On: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

[AlexandrB]

The person making $120,000 is heavily benefiting from a public infrastructure that makes $120k/yr jobs possible. A ditch digger needs almost no infrastructure besides a shovel to do his job. An engineer needs schools and universities to educate his colleagues, roads and railways to deliver parts required for the product he's working on, and police services that deter theft of those products once they're built. Not to mention a consumer base with enough money to afford the product in question.

[Mirioron → AlexandrB]

And the ditch digger requires the engineer to tell him where to dig. Digging a hole for no reason isn't very beneficial.

Even if you take away this public infrastructure you would get private infrastructure in its stead.

[foobarian → Mirioron]

There is no more ditch digger of old. They now use $1M excavators that are probably leased from a mega-corp that purchased it from another mega-corp.

[Mirioron → foobarian]

Of course there are ditch diggers. You can't dig everything with a machine.

[dionidium → AlexandrB]

This is right. The suburbanite wants the benefits of agglomeration, but they want to define their existence within it so that they aren't exposed to any of its downsides. It’s a neat trick.

[kiba → dionidium]

There are downsides to living a suburban lifestyle as it is typically designed. They just don't care or unaware.