[maxdo]

You just named symptoms not cause.

1. People vote for old idiots .

2. Local politics is all about milking any potential work with permits. Sky rocket housing due to that .

3. American lost engineering culture everywhere except software . Now software is dead as industry we used to know

[sfblah]

Personally I think those are also symptoms. In my opinion, the cause is:

1. Easy money for far, far, far too long in the US and a complete political unwillingness to take any risk of a recession, no matter the long-term cost required to stave it off. In my mind, this explains the rich-poor gap, the rise of crypto, insane valuations, house-price inflation, the weird delta between US and rest-of-world standard of living/salaries, and probably even the migration crisis.

[sbayg]

Easy money and cheap (foreign) labor are one and the same. Political parties that are not accountable for this are the upstream problem. In other words, it’s a failure of what we think of as our “democracy.” The will of the people doesn’t mean much when you can just swap out “the people” to get what you will.

[tim-tday]

Hey, I like easy money.

[jjtheblunt]

> American lost engineering culture everywhere except software

microprocessor design : Apple Silicon and lately Intel Panther Lake and later?

[maxdo]

Both companies created in the previous century and running on old fuel of past success

[jjtheblunt]

that looks like reinvesting profits from innovation in hopes of more innovation

[hparadiz]

Yea that's why the only three orbital grade reusable boosters are American. Lmao.

[iancmceachern]

But our bridges and infrastructure are crumbling

[esseph]

Those are issues of priority and revenue generation, not capability.

[iancmceachern]

Soon we won't have the capabilities. See the nuclear industry and how we don't have the people and training to do the work anymore.

[j16sdiz]

> People vote for old idiots .

i think this is also a syndrome not a cause

[305superuser]

Agree, coming from a 3rd country to US what I have personally perceived a lot is the generational loop at the later stage..."Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." — G. Michael Hopf

[phs318u]

The Russians must be having a grand old time according to this theory.

[ozim]

All these people working in NASA must have had terrible childhood.

We can selectively breed astronauts by beating them from early childhood.

People don’t realize how stupid this quote is.

[red-iron-pine]

yeah all those Good Times created by Hard Men like Mussolini and Stalin

or does this quote refer to Hard Men as in the men who rioted and fought and died for 8 hour work days and basic social services?

[judahmeek]

The latter