The Glade 4.0

Mont - Show me quantitatively that it would. Anything else is just a bare assertion. I'm not saying upgrades are always a waste of money, I'm arguing against the case you are making that upgrades always save money.

And unless you can demonstrate that quantitatively, that's exactly the claim you are making. You keep saying it, but you have yet to demonstrate it.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Just because building roads or interstates in the first place caused commerce to take off does not mean that making massive expendiatures on replacing, repairing, or updating them will have a similar effect.

When you install paved roads you greatly improve the ability of motor transport to move people and goods compared to dirt roads or trails. There is not, however, a similar improvement between a crappy road in the U.S. and a repaired one.

There need to be some numbers. Just asserting "but it's gonna work!" doesn't cut it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well put. That is a good example of increase of marginal cost principle.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

So, if we were to let our bridges and roads break down, your assertion is that it would have no economic impact?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Yea, that's exactly equivalent to what is being said

Likewise, I could say "so if we built point to point personal roads everywhere paved in marble, the only outcome could possibly be economic nirvana?"

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

So you agree that roads and bridges have economic value. Now, you want me to post numbers on that? Frankly, I'm not an economic research analyst, so that might be tough. I can talk about the economic impact when such infrastructure breaks down. We will use the MN bridge collapse as an example. The overall impact was about 50 million dollars lost in the local economy. It could also have ramifications for jobs, which then affects the overall economy.

By contrast, building it's replacement cost 27 million and actually increased the value by upgrading the structure itself.

Now, had MN invested in the original bridge, or in a project to replace it, they probably could have saved half the amount they spent on the new bridge, in addition to avoiding the majority of the negative economic impact of the collapse (And frankly, saved lives).

And that's just one example.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Montegue:

He's not disputing that bridges and roads have economic value. Rafael is also making a valid point. Upgrades are not necessary economically nor always of value simply because they are upgrades. The United States actually needs to remove some roads from service while improving the general transit time point to point AND investing in upgrades to roadway technology efficiently. This requires more research than I care to mention.

That said, bridge failures are not exactly a good measure of how these things affect the economy. There are a lot of variables, including material resonance, that caused said bridge to collapse. Some of these things were not anticipated in the original design.

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I'm not disputing that basic point. Yes, we need to invest wisely in infrastructure, as you argue. And yes, we need to invest with a mind towards maximizing benefit and minimizing negative impact. That being said, we have avoided *maintaining* our investment in infrastructure, and that has a cost. The MN bridge is one example. People knew it was a problem, but the will was not there to make the investment in fixing it.

I agree that putting people on roads just to give them work is not the ideal solution, although it's not an entirely bad idea, either. The money they make goes into the economy and helps to create more jobs.

So, if you put people to work on the roads, we ought to do so with a mind towards maximizing the benefit of our investment. Again, I think it's a win-win.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I do not want you to go out and do the study for yourself. That would be ludicrous; by the time you completed it, it would be obsolete.

I wanted you to find a comprehensive study detailing specifically what types of upgrades would be economical with the quantative analysis to back it up. I would get behind that.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I think you misunderstand what he's saying. Khross is speaking to the inherent inefficiencies of uninsulated overhead power distribution systems as a technology. As he said, there are no easy answers to this. We could insulate the power lines, of course, but this wholly infeasible. Aside from the astronomical cost, it just can't be done as a matter of practicality. They're able to run insulated armored underground cable for residential service lines only because these have been stepped down to appreciably lower voltage than the transmission lines. To insulate even a 14kV line (not to speak of the really high voltage transmission lines) you would need insulation as big around as a subway car, or else made of unobtanium. Nor is it practical to reduce the voltage of transmission lines. The efficiency lost to using thicker conductors with higher resistance would far outstrip any efficient gained from lower radiated power losses.

Simply put, we're doing the best we can with what exists. There are no technologies even remotely close the horizon at this point that could "solve" the problem. Things are further exacerbated as you move out into the expanses of the southern and western states. The structural arrangement of the urban U.S. is fundamentally different from that of Europe or China. It isn't something that can be reasonably changed at this point in history, so we're basically just stuck with it.

The distribution problem is also a thorn in the side of many energy initiatives which the current administration would be happy to pretend doesn't exist (not that they're alone in this). Better, cleaner, more efficient power generation is well and good. HIGW/CC or no HIGW/CC, I think most people would agree that -- all other things being equal -- this would be a good thing. However, being able to produce clean energy is essentially pointless if we can't transmit it to our urban centers efficiently. This is especially a problem for wind energy, which is especially unfortunate because it's probably the most practical and immediately exploitable "clean energy" technologies that we have. Most everything else is frankly "pie-in-the-sky" at this point. Do some research into the Pickens Plan if you don't appreciate the problem. Political quibbling about Ol' T. Boone Pickens aside, there's significant doubt whether his plan is even feasible, even provided that we were willing to spend the hundreds of billions it would cost just to build the transmission lines.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

http://selil.com/?p=260

That article seems to have several links that might lead to useful information.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

That doesn't mean the links lead to useful information. You should, perhaps, read the links you suggest we read before we read them. Just as a matter of course and due diligence.

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scholar.google.com
That might have links to useful information.

There, I've proven my assertion!

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Was there something in the article that you disagreed with?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I don't necessarily need to disagree or agree with anything in the article, Montegue. I'm pointing out that if you are going to recommend something to other people to read, you should have probably read it yourself.

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I read the main article. I have no reason to believe it's sources are faulty, but if you have reason to believe they are, I'm all ears.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Except, you recommended it as a source that has useful links. You would need to know what those links actually say. Like I said, I have no idea what the article says or does not say; I do know that you made a recommendation without investing due diligence in it. It's merely a minor quibble. If you're going to recommend an article based on its sources and links to said sources; you probably should have read everything.

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Useful in that, if you *do* want to double check the facts in the article, you can go click the links. Sorry if that wasn't terribly clear to you.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Montegue:

I'm saying you should double check them first. There would be no to end to the shitstorm I could cause at work by saying, "Hey, this book might be useful," if I hadn't read it and all its sources.

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But I'm not at your work, Khross, nor in your class. I'm on the interwebs.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Maybe you should be in his class...you might learn something! Then again, maybe not.

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Except, you keep asking for intelligent and informed discourse. That requires due diligence on your part, too. When I'm writing a paper on whatever text currently piques my interest, I have no option but to read everything written in the last 7 years on that text, plus every seminal work on that text, and the majority of items in the bibliographies of all of those texts. Hell, the bibliography for my dissertation was 62 pages long.

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Again, this is not your class, nor is it a place for informed discourse. Im not saying this in an angry tone of voice. I'm just pointing out that my lack of desire to investigate every linked article does not in fact invalidate the argument the article makes, nor my making it.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Definitely not informed. You got that right.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Was that a comment about me, or just in general?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show