The Abundance Agenda does appear to also assume that we should all want go live in large cities and rewild the countryside. In fact, if you look at current population patterns, when people have a choice, they would prefer to move to and telecommute from less dense areas, especially including well educated professionals. Look at the Weldon Cooper Center analysis of census trends.
There are real cultural differences in preferences, and these are not small differences. My idea of an abundant (small a) life centers around growing flowers and my own vegetables, green space, cooking for friends, hanging out at local farmers markets, enjoying nearby nature, and being able to see the night sky. Having lots of shopping, restaurants, and bars are not something I care about or want.
A lot of the current political unrest is precisely because of the shift from widespread manufacturing and business with widespread jobs to a relentless focus on a handful of crowded cities.
If Abundance means, give up the suburban, exurban, or rural place you love, leave your family and friends, live in a dense neighborhood of strangers, and replace the woods and pasture you left behind with solar farms that local residents loathe, then Abundance is going to flop.
?? - No.... that does not. They are referencing Supply & Demand. Of which the failures on stated goals, e.g. on the affordable housing front.
There is clearly excess demand for housing in certain metro areas, the housing prices - rather than anectdotes and personal assertsions - show that. Your comment is basically a strawman of at least what Klein & co actually wrote
They combine sensible solutions for excessive red tape with a specific, very urban perspective of how that reduction should be used that IMHO is not a good reflection of what most people want.
Less red tape is good. Using reduced red tape to go crazy replacing woods and farmland with solar farms is bad, IMHO.
Remote work has greatly undermined the case for agglomeration as a driving factor for urbanization. Encouraging remote work is a better solution to many housing issues than pushing people into shoebox apartments with no green space.
Examples where I feel like they overstate the case includes the suggestion that almost all major corporations have stopped remote work. In fact, Shopify, Atlassian, Dropbox, AirBNB, Pinterest, Coinbase, Wordpress.com, Square, Reddit, Twilio, Okta, TaskRabbit, Instacart, and Quora, just to name a few, are noted for fully remote, and several of those are remote-first.
If people can agglomerate virtually, and I have years of work experience showing that works well, those workers don’t need to live in crowded, expensive cities unless they just want to. Higher pay in cities usually doesn’t offset the higher cost of living, and you lose the many benefits in lifestyle and community of living in a less urban place.
Other examples include the discussion of Wal-Mart software development, where the book seems to suggest their software development is only in California and they rejected Arkansas because agglomeration made California “the” place for software. In fact, Wal-Mart has software offices in many different states and has multiple open software jobs, including senior jobs, listed in Arkansas, New York, etc. See https://careers.walmart.com/technology/software-development-and-engineering
I can give more specific examples if you want. No, it’s not a straw man.
Oh it is a strawman with a leavening of red herring
Of course one sees in part exactly the contradictory and generally hypocritical "Yes Butism": "Using reduced red tape to go crazy replacing woods and farmland with solar farms is bad, IMHO."
But of course replacing farmland and woods with suburb ex-urban McMansions is great.... Which is happening (nothing per se against McMansions, but to cite "replacing" farmland and forest w PV while being all in on "remote work" and sub/ex-urban choices is literally incoherent economically as well as ecologically. It's in short, fundamentally the kind of myopic hypocrisy that has led the Democratic Left into paralysing harm on the evidently disdained urban front.
This leaves aside that Agri-Voltaics with Solar PV intercropping in horticulture, fruits & berries and grazing applications is not only a significant development, real market basis [ as in the economics not the silly touchy-feely innumeracy of conservationists] but has interesting positives on the productivity of both the panels (cooling effects) and the agri-production (as in horticulture and fruits and berries notably).
As for Remote - as a red herring it's really neither here nor there for the subject that Klein & co are raising as structurally their focus is on the permitting issues that undercut the Democrats & Progressives stated build-out agendas. One does not "remote work" chip manufacturing nor auto manufacturing nor industrial centers nor power plants.
In any case, although what niche Tech sector service companies whose employment base is essentially comfortable white-collar employees, that is a minority within a minority of both employment and market drivers. Overall statistics rather indicate that broadly the white collar office employee segment outside of some specific areas are mostly back to office on least a general basis.
Myself as a CEO, my people are largely back in office as we do not find full remote effective - most management I speak with are of the same view (as is ironically Trump and Musk, but I shall not take a position merely out of reactive politics).
Outside of Tech sector of course for blue collar labor - retail, logistics (goods - manufacturing or agri or other), industrial, remote is not even an option so this concern is really ... well basically unexamined prejudice - which generally is part of what drove the Democrats in a ditch overall with far too much attention to the online commentariat skewed to white collar highly educated - this not only for the Wokey Culture stuff but very broadly beyond that.
Evidently not only the Wokey Lefties are an issue.
Concerns about loss of woodland and farmland are not hypocritical.
Replacing one uneconomical larger farm with several smaller hobby farms is not incoherent economically or ecologically. Species like bobwhite depend on edge habitats and have declined with the loss of small farms. Exurbs are not suburbs. Hobby farmers are not farming as their primary source of income.
And the farmers you see at farmers markets, the ones preserving historic livestock breeds and raising pastured meat, are typically those small farmers, often hobby farmers with a different primary source of income.
Remote works allows people to live where they want, not where they are forced to.
“Agri-Voltaics with Solar PV intercropping in horticulture, fruits & berries and grazing applications” is a niche product and not what is actually being imposed on rural communities with industrial scale solar. It’s also not suitable for most agriculture. Have you ever lived on or owned a farm?
Manufacturing, industrial centers, and power plants are frequently located in rural areas. Remote work provides those areas with better demographics and a more solid economic base.
You really don’t understand how this plays out in the real world. I do, because I have lived it.
More remote workers in a remote rural exurb mean more economic activity. More restaurants, stores, car repair shops. More construction. Plumbers and electricians start their own local businesses instead of driving to the city. People start service businesses- cleaning, landscaping, specialty agriculture, riding lessons. Artists have more local customers and start displaying work for sale in local stores, offices, and restaurants. Breweries and wineries open.
I have literally watched this play out over the past five years. I have eyes and I lived here before, during, and after. It is not about white collar bias - it’s an observation of the effect of that work dispersal on rural communities that is backed by census and economic data.
Well what can we say to someone who thinks manufacturing can be done via remote work or writes things about "uneconomical larger farms" - fairly the exact opposite of reality, but since one seems innocent of proper economics and actual statistics, carry on. You are indeed the proper audience for them although the one that won't listen and shall remain in genteel innumeracy.
I did not say that manufacturing can be done via remote work at any point in this discussion.
Uneconomical larger farms is clearly a specific reference to farms in exurbs that are no longer economically viable but are too large for hobbyists. Farms of 200-500 acres are often too large for most hobby farmers but many farms of that size are no longer able to produce enough income for a living, either because of scale, imports, or multiple other issues. You often see this with dairy farms, for example.
Exurbs often have farms of this size. I did not claim small farms are more profitable than large farms. I did point out that small hobby farms are often cut from those larger farms, that hobby farms are typically not run as a primary source of income, and they serve an important role in farming and in their local communities.
FYI, my family has been farming - for a living - in this state for over 200 years. Technically my own property is considered a farm, although I do not call myself a farmer. I am VERY familiar with the phenomenon of quite decent sized farms no longer being economically viable and being divided up into smaller properties.
As a paroled, former quarter century CA resident, it is not that demand is so much greater than many other places, but that supply, is so artificially constrained.
The last house we built in Northern CA spent nearly 2 years in plan check, 20 years ago. Friends have been waiting for just a remodel permit longer, now. Most people buy already constructed homes. They have no idea of the time and money involved in permitting. Our school district required a hand delivered check to the school system, where we were surprised to learn, a full time employee did nothing but accept checks.
It is a Blue State dirty little secret, that supply is kept purposefully low, to protect the housing values of older and Whiter residents. Blue States also, generally, have lower homeownership rates, which benefits Dems at the ballot box.
The same is true in health care. A cartel of existing (urban) providers controls not only the number of new providers but their location. The (Democratic) Senator from Nevada recently noted that for every 10 medical school graduates here, only 7 residencies are available. Thus 30% of the graduates relocate and generally never return.
and.... that is not a contradiction to the observation. Excess demand over supply (for regulatory / non-market reasons). Excess demand is excess demand -whether that demand is "more" than "many other places" is 100% irrelevant to the subject.
There is excess demand over supply and supply is precisely constrained for the non-market reasons they ID - the reasons of hypocritical posturing was actually evoked in the actual video (it rather appears to me most people are reacting to their own prejudices based on Headlines, not on what the fellow really said and covered in the interview / exchange).
Their point about the Progressives sabotaging their own stated agendas by rigid anti-market proceses across many domains largely through constraining permitting etc. is one that is exactly what the reactors are oddly missing.
California has seen a net loss in domestic migration and is expected to lose, not gain, electoral college votes.
Have you read the book being discussed? Several of your comments seem to suggest you are responding solely to the interview, not the actual book under discussion.
Of course, many people go to where the good-paying jobs are. That's why lots of people flocked to North Dakota to work in the Bakken oil fields. Of course, this will disrupt small communities that usually do not have excess housing.
An awful lot of jobs are relatively location-independent, including remote work, creative work, and e-businesses. In the past few years, more people living in the US having been moving out of big cities than have been moving into them.
Blue collar jobs in construction, manufacturing and health care require location-specific mobilizations. If we want modern infrastructure and assembled goods like cars, computers and cell phones we will need to select the locations where we will build new stuff. Then it will be easier for the more privileged to work remotely.
Blue collar jobs typically are available wherever people live, and construction workers often commute to job sites over a wide area. Health care jobs are similarly widespread.
When white collar workers and e-business entrepreneurs settle in exurbs and small towns, new jobs tend to spring up.
Manufacturing historically is generally done outside of cities, near transit. Manufacturing clusters historically have been all over. Some manufacturing is high tech, some is moderate, some is relatively low tech. It’s not all the same and while chip fabrication might cluster, pharmaceutical production, to give an example, isn’t necessarily going to cluster near it.
Re-shoring manufacturing, power data centers and creating a charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and heating will all require new electric infrastructure. Many transmission lines are over 50 years old. The system needs to be modernized which will require a reasonable permitting process that is not subject to regulatory delay and litigation.
I agree. However, I think that issues of land use are important in deciding the location and type of power infrastructure permitted.
Solar closer to the end use - sited over parking lots, in brownfields, on unused open space, and on existing structures - reduces the need for transmission lines, and minimizes the clear cutting of forest and the loss of farmland.
Nuclear fission, and perhaps someday fusion, has a smaller footprint than solar and can potentially be sited close to data centers. New carbon absorbent materials recently developed can greatly reduce carbon emissions of natural gas.
I believe that the countryside is more than a dumping ground for infrastructure that cities don’t want. When people object to clear cutting woods for solar farms, that’s reasonable, not NIMBY.
As you noted yesterday, it's not just the economy. It is the whole complex of faculty lounge issues
Oh, and thanks for the transcript. Otherwise I would have missed the discussion.
Clean energy isn't. It just means moving the dirt somewhere else like China or Congo. There is something to be said for having the dirt where the consumption is. Unless you are a NIMBY. There is not an existing clean energy technology that doesn't have massive externalities. So if you are going to have energy abundance, you have to accept some externalities.
The Left has for too long been mired in the philosophy of Malthus who has the distinction of being wrong more than Marx. There are those among my Boomer contemporaries who still worship at the shrine of Paul Ehrlich in spite of all the data. That philosophy leads to scarcity politics.
Time to look back to David Ricardo and the concept of comparative advantage. China has a growing advantage over the U.S. because of decisions to invest in mining, refining and manufacturing of clean energy technologies. Trying to revive 50-year old coal plants in the USA is a fools errand. It's not going to happen.
I haven’t seen anyone suggesting reviving 50 year old coal plants.
However, there is no good reason not to invest in mining, refining, and manufacturing. Giving that up is a prescription for loss of innovation.
Our current advantage in financial services is unlikely to be permanent. Surrender manufacturing and we are likely to wind up in decline like the UK and the EU.
Interesting conversation, notably from approx 27:45 and how to overcome the AOC lefty progressive ("damn the oligarchy") - as listner who was never a Democrat, not particularly D inclined except in reaction to Trump. Populism as a costume is an interesting marketing insight, the reflection on the put on non-technocratic language for the same goal - run against the system. However, how to get the Lefty Left fraction of the Democrats who may dominate the Primaries. Challenge, but not one to pre-fail.
I did like the Democracy is not an Arbitration line.
Needed on energy to have raised more on the Infra although in part touched on in the Texas building - but good observation that the degrowth Lefty Greeny (Germany example raised - ref to the Grunen idiocy).
(primary "reforms" to make them "democratic being a fundamental Progressive foolish reform from the 70s - smoke filled rooms to prevent the Trumps and the Sanders manipulations were a good things)
Just a few weeks ago it looked like many data centers would be built in Texas and the Southeast U.S. Now it is not so clear with a trade war going on whether we can afford the advanced semi-conductors from Taiwan. It may make more sense to build data centers in Canada and Mexico. It will be harder to tax the intellectual property that flows back and forth zillions of times over the internet.
Amy Lerman and Lindsay Maple from the UC Berkeley Possibility lab wrote an excellent article on the abundancy agenda for the on-line newspaper CalMatters. Following is a key quote from the article:
"We can’t achieve abundance without the architects, developers, planners and construction workers building our infrastructure. Beyond building, we can’t bring about abundance without the home care workers, pre-K teachers and primary care physicians who sustain our eldercare, childcare and health care systems. If we truly want to realize abundance, we need policies that make these jobs attractive and achievable: offering better wages, improving working conditions and building career pathways that recognize their vital contributions to a thriving society."
It's time for another Ruy Texeira interview of Oren Cass, chief economist at the American Compass, and articulate advocate for applying chemotherapy to the U.S. economy. He needs to explain again why Trump's policies are not seriously disabling the economy and ruining rural communities and putting more stress on family structure.
So how can a Democratic administration, if there ever is another, actually get things done? I supported Biden, but learned that he under supplied Ukraine. That shit could've been over with two years ago. The reason governors do well running for president is if they do what Thompson is saying and get shit done. Good plan. Find some Democratic governors and figure out how to speed up projects. The California high speed rail project is a joke. Like most road improvement bonds and the endless construction at LAX, it only exists to give work to the large construction companies. Perhaps the book should be a run down of (recent) projects that were actually accomplished quickly. I rent a three bedroom house that has a Zillow value less than the cost of two single room apartments to house the homeless. The people voted for council reps who want to house the unhoused, there's money... but along the way the cost balloons and the developers and contractors run the cost up.
The Abundance Agenda does appear to also assume that we should all want go live in large cities and rewild the countryside. In fact, if you look at current population patterns, when people have a choice, they would prefer to move to and telecommute from less dense areas, especially including well educated professionals. Look at the Weldon Cooper Center analysis of census trends.
There are real cultural differences in preferences, and these are not small differences. My idea of an abundant (small a) life centers around growing flowers and my own vegetables, green space, cooking for friends, hanging out at local farmers markets, enjoying nearby nature, and being able to see the night sky. Having lots of shopping, restaurants, and bars are not something I care about or want.
A lot of the current political unrest is precisely because of the shift from widespread manufacturing and business with widespread jobs to a relentless focus on a handful of crowded cities.
If Abundance means, give up the suburban, exurban, or rural place you love, leave your family and friends, live in a dense neighborhood of strangers, and replace the woods and pasture you left behind with solar farms that local residents loathe, then Abundance is going to flop.
?? - No.... that does not. They are referencing Supply & Demand. Of which the failures on stated goals, e.g. on the affordable housing front.
There is clearly excess demand for housing in certain metro areas, the housing prices - rather than anectdotes and personal assertsions - show that. Your comment is basically a strawman of at least what Klein & co actually wrote
They combine sensible solutions for excessive red tape with a specific, very urban perspective of how that reduction should be used that IMHO is not a good reflection of what most people want.
Less red tape is good. Using reduced red tape to go crazy replacing woods and farmland with solar farms is bad, IMHO.
Remote work has greatly undermined the case for agglomeration as a driving factor for urbanization. Encouraging remote work is a better solution to many housing issues than pushing people into shoebox apartments with no green space.
During the pandemic, census data shows that when workers had a choice, many wanted to move to smaller, less dense places. See for example https://www.coopercenter.org/research/remote-work-persists-migration-continues-rural-america
Examples where I feel like they overstate the case includes the suggestion that almost all major corporations have stopped remote work. In fact, Shopify, Atlassian, Dropbox, AirBNB, Pinterest, Coinbase, Wordpress.com, Square, Reddit, Twilio, Okta, TaskRabbit, Instacart, and Quora, just to name a few, are noted for fully remote, and several of those are remote-first.
If people can agglomerate virtually, and I have years of work experience showing that works well, those workers don’t need to live in crowded, expensive cities unless they just want to. Higher pay in cities usually doesn’t offset the higher cost of living, and you lose the many benefits in lifestyle and community of living in a less urban place.
Other examples include the discussion of Wal-Mart software development, where the book seems to suggest their software development is only in California and they rejected Arkansas because agglomeration made California “the” place for software. In fact, Wal-Mart has software offices in many different states and has multiple open software jobs, including senior jobs, listed in Arkansas, New York, etc. See https://careers.walmart.com/technology/software-development-and-engineering
I can give more specific examples if you want. No, it’s not a straw man.
Oh it is a strawman with a leavening of red herring
Of course one sees in part exactly the contradictory and generally hypocritical "Yes Butism": "Using reduced red tape to go crazy replacing woods and farmland with solar farms is bad, IMHO."
But of course replacing farmland and woods with suburb ex-urban McMansions is great.... Which is happening (nothing per se against McMansions, but to cite "replacing" farmland and forest w PV while being all in on "remote work" and sub/ex-urban choices is literally incoherent economically as well as ecologically. It's in short, fundamentally the kind of myopic hypocrisy that has led the Democratic Left into paralysing harm on the evidently disdained urban front.
This leaves aside that Agri-Voltaics with Solar PV intercropping in horticulture, fruits & berries and grazing applications is not only a significant development, real market basis [ as in the economics not the silly touchy-feely innumeracy of conservationists] but has interesting positives on the productivity of both the panels (cooling effects) and the agri-production (as in horticulture and fruits and berries notably).
As for Remote - as a red herring it's really neither here nor there for the subject that Klein & co are raising as structurally their focus is on the permitting issues that undercut the Democrats & Progressives stated build-out agendas. One does not "remote work" chip manufacturing nor auto manufacturing nor industrial centers nor power plants.
In any case, although what niche Tech sector service companies whose employment base is essentially comfortable white-collar employees, that is a minority within a minority of both employment and market drivers. Overall statistics rather indicate that broadly the white collar office employee segment outside of some specific areas are mostly back to office on least a general basis.
Myself as a CEO, my people are largely back in office as we do not find full remote effective - most management I speak with are of the same view (as is ironically Trump and Musk, but I shall not take a position merely out of reactive politics).
Outside of Tech sector of course for blue collar labor - retail, logistics (goods - manufacturing or agri or other), industrial, remote is not even an option so this concern is really ... well basically unexamined prejudice - which generally is part of what drove the Democrats in a ditch overall with far too much attention to the online commentariat skewed to white collar highly educated - this not only for the Wokey Culture stuff but very broadly beyond that.
Evidently not only the Wokey Lefties are an issue.
It’s neither a strawman nor a red herring.
Concerns about loss of woodland and farmland are not hypocritical.
Replacing one uneconomical larger farm with several smaller hobby farms is not incoherent economically or ecologically. Species like bobwhite depend on edge habitats and have declined with the loss of small farms. Exurbs are not suburbs. Hobby farmers are not farming as their primary source of income.
And the farmers you see at farmers markets, the ones preserving historic livestock breeds and raising pastured meat, are typically those small farmers, often hobby farmers with a different primary source of income.
Remote works allows people to live where they want, not where they are forced to.
“Agri-Voltaics with Solar PV intercropping in horticulture, fruits & berries and grazing applications” is a niche product and not what is actually being imposed on rural communities with industrial scale solar. It’s also not suitable for most agriculture. Have you ever lived on or owned a farm?
Remote is directly relevant, not a red herring, as it has been a significant factor in the recent US demographic shift away from cities (see https://www.coopercenter.org/research/remote-work-persists-migration-continues-rural-america) and it provides a significant economic basis for the revitalization of rural America.
Manufacturing, industrial centers, and power plants are frequently located in rural areas. Remote work provides those areas with better demographics and a more solid economic base.
Work from home is not niche, and the tech companies I mentioned are not niche, either. It’s not going away. See https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productivity.htm
You really don’t understand how this plays out in the real world. I do, because I have lived it.
More remote workers in a remote rural exurb mean more economic activity. More restaurants, stores, car repair shops. More construction. Plumbers and electricians start their own local businesses instead of driving to the city. People start service businesses- cleaning, landscaping, specialty agriculture, riding lessons. Artists have more local customers and start displaying work for sale in local stores, offices, and restaurants. Breweries and wineries open.
I have literally watched this play out over the past five years. I have eyes and I lived here before, during, and after. It is not about white collar bias - it’s an observation of the effect of that work dispersal on rural communities that is backed by census and economic data.
Remote is driving rural revival.
Well what can we say to someone who thinks manufacturing can be done via remote work or writes things about "uneconomical larger farms" - fairly the exact opposite of reality, but since one seems innocent of proper economics and actual statistics, carry on. You are indeed the proper audience for them although the one that won't listen and shall remain in genteel innumeracy.
I did not say that manufacturing can be done via remote work at any point in this discussion.
Uneconomical larger farms is clearly a specific reference to farms in exurbs that are no longer economically viable but are too large for hobbyists. Farms of 200-500 acres are often too large for most hobby farmers but many farms of that size are no longer able to produce enough income for a living, either because of scale, imports, or multiple other issues. You often see this with dairy farms, for example.
Exurbs often have farms of this size. I did not claim small farms are more profitable than large farms. I did point out that small hobby farms are often cut from those larger farms, that hobby farms are typically not run as a primary source of income, and they serve an important role in farming and in their local communities.
FYI, my family has been farming - for a living - in this state for over 200 years. Technically my own property is considered a farm, although I do not call myself a farmer. I am VERY familiar with the phenomenon of quite decent sized farms no longer being economically viable and being divided up into smaller properties.
As a paroled, former quarter century CA resident, it is not that demand is so much greater than many other places, but that supply, is so artificially constrained.
The last house we built in Northern CA spent nearly 2 years in plan check, 20 years ago. Friends have been waiting for just a remodel permit longer, now. Most people buy already constructed homes. They have no idea of the time and money involved in permitting. Our school district required a hand delivered check to the school system, where we were surprised to learn, a full time employee did nothing but accept checks.
It is a Blue State dirty little secret, that supply is kept purposefully low, to protect the housing values of older and Whiter residents. Blue States also, generally, have lower homeownership rates, which benefits Dems at the ballot box.
The same is true in health care. A cartel of existing (urban) providers controls not only the number of new providers but their location. The (Democratic) Senator from Nevada recently noted that for every 10 medical school graduates here, only 7 residencies are available. Thus 30% of the graduates relocate and generally never return.
and.... that is not a contradiction to the observation. Excess demand over supply (for regulatory / non-market reasons). Excess demand is excess demand -whether that demand is "more" than "many other places" is 100% irrelevant to the subject.
There is excess demand over supply and supply is precisely constrained for the non-market reasons they ID - the reasons of hypocritical posturing was actually evoked in the actual video (it rather appears to me most people are reacting to their own prejudices based on Headlines, not on what the fellow really said and covered in the interview / exchange).
Their point about the Progressives sabotaging their own stated agendas by rigid anti-market proceses across many domains largely through constraining permitting etc. is one that is exactly what the reactors are oddly missing.
California has seen a net loss in domestic migration and is expected to lose, not gain, electoral college votes.
Have you read the book being discussed? Several of your comments seem to suggest you are responding solely to the interview, not the actual book under discussion.
The post is about the interview and that is indeed what I am responding to, not something else entirely. The interview and the discussion.
That California is experiencing net out-migration fairly makes the point given excess demand over supply on that same basis.
Of course one can go on and on about one's feelings and the like.
You might want to try reading the book before making definitive statements about what the author says or what policies are being advocated.
Outmigration is an example of decreasing demand. California is currently projected to lose four Electoral College votes.
Policy discussions are not a discussion of feelings.
Of course, many people go to where the good-paying jobs are. That's why lots of people flocked to North Dakota to work in the Bakken oil fields. Of course, this will disrupt small communities that usually do not have excess housing.
An awful lot of jobs are relatively location-independent, including remote work, creative work, and e-businesses. In the past few years, more people living in the US having been moving out of big cities than have been moving into them.
Blue collar jobs in construction, manufacturing and health care require location-specific mobilizations. If we want modern infrastructure and assembled goods like cars, computers and cell phones we will need to select the locations where we will build new stuff. Then it will be easier for the more privileged to work remotely.
Blue collar jobs typically are available wherever people live, and construction workers often commute to job sites over a wide area. Health care jobs are similarly widespread.
When white collar workers and e-business entrepreneurs settle in exurbs and small towns, new jobs tend to spring up.
Manufacturing historically is generally done outside of cities, near transit. Manufacturing clusters historically have been all over. Some manufacturing is high tech, some is moderate, some is relatively low tech. It’s not all the same and while chip fabrication might cluster, pharmaceutical production, to give an example, isn’t necessarily going to cluster near it.
Re-shoring manufacturing, power data centers and creating a charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and heating will all require new electric infrastructure. Many transmission lines are over 50 years old. The system needs to be modernized which will require a reasonable permitting process that is not subject to regulatory delay and litigation.
I agree. However, I think that issues of land use are important in deciding the location and type of power infrastructure permitted.
Solar closer to the end use - sited over parking lots, in brownfields, on unused open space, and on existing structures - reduces the need for transmission lines, and minimizes the clear cutting of forest and the loss of farmland.
Nuclear fission, and perhaps someday fusion, has a smaller footprint than solar and can potentially be sited close to data centers. New carbon absorbent materials recently developed can greatly reduce carbon emissions of natural gas.
I believe that the countryside is more than a dumping ground for infrastructure that cities don’t want. When people object to clear cutting woods for solar farms, that’s reasonable, not NIMBY.
As you noted yesterday, it's not just the economy. It is the whole complex of faculty lounge issues
Oh, and thanks for the transcript. Otherwise I would have missed the discussion.
Clean energy isn't. It just means moving the dirt somewhere else like China or Congo. There is something to be said for having the dirt where the consumption is. Unless you are a NIMBY. There is not an existing clean energy technology that doesn't have massive externalities. So if you are going to have energy abundance, you have to accept some externalities.
The Left has for too long been mired in the philosophy of Malthus who has the distinction of being wrong more than Marx. There are those among my Boomer contemporaries who still worship at the shrine of Paul Ehrlich in spite of all the data. That philosophy leads to scarcity politics.
Time to look back to David Ricardo and the concept of comparative advantage. China has a growing advantage over the U.S. because of decisions to invest in mining, refining and manufacturing of clean energy technologies. Trying to revive 50-year old coal plants in the USA is a fools errand. It's not going to happen.
I haven’t seen anyone suggesting reviving 50 year old coal plants.
However, there is no good reason not to invest in mining, refining, and manufacturing. Giving that up is a prescription for loss of innovation.
Our current advantage in financial services is unlikely to be permanent. Surrender manufacturing and we are likely to wind up in decline like the UK and the EU.
We need to be smarter than that.
Interesting conversation, notably from approx 27:45 and how to overcome the AOC lefty progressive ("damn the oligarchy") - as listner who was never a Democrat, not particularly D inclined except in reaction to Trump. Populism as a costume is an interesting marketing insight, the reflection on the put on non-technocratic language for the same goal - run against the system. However, how to get the Lefty Left fraction of the Democrats who may dominate the Primaries. Challenge, but not one to pre-fail.
I did like the Democracy is not an Arbitration line.
Needed on energy to have raised more on the Infra although in part touched on in the Texas building - but good observation that the degrowth Lefty Greeny (Germany example raised - ref to the Grunen idiocy).
(primary "reforms" to make them "democratic being a fundamental Progressive foolish reform from the 70s - smoke filled rooms to prevent the Trumps and the Sanders manipulations were a good things)
Just a few weeks ago it looked like many data centers would be built in Texas and the Southeast U.S. Now it is not so clear with a trade war going on whether we can afford the advanced semi-conductors from Taiwan. It may make more sense to build data centers in Canada and Mexico. It will be harder to tax the intellectual property that flows back and forth zillions of times over the internet.
NVIDIA has existing plans to invest hundreds of billions in US manufacturing. This predates the new tariffs announced this week.
See https://manufacturing-today.com/news/nvidia-to-invest-billions-in-u-s-manufacturing-over-four-years/#:~:text=Nvidia%20has%20made%20a%20major,over%20the%20next%20four%20years.
Amy Lerman and Lindsay Maple from the UC Berkeley Possibility lab wrote an excellent article on the abundancy agenda for the on-line newspaper CalMatters. Following is a key quote from the article:
"We can’t achieve abundance without the architects, developers, planners and construction workers building our infrastructure. Beyond building, we can’t bring about abundance without the home care workers, pre-K teachers and primary care physicians who sustain our eldercare, childcare and health care systems. If we truly want to realize abundance, we need policies that make these jobs attractive and achievable: offering better wages, improving working conditions and building career pathways that recognize their vital contributions to a thriving society."
It's time for another Ruy Texeira interview of Oren Cass, chief economist at the American Compass, and articulate advocate for applying chemotherapy to the U.S. economy. He needs to explain again why Trump's policies are not seriously disabling the economy and ruining rural communities and putting more stress on family structure.
So how can a Democratic administration, if there ever is another, actually get things done? I supported Biden, but learned that he under supplied Ukraine. That shit could've been over with two years ago. The reason governors do well running for president is if they do what Thompson is saying and get shit done. Good plan. Find some Democratic governors and figure out how to speed up projects. The California high speed rail project is a joke. Like most road improvement bonds and the endless construction at LAX, it only exists to give work to the large construction companies. Perhaps the book should be a run down of (recent) projects that were actually accomplished quickly. I rent a three bedroom house that has a Zillow value less than the cost of two single room apartments to house the homeless. The people voted for council reps who want to house the unhoused, there's money... but along the way the cost balloons and the developers and contractors run the cost up.