Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Robert Stephenson's avatar

(USA) I've been a lifelong sci fi fan, and have been disappointed at the devolution of the entire genre into dystopian nightmares. Turns out, we're in one. Day after day is a constant drip drip of the latest loonacy from a parade of ass clowns... the latest; a WWE style take down of a California Senator at a press conference in LA. Saddest of all? I fear we let our secondary educational outcomes slip away unnoticed over several decades, to where we are way down the list in terms of STEM outcomes in the world among advanced economies. I am not sure we can ever get it back. Are we going to enter an insular dark ages in the USA because of it? I mean, you have to have a whole lot of sub par graduates to elect something like the current clown show. Now that morons outnumber the rest of us, who's going to vote for rigorous outcomes that may, in time, lead to the critical mass of critical thinking necessary to maintain a bulwark against another lowest common denominator reality show takeover of the country? Keep fighting the good fight, Mari.

Expand full comment
Lyra's avatar

Oof. I so want to agree with you in theory, but based on what I've seen I'm 100% with Ronnie on this one. I believe there are some small, high-trust, homogeneous countries where this kind of government service works well and is trustworthy (Switzerland, probably Denmark and Norway, maybe others), but I think it's just a pipe dream for a place as big and diverse as the US or (even worse) just low-trust and as big as Italy.

We live in an area similarly given to random landslides and unstable terrain in general, but no one ever sounds the alarm beforehand in Italy as far as I can tell. If you're lucky and survive, they might evacuate you later and put you up in a hotel for a while (this happened in our tiny hamlet of <800 people in 2003/4, before we moved here, but while I lived not far away), but you better have your residence officially registered there (many landlords won't let you, despite the fact that it's illegal). Friends of ours lived in a house here they owned, but technically kept their residence at the mother-in-law's house in the agacent town because it was above their business and easier to manage the mail. They had to foot their own bill. We've had dam disasters sweep away multiple entire towns (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_di_Stava_dam_collapse), mostly attributable to government corruption or poor maintenance, to say nothing of countless earthquakes, bridge collapses, and I'm going to stop here because I'm depressing myself.

I can't say FEMA has that great a reputation either -- we've seen some pretty terrible failures of management, response times and distribution during any number of disasters in my lifetime (Katrina, Helene and Maria, just to name hurricanes). The poorer you are, the less likely you are to even qualify for FEMA assistance. I'm not saying fixing all this is impossible, but it's definitely much more complicated than just funding them more (or at all). With 330 million people, I'm not even sure a federal agency for disasters even makes sense. Seems like we'd be better off with state-level entities that can maybe apply for federal grants in a pinch (although if that comes with boot-licking and sworn fealty now, I'm guessing it might not be worth it 🙄).

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts