[VLM]

The geography is special and we're kind of the "Saudi Arabia" of world coal production. As the worlds best producer (or one of the best anyway) we should be the one place in the world still digging coal.

Kind of like how wheat is not quite as sexy as javascript frameworks. However, the midwest has the unique geological feature of being the "Saudi Arabia" of wheat production, so despite wheat not being as sexy as SV startups, we are one of the best places on the planet to grow it so you'd think we'd grow a heck of a lot of wheat compared to, say, Ecuador or Hawaii.

Imagine as a thought experiment that javascript frameworks were not cool and not the future, yet, SV remained the best spot on the entire planet to grow new javascript frameworks. If something (politics? regulation of programmers?) prevented SV from actually being the world capital of javascript frameworks, it would be a valid question to ask why and then fix it.

USA is a big country. We do all kinds of stuff, not just SV stuff. Also obviously 99.99% of the countries population isn't going to sit down and quietly die because they can't participate in SV tech scene, luckily they have plenty of economic activities to perform.

[woodandsteel]

>The geography is special and we're kind of the "Saudi Arabia" of world coal production. As the worlds best producer (or one of the best anyway) we should be the one place in the world still digging coal.

But Trump isn't just saying that the US should remain #1 in a shrinking industry. He claims that he can get coal employment back to where it was decades ago. That's crazy.

[tobltobs]

China is Nr.1 world producer by far. Then comes the US, Europe, India, Australia with more or less the same output each. Sure you could try to compete with China by removing all environmental regulations but even the Chinese slowly understand that drinkable water might have its use also.

Your corn example isn't a good story also, because without subsidies the "Saudi Arabia" of wheat production wouldn't exist.

How about concentrating on stuff which actually generates money?