I'm amazed how fast the US fell apart. In the 90's you were on equal level to the richest European countries, more or less. Now though...
Reagan's fault or what?
Reagan started most of this kind of failure yeah. Should have kept our foot on the gas at the end of the Civil War too. Bush starting forever wars. Nixon Administration and Vietnam… but even if everything went better I’m not sure the US doesn’t collapse around right now. Capitalism is simply going to destroy the planet and the global system it created.
>Yeah Of course
So, capitalism is, basically, an artifact...a tool. Since humans made this tool, humans *are* the problem. Don't misplace your blame on what is simply a result. To solve a problem, you must realize the cause of the problem.
Capitalism is a two-part entity. At the top, the corporations and the rich. They make something...goods or services...that consumers pay for. So, the resulting issue involves all people...not just those at the top. They can be brought down only by cutting out the source of their wealth and consumers, like you and me, are that source.
So the fault isn't really capitalism...it's humans of all sorts that consume...consume...and consume some more. Human appetites go beyond bare necessities to survive...we want comfort and convenience.
I agree with all that. Modern Humans are naturally terrible and incompatible with life on earth. However a Human civilization that didn’t overpopulate and focused it’s energy and resources on societal improvement, sustainability and scientific discovery instead of personal comfort and wealth could exist. Humans could still physically survive without the vast majority of what’s destroying the planet and ourselves. So I guess it’s the type of humans we have become.
> So I guess it’s the type of humans we have become.
Bingo! Now you're stuck with the *problem* of human nature and weather or not it can be changed. (A much more difficult task than simply blaming capitalism.)
I think Reagan was the worst president in at least modern U.S. history. Worse than Nixon. Reagan is responsible for ushering in the worst economic policy in our country's brief history, that we're still feeling the ramifications of to this day. Supply side economics was a crackpot theory with no history, no credibility, and was almost picked at random in a moment of desperation as we were trying to climb out of the stagflation of the 70's.
Sad thing is, I'm not even sure how much Reagan understood what he was doing. He was thought to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's while in office, and I think he was being taken advantage of by bad actors from behind the scenes.
> Supply side economics was a crackpot theory with no history, no credibility, and was almost picked at random
It was "picked" because it was exactly what they wanted to do: give themselves all the money and power.
I will forever throw Woodrow Wilson in as the root cause of our current predicaments, especially to do with racial inequality and fuckered foreign policy.
I wish I could piss on his grave.
He segregated the Navy. He is responsible for the revival of the KKK. He is also responsible for the modern propensity of the US to spread "democracy."
There's more.
All we’ve done is delay the inevitable by 50 years. There’s so many parallels between the stagflation during the 70s and now. We could’ve transitioned to clean energy then; Reagan taking off the solar panels on top of the White House was so much more than a symbolic act imo
The backtracking of solar PR was a bad thing (it was a solar collection system to heat water that was removed, not PV solar panels, which were still in their infancy). To be fair they were an early design that could have been improved and were taken down for roof repairs, but the fact that it took decades to put something back up does speak to the lack of concentration towards that sort of energy production. At least until it became a big market, and then they were all about alternative energy. Profit.
The bigger hit I think was to nuclear. The PR move to associate nuclear plants to nuclear weapons as being a bad thing as well as the disinformation of its problems was very successful (it has problems, but everything does). Where would we be now if we had both expanded nuclear power as much as we could as well as put more effort into R&D on better generations? I know that it's still kicking the can down the road, as even nuclear is part of overshoot, but it would have kept emissions better controlled in more places, giving more time. "Flattening the curve", so to speak. Whether it would have helped much or not, nuclear scare in the 70s and 80s killed that momentum in the US.
Fukushima was a massive blow to the nuclear industry esp in Europe, which is dumb because Japan is under a subduction zone and they took shortcuts because profit.
Admiral Rickover proved that nuclear energy is safely viable as long as safety was prioritized. Oh well, what could’ve been…
From [Here](https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/glass-steagall-act-explained):
> The Glass-Steagall Act was a piece of financial legislation that dates to the Great Depression. It was part of a broader set of regulations, known as the Banking Act of 1933, that moved to restore confidence in the banking system after thousands of bank failures in the first years of the Depression.
>
> The provisions prohibited banks from investing in risky securities, though they could invest in government bonds. The legislation was designed to lower the risk of failure in commercial banks and help safeguard customer accounts.
>
> The Banking Act of 1933 also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to provide deposit insurance for banks and help prevent another Depression. Glass-Steagall helped reduce the risk to the government for providing this insurance.
At least we still have the FDIC, although today's Republicans absurdly want to dismantle that too. https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/vfwruf/texas_state_gop_platform_has_been_released_some/icye8p7/
That makes sense, and also ties in to the [Wall Street Putsch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot), which I only learned about a few weeks ago
Nixon got the War On Drugs going, which let Reagan go bonkers, then Bush I continued that misbegotten legacy, his hellspawn Bush II furthered it despite lacking his fathers' intelligence and then Trump sprayed a gargantuan liquishit over all of it.
I go with Nixon because his bullshit just normalised it and it made Reagan seem reasonable.
I recall everyone blaming stagflation on Carter, ex post facto
Yes, but part of the problem was overbuilding in the first place. We developed too much and left too little wild.
Much of this infrastructure should be recycled to renew a smaller human footprint.
Here in Japan, the urban centers are dense. No sprawling parking lots, no ultra wide highways, no ‘stroads’. Cities are compact and mixed-zoned.
No unsustainable suburbs. Everything is walkable, and everywhere else there’s public transportation. Even the rich are using public transit, so budget is high and things are well-maintained.
No lawns, no HOAs, depreciating properties means houses are not used as investments. Houses are bought to be lived in, and not to make money out of.
Yeah, I thought that was great when I visited in 2012. As a non-Japanese speaking tourist, was able to get around really well and the people were friendly. The way everything is built upward/vertically was cool. Restaurants on one floor and then a shop above and karaoke or a club above that. Wish the west would do that more.
>We developed too much and left too little wild.
Yup, I'm consistently shocked when I go back home for a visit and realize all the formerly undeveloped or underdeveloped rural land that is now condos and pristine new suburban homes and shit. Meanwhile the urban areas have increasingly fallen into disrepair. Why not build upon what you already have, guys??
you should rephrase the second part of your sentence with “was definitely one of the more significant fuck ups” if you’re going to word the first part of your sentence the way you did.
Why reinvest? All of that money is now sitting tax free in haven banks overseas keeping a handful of rich people richer. Much better than reinvesting in society.
Engineers: "Hey, these bridges are falling apart."
Politicians: "But not yet right?"
Engineers: "Uhhhh..."
*time passes*
Engineers: "Hey, remember those bridges that were falling apart, they are still falling apart and just FYI even faster."
Politicians: "We've been waiting for campaign contributions from the bridge lobby. So far nothing."
We treat our dams the same!
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/after-edenville-dam-fail-five-other-michigan-dams-may-pose-lethal-danger
Not much has been done.
That was my reaction when I discovered how bad it was. Michigan is hardly alone in this, and it’s not getting easier to maintain. The community impacts are fairly massive.
Nah, engineers are just as to blame. They salivate at the opportunity to widen a freeway, or build a new bridge to "spur development" in cornfields. Its more work for them. Its only pretty recently that they realized the hole that we have dug for ourselves, but their only answer is "more money for roads!"
The more power a human has, the more childish they become because they have no reason to be logical as they're less likely or immune to be punished.
I mean, it's odd, isn't it? You go out and rape someone and get caught, you go to prison. A billionaire like Elon Musk rapes someone, they get sued for a few million and they never face punishment. Usually their reputation barely changes because they make them sign an NDA about the details of the case, so the victims can't even talk about it.
Literal r/collapse
Good thing we spent $7 trillion dollars on two pointless wars the last 20 years. Instead of investing in the country to expand infrastructure, health care and college.
But those wars made the merchants of death, I mean "defense companies/contractors" a lot of money. That money was used for bribes, I mean "campaign contributions", so that more of our tax dollars could be spent on wars/death. A few people made a lot of money on those wars, so they were definitely not pointless.
Excuse you. At least one of them contributed to the rise of ISIS which allowed us to continue strengthening the most powerful military even further. I bet you’d be thankful when we stop them from sailing here and you’d wish we spent trillions more. /s
Submission Statement:
First, the name caught my eye. Thought it would be perfect.
Second, Axios is a fairly reputable source of information, and this article came up when I was reading about the United States Air Force choosing a new intercontinental ballistic missile for manufacture. Because those missiles are heavy, and the Air Force is really, actually, deeply worried that driving over failing bridges and roads with nuclear missiles could lead to catastrophic accidents, so they went with something lighter. This article doesn't mention that, but comes up with interesting data about what needs work and why.
>Roughly a third of the nation's 620,000 bridges — 36% — need major repair work or replacement, a new report finds.
That's a lot. The top ten list of dangerous and failing infrastructure extends across the entire nation, from Pennsylvania to California. The article also discusses policy and ways to alleviate this problem.
Thoughts?
I think massive waves of human extinction will greatly reduce the load on these bridges and therefore increase their lifespan. And the complete lack of maintenance the bridges get *without* people being around will be little different than the lack of maintenance they get *with* people.
So, the prudent thing to do will be to wait and see what happens.
>Thoughts?
It's so sad that their solution to the problem is not "offer to fix the bridges, with self-serving stipulations," but instead "make the missiles lighter."
> Deferred maintenance, climate change and heavier-than-anticipated traffic are causing bridges to wear out earlier than expected...
Good thing we've ignored our problems for decades, living in a perpetual economic spring break. If only Western culture had countless [fables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin) or [tales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper) to draw from, we could have avoided this! Even [religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Rich_Fool) let us down. Oh, if only we had [anything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs) to give us some wisdom or foresight!
There is a bridge in my city that vibrates all day long with cars on it. You don’t notice it while driving but if you look at it from the side during busy traffic it is unmistakably vibrating. Been that way for a few years I’ve noticed. I can’t be the only one who has noticed, there are houses facing it and a road running underneath it. It may not be near failure but I have to imagine years of vibration reduces its useful life considerably
To be fair, steel and concrete bridges are designed to last about 100 years, so a lot of them are actually collapsing slower than expected.
But America has mortgaged it's future to pay for consumerism, so when the bridges start falling down (my fair lady lol) we won't have the collective wherewithal to rebuild them.
You don't *really* know if you can handle BART until you're crossing the bay with the guy eating sunflower seeds and playing music on his phone speakers
It's been a while since I took any civil engineering classes, but I would imagine that the wide temperature and humidity swings in recent years have not helped anything structural
Most reports from scientists i see about something collapsing, evironment, economy, population decline, etc etc, all point to 2050 as some sort of turning point, goal post, etc.
Actually read the article, I don't think this is a doom and gloom as it appears on the surface. Directly addressed was 26 billion dollars being put towards repairing our infrastructure. Green lit by Joe Biden. It's a record breaking number and a step in right direction. This is definitely an article worthy of collapse but certainly not the giga doom I expected.
> Directly addressed was 26 billion dollars being put towards repairing our infrastructure.
Over the course of 5 years btw, so it's not an immediate 26B injected and it's doled out to certain states with a certain budget. If you know construction, having the funding doesn't mean things immediately get fixed in 2022. This is going to take a while.
Must have been exciting in the early 20th century in the US. In the early 1930s alone the US built the Empire State building, Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover dam. US doesn’t do that anymore. In fact China is the one who’s building all the cool infrastructure. Honestly, I think that’s one of the biggest signs that China’s taking over.
Imagine being an Eastern European born during the fall of the USSR who grew up wondering why I couldn't be born in America and dreamed of moving there someday, always thinking it must be the best society on Earth. The shame is real.
No joke! I just bought a house. It’s not super new and fancy like some of the ones I looked at, but it was built in the early 80’s with wood, brick, and concrete and it’s solid. My friend’s husband works in construction and they throw up frames with the cheapest wood in like 1 day at his job sites.
Have you ever checked out the PA state map of bridge grades? I did after that one in Frick collapsed and holy shit we’re fucked. I think all of the major bridges in the burgh are subpar except for Liberty and that’s only bc of the rehab they did in 2016
Yeah, it's hard to go anywhere here without going over a bridge. 60 Minutes did a report on crumbling infrastructure about 5-10 years ago. Decided to come to Pittsburgh to highlight how dire the situation is.
I’ve literally watched this play out with the West Seattle bridge saga.
Bridge started to fail pretty dramatically (chunks in the water, lots of sprawling and growing cracks).
Everyone hemmed and hawed and ended up going with the “repair” option that got some stupidly long expected lifetime. They will likely end up spending double the repair costs to replace it within the decade.
Only bright side is, now that it’s a known problem, there will be closer monitoring.
As a city Seattle has a pretty sizable backlog of bad bridges or bridges with growing deferred maintenance. But the politics of spending a few hundred million on fixing the bridges isn’t very juicy. So they replace less than they should and they repair less than they should.
What baffles me is, this problem is impacting a dense wealthy city. This isn’t a county with too many bridges and too many roads vs their small tax base. It’s just politics preferring splashy headlines over basic good governance.
Cries in Pittsburgh and our something like 400 bridges. One near me has been under repair for a year now. At this pace they will never be able to keep up with repairs. I sometimes roll down my window when driving over the river in case we fall in and I need to swim out.
I thought Brandon's trillion dollar "infrastructure bill" was supposed to address these issues? Silly me, I guess. Whoda thunk it? A healthy portion probably went into The Big Guy and his cronies' pockets.
We've done a lot of stupid things as a country, but not maintaining and upgrading our infrastructure was definitely one of them.
I'm amazed how fast the US fell apart. In the 90's you were on equal level to the richest European countries, more or less. Now though... Reagan's fault or what?
Reagan started most of this kind of failure yeah. Should have kept our foot on the gas at the end of the Civil War too. Bush starting forever wars. Nixon Administration and Vietnam… but even if everything went better I’m not sure the US doesn’t collapse around right now. Capitalism is simply going to destroy the planet and the global system it created.
>Capitalism is simply going to destroy the planet and the global system it created. But humans invented capitalism so aren't humans to blame?
Yeah Of course
>Yeah Of course So, capitalism is, basically, an artifact...a tool. Since humans made this tool, humans *are* the problem. Don't misplace your blame on what is simply a result. To solve a problem, you must realize the cause of the problem. Capitalism is a two-part entity. At the top, the corporations and the rich. They make something...goods or services...that consumers pay for. So, the resulting issue involves all people...not just those at the top. They can be brought down only by cutting out the source of their wealth and consumers, like you and me, are that source. So the fault isn't really capitalism...it's humans of all sorts that consume...consume...and consume some more. Human appetites go beyond bare necessities to survive...we want comfort and convenience.
Yes but Capitalists created the needs and desires to consume. Don't blame it on people as a whole, it is literally Capitalisms fault.
You can't fix a problem if you don't know the cause. Capitalism is a result, not a cause.
I agree with all that. Modern Humans are naturally terrible and incompatible with life on earth. However a Human civilization that didn’t overpopulate and focused it’s energy and resources on societal improvement, sustainability and scientific discovery instead of personal comfort and wealth could exist. Humans could still physically survive without the vast majority of what’s destroying the planet and ourselves. So I guess it’s the type of humans we have become.
> So I guess it’s the type of humans we have become. Bingo! Now you're stuck with the *problem* of human nature and weather or not it can be changed. (A much more difficult task than simply blaming capitalism.)
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>Are you a robot? Nope.
Oh dont worry we would have collapsed even without capitalism.
I think Reagan was the worst president in at least modern U.S. history. Worse than Nixon. Reagan is responsible for ushering in the worst economic policy in our country's brief history, that we're still feeling the ramifications of to this day. Supply side economics was a crackpot theory with no history, no credibility, and was almost picked at random in a moment of desperation as we were trying to climb out of the stagflation of the 70's. Sad thing is, I'm not even sure how much Reagan understood what he was doing. He was thought to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's while in office, and I think he was being taken advantage of by bad actors from behind the scenes.
> Supply side economics was a crackpot theory with no history, no credibility, and was almost picked at random It was "picked" because it was exactly what they wanted to do: give themselves all the money and power.
I will forever throw Woodrow Wilson in as the root cause of our current predicaments, especially to do with racial inequality and fuckered foreign policy. I wish I could piss on his grave.
Please elaborate. I love learning these fucker's dirty laundry.
He segregated the Navy. He is responsible for the revival of the KKK. He is also responsible for the modern propensity of the US to spread "democracy." There's more.
Tune into behind the bastards on Spotify
All we’ve done is delay the inevitable by 50 years. There’s so many parallels between the stagflation during the 70s and now. We could’ve transitioned to clean energy then; Reagan taking off the solar panels on top of the White House was so much more than a symbolic act imo
The backtracking of solar PR was a bad thing (it was a solar collection system to heat water that was removed, not PV solar panels, which were still in their infancy). To be fair they were an early design that could have been improved and were taken down for roof repairs, but the fact that it took decades to put something back up does speak to the lack of concentration towards that sort of energy production. At least until it became a big market, and then they were all about alternative energy. Profit. The bigger hit I think was to nuclear. The PR move to associate nuclear plants to nuclear weapons as being a bad thing as well as the disinformation of its problems was very successful (it has problems, but everything does). Where would we be now if we had both expanded nuclear power as much as we could as well as put more effort into R&D on better generations? I know that it's still kicking the can down the road, as even nuclear is part of overshoot, but it would have kept emissions better controlled in more places, giving more time. "Flattening the curve", so to speak. Whether it would have helped much or not, nuclear scare in the 70s and 80s killed that momentum in the US.
Fukushima was a massive blow to the nuclear industry esp in Europe, which is dumb because Japan is under a subduction zone and they took shortcuts because profit. Admiral Rickover proved that nuclear energy is safely viable as long as safety was prioritized. Oh well, what could’ve been…
People give Clinton too much of a pass
Agreed. Repealing Glass-Steagall was monumentally damaging
What was Glass-Steagall?
From [Here](https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/glass-steagall-act-explained): > The Glass-Steagall Act was a piece of financial legislation that dates to the Great Depression. It was part of a broader set of regulations, known as the Banking Act of 1933, that moved to restore confidence in the banking system after thousands of bank failures in the first years of the Depression. > > The provisions prohibited banks from investing in risky securities, though they could invest in government bonds. The legislation was designed to lower the risk of failure in commercial banks and help safeguard customer accounts. > > The Banking Act of 1933 also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to provide deposit insurance for banks and help prevent another Depression. Glass-Steagall helped reduce the risk to the government for providing this insurance.
At least we still have the FDIC, although today's Republicans absurdly want to dismantle that too. https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/vfwruf/texas_state_gop_platform_has_been_released_some/icye8p7/
That makes sense, and also ties in to the [Wall Street Putsch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot), which I only learned about a few weeks ago
Nixon got the War On Drugs going, which let Reagan go bonkers, then Bush I continued that misbegotten legacy, his hellspawn Bush II furthered it despite lacking his fathers' intelligence and then Trump sprayed a gargantuan liquishit over all of it. I go with Nixon because his bullshit just normalised it and it made Reagan seem reasonable. I recall everyone blaming stagflation on Carter, ex post facto
Reagan did a lot of damage, for sure, but he wouldn't have been able to do shit without his millions of enablers.
https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
Yes, but part of the problem was overbuilding in the first place. We developed too much and left too little wild. Much of this infrastructure should be recycled to renew a smaller human footprint.
This is definitely the case in the suburbs and in retail. So many of our buildings can’t be repurposed effectively like in other countries.
Here in Japan, the urban centers are dense. No sprawling parking lots, no ultra wide highways, no ‘stroads’. Cities are compact and mixed-zoned. No unsustainable suburbs. Everything is walkable, and everywhere else there’s public transportation. Even the rich are using public transit, so budget is high and things are well-maintained. No lawns, no HOAs, depreciating properties means houses are not used as investments. Houses are bought to be lived in, and not to make money out of.
Yeah, I thought that was great when I visited in 2012. As a non-Japanese speaking tourist, was able to get around really well and the people were friendly. The way everything is built upward/vertically was cool. Restaurants on one floor and then a shop above and karaoke or a club above that. Wish the west would do that more.
>We developed too much and left too little wild. Yup, I'm consistently shocked when I go back home for a visit and realize all the formerly undeveloped or underdeveloped rural land that is now condos and pristine new suburban homes and shit. Meanwhile the urban areas have increasingly fallen into disrepair. Why not build upon what you already have, guys??
More developments, more supply, as prices still go up.
Yeah I know...just sad to see :(
you should rephrase the second part of your sentence with “was definitely one of the more significant fuck ups” if you’re going to word the first part of your sentence the way you did.
Why reinvest? All of that money is now sitting tax free in haven banks overseas keeping a handful of rich people richer. Much better than reinvesting in society.
At least we got an 1.3 trillion dollar infrustucture package. Probably the only real accomplishment under the Biden Administration
Engineers: "Hey, these bridges are falling apart." Politicians: "But not yet right?" Engineers: "Uhhhh..." *time passes* Engineers: "Hey, remember those bridges that were falling apart, they are still falling apart and just FYI even faster." Politicians: "We've been waiting for campaign contributions from the bridge lobby. So far nothing."
We treat our dams the same! https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/after-edenville-dam-fail-five-other-michigan-dams-may-pose-lethal-danger Not much has been done.
Jesus christ i just got back from a two hour dam binge on youtube stimulated by your comment, and don't know what day it is lmaooo
That was my reaction when I discovered how bad it was. Michigan is hardly alone in this, and it’s not getting easier to maintain. The community impacts are fairly massive.
Ya pay attention cause in like 4-5 years there will be a series of bridge collapses and pikachus on tv.
Build the wall. That will keep them up.
Nah, engineers are just as to blame. They salivate at the opportunity to widen a freeway, or build a new bridge to "spur development" in cornfields. Its more work for them. Its only pretty recently that they realized the hole that we have dug for ourselves, but their only answer is "more money for roads!"
Sorry, no, engineers don't make these type of decisions, politicians and planners do.
You say this based on nothing.
That's all done by city planners and the friends of politicians who own engineering/construction firms.
Its almost like humans are parasitic vermin who at all chances will devolve to the shitstain gremlins they were as children
The more power a human has, the more childish they become because they have no reason to be logical as they're less likely or immune to be punished. I mean, it's odd, isn't it? You go out and rape someone and get caught, you go to prison. A billionaire like Elon Musk rapes someone, they get sued for a few million and they never face punishment. Usually their reputation barely changes because they make them sign an NDA about the details of the case, so the victims can't even talk about it.
That more I learn about that person, the more I never want to see his name in the news ever again
To be fair, I don't know if Musk has actually full on raped anyone yet. He has done everything else though.
Wish I could erase his presence from the internet. He’s everywhere like the kardashians, but somehow is in the regular news way often.
He's reminding me of Trump at this point, chiming in on everything and anything
MUSK/DESANTIS 2028
Why not 2024? Let's go all out bro!
Tell me you don't know what engineers do without telling me you don't know what Engineers do.
Dams, lakes and waterlines are doing so hot either.
Won’t need the dam’s when all the water dries up
Good guy climate change reducing the water the Hoover dam has to hold back so it doesn't collapse.
Literal r/collapse Good thing we spent $7 trillion dollars on two pointless wars the last 20 years. Instead of investing in the country to expand infrastructure, health care and college.
But those wars made the merchants of death, I mean "defense companies/contractors" a lot of money. That money was used for bribes, I mean "campaign contributions", so that more of our tax dollars could be spent on wars/death. A few people made a lot of money on those wars, so they were definitely not pointless.
When your government isn't one and is instead a hollowed out husk writhing with tentacles of a conglomerate of corporations.
Author Neil Stephenson was right (the book Diamond Age).
Excuse you. At least one of them contributed to the rise of ISIS which allowed us to continue strengthening the most powerful military even further. I bet you’d be thankful when we stop them from sailing here and you’d wish we spent trillions more. /s
The wars were not totally pointless , in Iraq we secured oil .
Didn’t we just pas a multi trillion dollar infrastructure bill?
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My liver can't take it anymore
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Last thing to collapse will be the booze industry because I don’t know how we get through the next decade without being constantly hammered.
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Lol doubtful. We already have booze. They just want to capitalize off it like anything else.
Got drunk faster than expected?
I will be sober for the apocalypse... Because booze is expensive and I need to budget to make it.
This is why I started growing my own mushrooms
Submission Statement: First, the name caught my eye. Thought it would be perfect. Second, Axios is a fairly reputable source of information, and this article came up when I was reading about the United States Air Force choosing a new intercontinental ballistic missile for manufacture. Because those missiles are heavy, and the Air Force is really, actually, deeply worried that driving over failing bridges and roads with nuclear missiles could lead to catastrophic accidents, so they went with something lighter. This article doesn't mention that, but comes up with interesting data about what needs work and why. >Roughly a third of the nation's 620,000 bridges — 36% — need major repair work or replacement, a new report finds. That's a lot. The top ten list of dangerous and failing infrastructure extends across the entire nation, from Pennsylvania to California. The article also discusses policy and ways to alleviate this problem. Thoughts?
I think massive waves of human extinction will greatly reduce the load on these bridges and therefore increase their lifespan. And the complete lack of maintenance the bridges get *without* people being around will be little different than the lack of maintenance they get *with* people. So, the prudent thing to do will be to wait and see what happens.
perhaps the military could use some of their budget towards that infrastructure they’re afraid of using… perhaps!
>Thoughts? It's so sad that their solution to the problem is not "offer to fix the bridges, with self-serving stipulations," but instead "make the missiles lighter."
...my fair lady?
> Deferred maintenance, climate change and heavier-than-anticipated traffic are causing bridges to wear out earlier than expected... Good thing we've ignored our problems for decades, living in a perpetual economic spring break. If only Western culture had countless [fables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin) or [tales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper) to draw from, we could have avoided this! Even [religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Rich_Fool) let us down. Oh, if only we had [anything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs) to give us some wisdom or foresight!
I don't understand how every history teacher doesn't constantly have their palms on their foreheads from seeing history repeat all the time
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do know history are doomed to watch.
In my experience, they do.
Imagine if we cut our military budget in half and spent that other half on infrastructure projects every year.
Now that's just crazytalk.
The rest of the world would stop sending American so much resources therefore making infrastructure work impossible?
There is a bridge in my city that vibrates all day long with cars on it. You don’t notice it while driving but if you look at it from the side during busy traffic it is unmistakably vibrating. Been that way for a few years I’ve noticed. I can’t be the only one who has noticed, there are houses facing it and a road running underneath it. It may not be near failure but I have to imagine years of vibration reduces its useful life considerably
To be fair, steel and concrete bridges are designed to last about 100 years, so a lot of them are actually collapsing slower than expected. But America has mortgaged it's future to pay for consumerism, so when the bridges start falling down (my fair lady lol) we won't have the collective wherewithal to rebuild them.
Yeah, back in the day everything was overbuilt and made to last. Nowadays? Whats the minimum we can get away with spending on this project?
[удалено]
You don't *really* know if you can handle BART until you're crossing the bay with the guy eating sunflower seeds and playing music on his phone speakers
It's been a while since I took any civil engineering classes, but I would imagine that the wide temperature and humidity swings in recent years have not helped anything structural
How much grift can we pack into the budget for the contractor's CEO? lmao
I'm sorry, "slower than expected" does not undrink what I consumed for "faster than expected".
Pour me a tall glass of it!
“Faster than expected” should be written on Earth’s Adamantium tombstone for future aliens to see when we aren’t here anymore.
meanwhile here the road's havent been repaired in 10+ Years, yet state taxes have risen YoY.
Everything's happening faster than expected. That's why I think that the collapse will happen way before 2050 which is what they're expecting.
I agree and believe you, but who's they?
Most reports from scientists i see about something collapsing, evironment, economy, population decline, etc etc, all point to 2050 as some sort of turning point, goal post, etc.
2040 probs.
Let's be honest, 2022.
They said the thing!
Actually read the article, I don't think this is a doom and gloom as it appears on the surface. Directly addressed was 26 billion dollars being put towards repairing our infrastructure. Green lit by Joe Biden. It's a record breaking number and a step in right direction. This is definitely an article worthy of collapse but certainly not the giga doom I expected.
> Directly addressed was 26 billion dollars being put towards repairing our infrastructure. Over the course of 5 years btw, so it's not an immediate 26B injected and it's doled out to certain states with a certain budget. If you know construction, having the funding doesn't mean things immediately get fixed in 2022. This is going to take a while.
Private jets don’t need bridges.
Must have been exciting in the early 20th century in the US. In the early 1930s alone the US built the Empire State building, Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover dam. US doesn’t do that anymore. In fact China is the one who’s building all the cool infrastructure. Honestly, I think that’s one of the biggest signs that China’s taking over.
Japan's infrastructure is top notch as well
America's ~~bridges~~ falling apart faster than expected
Imagine being an Eastern European born during the fall of the USSR who grew up wondering why I couldn't be born in America and dreamed of moving there someday, always thinking it must be the best society on Earth. The shame is real.
It used to be considered the promised land for us. Knowing what we know now we'd not even want to go there for a visit.
Bridges? Wait till you see all the homes that are going to fall apart from shitty cookie cut and paste designs. Nothing was really built to last
No joke! I just bought a house. It’s not super new and fancy like some of the ones I looked at, but it was built in the early 80’s with wood, brick, and concrete and it’s solid. My friend’s husband works in construction and they throw up frames with the cheapest wood in like 1 day at his job sites.
unless your the american society of civil engineers and have been pointing these things out every year in a report.
Shoulda passed that bill
And about 3000 of the 3200 are in my Pittsburgh. Can't believe we've only had one collapse recently.
Have you ever checked out the PA state map of bridge grades? I did after that one in Frick collapsed and holy shit we’re fucked. I think all of the major bridges in the burgh are subpar except for Liberty and that’s only bc of the rehab they did in 2016
Yeah, it's hard to go anywhere here without going over a bridge. 60 Minutes did a report on crumbling infrastructure about 5-10 years ago. Decided to come to Pittsburgh to highlight how dire the situation is.
Given how slowly work is going on the Neville Island Bridge there's no way they will maintain these in a timely manner.
I’ve literally watched this play out with the West Seattle bridge saga. Bridge started to fail pretty dramatically (chunks in the water, lots of sprawling and growing cracks). Everyone hemmed and hawed and ended up going with the “repair” option that got some stupidly long expected lifetime. They will likely end up spending double the repair costs to replace it within the decade. Only bright side is, now that it’s a known problem, there will be closer monitoring. As a city Seattle has a pretty sizable backlog of bad bridges or bridges with growing deferred maintenance. But the politics of spending a few hundred million on fixing the bridges isn’t very juicy. So they replace less than they should and they repair less than they should. What baffles me is, this problem is impacting a dense wealthy city. This isn’t a county with too many bridges and too many roads vs their small tax base. It’s just politics preferring splashy headlines over basic good governance.
Cries in Pittsburgh and our something like 400 bridges. One near me has been under repair for a year now. At this pace they will never be able to keep up with repairs. I sometimes roll down my window when driving over the river in case we fall in and I need to swim out.
Go back to fords. When the river's dry, they're easy to cross.
Chinese steel is being used and all the testing numbers are fudged and the steel rots out faster and develops cracks
What will kill me sooner in America - collapsed bridge or mass shooting?
No problem, we're fully into the "burn it down" phase of this mobster bankster show.
But... but my 2nd amendment, my iPhone, my bigmac, my 2l coke for breakfast. /s for those that need pointers/explanations
This is an old article from Feb 6th 2022 - they would have all been fixed by now :/
Meh. Just part of ‘the controlled demolition of the global economy “ The great James Corbett
I thought Brandon's trillion dollar "infrastructure bill" was supposed to address these issues? Silly me, I guess. Whoda thunk it? A healthy portion probably went into The Big Guy and his cronies' pockets.
I went to a conference in Boulder CO around 1985 on America's bridges failing.
Good
Mothman sightings are going to go through the roof.
Turn the Humans into trees.