The Netflix show Stranger Things was loosely based on this. It was originally going to be called "Montauk" and take place on Long Island, as there were conspiracies of mind control, time travel, and other experiments going on at Montauk Air Force base.
Interestingly, from a technological standpoint, container ships could switch to nuclear propulsion tomorrow if they wanted to. The 2 main reasons they haven't is the large up front cost, and the fact that very few nations like the idea of a ship with a nuclear reactor being highjacked by pirates.
Most versions of the Green New Deal that I've seen heavily incorporate resilience into the plan, it's not solely focused on trying to reverse climate change.
1. Even if we can't completely prevent it, we can stop it from being much worse.
2. Regardless of the climate changer factor, polluting the air causes cancer, damages ecosystems, harms our food supply, etc.
The mentality of "we can't prevent it, so why bother trying" is like accidentally shooting yourself in the foot, and when finding out it'll have to be amputated, proceeding to shoot your other foot because "what's the point?".
Same goes for solar panel/roof installation, backup battery installation, burying power lines to improve storm resilience, etc. There's no shortage of infrastructure that needs to be built to modernize our system.
Trying to artificially protect jobs in one industry while there's a huge labor shortage in much more productive things like infrastructure modernization or housing construction seems like the antithesis of an efficient market.
If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war, maybe we need to reconsider allowing elected officials to use social media as their official communications channel. Instead, they should have a government run portal where they relay whatever info they need to.
If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war, maybe we need to reconsider allowing elected officials to use social media as their official communications channel. Instead, they should have a government run portal where they relay whatever info they need to.
Here's a thought experiment I like to use whenever this comes up.
If someone were to approach you on the street and ask you to do something for them that will take an hour of your time, what amount of money do you think would be a fair compensation for just the time expense? Now add to that the fact that it's not just an hour of someones time, it's also an hour of use of an expensive machine they own and maintain.
I've found that when minimum wage is thought of in this way, anything less than $20-25/hour sounds absurd.
Road traffic is caused by two main things: congestion and bottlenecks.
Congestion is solved by properly designing cities and their transit systems so that there's an optimal ratio of car/bus/train/bike use.
Bottlenecks are solved by properly designing the road network itself so that you don't have situations where 5 lanes become 2, or highway onramps/off-ramps that are too short and cause an entire lane to be backed up by people entering and leaving.
Yes adding more lanes by itself doesn't solve the problem due to induced demand, but refusing to expand highways while simultaneously neglecting to have transit keep up with growth is even worse.
I personally think that all new housing should have a state "transit expansion" tax per unit of housing it introduces, to allow the system to keep up with growth.
My point is that as long as donations of any kind are legal, politicians will continue to optimize for fundraising, rather than optimizing for policies that benefit the largest number of people. Who is most equipped to donate large sums to politicians? The wealthy.