These numbers mirror a skewed culture. The best and the brightest should think again. Barack Obama put the issue this way at Wesleyan University in May: beware of the “poverty of ambition” in a culture of “the big house and the nice suits.”
College seniors might start by reading “A New Bank to Save Our Infrastructure” in the current edition of The New York Review of Books, an impassioned plea from Felix Rohatyn (who knows something of financial rescues) and Everett Ehrlich for the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank, or N.I.B.
Its aim, at a time when the Chinese are investing $200 billion in railways and building 97 new airports, would be to use public and private capital to give coherence to a vast program of public works. “This can improve productivity, fight unemployment and raise our standard of living,” Rohatyn told me.
It’s absurd that earmarks — the self-interested budgetary foibles of senators and representatives — should dictate the progressive dilapidation of America. How can the commonwealth thrive when its bridges sag, its levees cede, its public transport creaks?
So, young minds, sign up for the N.I.B.! Before doing so, read Nick Taylor’s stirring “American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the W.P.A.: When F.D.R. Put the Nation to Work.” It shows how the Works Progress Administration, a linchpin of Roosevelt’s New Deal, put millions of unemployed to work on dams, airports and the like. It’s a book about how imaginative political leadership can rally a nation in crisis.
Yes, the death of the old is also the birth of the new. In my end is my beginning. It’s time for the best and the brightest to step forth and rediscover the public sphere.
Apparently all of America requires a Bridge to Nowhere. Do the Chinese really need 97 airports? Do they need more railway? Heck, the Soviets had infrastructure. What do we need infrastructure for? Dude, I'll carry no water for either T. Boone Pickens (for real, that's his fucking name?) or James Howard Kunstler. The former a pipe-dreamer who wants to getrichbitch!; the latter a critic who I appreciate somewhat, but a doctor whose prescription I wouldn't want filled.
It just so happens that Mr.Fundamental resides, at present, in the Infrastructure World. The Infratainment World. Lemmetellya, most days I blog this computer until it's smoking and crying for me to go home. This job is boring. It's soul depriving. It's killing me slowly each and every day. I deal with idiots. I deal with regulatory bodies and their agents and their hours. (8-4, wtf?) Now ask around. Take a look around. Who is entirely happy where they are? Who doesn't have problems or issues or boredom and frustration with their job? That's the whole society deal, man. Everybody works. Work sucks. Whatareyagonnadoaboutit? Find something to do that you can tolerate. If you think you can do something better, then go do that. People go after those jobs and that money so they don't have to do this job for this money. Duh.
But wait. Now you're telling me I could be a millionaire? I now suddenly find myself in the driver's seat to an entirely new and upcoming field of work? My salary might double? The best and the brightest are suddenly going to show up in suits and ties and solve our infrastructure problems? They want to design the culvert I'm working on? They want to conduct the plan review I've got scheduled for tomorrow? For me? Please, step in, I'll leave quietly through the back door. Just wait until they discover the joys of pavement design. Wait until they have to write a spec, or sit in front of a CAD screen all day, or walk a regulator through your project because they're a liberal arts major and you're the one with the solid science and math background, or worse, someone from PennDOT with a notable East Asian accent who is "just doing his job" as he spews out 15 more comments about your project that you niether noticed nor cared about because, well, it's not your job to care about all of those things, it is in fact his. Do you think we're going to grease the regulatory wheels and allow the country to fire off road, sewer, water, and bridge repairs? Is our streets and bridges crumbling? (wink) Do you think there's not corruption at every level in China, or here in America? Are you bloody fucking high? Just shut up and admit that you only wish to apply your vision of what needs to be done in order to "make America right" and "set it straight." Whatthefucksuchathingmightlook
The type of organizing this nitwit is calling for would require a severe American Depression. No, scratch that, it would a require severe American Depression motivation. Dude, take a look around. (It might be funny to imply, at this point in the post, the "canary in the mineshaft" of America's most recent nationalizations. Harhar. You can buy twobuckchuck at Trader Joe's.) This shit was built on the cheap as strongly as possible for as little as possible. America!'s infrastructure is a shamble because it was built that way. It was built to last 50 years, and we're getting there. And when a bridge collapses, we'll rebuild it. When a road fails, we'll fix it. It's easier that way. It's also less time consuming, less wasteful, and cheaper. Also, this is how the world works. When something major comes along, we fix it. The majority of my projects are band-aids, yo. What do you want to do about it? Make the world right? Get America on the right track? Good luck, man, I've got some things to do. Don't stay too late, ok? Think of the, no, wait, think of your own children for once. Much better.
Dude whether I'm in a car or on a bike or in a commuter train I'm still just a fucking drone buzzing to and from work and home. We could abandon half the roads and bridges in America and focus our attention on the rest and probably keep them in better shape because of it.
h/t: Capn Capitulation
read Nick Taylor’s stirring “American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the W.P.A.: When F.D.R. Put the Nation to Work.”
Dude, it took me like a half hour to get through that sentence... I fell asleep every time I reached a colon.
There is an overpass built by the W.P.A. down the street from here, made of huge blocks of Massachusetts granite. It'll probably still be there when the only things taking the Riverway from Jamaica Plain into Brookline are deer and the odd mutant badger.
Posted by: paul of crazy like whoa | 18 September 2008 at 06:40 PM
Yeah, it's really not the American Way to build things that will last. Cuts down on profit margins. Those damn Europeans with their cobblestone base to roads that don't need to be torn up every 10 years and rebuilt at a tidy profit to contracters and a big assessment to homeowners. They're missing out on the big bucks!
At least we're not as corupt as the Turks, what with their buildings that collapse in a high wind.
Posted by: Rick98c | 19 September 2008 at 08:26 AM
Anyone in the mood for some light reading?
Posted by: Agi | 19 September 2008 at 12:57 PM
Yeah, but those beautiful porphyry paving stones in Rome turn slippery as greased Formica every time it rains. They're tearing them up and laying asphalt, to the horror of everyone except people who actually have to USE said streets...
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