you accomplish land acquisition in the face of that? And re climate, do we just keep on building, building, building? Millions of tons of concrete. The continued destruction of the environment. Bulldoze through everything. Burn baby, burn. More roads? More cars? Yes, with the congressional will we could achieve miracles. I just don’t see it happening in an America that has just elected a criminal fantasist to the presidency. A supreme court that is emboldening him and undermining labour. I’m 85. I’m with Bernie and AOC but honestly, do we still need more of everything?
I hear you, John. I try to keep my posts to a readable length so I can't talk about it all every time. I realize climate change is an existential threat. I think we can solve it with either the Jetsons or the Flintstones approach - and the Flintstones version is going to be more painful and deadly.
When I was working on the Green New Deal, I envisioned it as a path to innovate and work our way out of the crisis. I still do. I'm trying to describe the need for a political and electoral mass movement. That's why this Substack is so focused on the depths of the problems - so we can see the scale of the solutions needed.
Vision is critical to change. We can't achieve what we can't imagine. We can't fix what we don't know is broken. When I worked with AOC, I advocated for relaunching a "world's fair" type of event. I pushed for a visual that became the video "A Message from the Future." I think it's critical that we inspire our imaginations.
And yes, I think there is more building to do - more discovery. More understanding of how to live in comfort but also harmony with our planet. This is one piece I've written - about 20 so far. Another dealt with privatization and ownership of the nation:
https://www.americasundoing.com/p/americas-execution-crisis-privatization
I'm so glad to see you in the comments. I want to talk this stuff through.
The top 1% used to pay higher taxes, which paid for the giant infrastructure projects.
There was a change in the US after the 60s. We had optimism then. We put a man on the moon! We were going to end poverty! Perhaps it started with Nixon/Kissinger’s plan to fund the military build up of Iran (then, later, Iraq) as the US enforcer in the Middle East by encouraging the oil-rich Arab states to collude to raise oil prices, rather than raise money through taxation. Perhaps it had to do with the backlash against Civil Rights by people willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, voting against programs that would have helped them in order to punish black uppityness. Maybe it was Watergate and Nixon’s subsequent pardon. Maybe it was Reagan, with his “government is the problem” line of BS. Maybe it was the endless stream of infomercials and books telling us that only fools worked for a living and smart people developed “passive income streams” in real estate, investing, and MLM. Maybe it was the assassinations of JFK, MLK, & RFK.
Or a shift in popular entertainment from the lead characters being upholders of decency (think The Waltons) and the rise of the anti-heroes (think Dallas).
Thoughts?
Almost forgot: unions, which used to be for protecting workers from abuse & getting them a fair shake, became protection for laziness & incompetence. Workers, who once understood the concept of standing together, became got the “I’m in it for me” attitude and voted to screw other workers in contract negotiations.
As the wife & sister in law of factory workers, I’ve got stories. (Yes, not all workers.)
You definitely make some good points, but I do feel the need to remind folks that a lot of regulation is there for a reason. I work in making sure large infrastructure meets those regulations, so I believe I'm one of the compliance workers in your list of bloat.
As they say, regulations are written in blood. Nearly every issue I'm checking new projects for is checked because of a catastrophic failure we agreed should never happen again. There is certainly room for more efficiency, but I'd ask lay people to avoid being hasty when eliminating "red tape". It's important we build and improve on our infrastructure, but we need to do it safely or lived will be lost. Generally, just training wore skilled workers and engineers would allow us to ensure these projects are safe on a quicker timeline seems a better solution to me. I know my industry has been operating in a labor deficit for my whole career.
IMHO all politics is local, therefore the solution begins with local offices. the GOP has been gerrymandering and cheating to take over local politics for decades but some Democrats in red states are beginning to fight back by talking to their neighbors and organizing as well as running for office even if they lose; that gives them more opportunities to talk about local issues and has helped narrow the losses. No one really wins when GOP candidates run unopposed.
I agree with everything else said here, spot on...
You're right that local efforts matter, and groups like Run for Something are doing important work. I totally support those efforts. But I also think Democrats have a real branding problem at the national level, and when your national brand is terrible, it makes local races that much harder.
The other thing is, some of the problems I outlined in this piece just can't be solved locally. The Interstate Highway System, NASA, railroads, subways, high-speed rail - these aren't local projects. It's like comparing a national library system to those little "take a book, leave a book" boxes on wooden posts. Both have value, but they operate at completely different scales.
Yes, all politics comes down to local elections in some ways, but the solutions we need often have to be bigger than that. We need both - strong local organizing AND a coherent national vision.
Thanks for bringing this up - it's a crucial part of the conversation.
Interesting perspective. When you mentioned the cost of railroad building, was it just dollars, or was there a factor about the cheap labor of immigrants?
If you draft all Americans into military service and teach them engineering and other trade skills and set them all out of military at relatively the same time with free college and free houses and you can't forget this: The rest of the world must be in ruins so that the American economy and dollar are the only stable things then you can recreate the same economy. Remember: non whites don't get the free college and the free houses so whites will support this "socialism." Maybe that's what it will take to create a "scandinavian" style "socialist" economy in the usa again.
Capitalism has declared war on community. That's it. We have no community feelings becasue community is bad for capitalism.
You're a clown.
This guy is an idiot. Anyone moron blaming "regulation" for the problems of this country can fuck right the fuck off. blocked. muted,
I don't understand why we can't describe the regulations that have been implemented by capitalism for capitalism. There are a ton of these - when I was going to culinary school in New York I saw it in the small dairy sector where people were trying to start these really small farm based dairies producing cheese and milk and various other things but the cost of doing so were nearly unbearable and that was in large part to what you might call big dairy. There are barriers that are placed to entry, there are barriers that are placed to production, there are barriers that are placed to create scarcity when there should not be any.
So I don't understand why we can't hold two thoughts in our head at the same time. Regulation that stops people from dumping chemicals in lakes and rivers or on the ground - obviously good. Regulation that keeps people from working people too much or not paying them for overtime - obviously good. Regulations organizing to protect workers rights - obviously good. But some of this shit is really bad and serves no purpose other than protecting corporate profits.
That's what I'm talking about. Not all regulation - the regulation that corporations put in place to protect themselves from competition while pretending it's about safety.
Hi Corbin. Small is Beautiful. We cannot survive a science fiction future where new grease on old wheels re-creates a Camelot that never was. The massive build out during my lifetime - I am 76 - created a heat sink in the air and a garbage dump on the ground and an acid stew in the water. Bigger is better is the ancient theme of corporate hegemony - get in line or get crushed.
No thank you, no more. That we need something constructive to do with our lives, I absolutely agree. Everyday when I go to town for materials or errands I encounter an unbelievable number of cars driving around. Is everyone like me - quasi-retired and just fixing up a few things - or are most people actually not employed. It takes weeks or months to get a skilled professional in the trades to come and estimate or repair something above my pay grade. Meanwhile, the roads crumble, the weeds grow, fixing a street or a county road or a drainage issue or a traffic issue or reducing the loss of energy while nothing important gets energized, continues at a high rate of speed.
It is the paradigm of the dualistic fantasy of humans seen as separate from the confusion they create/experience that has steamrolled society over the edge of failure and into the abyss of dysfunction you outline so well. We cannot and must not go back. It will only hasten the demise already baked into the cake. We could employ every able body all the time for the next 100 years just rescuing, recovering and renewing the environments we live in and depend on. But it will never happen. Why? The toxic stew of democracy + corporate disaster capitalism kills everything while it builds nothing but lifeless confusion, the ones you outline. We worship materialism and private ownership beliefs while 50 percent of citizens have only 2.5 percent of real wealth, the next 40 percent have 40 percent and the top 10 have more than 50 percent.
Wealth should be the valuable energy saved and stored for future needs. It is not. It is just more excess junk meant to puff up narcissistic self-aggrandizement that requires constant maintenance or else it just breaks in a few days, weeks or months and is hauled to the toxic landfill. Our future is either buried in landfills or junkyards or pumped into the soil, air and water and is now killing us and all that lives.
Our govt. AND our corporate empire do not work, they destroy. Only psychic and spiritual revolution will find a way forward, out of this nihilistic mess. We have a shield - our military and defense might - that should allow us to look inward and fix our mess if we destroy the disaster capitalism cabal that cares nothing for us our our home. Self-governance is a trainwreck inside a myth right now. We are owned, and politics as usual and business as usual will finish off the last outliers of support we need. War? We are already at war, with ourselves and our planet, and we are all losing, big time.
Hey Mick, I largely agree with what you're talking about here and definitely see the critiques of building for building's sake. That's why I'm supporting efforts like the Green New Deal or the Mission for America, and why I've spent my time working for candidates and recruiting candidates that I think embodied that vision. I would love to spend the next 100 years - not me personally but the society - rescuing, recovering, or renewing our environment.
I just, I guess I don't believe that it will never happen. I think that there's - one of the things that we miss is the capacity to understand or believe that we have agency, that we can determine a future, that it doesn't just happen. I think that's from a lot of different reasons - there's a lot of effort to make people feel powerless, individual, and isolated. But I think that's what a political movement could potentially do - is to make people feel unified and powerful. And if we can ever find that mix, sort of the antithesis of the toxic stew you described, the antidote to that toxic stew, then I feel like we can have something beautiful.
I mean, you know, I feel like we should always be striving for utopia. Obviously I think we'll never get there, but if we're shooting for something big, something like the stars, then we can at least get into orbit. I mean, and that's just sort of the theory of which I work from. I think religious folks do this too - like, you know, Christians ostensibly live to try to be more Christ-like, and the theory there is that if you endeavor to be more Christ-like, then you will improve yourself, though the goal, the outcome, is never something you can achieve in their mind. It's still something you should strive for because it will lead to improvements.
And I think in my life I've seen something similar. When we did Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats and we wanted to recruit hundreds of candidates to replace a lot of incumbents, we recruited a dozen, only one of which won the first time - that was AOC. And I think that was a situation where we got very lucky and she had more impact than anybody thought possible. But by shooting for something huge, we accomplished something useful, I think, to some degree. And then the next cycle, a couple more folks won - unfortunately it got muted and didn't continue, but the point is that if our goals are huge and we believe that we have agency towards reaching them, then we can make a world that's better, a country that's better. That's all I'm saying, and that's what I believe, and I hope to continue believing that because the alternative is very depressing.
A Mr. LaPointe notes-it's all about the Benjamins. Greed begets poverty - of the pocket and the soul. My parents, children of the Depression and WW2 and Korea, built a house with a mortgage payment of $110 a month. They raised 3 kids on a salesman salary(Mom raised us at home, with no need for a second income just to feed us) and sent us to top end colleges. The U of Chicago cost $3000 a year.
A consumer based economy, which has led the U.S. to maintain the Reserve Currency and economic leadership of the world, has created a populace of desirous, shallow materialists whose children's children have no goals because 3 generations from the Greatest Generation they have no hope of living the "American Consumerist Dream". And AOC (a political lightweight) and Bernie (a failed Communist) are too late to the game to ever have any noticeable effect. Their Congressional partners are in it for the dough (see Pelosi's stock picks) and every Congressional district has a Department of Defense corporate recipient of weapons systems largesse.( You forgot to note that the one industry that leads the world in expertise and quality work-except Boeing- are defense contractors).
Sadly the only likely way out of this soul crushing crisis is war. If not the 30 year Neocon dream of taking over Russia via the Ukraine debacle(BlackRock already has the contract to rebuild the rubble that will be left there), then China will eventually overcome us economically as they pattern their economy on the US model, if they don't first economically crush us in a protracted war.
Buckle up kids, the road si gonna be a bit bumpy.
Wow. This is a fascinating mix of things I agree with and things I couldn't disagree with more strongly. I actually wrote about what you're describing - how people used to be able to build lives on one income - in this piece https://www.americasundoing.com/p/a-massive-american-pay-cut
But then you call AOC a political lightweight, which has been proven false by her effectiveness in Congress, and Bernie a "failed Communist" when he's really more of a democratic socialist who's achieved remarkable things. I do agree with your assessment of Pelosi and many other House members - both Democrat and Republican. And yes, the military industrial complex was incredibly strategic in positioning themselves across congressional districts.
Where I disagree is on military products and technology. I don't think we're still producing the best - we're starting to get beaten there too.
But the biggest disagreement? That war is the only way out of this crisis. That's the path unthoughtful leaders might take. Sure, there's appeal in using war to unite the country and build an economy, but it's not the only way. The Green New Deal was essentially mobilizing on a wartime footing without building bombs.
Glad to see you engaging with these ideas, even if we see some things very differently.
-Corbin