[Pops]

I hope people understand the United States is nothing but a collection of city-states.

There is no "rural" or "small town" America.

This is pretty much it. I've lived in small towns and out in the country all my life and there is increasingly less here. Farms are consolidating, nothing is made here, retail consists of walmart, dollar general maybe a parts store. No one lives here that can afford a city house, lots of old people on pensions. Nice new hospital about 20 miles away was a shock—less shocking is the OB/Delivery ward closed almost right away since no OB doctor wants to work in Missouri for fear of jail. So much for protecting babies.

One big thing seldom mentioned is that nice cars and paved roads have been the killer of small towns. As roads and cars improved, even people who wanted to live in a small town began commuting to the city. But then they also they also shopped there, went to city doctors, city restaurants etc. Eventually nothing is left in the little burg except a Quick-Sac, if that.

We drive around some. The only small towns still viable that we see are at least an hour away from a big town. As cars are nicer and eventually self-driving even those places will lose the battle. Maybe once upon a time cities depended on small towns to support farmers and bring the crop to market. But FedEx, big rigs and paved roads now make it the other way 'round.

[Tanada]

Did you see that!
The cops just let them all go!
just a tour group

Are you talking about the UM "Protest" in Ann Arbor, Michigan? 200 students and agitators broke into the locked admin building and occupied it for six hours, state police chased out the ones who left willingly and then issued trespassing tickets to the rest before releasing them outside the building?

I believe in a former age the University would expel students who did such a thing, especially when there is a LONG waiting list of applicants who want to get in and qualify. In todays world 10 percent got a misdemeanor citations and 90 percent didn't even get their name put on an ID list of troubled students who are confused how the real world works.
Detroit News
Detroit TV News

[Pops]

Are you talking about the UM "Protest" in Ann Arbor, Michigan?

Naw, just being snide as usual. LOL

[theluckycountry]

A lot of the metals in the picture below go into cities, or create product used in the cities. Probably more than half of it ends up in the service of the world's cities.

[nocar]

All that iron, and other metals. I want to know where is goes.

How much is to cars and trucks? How much is for highways? (I believe there is lots of iron for reinforcement i highway bridges)

How much is for building public transport?

How much for agriculture equipment?
How much is for bicycles?

How much is for building? Single family housing, apartments, schools, retail, industries?

[kublikhan]

All that iron, and other metals. I want to know where is goes.

How much is to cars and trucks? How much is for highways? (I believe there is lots of iron for reinforcement i highway bridges)

How much is for building public transport?

How much for agriculture equipment?
How much is for bicycles?

How much is for building? Single family housing, apartments, schools, retail, industries?

Almost all iron goes into making steel. Here's where the steel goes:

The Major Applications of Steel
Steel applications can be divided into seven primary market sectors. The figures are the percentages of steel production dedicated to them, according to the World Steel Association (WSA):

Buildings and infrastructure, 51%
Mechanical equipment, 15%
Automotive, 12%
Metal products, 11%
Other transport, 5%
Domestic appliances, 3%
Electrical equipment, 3%

Buildings and Infrastructure
More than half of the steel produced annually is used to construct buildings and infrastructure such as bridges. Most of the steel used in this sector is found in reinforcing bars (44%); sheet products, including those used in roofs, internal walls, and ceilings (31%); and structural sections (25%). In addition to those structural applications, steel is also used in buildings for HVAC systems and in items such as stairs, rails, and shelving.

Besides bridges, applications for steel in transportation-related infrastructure include tunnels, rail track, fueling stations, train stations, ports, and airports. Steel is also widely used in utility infrastructure, including for fuels, water, and, electricity. The WSA states that half of the steel used for utility infrastructure is in the form of underground pipes for water or natural gas.

Mechanical Equipment
This second-greatest use of steel includes (among many other things) bulldozers, tractors, machinery that makes car parts, cranes, and hand tools such as hammers and shovels. It also includes the rolling mills that are used to shape steel into various shapes and thicknesses.

Automotive
On average, almost 2,000 pounds, or 900 kilograms, of steel is used to make a car. About a third of that is used in the body structure and exterior, including the doors. Another 23% is in the drive train, and 12% is in the suspension.

Metal Products
This market sector includes various consumer products such as furniture, packaging for food and drinks, and razors. Foods packaged in steel cans don't need to be refrigerated.

Other Transport
Steel is used in ships, trains and train cars, and parts of planes. Hulls of large ships are almost all made of steel, and steel ships carry 90% of global cargo. almost all of the world's approximately 17 million shipping containers are made of steel. Besides the cars, steel shows up in trains in the wheels, axels, bearings, and motors. In airplanes, steel is crucial for engines and landing gear.

Domestic Appliances
Clothes washers and dryers, ranges, microwave ovens, dishwashers, and refrigerators all contain steel in varying amounts, including the motors, when applicable. According to the American Iron and Steel Association, a front-loading washer generally contains 84.2 pounds of steel, while a top-bottom refrigerator-freezer contains 79 pounds.

Electrical Equipment
The last major steel market sector involves applications in the production and distribution of electricity. That means transformers, which have a magnetic steel core; generators; electric motors; pylons; and steel-reinforced cables.

The Major Applications of Steel

[Pops]

Simple fact is there were less homeless when America was great because we warehoused our mentally ill and addicted people in "state hospitals" and prisons. from the 70's-90's this ended as the government-funded hospitals were closed because taxes.

Also the laws surrounding involuntary commitment changed as well — that was a good thing.

For-profit boarding homes (and prisons) sprang up to contain these people. Like any for profit "institution" these places were no better than the state could do and in many cases much worse as their motive was profit not improvement. Today these places can cost tens of thousands per month (because capitalism) so obviously poor people are forced out if they could ever find a bed in the first place. But "deinstitutionalization" made a few people lots of money and made a few other people feel good about kicking out the moochers.

Like all other medicine, capitalism has taken over. We spend more on medicine yet receive worse care than other rich countries. We are 50th behind other rich and not so rich countries in infant mortality. We spend huge percentage of GDP on medicine but because medicine is for-profit, government money just causes the bill to rise that much more.


The other part of homelessness is lack of homes for those willing and able to work but low-skilled, low-paid. Zoning and NIMBYism prevents construction of low-income, high density housing making any home unaffordable in cities... where the jobs are.
To rent the average 1bdrm apt in San Fran you need to earn about $125k/yr. Not exactly dishwasher wages. In fact as more and more money is hovered up by the top rung of society, there is simply less to go around—why else would the stock market again be so overvalued, not to mention all the off-book transactions.




The US populace and government spends more than most countries on for profit medicine and for profit militarism—ye olde Military-Industrial complex is only rivaled by the Medical-Industrial complex. But surprisingly, or not if you follow politics, we are dead last among OECD countries in what is termed "social protection." Think, police, fire and courts. But also measures to help people with a litany of ill fates that befall citizens. Our programs range from OSHA to disability to unemployment to mental heath services: WIC, TANIF, SNAP, and of course especially SSI.

If one shakes their head and scoffs at those programs and votes for the political party that makes those services the butt of jokes and fund-raising emails, there is only one direction to point.

[theluckycountry]

All that iron, and other metals. I want to know where is goes.

How much is to cars and trucks? How much is for highways? (I believe there is lots of iron for reinforcement i highway bridges)

One problem is that as time passes the mines produce less and then play-out. New mines are founded but usually at greater cost of extraction because the ore grades are lower, the high hanging fruit. All this results in greater consumption of fossil fuels, and metals, to extract said metals.

20 years ago when most of our electricity came from coal or nuclear power stations very little metal was involved in generation, though there was mass extraction of fuels, the metal use was in long lasting machines, mining machines, railways etc. Now we have millions of tonnes of steel going into wind generator towers, just as much into the concrete foundations of them too. Then all the extra copper going into the individual generators themselves. Then there is the solar side, how much steel goes into the vast supports for the arrays of PV and solar thermal plants out in the fields? How much aluminium goes into the panel frames and the rails that support them? I would guesstimate that there is 3x as much aluminium in my home solar system than in all the sliding windows and doors combined.

This is my major gripe with these re-buildable systems, they cost a fortune in energy and metals as well as the transport and installation, government oversight, paperwork. And in 15 or 20 years it all has to be repeated when they wear out. And the solar panels themselves are not recyclable, the frames sure, but at a cost, and then the glass and substrate goes into stockpiles and the landfill. Same with wind to a degree. They are very complex machines and a lot of the running gear, like the huge fiberglass blades, becomes landfill. It's not a solution to the depletion of F-Fuels, it's an added ongoing consumption of them.

These power sources have their place, but unfortunately capitalism has forced them into every corner of the planet with no regard for practical efficiencies or long-term viability.

[ralfy]

More cities are made, especially near port areas, so that more can earn from service industries and manufacturing. Meanwhile, agriculture is mechanized to increase food production.

To ensure all that, just-in-time processes and economic order quantities are needed, especially to ship many goods across long distances, and frequently in order to keep inventory costs low.

[Pops]

Regarding the rebuildability of PV, the panels will last many many years. Old panels hit the pit now mainly because cheaper / more efficient ones are on the market regularly. Panels are warranted for 25 years at 80% output - it seems likely they'll still be making power in fifty, if only at 75%. Don't know how this works, could be they have a cliff, could be they hit a plateau.

In any event, I'll bet that in 2073, if nukes don't resurge and fission and di-lithium crystal power (or whatever the Energy Fairy may pull out of her bum) are still 10 years away, people will be clamoring over 50 year old panels.

[theluckycountry]

DC Transit Could Become "Unrecognizable" With Drastic Service Cuts, Layoffs Amid Deficit

Clarke pointed out the level of proposed service cuts "is hard to imagine." This also includes reducing or eliminating service on 108 of its 135 bus lines. The rail system will have its midnight hours reduced by 2 hours and cease operations at 10 pm.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/dc-tr ... id-deficit

[Shaved Monkey]

When you go to Japan you realise if you build a great fast reliable rail connection the city will grow to use its benefits,it looks like it wont take long before Kyoto is a suburb of Tokyo.

[theluckycountry]

The End of the Industrial Age is Set in Concrete

An old story, but worth a revisit.

Every year, the world pours enough concrete to build a wall 88 feet high and 88 feet wide girdling the globe at the equator. The varieties in concreting, as you see here, are proof. In just two years — 2011 to 2013 — China poured more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th Century. Manufacturing cement — the product that makes concrete out of water, sand and gravel — is the third largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in the world; if it were a country, it would be the world’s fourth worst polluter. Increasing demand for, and scarcity of, sand for both concrete and fracking has created a vicious global competition that in some respects resembles the worst of the drug cartels for violence, ruthlessness and lawlessness.

Now the bad news. Concrete has a life span. Salt, water and heat degrade it until at some point it can no longer be the road or the bridge or the high rise or the dam it once was. If nothing is done to replace or repair it, it fails. And people die.

Now the really bad news. Most of the infrastructure of the United States is made of concrete, and most of that concrete is at the end of its life span. If you want to see what that looks like, go to Surfside, Florida and look at the pile of rubble that used to be the Champlain Towers. The pile of rubble that demonstrates perfectly the nature of the rapidly approaching concrete crisis.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers:

Nearly half of America’s 617,000 bridges are 50 years old, or older, and 46,000 of them are structurally deficient.
40% of the country’s highways are rated in poor or mediocre condition. Many of them in urban situations are impossible to close down in order to rebuild them.
2,300 dams rated as high hazard — meaning that any failure would be catastrophic — are also rated as deficient.

Which brings us to the really, really bad news. There is no logical way that the local, state or federal governments in this or any other country are going to find the political will to raise and spend the money necessary to fix this problem. For half a century and more, especially since the advent of the Reagan Era, the standard operating procedure has been to kick the can down the road. Now both the can and the road are just about used up.

https://www.dailyimpact.net/2021/07/11/ ... -concrete/

[Newfie]

Yeah, there is some mistaken idea that we can just keep building and building. While at the same time we claim to want to decarbonize. And it extends to office space. In many large US cities new commercial space is at under 30% occupancy with no good prospects.

At this point we should put a moratorium on new construction. Divert funds to maintaining what we have, replacing where rational.

But then what of our odern society is rational?

[theluckycountry]

One of the major problems in our modern world, and in the ancient world as well, is "the psychology of previous investment" It was most famously seen in the Easter Island culture where the ruling tribes kept cutting down trees to facilitate the manufacture of the stone Maui and the elaborate personal veranda they constructed to feast on. These latter were big T shaped stone affairs where the tribes elite would gather. They simply couldn't stop. And eventually the last tree was felled and that was the end.

Today the debt based money system requires continual growth, banks need to loan money, builders want to build, workers want to eat. There is no solution aside from collapse which is inevitable. We have had many partial collapses over the past century or two but cheap coal and oil has allowed us pickup and move on. What we need now, to balance things, is a major collapse that does away with the 20th century hyper expansionist model. We can still have roads and trucks and cars, just not on the same scale. It's one of the many things that didn't jibe with the whole utopian EV/fuel cell future, having millions of complex and arguably delicate vehicles traveling over broken highways and dirt roads.

That's been a global trend for decades, nations that once had decent road networks now covered in broken asphalt.


You go to this



Then to this



It's happening all around us.

The Key to Successfully Converting Paved to Unpaved Roads

January 11, 2021 A Growing Movement

There’s a growing movement of converting paved into unpaved roads. By 2015, road conversion projects had occurred in 27 states (including Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Michigan, Alabama, Pennsylvania and more). Why this growing trend?

Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, when asphalt and construction prices were low, many rural, low-volume roads were paved. Now, those roads are well beyond their design service life and need to be repaved. Local road agencies across the country have found it beneficial to convert to unpaved roads for the sake of cost savings...

https://blog.midwestind.com/converting- ... ved-roads/

Why Counties and Municipalities Are Choosing Gravel Roads over Paving
https://blog.midwestind.com/counties-mu ... vel-roads/

[Newfie]

Lucky,

Good to hear. I see that occasionally. And it makes sense.

[theluckycountry]

It's why I bought a 4x4 and then an adventure bike, not that I need them need them yet, but the trend is clear. We're having another intense rain/storm/tornado cycle now and I can only imagine what the backroads will look like when I eventually get out there. There is some weird shit going down here in Oz, storms with 160 km/h winds, unheard of. Then 2 days ago a tornatic event south of Brisbane that cut a swath 60km long and tore down untold power poles and destroyed untold houses. That stuff is common in the US but not here. I guess insurance premiums will be going up again next year...

[Newfie]

Nearly lost the bridge on our woodlot this year. Took 44 truck loads of stone and some serious culvert work to secure the bridge.

https://ibb.co/Zzp4V8L

[careinke]

Nearly lost the bridge on our woodlot this year. Took 44 truck loads of stone and some serious culvert work to secure the bridge.

https://ibb.co/Zzp4V8L

Damn, that is a LOT of rock How big were the trucks?

Peace

[Newfie]

https://imgur.com/a/iYxce0D

URL=https://imgbox.com/hNbXdxyq][/URL]