Comment by mawadev
7 hours ago
I think the leaders of western countries know something that we don't know. Maybe how the economic impact of AI is not as big as advertised for 3 years or that electric cars still cannot do what is needed on a bigger scale in terms of distance and transport. Or maybe they are going to pull fusion out of their sleeves rendering the existing infrastructure almost obsolete?
AI literally came out of the US at this scale and they are the reason we have this conversation now, you can twist any narrative and make it seem like one country is smarter or better if you want to present it as that.
But does anyone even keep track of effectivity of resource utilization?
Maybe all of these avenues are not worth the effort to begin with?
The much simpler explanation is that our leaders are focused solely on short term gains. They'll grift their way to them gladly, but investing in infrastructure that'll take years to build and won't be useful until they are gone is not interesting to them.
> They'll grift their way to them gladly, but investing in infrastructure that'll take years to build and won't be useful until they are gone is not interesting to them.
I think this may have something to do with the professionalisation of politics, or the existence of career politicians. If you want to climb up the ladder in politics, working on short-term goals is probably the best way to do this. Infrastructure projects are high-risk, low-reward. Infrastructure projects may take a long time, may be reversed/aborted by the next government, may piss off potential voters, may require to fight off NIMBYs, or aren't noticed due to the preparedness paradox.
Very vague story comming up: I've seen a group of companies and ngos working on a scientific project. On itself, it was a temporary setup, but it also gave everyone an opportunity behind the scenes to test each others tools and capacity without making things too official. People were talking about building new labs and offices in our town. The local government got involved, mainly to provide some trust and stability guarantees.
Then a politician from the national level found out. She coopted the government communication channel, made herself the central person, and backstabbed everyone. We had some very rough weeks ensuring everyone we were just as surprised as them.
Crucially, the politician did not know about the testing capacity aspect, so there was nothing in the schedule allowing for it, even if it was the most important aspect.
In the end, she got a few glowing press releases, and an estimated 100ish jobs evaporated overnight and went to another country. I've learned a lot of politics in that episode and hate all of them.
Even more simple is that voters are focused solely on short term gains, so investing in infrastructure that’l take years to build and won’t be useful until they are gone is not interesting to them.
The proof is voters keep rewarding the party that has only passed tax cuts for the last 30 years. And started an unnecessary foreign war.
The aging population histograms of pretty much all democracies don’t bode well for democracy.
The party with control of the federal legislature and executive has vigorously opposed shifting energy demand away from fossil fuels for decades. The opposition has spent that time doing the opposite. The economic viability of added generation capacity is utterly irrelevant here.