> It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.
I worked on technology for years that the FCC effectively killed for stupid reasons. So it’s heartening to me that someone can still just do stuff and build things. It’s amazing. If you asked me 10 years ago I would have thought that getting something like Starlink off the ground would’ve been impossible due to red tape.
The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different. To one person it can mean, "don't put the construction garbage in the river." To another it can mean "not one single Delta Smelt can be scared because of this construction."
And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1]
The deregulation stuff isn’t about nimby. It’s making nimby 10x worse by making it hyper local. That means poor people who are poorly organized get boned. State regulations tended to help with that.
I live in upstate NY, the rebuild of the GOP here is around hyper local issues, mostly apartments and solar. MAGA changed the discourse and allows the rabble rousers to say the quiet part out loud. (Ie bike infrastructure and apartments will bring poor black people to rape and pillage)
Do you have any specific examples of how new state regulations actually eased the regulatory burden for building something? Adding new regulations at the state level almost never removes the hyper local restrictions, it just adds a new layer of compliance on top.
How can the solution to burdensome regulations be MORE regulation?
A law banning certain types of regulations at a lower level I would not call “state regulation” I would call that deregulation.
I suppose I agree with you that the solution to burdensome regulation is to write new laws which forcibly deregulate lower level things. But calling laws like that “state regulation” is true only in the most technical sense. Your example is a textbook example of deregulation.
The problem most ignore is that you will either have public regulation from the government or private regulation from companies.
Would you rather have a published regulation that is subject to democratic and judicial review and applies equally to every one. Or a company terms of service that forces binding arbitration and your only recourse is to not use the service?
I lived in a neighborhood with an hoa and it was the worst form of regulation I've ever dealt with. I own a health care provider and the regulation when it was direct medicaid was infinitely better than after it was privatizatized with managed care.
To be fair, part of the inordinate expense is just because it takes longer for the environmental reviews (costs are in expected year of construction, so pushing a project a decade into the future can increase costs by 30-40+% (inflation + interest) depending on the specifics, even if everything else costs the same).
That's why the cost estimates for CA HSR jump a bunch every time an administration hostile to it enters the white house.
> project a decade into the future can increase costs
A very good point.
I don't agree we can blame Trump for HSR though. 2/3 of the time that has passed have had Democrats in the white house. HSR is nearly all pure-California-style self-inflicted wound. And honestly it's just the most visible project California has failed with, there are many others. The one I'm personally angry about is Prop 1. We're now 12 years after, and have no additional water resources even broken ground. It's shameful.
It’s an fully intra-state train line in a state that has an economy bigger than France. California should be able to build an entire EU-style HSR network with zero regard to what’s happening federally.
CA can and did recently, but that's money that will need to come from and/or could have gone to other programs/etc.
I think the most recent cut was $4+ billion in federal funds for HSR. It's going to come from cap and trade instead, but the state could have had both.
Agriculture uses 90% of the water in California growing cotton, alfalfa and almonds, which are all very water intensive, Humans watering their lawn, drinking water and bathing, use a fraction.
Note: The way they divide up water usage. They have a third category, listed As environment, but that’s misleading because the people who have the water rights can always use a lot more water at their discretion at any time. where as the common citizen cannot.
We can in part. Like you said, it took a ton of time because of environmental review, and that's on the state. With that said, construction didn't begin until 2015, and Trump pulled billions in funding in his first term in 2016 and did the same in 2024.
infrastructure building is a bad word in the United States of America currently, Unfortunately, our major competition in the world is building infrastructure like crazy, but there is still hope, Because once that high-speed rail system starts building west to east or even east to west, all those areas in the middle of the country will change their tune. They will all be fighting on getting a piece of the rock, or I should say a piece of the rail.
The only mistake California made was not including one of the adjacent states as a destination, be it to Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Portland, all of a sudden business interests and those crazy Republicans would be on board because they’re concerned about missing out on making money, which is basically God in America.
I may not live to see it. but once they start going interstate with high-speed rail anywhere within the United States, the tune will change. It’s just amazing that so many people are short-sighted about it. More of that short-term thinking humans are famous for.
Note: Those who think ahead long-term obviously have already bought land on both sides of the route of that high-speed rail line in California, and probably along the proposed route leading to Las Vegas in the future, and the same applies to any possible line to Phoenix or to the Arizona high plateau.
No cope to it the Republicans in California are powerless, but when there was an opportunity at the last minute to lobby on putting the line on the eastern side of the Central Valley (which probably added three or four years to the process), guess what they cried like babies, to put it on the eastern side of the valley even if it meant more delays.
Originally, the line was scheduled to run on the western side because that side was less populated. In other words, you had pretty much a clear lane as far as the right-aways were concerned, and this scenario will play out once high-speed rail runs out of California to the east.
All those conservative red areas will all of sudden change their tune, and there is no cope again money is God in those red areas that is the one thing those red areas understand particularly those at the top that and taking away the vote, firing a gun or blaming a worker that is less fortunate.
Given the nightmarish nimby gridlock I’m less and less convinced it’s a good thing. I’d rather have people mad about windmills being eyesores than be perpetually chained to oil and gas for energy, as an example. I’m also not a fan of endless roadblocks to all manner of construction, even for such simple things as housing.
Yes, having a data center that raises your utilities costs by 300% jammed down your throat because the local mayor got blatantly bribed shouldn’t be a thing, especially when it’s powered by mobile gas turbines that stink up the entire area (note: I’m not against data centers on principle, but there are many ways for ultra-wealthy interests to leave people hosed). But things like faintly visible mini-sats don’t seem like a big deal, subjectively, unless you work at an observatory.
You might have thought they were stupid reasons but protecting a public good is a very important and challenging task. Unlike the FCC, spaceX isn’t accountable to democratic forces and can do antisocial things with the shared resource and there will be little we can do about it.
“Protecting the public” is the propaganda. In practice, you have a regulatory system that gives every minority interest an effective veto on development, disregarding the global cost/benefit analysis. In our case it was church microphones and other tiny minorities that held up deployment of technology to take advantage of spectrum white spaces.
There may be examples of protecting the public good being propaganda designed to hide the reality of using regulation to protect a minority interest. But there are also countless examples of true public good objectives being served by regulation.
One example is environmental dumping regulation. Unregulated release of chemicals into the environment by a minority harms everyone. In north Carolina entire watersheds are polluted with forever chemicals because the power company was dumping transformers in rivers. Now no one can eat fish.
I am not saying we shouldn't have an electric grid. But clearly their unregulated right to dispose of transformers is in their direct economic interests and against the public interest. And clear simple regulation can support better development with reduced harm.
I dont follow your example and am not familiar with that issue. But I would be the first to acknowledge regulatory process can be abused and irrational but that doesn't mean it is always bad or worse that other approaches.
I agree with you that regulation should have a cost benefit analysis. I would remind you that it often does, look at the public comment process, congressional debate, judicial opinions where that analysis is done in public view.
I would argue that there are improvements to be made like requirements to make predictions on the effects of a regulation and a sunset if the predictions don't match outcomes and a mandatory sunset of all regulation based on time and changed circumstances.
But I would rather have the government regulatory process than anthropic, or Facebook, or Uber or cursor being able to change their terms of service to implement adaptive pricing or training on my data or making digital clones of my family and using them to advertise in misleading endorsements.
except it's not so much about do stuff and build things, it's about literally raping the planet, extorting and exploiting everyone including retirement savings, and also to "move fast and break things" which we know understand better was really meant to mean "remove accountability for the richest people", a.k.a. remove public oversight. Taxes for the poor, and the money goes to multi-billion dollar corps. Vaccines? Red tape! Safety belts? Red tape! Environmental concerns? Red tape!
And by the way this guy is responsible for the death of multiple hundred thousands deaths according to estimates. Because he championed removal of Red tape and shutdown of that allegedly "criminal organization" (his words), USAID. Tell that your children.
“This agency has funded everything from research projects to groups that oppose the government. In Mexico, 'Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción' has received proven support from this agency. So how is it that these so-called 'aid' agencies get involved in politics?" Sheinbaum questioned.
Likewise The Nation, which hates Trump and Musk: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/usaid-trump-musk-... (“Trump and Musk’s war against the agency should be opposed on principle. But we can’t overlook that USAID has been a destructive arm of American imperialism for decades.”).
There’s lots of rich countries to do this aid. China is investing in infrastructure without interfering with local politics. The world’s military hegemon has too much of a conflict of interest to do this job.
I worked on technology for years that the FCC effectively killed for stupid reasons. So it’s heartening to me that someone can still just do stuff and build things. It’s amazing. If you asked me 10 years ago I would have thought that getting something like Starlink off the ground would’ve been impossible due to red tape.