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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Train racing. No I will not elaborate.
with multi-track drifting of course
I’m listening
High speed rail running the ‘spine’ of the americas - people should be able to go from Alaska to the far end of Chille and not need to transfer (although one imagines a number of stops along the way)
obviously, this would also be paired with a lot more freight rail, with the goal of eliminating as much intra-americas cargo voyages as possible. Really, that would be the true aim of the project, but the high-speed passenger line would be the forward face of it.
Run some ultrahigh voltage DC power lines with it and have a hemisphere wide electric grid
Community cafeterias. 1 caf per x (tbd) population.
- informed by national-level dietary guidelines
- very receptive to local neighborhood dietary preferences and encouraged to develop specialties
- worker controlled
- kitchen teams could swap/guest in other neighborhoods to mix things up
- you can go to cafs in other neighborhoods but there would probably be some system to anticipate demand to avoid over/under prepping (like you have a home caf but you can make reservation at another one?)
You can eat there or get take out.
Benefits:
- less food waste
- don’t have to waste time shopping, chopping, cooking and cleaning when you don’t want to
- will not have insane “chef” centered kitchen cultures, unless everyone working there votes in favour of this for some reason
Create a large network of state and/or cooperatively owned cannabis farms to mass-produce hemp for industrial purposes, and every strain of quality marijuana known to man. You think the weed’s too strong these days? That’s ok, the state will devote its resources to developing 10% THC strains that taste like a gourmet meal. You want to be sent to the moon? Why yes, there will be 99.9% pure concentrate oils widely available.
Just as the USSR had an alcohol ration, there will be a mids ration available for all. Any unclaimed rations will be distributed to the gulags to forcibly pacify political prisoners. While high and marginally more open-minded, they will be made to play video games where every character is a black lesbian and all the messaging is based on post-colonial theory. Only after their daily shift constructing and tending the farms is finished, of course.
Any questions?
Also linen! Massive state linen and wool production so no one ever has to wear cotton, the shittiest fiber, again!
I’d wage trade, diplomatic and military offensives to push the sae/imperial/feet, pounds etc. on other countries.
They could even do something different as long as it’s not metric.
E: compulsory trade, music and art education.
Not for the workforce, just because it’s nice to make and enjoy stuff.
After I’ve done the full maglev rail network, the tallest structure on Earth. And then a slide coming off the top floor.
Maglev network featuring a 100 mile long vactrain built into a mountain range that yeets a rocket into space (and eventually a space station that can refuel/launch the vac trains to a lunar station. That is correct, you will be able to take a train from Mumbai to the moon.)
The destruction of all white settlements in desert areas and summar execution of sundown towners
the orbital solar condenser + ground based collection disk from simcity 3000. like normal solar power but spicier
I’m definately in the Orbital Solar Power camp of madcap dictator projects
Besides telecom and pure exploration, this is the only reason to actually go to space at all.
Offworlding all industry?
I have serious doubts we’ll ever come close to a space elevator.(or launch loop or rotovator or unobtainium of the week) Which tends to raise a lots of questions as to how exactly we’ll ship ballistic toasters.
Power is easy. Masers and rectenna arrays have decently good conversion rates and are light, cheap, and dont require slowing down 11km/s loads of space kipple.
We’ve been deorbiting humans for half a century, it’s presumably easier for toasters.
The real challenge is speeding things up to escape the gravity, not nearly as easy compared to slowing them down. You’d need to launch an astonishing amount lot of equipment to offworld power production, which is why you’d develop a space industry in the first place.
You’d need to launch an astonishing amount lot of equipment to offworld power production, which is why you’d develop a space industry in the first place.
Agreed, you’d need an astonishing amount of equipment to do anything up there. Which is why i can’t imagine a logistics system on both sides of the gravity well for finished goods ever making sense. Heat shields & parachutes only get you so far when you start scaling up from a several people in a hollow capsule to bulk freight loads. Retrobraking adds a gas tax that scales with the rocket equation.
Any tech you have for making a self-contained, pollution-sequestering factory in orbit could probably be built on the ground a whole lot easier and cheaper. Which is why i dont think we’ll end up having orbital factories without a scifi-ass megastructures or nuclear rocket engines & the headaches they bring.
But we’ll probably keep slinging shit into orbit for a long time. Panels are cheap & getting lighter. Mirrors are cheaper & lighter still, and can multiply the effect of panels you have. And its all scaleable and implementable with current tech. Yeah, you’re never going to off-world all power production with beamed solar this way, but it’s a workable vanity project.
There is no problem that cannot be simultaneously solved and made cooler by the unmatched power of the sun.
Giant solar shield in orbit so that i dont have to see the sun
I would go hard on pushing public nudity as fine. I don’t want to be naked in public but human bodies are normal and nothing to he ashamed of.
Americans would fucking hate it but they’ll get over it.
The GDR already beat you to it
what’s that quote on women’s satisfaction with sex in the GDR?
The extent to which North Americans, among others, are absolutely incapable of being normal about nudity is disheartening in the extreme.
I feel like there would be a crimewave of public wanking
Hell yeah unironically. Nudity is literally just not wearing clothes and is not worth being embarrassed about.
The Home, WA anarchist commune fell apart because of conflict between “the nudes and the prudes.” You’re playing with fire, be careful.
That said, you can’t signify rank or class with clothing if no one wears clothing. Uphold anarcho-naturalist thought.
I don’t consider normalizing nudity a crank position. Honestly I think it’s going to end up being an essential part of feminism at some point, desexualizing and destigmatizing the body outside of sexual contexts. And it’s 100% achievable. Nudity taboos are entirely cultural and vary widely over time and across cultures.
I would be like Hoxha but build earthships everywhere instead of bunkers.
I would put arcades in the public libraries and by extension nationalize professional
Yes id still do the rail/green energy/mass housing megaprojects, but those arent crank enough
ban gaming
Plattenbau construction megaproject. Socialism, gray, big blocks and no suburb freedom? Yes, we’ll build more.
