submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Now that is a crank prject i can get behind.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Use elevated monorails for your mass transit solution so you can run transit over the greenways with minimal impact at the ground level!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I love it! Isn't regular rail more efficient though? Both can be elevated. Or are we talking monorail just for thr retro future vibes?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

i'm listening

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I’m in. I don’t even understand why we would do it or what the ultimate implications would be. I just want something to believe in, and this is worthy.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

at least crop out the ifunny watermark if you're going to repost from those shitters.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Why would I put effort in to posting a Screencap of a years-old Twitter post?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

gigachad-hd

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think this is my favorite

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

oh and trains, I guess, space trains

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

The Culture.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Doc Savage vibes.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

We’re bringing back Roman bath houses and including spots to nap in public there in case you have like an hour and a half gap between things you have to do but it’s too far to go home. Really just more public space investment

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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023

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chapotraphouse

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