submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by HarryLime@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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My megaproject ideas are mostly pretty standard. I'd build a high speed rail network across North America, and build and expand metro and regional rail systems in and around every city. I'd turn all cities and suburbs into fifteen-minute cities. I'd decommodify housing, and build ten million units of public/social/non-market housing, mostly three bedroom units. I'd link those last three policies together by building TODs around the new Metro and rail stops. And I'd build bicycle networks in every town and city and connect them to the TODs. I'd build bridges and walkways across skyscrapers. I'd put a bidet in every American toilet (uses less water than toilet paper apart from being more comfortable). Fiber internet in every home. A heat pump in every home. An induction stove in every kitchen. Phase out fossil fuels and power everything with Pumped Storage Hydropower and Geothermal. I'd make the US go Metric.

But my truly crazy, obsessive idea would be to bring back the French Revolutionary calendar. Or I'd purge all French influences from English.

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[-] Nagarjuna@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

This is conpletely serious but definitely a crank answer:

Create a network of Greenways on the scale of our railroads and interstates, carving out huge swaths of cities and connecting every state and national forest and park.

Then maintain the ecological integrity of these Greenways by making practical indigenous land management and foraging mandatory topics in schools.

I will also maintain a small army of engineers to run clean, running water through the greenways (for handwashing) as well as an army of pilots and EMTs to make sure the Greenway dwellers have access to modern medical infrastructure.

Again, I am completely serious.

[-] usernamesaredifficul@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Then maintain the ecological integrity of these Greenways by making practical indigenous land management and foraging mandatory topics in schools

seems like it would be more practical to just have civil service jobs to maintain them and teach how to maintain them to people that take the job

[-] Nagarjuna@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Part of the point of this project is to allow people to opt out of "having a job." The dichotomy between work and leisure is underexamined and imo leads a lot of people towards unhealthy self denial and compartmentalization.

Additionally, the division of labor where each person is not a human who sometimes does ecological restoration, but an ecologist is foundational to class division (at least in Marx). By attacking those divisions and allowing people to heard sheep in the morning and write criticism by night, without ever becoming a heardsman ot a critic, we can attack the very foundations of class society.

Finally, by training everyone to be in relationship with ecological systems, we create a system where everyone has a stake in preventing ecocide. It would be a thorough preventative against the kind of ecological crisis we're in now

[-] usernamesaredifficul@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I see that point but also people do need to learn how to do certain jobs. I can't just go be a brain surgeon one morning. Or a herdsman if one morning no one decides to be a herdsman guess what we just lost all the sheep they wandered off. Ecology is also a complicated thing that might require specialised training, some form of regulation to make sure people don't abuse natural resources corruptly etc. Also if there is ecocide then we all die there is already a stake it's just that capitalism doesn't work with those kinds of concerns

and also I'm not convinced that do it whenever you feel like it is a very good way of making sure necessary things get done. The thing about work is that it takes labour to ensure that food is grown and delivered, water is extracted etc and therefore society needs to allocate that work granted a lot of work now is unecessary but the necessary work will always need to be alloted ideally in ways that are fair and maybe automation could cut down on the amount needed

[-] Nagarjuna@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I think you're confusing a bunch of distinct concepts.

Like, a job has so much that goes into it: a wage, time boundaries, a management structure, etc.

There's also other parts of a job that can be done without those things: the actual (re)productive activity, the skills associated with it. Like, you can be a landscaper as a job, or you can keep a garden.

You don't clock in to gardening, you don't report your progress to a boss, you don't get paid for it.

There's also multiple avenues for learning things. Many people learn cooking and auto maintenance in their families. People go to language learning clubs. People pick up skills on the job. People go to school. There's nothing that says that skilling needs to be in service to a job.

"Jobs" and markets are the current ways of organizing (re)productive activity in our society, but that's historically contingent.

In Marx, neither Jobs nor markets appear in his descriptions of communism. Indigenous people have and still use ritual do do certain productive activities such as controlled burns or salmon harvests. Many anarchist projects run on a volunteer basis. On the darker side, serfdom and slavery have appeared as alternatives to jobs

Insisting on the persistence of Jobs is to insist on an incomplete break with capitalism.

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[-] Dolores@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

your proposals are all quite nice but none of them would knowingly ecocide half a continent & cost/generate more power than has ever been used by humanity for the simple goal of refilling the LA River

oh yeah, its NAWAPA TIME

[-] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

i'm listening

[-] Zuzak@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Sure, but think of how many more desert golf courses we could have!

[-] Dolores@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

conquering gravity, water, and distance, destroying the yukon and northwestern territories for these treasures most sublime: cheap water for californian cash crops & golfcourses freedom-and-democracy

[-] mustardman@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Don't you leave us hanging like that. Copy the relevant paragraph from wikipedia so I don't have to google

[-] Dolores@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWPA or NAWAPA, also referred to as NAWAPTA from proposed governing body the North American Water and Power Treaty Authority) was a proposed continental water management scheme conceived in the 1950s by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The planners envisioned diverting water from some rivers in Alaska south through Canada via the Rocky Mountain Trench and other routes to the US and would involve 369 separate construction projects. The water would enter the US in northern Montana. There it would be diverted to the headwaters of rivers such as the Colorado River and the Yellowstone River

"The environmental damage that would be caused by that damned thing can't even be described. It would cause as much harm as all of the dam-building we have done in a hundred years."

"the hydrologic anti-Christ"

"the most outlandish water development scheme to emerge in the past 50 years"

The power demands for pumping this amount of water over such obstacles would be more nuclear and hydroelectric power than yet exists in north america, the excavations so titanic that civil engineering grade nuclear explosives were proposed.

[-] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Oh man this also involves Project Plowshare? lets-fucking-go

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[-] NoGodsNoMasters@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My crank project is a massive geoengineering project to restore Lake Megachad and then expand it beyond its previous greatest extent to create Lake Gigachad

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Now that is a crank prject i can get behind.

[-] hypercube@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

the orbital solar condenser + ground based collection disk from simcity 3000. like normal solar power but spicier

[-] Beaver@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I'm definately in the Orbital Solar Power camp of madcap dictator projects

[-] DefinitelyNotAPhone@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

There is no problem that cannot be simultaneously solved and made cooler by the unmatched power of the sun.

[-] Zoift@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Besides telecom and pure exploration, this is the only reason to actually go to space at all.

[-] Moss@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I would bring big efforts to resurrect the Irish language by having all sporting events, news broadcasts etc in Irish, having Irish be taught in school before English, having social events where people are expected to speak Irish etc. However this would merely be a Trojan horse for my real goal: slyly take out gendered pronouns from Irish and have everyone's pronouns be gender neutral by default, and only otherwise if specified.

It should be obvious that I'm Irish but we can apply this to any Anglophone country. England speaks Irish now, fuck you

[-] soy_disantra@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

A truman show-esque reality TV program, where donald trump is planted as a regional manager of a small chain restaurant and monitored 24/7.

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[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

The Culture.

[-] LaughingLion@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Ban lawns. Like, completely. No more lawns. Having one is a punishable offense. I want children to report their parents on this matter. Merciless enforcement. EVERYONE with ground space MUST have a garden.

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

One of my not-crank i will actually do this if you fools let me wield power projects is evacuating the suburbs in to high density city cores, mining the burbs for useful materials, the bulldozing them for use as crop lands, light industry, and whatever else is acceptable to have near cities.

[-] EnsignRedshirt@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I'd make all detached single-family homes near an urban center illegal and start replacing them all with a combination of low-rise attached units for families, and apartment complexes for people without kids (notionally, I'm fine with some intermixing). Make sure that there are services and amenities within walking distance of all newly-densified housing, and run bus service and light rail everywhere. Then I'd ban private vehicles anywhere within view of a skyscraper. You will live in a pleasant, walkable community with greenspace and accessible services, or you will be sent to the reeducation camps.

Also, big bronze statue in a park. Big enough to provide ample shade to park goers in the summer.

[-] a_blanqui_slate@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I'd start math education with formal logic, elementary number theory, and mathematical language in the first grade. That way everyone has a chance to actually understand the math they're expected to manipulate in high school.

[-] WoofWoof91@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i'll put chemicals in the water to make the ~~frogs~~ everyone gay

and more dog infrastructure

and retirement homes for cows

superheroes are illegal now

fursonas are mandatory

free kalashnikovs for the unemployed

mao gets beatified

make werewolves real

drag the moon closer

[-] WIIHAPPYFEW@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Bringing streetcars and trams back to as many roads as logistically possible

[-] principalkohoutek@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Bike freeways, playgrounds for adults, free/open gyms, and municipal go kart tracks with competitive leagues

[-] Ho_Chi_Chungus@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Antarctica colony. Big ass bronze statue staring out over the ocean north like the Colossus of Rhodes

[-] HiImThomasPynchon@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Doc Savage vibes.

[-] Kuori@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

forced bimbofication + everyone's gay now

taking no questions

[-] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Make rokos basilisk real but exclusively target dipshit techbros. And genetically modifying humanity so I can eat all the unhealthy tasty food I want without getting some kind of cancer or turning into a blimp, or anything else really.

[-] Owl@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

If you built a 5km tall lightning rod, it'd sap all the electrical potential from the clouds before lightning can form. There's gotta be a lot of electric potential there, given that it's enough to make lightning. Catumbo experiences 1.6 million bolts of lightning per year, and the average lightning bolt is 5 gigajoules of power, so harnessing it all would produce about 2.5 gigawatts of power, which is about the same as 2.5 ordinary nuclear power plants. This is clearly not worth it, let's do it.

[-] ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i liked ur idea and thought abt using airships to hoist a wire up there. those huge HVDC cables that cross oceans are capable of transmitting power in the gigawatt scale. but apparently these things are heavy as fuck at ~50 kg/m. so 5 km of this is 250 metric tons!! airships definitely can’t do that and even a tower that tall would be an engineering marvel.

i just thought of another way while typing this! you could send airships up there with giant batteries and just bring them back to earth when theyre fully charged

[-] NPa@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

me, after another long and fulfilling day of getting bombarded with the full force of the heavens for the betterment of humanity soviet-chad

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Do orbital skyhooks that support a cable that comes within a few dozen meters of the earth

Sure, there's some material science problems but the room temperature superconductor is going to fix all thaty!

[-] Venus@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

harnessing it all would produce about 2.5 gigawatts of power, which is about the same as 2.5 ordinary nuclear power plants. This is clearly not worth it, let's do it.

That's my fucking president rosa-salute

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I think the hard part with lightning power is storage. You need some extremely cool/dangerous capacitors that won't detonate on you to pull it off.

[-] Owl@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

That's if you want to actually harness lightning, say with a really big lighting rod. This would be harnessing electrical potential before it becomes lighting, which would be a much cleaner, more continuous flow.

But a five kilometer tall tower is an absurd engineering feat, and building those unrealistically robust capacitors would almost certainly be easier.

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