It is disappointing that the US got all of the authoritarian surveillance that China did but few/none of the safety/planning upsides it could be used to bring. It’s the worst of all possible configurations.
I wish that extremely large government would use its vast resources to plan for large risks other than “people with guns/bombs/tanks/missiles/planes want to kill us”, and focus at least some of that on emergency preparedness. Why isn’t there a strategic nationwide domestic reserve of supplies for emergencies? I know this is what FEMA is supposed to be doing, but they are utterly terrible at it.
If we’re paying most of a trillion dollars each year for defense, why not defend us at least a little bit against stuff that might well happen sooner or later: giant fires, flooding, pandemics, big/long power outages, fuel shortages, water or food shortages, ice storms, et c? It’s really disappointing to see almost 100% of that money going to a system that is focused more on war (which is, to varying degrees, mostly preventable) and almost none to natural catastrophes (which are absolutely inevitable).
I wish that extremely large government would use its vast resources to plan for large risks other than “people with guns/bombs/tanks/missiles/planes want to kill us”, and focus at least some of that on emergency preparedness. Why isn’t there a strategic nationwide domestic reserve of supplies for emergencies? I know this is what FEMA is supposed to be doing, but they are utterly terrible at it.
If we’re paying most of a trillion dollars each year for defense, why not defend us at least a little bit against stuff that might well happen sooner or later: giant fires, flooding, pandemics, big/long power outages, fuel shortages, water or food shortages, ice storms, et c? It’s really disappointing to see almost 100% of that money going to a system that is focused more on war (which is, to varying degrees, mostly preventable) and almost none to natural catastrophes (which are absolutely inevitable).