[bpodgursky]

Given how bad most US cities are at building sufficient housing, it wouldn't actually shock me if a well-planned company town was short-term financially much better for their employees than average... at least Amazonville won't have NIMBYs complaining about new high-rise condos ruining the neighborhood.

And like it or not (not, probably), housing is 40+% of low-income worker living expense, so even fixing rent could turn a worker's life around...

[varelse]

There are plenty of places in the United States where there is little resistance to building more housing and the local government would love for people to come there and start businesses.

But they are not considered desirable places and they often end up on 100 worst places to live in the United States lists made by the same sort of people rationalizing their high cost of living. Amazon has apparently taken notice of this and decided to monetize it. But if it becomes a broken Orwellian dystopia like this camera system, that's a made for TV horror movie.

And if you suggest someone in an expensive place like San Francisco who is sinking into debt should move to a place like that and bootstrap you will hear an unending stream of profanities from them. Because the people who are willing to do that sort of thing have mostly already done so. Your priorities are not their priorities. They'll take the NIMBYs if they're close to their friends and family.

[nebula8804]

Those undesirable places are partially that way because a community is not just housing. It is good infrastructure, good governance, good society among many other things.

Look at all this anti-vax nonsense...look they are free to act the way they want but it does scare away investment into those communities.

Low taxes could mean less red tape but it can also mean non-existent governance and investment into infrastructure. People are starting to realize this scam for what it is.

[varelse]

I remember an earnest soccer mom sort asking me what she could do to stop Trumpism in 2017. And I replied that she should move to a blue city in a red state before the 2020 election. She bristled and responded with profanity at the very thought of that. And then walked away in a huff.

So I conclude people are unwilling to walk their talk. You're not wrong though, but all those really cool communities were built by pioneers who did something exactly like the above. The only way to beat the stupid is to infiltrate and vote their insane representatives out of office. As long as the educated are corralled and contained to the coasts, this will just keep getting worse IMO.

[Dylan16807]

> So I conclude people are unwilling to walk their talk.

You are holding that person to a ridiculous standard. They talk to you about wanting to do something, and if they don't uproot their entire life just to shift a single vote around you're going to pretend they were speaking some enormous talk and now refuse to back it up?

[varelse]

Talk is cheap. Lowering standards is how you get craptastic AI like the camera system here deployed. But it's even worse than that because it's obvious they could improve its false positive detections, but seemingly given they already got paid, they don't care. Now imagine an entire city designed around that principle. That's either a British sitcom or a made for TV horror movie depending on where you go with it IMO.

[Dylan16807]

Talk is cheap, sure.

But you're demanding an enormous act with a tiny benefit. It is completely unreasonable for you to complain that someone doesn't meet this standard you made up.

[antifa]

> Talk is cheap

Indeed, it cost almost nothing to suggest somebody should move to another state/city just to cast a vote.

[nebula8804]

Its is happening but the people who are moving to these places seem like those who cannot make it in the more competitive markets. At the same time, you only live one life so people who can afford to thrive in the expensive markets don't want to spend their time not living their best lives. So this catch-22 exists.

The sanders approach had hope: Invest in all these communities to help bring those people up to the same level of quality society as the coasts and the hope was that enough would abandon Trumpism as their prospects improved. Instead we are repeating the mistakes of the Obama years and I guess after Biden, the only way forward is more pain and suffering when the next demagogue makes it to the white house.

[varelse]

If we fall as a nation, just under 7.6B other people get a shot at running the show and fix what's broken to whatever extent we can. Good for them, bad for us.

[nebula8804]

I can't see any other nation becoming the world superpower any time soon with the exception of China. The US is unique in that it has a trifecta of components necessary to maintain its power. It has the natural resources, it still has a great talent pool and one thing it seems to have over everyone else is a level of net immigration that allows it to mask the population implosion that is happening in all other western nations and China. China may very well surpass the US or at the very least rival them but I just don't see how they are going to overcome the population implosion that is coming for them in a few decades.