Are you gonna get an electric car anytime soon? (Or do you already have one?)

[Ryan Gallagher]

EV owners in my condo building just got some horrible news. It seems allowing individual charger sub-metered installs in their designated spaces was not a scalable solution. We've reached our electrical service capacity with pretty minimal number (8). I think the HOA is going to make everyone remove them and look into a bank of load-sharing chargers... alas we have minimal guest spaces to work with.

Surely, with some coordination and upgrades, it would be possible to make the existing individual owner's chargers load share... but perhaps they are not designed for that kind of use.

Separately, I wonder how many battery fires were part and parcel to the department struggles in the various LA residential wildfires? It was gonna be bad either way, but a non-extinguishable EV fire doesn't help.

[Bobby Henderson]

I know Florida and Georgia got a bunch of serious damage; I just didn't mention them. Before the hurricane made landfall I took note of Albany, GA getting hurricane warnings since I lived there over 30 years ago. Still, it looks like parts of Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina suffered the worst damage (and possibly the worst loss of life).

It looks like a bunch of Asheville will have to be completely demolished and re-built from scratch. I'm sure more than a few of the homes and businesses that were flooded won't be re-built for various reasons.

Hopefully the repairs to I-40, I-26 and other roads can take place on an accelerated schedule. What I mean by that is bypassing years worth of Draft EIS and Final EIS filings along with the usual lawsuits filed to block highway projects. They may be able to do some temporary things to at least allow traffic to pass through some locations on the Interstates in 2-lane configuration. Considering portions of I-40 in the Smoky Mountains have been washed out at least twice they probably need to re-think how the Interstate is designed and get it re-built properly.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I just can't believe the level of devastation in parts of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. It's just staggering. When I was a kid and Marine Corps brat my family made numerous road trips on I-40 through North Carolina. A bunch of Asheville is just ruined. Both I-40 and I-26 have serious damage that will take at least months, if not years, to fully repair.

The death toll is already very terrible (at least 128 confirmed dead as of Monday). Hundreds of others are missing. I hope the people who are missing are alive but just not able to call anyone due to dead mobile phones and no Internet service.

You forgot Florida and Georgia. As far as roads, TN may be able to get I-40 open the quickest. The 5 bridges will take at least three years. New bridges have to be designed first. The interesting thing about the I-40 washout is that geologists told them not to put 40 along the river back when it was built in the mid 70's because of this very thing happenning. Same FEMA guy said tonight at least a decade to get stuff back to normal in Ashville. He also said this was the most devastating storm to ever hit the US.

[Bobby Henderson]

I just can't believe the level of devastation in parts of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. It's just staggering. When I was a kid and Marine Corps brat my family made numerous road trips on I-40 through North Carolina. A bunch of Asheville is just ruined. Both I-40 and I-26 have serious damage that will take at least months, if not years, to fully repair.

The death toll is already very terrible (at least 128 confirmed dead as of Monday). Hundreds of others are missing. I hope the people who are missing are alive but just not able to call anyone due to dead mobile phones and no Internet service.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Well, in the case of East TN where the Tesla was in the water, the flood water that breached the dam came in at 1.2 million gallons per second. That's twice the flow rate going over Niagra Falls. Glad I wasn't out that way. Some people had mere seconds to get out of the way.

On another note, special battery assembly - service tables are being built where if there is any battery fire, then the entire shelf containing the battery pack plunges into a special chemical of some sort that can extinguish the fire...

[Marcel Birgelen]

The future is not to simply dump your flaming EV into a container filled with water, but to let it burn to the ground in a controlled environment:

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

It was interesting to see video of Teslas, and other Electric cars that were submerged in Ashville, N.C., and other areas of Eastern Tennessee... all were on fire while under water.

[Bobby Henderson]

Even if we don't buy electric cars en-masse, lithium battery packs won't go a way as the hunger for more compressed power storage is only increasing year after year. So, I guess we need to come up with better ways to prevent and extinguish those kinds of fires.

Lithium-Ion batteries will probably be used for many years to come in various kinds of consumer electronics. Prices may even start to fall once new Lithium extraction plants come online in Arkansas. But I think L-Ion batteries are proving themselves to be pretty lousy for powering vehicles. Note the glut of used Tesla cars the owners have abandoned after just a few years of use. The staggering cost of replacing the battery packs is a deal breaker. It's like having to replace the engine and transmission in a gasoline powered vehicle after 50,000 miles.

For people like me who occasionally have to drive long distances the limited range of 300 miles at best per charge really stinks. If I'm driving from Lawton to Colorado Springs I don't want to be stuck for possibly hours at a time in Amarillo and Raton not only charging my vehicle, but waiting for an open charger.

Trains indeed are bad at covering suburban sprawl efficiently. Still, I personally see no reason why high-speed rail won't work in the U.S. other than "politics".

There is a much bigger problem than "politics": Cost. The United States just does not know how to build any kind of rail line without it costing a mega-fortune. Just look at the tens of billions of dollars going into the Bakersfield-Merced HSR project. And IIRC that train line doesn't have any tunnels.

When it comes to tunnel building, firms in the US know no bounds on how far they're willing to let costs escalate. The 2nd Avenue Subway project in Manhattan is the most expensive commuter rail project in the country. It's currently costing around $4.5 billion per mile to build. Any high speed rail line that would span a long distance in the US would end up having to incorporate a significant amount of tunnels and elevated viaducts in order to maintain the grades and curve geometry required for high speed operation. The US can't seem to be able to build tunnels of any kind without it breaking the bank. We're getting just about that bad with bridges too. A number of major highway projects are stalled mostly because of costs. The Interstate 69 project in Southern Arkansas and Mississippi has a big stumbling block: The Great River Bridge. I think the costs of the proposed bridge have surpassed $2 billion.

Nations like China have another advantage with building high speed rail lines. They tell anyone living in the path of the proposed rail line to GTFO and move. Authoritarian regimes don't have to spend years or decades filing Environmental Impact Statements and holding public hearings either. They just start building. Since the US has so freaking many attorneys any new infrastructure project represents a big money-making opportunity.

If the Interstate Highway System in the US didn't already exist and we set about trying to build it from scratch today the effort would be laughably impossible.

Many municipalities with lots of suburban development operate more like a Ponzi scheme than like a sustainable business. They often can't pay for the upkeep of the existing infrastructure of those suburban developments with current tax income. They essentially pay for the upkeep of their existing infrastructure by selling land for new developments. Once those new development opportunities dry up, they end up holding the bag. The end result is what you can already see in many older suburban areas, where infrastructure maintenance has been deferred for years and is now showing its age.

The problems run deeper than that. The build quality in many of these big homes in suburban developments is not very good. The houses and streets all look pretty when the homes are new. Check back 20 years later and most of the homes will have serious problems. In states like Oklahoma it doesn't take even that long. Our red clay soil is ruthless at attacking any home foundation that wasn't installed properly. Our weather wreaks havoc on structures where the builders cut corners to boost their profit margins.

That's another factor which will make the situation so much worse 10-20 years from now when many current owners of big homes want to sell and downsize. They're already going to face a shortage of buyers who need houses with 3 or 4 bedrooms and huge amounts of space to heat and cool. The big homes may also have a mountain of maintenance needs. They'll be forced to sell at steep discounts if they can even unload the properties at all.

The real estate situation in Japan is indeed pretty absurd. There are many thousands of "akiya" around mostly rural parts of Japan that are falling into ruin. Yet even with a shrinking population the living costs in the cities is very expensive. Anyone can see the same thing already happening here in parts of the US. We have lots of small towns that are literally dying. If they're not within a reasonable commute distance to a large population center and jobs base they're not going to be able to attract or retain any working age residents. In the case of Oklahoma, when you have a state superintendent of schools that is a complete moron and media whore it hits these small towns with a double whammy. They're trying like hell just to keep one single school open. Yet they see their funding cut, so it can be redirected to charters and other things. Parents are forced to live in bigger cities to give their kids any chance at a decent education. A bunch of other young adults who can't afford to buy a home in a good school district may give up on having children at all.

[Leo Enticknap]

Even if we don't buy electric cars en-masse, lithium battery packs won't go a way as the hunger for more compressed power storage is only increasing year after year. So, I guess we need to come up with better ways to prevent and extinguish those kinds of fires.

IMHO, it's becoming clear that the use of lithium ion batteries to power transportation is the c21 equivalent of hydrogen-filled airships. Until 1935, there was no other technology available that enabled a man-made aircraft carrying an economically viable payload to cross one of the major oceans. But as soon as the Martin M-130 (the first airplane capable of carrying a payload greater than the weight of the aircraft itself over a 2,500 mile range) entered service, the writing was on the wall, because the safety and operating cost gains were staggering. You could buy six M-130s (Pan Am paid $417K a piece for them) for what it cost to build the Hindenburg ($3m), and their operating cost per mile was around 20%. Likewise, Toyota and Samsung have just started to put solid state EV batteries into mass production, and unlike other projects that didn't get further than proof of concept in a lab, they are investing seriously in scaling that production up to mass manufacture.

So in the short term, preventing and managing lithium ion battery fires is going to be a significant problem. But with any luck, large li-ion battery packs will be history within one to two decades.

Still, I personally see no reason why high-speed rail won't work in the U.S. other than "politics". Countries like Japan, France, Spain and to some extend China have proven that high-speed rail, while being expensive, will work if done correctly.

AFAIK, China is the only country that has tried to do it over the sort of distances that would be involved here. Paris to Bordeaux or Madrid to Cadiz is a much shorter distance than New York to LA. The scale of development in China in the last two decades there, combined with a system of government that made such a huge infrastructure investment in such a short timescale possible, has made that scale of railroad building uniquely possible. The only other nation of a similar size and that uses railroads as its primary method of long-distance passenger transportation I can think of, India, has not tried to network the entire country with 200mph lines, even though it is also developing very quickly. An additional hurdle here in the USA is that we already have large and advanced road and civil aviation infrastructures. The headwind is as much economic as it is political.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Even if we don't buy electric cars en-masse, lithium battery packs won't go a way as the hunger for more compressed power storage is only increasing year after year. So, I guess we need to come up with better ways to prevent and extinguish those kinds of fires.

Here in South Florida, this is exactly the problem with the Tri-Rail commuter service. Although you can connect to Miami's Metrorail and MetroMover system, in the Ft. Lauderdale area (and north) you have to take some other form of transportation to or from the train station. Except for a few people who live near a station, the commute to take the train is almost as long (time wise) as it would be to just commute to the destination.

It's not really a design/planning issue, trains just aren't a great solution in sprawling suburban and semi-urban areas. Since they can't deviate from the tracks, there has to be a high density of origins and destinations within walking distance of the tracks for stations to be convenient.

Trains indeed are bad at covering suburban sprawl efficiently. Still, I personally see no reason why high-speed rail won't work in the U.S. other than "politics". Countries like Japan, France, Spain and to some extend China have proven that high-speed rail, while being expensive, will work if done correctly. France's high-speed rail network is interesting, because they made the somewhat controversial decision to sometimes NOT put their TGV stops in the center of the city, but rather more on the outskirts. The reasoning behind this is to make those stops more easily accessible for those who do not live in the center of the city and to keep the commuting traffic to and from those stations away from the often already overcrowded city centers.

I'm not normally a big "taxes are the solution" type of guy but, in this case I am. I think that the taxing structure on income and capital gains from residential real estate should be set up in a way that disincentivizes it as an investment vehicle for Private Equity or publicly traded companies especially. It also should be taxed in a way where it isn't really attractive for individuals to buy investment properties. It should be a lot more attractive to invest in companies (which have potential to employ people) than to invest in the homes and apartments that people live in.

For apartments it could even be something like the income tax rate is lower the lower the median rent per square foot is in the buildings owned by an entity. It would be an indirect rent subsidy.

This would also force developers to invest in more starter homes because it will take away a chunk of the market for the expensive homes.

Eventually, someone needs to pay for the upkeep of the neighborhood and keeping infrastructure up-and-running in a suburban setting is especially expensive, due to the low density. You simply need more streets, more cables, more pipes per capita. Running a public transport service is also more expensive.

Many municipalities with lots of suburban development operate more like a Ponzi scheme than like a sustainable business. They often can't pay for the upkeep of the existing infrastructure of those suburban developments with current tax income. They essentially pay for the upkeep of their existing infrastructure by selling land for new developments. Once those new development opportunities dry up, they end up holding the bag. The end result is what you can already see in many older suburban areas, where infrastructure maintenance has been deferred for years and is now showing its age.

I know it's a giant country with huge differences between standards of living, but many areas of the U.S. look like a 3rd world country to me. While this probably has always been the case, my opinion is that I only see this worsening year after year I visit... To the contrary, I've seen places that used to look like a 3rd world country see develop in something that seems to be actually livable during the same timeframe. And while there are also places in the U.S. that seem to be recovering, for every recovering place, there seem to be two or three places falling off the map elsewhere. So something is happening that can't exactly be called progress.

And while those somewhat near-apocalyptic vibes might be a great backdrop for Mad Max-style road movies, for the richest country on Planet Earth, it's often pretty painful to look at. It's not just the U.S. though, if you take a trip through the countryside of e.g. Japan, you'll often encounter entire villages that have long since been abandoned.

While I'm convinced that capitalism is one of the least evil forms of running a society we currently know, I also do believe that pure capitalism will not work and I'm afraid that we still need to learn of how to peacefully implement capitalism in a market thats running out of growth potential or is even shrinking, without invoking another major financial crisis. It's clear that our "western societies" are changing. We're getting older every year and there isn't sufficient influx "from below" to support our aging population. Letting younger people in from other regions of the world has its own set of problems, both politically and practically. Meanwhile, new developments like AI may have a profound influence on the job market at large... Interesting times ahead...

[Leo Enticknap]

The last lithium ion battery fire I posted a report of in this thread happened in the middle of nowhere, even if it was on an arterial freeway, which somewhat limited its impact. This one, however, has essentially closed down one of the biggest container shipping ports in the country (just as port workers on the East and Gulf coasts are going on strike, and Hurricane Helene hits them, too - nice timing!), because it took place on the approach to a bridge (thereby blocking it) carrying around 70% of the road capacity in and out. From the Orange County Register:

Vincent Thomas Bridge remains closed as crews work scene of lithium-battery fire

Late Friday. firefighters finished the complex task of moving the big rig container that held burning hazardous lithium ion batteries to an open lot near a fire station. Crews would then work to clean the scene so the streets could be reopened safely. The timetable to reopen was still uncertain.

Work rolled into the night-time hours on Friday Sept. 27, as crews labored to clear the wreckage of an overturned truck carrying lithium-ion batteries that resulted in a fire, shutting down the 47 Freeway and the Vincent Thomas Bridge.

Late Friday. firefighters finished the complex task of moving the big rig container that held burning hazardous lithium ion batteries from the 900 block of Seaside Avenue to an open lot near Los Angeles Fire Department Fire Station 40 on Terminal Island, according to fire department officials.

The tractor remained on the roadway, however, which remained closed as crews from multiple agencies worked to lift the big rig upright, remove it, and begin a cleanup operation to assure safe travel.

The bridge remained closed Friday as Los Angeles city firefighters continued working the scene of the lithium-battery fire that erupted after the truck overturned on Thursday.

Before deciding to move the container, fire officials previously said the batteries could take 24 to 48 hours to burn off and that the freeway and bridge would remain closed as they wait it out.

“It’s going through periods of open flames and others of just smoke as some of those batteries in there go through different cycles of heating up and thermal runaway,” Nicholas Prange, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department said at the time.

And while fire officials began discussing moving the batteries elsewhere on Friday afternoon, there were a lot of logistical challenges to figure out.

“At the moment,” Medina said around 5 p.m. Friday, “crews are trying to get the trailer of that truck and move it to a remote area away from traffic and the public to an open lot at Fire Station 40.

“There were a lot of things to figure out,” he added, “when sundown was coming, avoiding any traffic, trying to determine if it was still volatile or if some situation could happen as they moved it.”

Firefighters have not wanted to spray water on the fire for fear of spreading hazardous materials into the waterways or other areas, Prange said.

The crash was reported just before noon on Thursday. There were no reports of injuries, evacuations or widespread hazardous warnings.

The truck did not overturn on the Vincent Thomas Bridge itself, but on a portion of the 47 Freeway at Navy Way east of the bridge on Terminal Island.

Firefighters arrived and went into defensive mode, creating a large perimeter around the site after one battery exploded, fire officials said. A hazardous-materials team was also dispatched to the scene.

This isn’t the first time lithium-ion batteries have posed problems for firefighters.

Earlier this year, a Tesla semi crashed on Interstate 80 about 70 miles northeast of Sacramento, and its lithium-ion battery caught fire. It took about 50,000 gallons of water to extinguish flames — as opposed to the 500 to 1,000 it normally takes to extinguish a fire in a gas-powered car — and the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

As for the crash near the Vincent Thomas Bridge, the road closures caused heavy gridlock in the area and took its toll on Port of Los Angeles operations, with several terminals expected to be closed on Friday, port officials said in a statement.

Councilmember Tim McOsker introduced a motion on Friday calling for greater inspection of trailers, among other actions, to prevent similar emergencies from happening.

McOsker is asking the Port of Los Angeles, which is within the councilmember’s 15th District, to evaluate and implement an inspection process for trailers leaving each terminal to see whether cargo is secured or not. While the cause of the fire has not yet been determined, the councilmember said he hopes his motion will address any factors that led to the emergency.

“This is primarily for the safety and security of our workers, and our travelers,” McOsker said. “It’s of lesser importance, but there are multiple terminals that are shut down and will be shut down while this emergency is ongoing.”

Port of Los Angeles spokesperson Phillip Sanfield, however, said impacts on the port’s workflow are expected to be minimal.

“There are no plans to reroute ships and we really are expecting minimal delays,” Sanfield said in a phone interview Friday morning. “Once we get the clearance, we will catch up. Thursday nights and Fridays are not a peak for gate movements, so if this had to happen, a Thursday night and Friday are lighter than Monday through Thursday.”

Weekends also are typically lighter, he added.

Port officials are meeting with the various agencies that will make the determination on when workers can return, but tentative estimates have been 48 hours. The terminals initially shuttered — APM Terminals, Fenix Marine, Everport and Yusen Terminals — will remain closed through Friday night, Sanfield said.

“With safety the top priority, all parties involved are working to resume full operations as soon as possible,” a port news release stated late Friday, adding that Tra-Pac, West Basin Container Terminal and the World Cruise Center remained fully operational.

“We lost a couple shifts here but you can make up those shifts,” Sanfield said. “We have the best labor workforce in the world and they’ll be critical in that plan to catch up. We’re optimistic about getting back to work soon.”

The Port of Long Beach, in a statement released Friday morning, said the incident that occurred closer to the Port of L.A. also “continues to impact operations at nearby terminals in the Port of Long Beach.”

“Two Port of Long Beach container terminals at Pier T and Pier A will remain closed for the day shift (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) today (Friday) due to proximity to the fire,” the statement said. “They will reassess resumption of operations at a later time.”

Other terminals — LBCT, ITS, PCT and SSA at Pier C — are open, the statement said.

“At this time,” the statement concluded, “it is not expected that the incident will greatly impact the flow of cargo at the Port of Long Beach.”

“We have drones that are monitoring the heat,” LAFD spokesman David Ortiz told Fox 11 on Friday. “It’s hard to tell because these are sealed batteries and we don’t know if these chain-reaction thermal runaways will continue to reignite — or by us moving it, make a bigger problem and create another fire.”

Matt Schrap, CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association, said the sheer weight of the lithium batteries poses a serious challenge.

“Diesel trucks burn, too, but they don’t burn for three days,” he said. (The truck that turned over was not a battery-operated truck but was carrying a lithium battery load.)

“We need to make sure we’re fully appreciating all of the challenges in employing battery electric technology,” Schrap said, adding that large numbers are being imported now due to concerns about coming tariffs. “Operationally, this has shut down the Port of L.A. It will take two or three days to dig out and catch up.”

City News Service contributed to this report.

[Lyle Romer]

The other big failing is America can't build high speed rail lines from one city center to another city center. I lived in Japan over 40 years ago and keenly remember their Bullet Train connecting to just about every major city core. This is why the high speed rail projects in California seem like such a waste of time. If you have to drive a personal vehicle to a train station on the outskirts of the city how is that going to save time and money (much less cut down on air pollution)? For that trip from LA to Vegas it seems more convenient to just keep driving the entire way.

Here in South Florida, this is exactly the problem with the Tri-Rail commuter service. Although you can connect to Miami's Metrorail and MetroMover system, in the Ft. Lauderdale area (and north) you have to take some other form of transportation to or from the train station. Except for a few people who live near a station, the commute to take the train is almost as long (time wise) as it would be to just commute to the destination.

It's not really a design/planning issue, trains just aren't a great solution in sprawling suburban and semi-urban areas. Since they can't deviate from the tracks, there has to be a high density of origins and destinations within walking distance of the tracks for stations to be convenient.

It hasn't helped that America's residential real estate market turned into a global investor playground. A bunch of home buyers moved money out of the stock market and into residential real estate. Private equity companies, such as Blackstone, bought hundreds of thousands of homes. Private equity companies are now among the biggest landlords in America, often charging insane rent prices and dragging their feet on any repairs.

I'm not normally a big "taxes are the solution" type of guy but, in this case I am. I think that the taxing structure on income and capital gains from residential real estate should be set up in a way that disincentivizes it as an investment vehicle for Private Equity or publicly traded companies especially. It also should be taxed in a way where it isn't really attractive for individuals to buy investment properties. It should be a lot more attractive to invest in companies (which have potential to employ people) than to invest in the homes and apartments that people live in.

For apartments it could even be something like the income tax rate is lower the lower the median rent per square foot is in the buildings owned by an entity. It would be an indirect rent subsidy.

This would also force developers to invest in more starter homes because it will take away a chunk of the market for the expensive homes.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think computing technology has to achieve the big step beyond AI in order for true robot soldiers to be possible. That step is AGI or Artificial General Intelligence. Computers that develop self-awareness or consciousness and their own motivations may open one hell of a Pandora's Box. For now, so-called AI is just automating a lot of repetitive tasks in somewhat glorified fashion. There is a dumb quality to AI, which makes it very dangerous when applied to military technology. It's pretty important for the systems to be able to distinguish the difference between friend or foe.

With fewer soldiers on the battlefield more work will be done by drones. Recently the US Army moved its Counter UAS school from Yuma to Fort Sill. Multiple defense technology companies are developing and testing all sorts of drone systems. The playbook on drone warfare is getting re-written in Ukraine. Drones still need human pilots, but it's possible for one pilot to control a swarm of drones.

The California "high speed rail" project is notorious for having been an infrastructure sh!t show to rival the new Berlin airport.

The situation is pretty ridiculous. The LA to Bay Area high speed rail project is costing a breath-taking fortune, but will end up only having true high speed service between Bakersfield and Merced. Normal speed trains will get passengers the rest of the way into the edges of the LA and Bay Area metros. The LA to Las Vegas line will be an entirely different service (Brightline) with different kinds of trains. Most other nations with high speed rail have unified systems. The US seems destined to have a random scattering of different systems confined to certain regions of the country. In Texas they're trying to get a high speed rail project off the ground, but it would only serve the triangle of big metros (DFW, Houston, San Antonio-Austin). There is no national focus.

The other big failing is America can't build high speed rail lines from one city center to another city center. I lived in Japan over 40 years ago and keenly remember their Bullet Train connecting to just about every major city core. This is why the high speed rail projects in California seem like such a waste of time. If you have to drive a personal vehicle to a train station on the outskirts of the city how is that going to save time and money (much less cut down on air pollution)? For that trip from LA to Vegas it seems more convenient to just keep driving the entire way.

Just in terms of mass transit it's ridiculous how expensive any kind of rail line can be to build. Yet rail is usually the first thing that comes to mind when mass transit is mentioned. No one mentions riding the city bus.

One issue that seems to repeat itself is that there will be a reasonably priced town somewhere. Then, as people realize it and start moving there it causes the costs of homes to rise.

America's crisis with housing involves multiple problems.

For the past 3 or more decades American home builders and real estate developers have only been interested in building homes for rich people. It's either luxury-priced apartments in the trendy urban centers or it's big-ass McMansions out in the suburbs. No variety. There is a massive shortage of modest-size "starter homes" and other kinds of housing that would have been more affordable to people making less than $50,000 per year. Young adults just trying to move out on their own or older people wanting to down-size are stuck. Existing small homes are coming in two types. Some are renovated and have sky-high price tags. Or the homes are falling apart and need extensive, expensive repairs. The dilapidated homes are often in not-desirable neighborhoods.

It hasn't helped that America's residential real estate market turned into a global investor playground. A bunch of home buyers moved money out of the stock market and into residential real estate. Private equity companies, such as Blackstone, bought hundreds of thousands of homes. Private equity companies are now among the biggest landlords in America, often charging insane rent prices and dragging their feet on any repairs.

This is just another factor that is going to dramatically worsen America's falling birth rates. Young adults won't be as likely to get married and have kids if they can't find a decent place to live.

America's real estate market will face a severe reckoning in the next 10-20 years. All these well-off people with their big McMansions will be older and wanting to downsize. But they won't have any buyers for their big-ass houses. In the future far more home buyers will be single and child-less. Why would a single, child-less person want to buy a big house with big utility bills, big property tax bills, big maintenance costs, etc? A bunch of these big houses in suburban gated communities will be white elephants just waiting for the bulldozer.

[Lyle Romer]

Bobby makes some excellent points above. One issue that seems to repeat itself is that there will be a reasonably priced town somewhere. Then, as people realize it and start moving there it causes the costs of homes to rise. Then, developers see an opportunity but the cost of land has now increased and they don't want to make the investment for little return so the new houses they build are priced based on the new market for the town and it keeps getting more and more expensive so that the only service employees who can afford to live there are the ones who were already there before the town started growing.

As for the military issue with the ageing population, have no fear, AI robot soldiers are just around the corner. It will be like The Empire's Storm Troopers. Once the exhibition industry moves to direct view screens the lasers from the replaced projectors can be used to power the blasters!

[Leo Enticknap]

Another big problem in America: we can't build a passenger rail line of any kind without it costing a stupid fortune.

And, for passenger transportation at any rate, being functionally useless.

The California "high speed rail" project is notorious for having been an infrastructure sh!t show to rival the new Berlin airport. Lesser known, but equally ludicrous, is the project that is just starting to build a line from Las Vegas to ... wait for it ... Rancho Cucamonga (as in, the subject of the Bugs Bunny running gag, and nicknamed Rancho Cucamethlab locally). This is apparently going to be open in time for 2028, so that visitors to the Olympics can zoom off to Vegas for the day when they've gotten bored of watching the athletics. How they are going to get from LA to Rancho, about 40 miles east along one of the most congested stretches of freeway in the world (there is also a local train that runs once every two hours outside the rush hour, stops everywhere, and takes around 90 minutes), has either not been figured out, or the geniuses behind this scheme have chosen not to share.

Oh, and while the whole world is in LA and banned from using cars by the mayor in order to save the planet, they can enjoy charming, authentic local experiences such as this one. Maybe Disneyland could come up with a "Busjack" ride?