Comment by tomcam
2 months ago
Of course we can motivate ourselves. But they're acting like we did in the 1800s through the mid 1900s. They just build anywhere no matter what. They have no interest in dealing with environmental concerns. The officially released pollution levels in China are mind-boggling and they still do not represent how bad it really is.
You think US manufacturers wouldn't be delighted to just buy a few hundred acres land and start building stuff? They'd do it in a heartbeat. For better and for worse, it is not a level playing field. Conforming to government regulations over here is stifling for a 100-house development in Arkansas, but it's almost impossible in California, Illinois, or New York. Now imagine what it's like to build a huge factory. It is nearly impossible to get permission, and inspections, endangered wildlife concerns, waste removal, etc. handled in under 5-10 years.
The air quality in China is lot better now than a decade ago. The smog was so bad in 2012 and I remembered the AQI hitting 999 (the max it would go) on more than one occasions during Beijing winter.
Went back again in early 2024 and it was so much better, pollution still noticeable on more days than not but at least half the time I spent had AQI below 100.
I was in Shenzhen in 2017 and again recently. The difference is huge. The air quality walking around the street is very good and you never smell gasoline.
True and good on them, but I suspect you’re not hanging out in a lot of the backwater provinces where industrial development is happening
i've been to a lot of smaller cities, provinces, and rural areas in china over the past decade+ and it really has got a lot better everywhere. it's not fake and not limited to a few developed areas
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Counterpoint: See the speed with which Colossus has been (is being) assembled in Memphis Tennessee. Yes, on an existing industrial site but this is still one damn impressive accomplishment.
https://www.servethehome.com/inside-100000-nvidia-gpu-xai-co...
A data center is much easier than building an industrial factory
This seems like an apples to oranges comparison. They are completely different. Can you provide some specific examples?
They had to build themselves because third parties gave longer timelines.
Is it your thought that is typical for large-scale development?
No, far from typical. But then Elon involved ;-)
I’d argue that vested interests in oil and coal have done more to damage the US’s ability to invest like this than any regulatory red tape.
Huge parts of America hate EVs. There is endless debate about nuclear vs clean energy vs coal, which prevents any change from happening.
>There is endless debate about nuclear vs clean energy vs coal, which prevents any change from happening.
Meanwhile coal has been on a clearly uneconomical trend for decades, and no amount of bitching by 60k coal miners can prevent that fact, no amount of crying about "woke" policy can prevent other fossil fuels from just being better than coal in every single way.
It's infuriating our country has been strangled by these morons.
They all cry about making America great again, oblivious to the fact that America thrives when it shovels public money into infrastructure like a bad habit. From gifting thousands of square miles of public land to bribe the railroads into building one of the best transportation networks for it's time (also why "america isn't dense enough" is utter horseshit. We connected the coasts before there was anyone living in most of the US), to the interstate which is still unparalleled, to the Postal Service way back in our infancy, to the homesteading project which ensured we have some of the most productive farmland in the world, to the highly educated workforce of the mid 1900s who did the electronics revolution which came about largely because the US navy wanted computers all the way back in WW2, and transistors largely exist so we could have ICBMs, to the millions of electronics experts just set free to build after the war...
America has ALWAYS profited from public investment into infrastructure, both physical and mental, but because a bunch of poorly educated (not a slight, an objective fact) people would rather get black lung like their pappys, we aren't allowed to have nice things.
> Conforming to government regulations over here is stifling for a 100-house development in Arkansas, but it's almost impossible in California, Illinois, or New York. Now imagine what it's like to build a huge factory. It is nearly impossible to get permission, and inspections, endangered wildlife concerns, waste removal, etc. handled in under 5-10 years
Reading this (and I completely agree, it's even worse in Europe), sounds like Chinese "management" implemented Agile on a whole new scale.
The upside of a planned economy is that it can work like the internals of a private company, with one drive, "do what needs to be done". The downside is that it can work like the internals of a private company where you bite the bullet or look for another employer. This is much harder with countries, especially because planned economies are more likely to have taller fences around them.
The flipside of this argument is that it enables Chinese industrial interests to operate on strategies with 10+ year time scales, whereas Western markets seem to focus on the next few quarters. This is probably very efficient for some businesses, but not for big industrial corporations with long development timelines.
> Now imagine what it's like to build a huge factory. It is nearly impossible to get permission, and inspections, endangered wildlife concerns, waste removal, etc. handled in under 5-10 years.
This explains why the Tesla gigafactory in Nevada (announced in Sept 2014) still isn't operational...
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So we compete with a highly regulated planned economy by getting rid of regulations?
Gotcha.