Selected Lesser Grievances

There are lots of big issues facing the United States, the biggest of which is the existential threat to its continued functioning as a democracy posed by Donald Trump's candidacy in this year's Presidential election. And, this blog spends plenty of time thinking about those big issues.

But, the world is also full of things that aren't "big issues" but are minor annoyances and lesser grievances that it would be nice to see remedied, even if they aren't really make or break issues. This post recounts some of them.

Computer System Treatment Of Hyphenated Names And Similar Issues

* There ought to be a law that mandates that government and big business computer systems accommodate people who have hyphens, apostrophes, spaces, and just one or two characters in their names. This may have been an issue at the start of the computer age, but we have reached a point where it is no longer that hard to do.

Fraud

* We do a poor job of dealing with fraud perpetrated by phone, text message, email, social media, the Internet more generally, and the financial system. It should be possible to click a 9-1-1 style universal fraud reporting code and send reports of fraudulent activity instantly to the appropriate law enforcement agency and telecommunications providers, with no further effort from the person reporting it required. This should shut down the fraudster's phone number, and email accounts, social media accounts, and freeze any associated financial accounts almost instantly, and launch investigations as a matter of course into the perpetrators and into the institutions used by them to perpetrate the frauds. The cost of an individual fraudulent communication is small and the fraudsters count on that to shield them from investigations, which when they do happen aren't nimble enough to address it because the perpetrators are long gone. Yet, we have a system that is much better a dealing with the much less serious problem of copyright infringement than it is at dealing with fraud. 

* We should do a better job of dealing with deceptive business practices by credit reporting agencies that try to trick you into paying for services that they are required to provide for free.

* We should do a better job at shutting down businesses that dupe people into paying to get government services that are available cheaper or for free from the actual government.

* Credit cards should have PIN numbers the way that ATM cards do. This would dramatically reduce credit card fraud and reduce the incentive to steal credit cards.

* Food labeling should be more tightly regulated to discourage spurious and misleading health claims like "antibiotic free" in foods where antibiotics aren't allowed anyway, or claims that a food that ordinarily would have sugar but not fat anyway is "fat free".

Regulated Occupations

* We should have a central database of people who are sanctioned or "disbarred" from particular professions in a particular state or local jurisdictions, so that these people are prevented from going to some other state or local jurisdiction, or some other licensed occupation where the same conduct would also be disqualifying.

* The construction trades should be regulated at the state level, not the local level. This prevents an unreasonable barrier to entry for legitimate reputable construction contractors, which causes construction trade licensing to be ignored or overlooked, while also making it too easy for someone who has had their construction trade license rightfully revoked to just go to another locality that hasn't caught up with them yet.

Arrest Records

* We should also have a way of purging the official arrest records of people who are arrested or charged, but are ultimately not convicted of anything, from public records and databases (that do not at least disclose the exoneration with the arrest record report). Similarly, there should be a better process to purge or annotate criminal convictions that are vacated.

Mail, Package Delivery, And Porch Piracy

* The U.S. Postal System and all other package delivery firms should be liable for damages when it delivers a package to the wrong address (or doesn't deliver it at all), preventing the intended recipient from receiving it, even without requiring the sender to procure insurance, at least up to a certain dollar amount. 

* A parallel and similar system for dealing with fraud via mail to the one suggested above for telecommunications fraud should also be put in place. Violators (both firms and their managers and principals) should have their right to send mass mailings suspended for some period of time in addition to any other relief.

* A certain percentage of packages should have tracking chips that can be used to locate the packages if they are taken by porch pirates, allowing the perpetrators to be found, and creating too high of a risk for people contemplating porch piracy to consider doing so.

* Mutual funds should be required to make information about their funds publicly available, but mailing prospectus-like disclosure documents to their investors on a regular basis just kills trees without providing meaningful improvements in investor knowledge.

* The same is true of privacy policies. Require them to be made available in some standardized place, but don't mail them out to everyone connected to a business.

* Low advertiser postal rates for "junk mail" that don't reflect reduced costs for the postal system due to, e.g., pre-sorting, should be abolished and instead, all mail should have to pay first class mail rates. If it isn't worth sending a first class mail rates, it isn't worth bothering people with the unsolicited junk mail.

* Congressional franking privileges should be abolished and replaced with a budget for postage for each U.S. House and U.S. Senate office, based upon the population of the state in question for U.S. Senate offices. This privilege is widely abused by office holders and undermines the economic viability of the U.S. Postal Service.

* Mail-In Ballots should have business return postage type treatment so that the voters doesn't have to attack any postage to return their ballot through the mail, paid for by the governmental body conducting the election.

* Registered voters should indicate (in a database that is not public record at an individual level, just at a statistical level), their preferred language for election related information and communications. Thus, election related disclosures and ballots would go to voters only in their preferred language rather than in both English and Spanish with other language versions available upon request. This would make ballots more readable, and cut in half the amount of paper wasted in pre-election disclosures. It would also significantly reduce the burden on voters who need to receive translations into languages other than English or Spanish.

Long Ballots 

Ballots are too long, in part, because we have voters do too much. But long ballots discourage voting generally and lead to uninformed decision making.

* We should not elect, at any level coroners, surveyors, engineers, dog catchers, assessors, treasurers, clerks, or secretaries of state, who are supposed to be carrying out technocratic tasks with only limited discretion.

* Elections should not be administered by partisan elected officials, or by partisan political appointees.

* Judicial retention elections like the ones held in Colorado make ballots much longer (just short of half the questions on my ballot this year are judicial retention elections) and demand a great deal of effort from voters who try to make those decisions in an informed manner, but provide very little benefit. Typically only one or two judges in the entire state are not retained in any election cycle, and sometimes, none are. Only about 1% of judges are ever removed this way, which inadequate purges inadequate judges. And, a significant share of judges who are removed are removed for decisions that are legally required but unpopular. Simply put, the general voting public is ill-equipped to make this decision even with state supplied information pamphlets, and it is a great burden on voters that makes ballots too long. There might be a place for retention elections, but only in cases which are singled out as "high risk" in some reasonable manner, for the voting public to focus upon.

* In Colorado, the Taxpayer's Bill Of Rights, requires voters to approve tax increases and to authorize retention of revenues from existing taxes if those revenues grow fasters than a formula in the state constitution. I don't have a problem with the first kind of voting requirement for new taxes. But, votes on retention of revenues from existing taxes (called "debrucing" ballot issues, after Doug Bruce, the author of TABOR in Colorado) should not be required and make our ballots unnecessarily long.

* Similarly, while voters should have to authorize increased debt limits for local governments, they should not have to authorize incurring debt at levels previously authorized by voters and paid for with existing taxes, after the original debt is paid down, at least in part.

* The CU Board of Regents and the state school board, should not be chosen by the general public in elections, let alone, in partisan elections.

* Perhaps in addition to petitions to establish a minimum threshold of support for a ballot measure before putting it on the ballot for the general public to consider, citizen's initiatives should face a public opinion poll test and only be granted ballot access if it can garner at least, say, 35% support, in a public opinion poll conducted by a reputable and certified firm.

Notarization

* The requirement that statements made under penalty of perjury be presented in a notarized affidavit made under oath should be replaced with a rule allowing unnotarized declarations made under penalty of perjury in court documents, something that is already the case in the federal court system, and the court systems of Colorado and Utah, at least.

* Notarized but not otherwise witnessed wills are valid in Colorado. This should be the norm nationally.

Copyrights, Rights Of Publicity, And Privacy

Copyright laws are too strong for a digital age. Some examples:

* There should be more legally binding safe harbors for fair use. Far too many cases are in gray areas decided on a case by case basis by a particular judge and jury.

* Some version of a fair use defense or dramatic remedy limitation should be available in the cases where someone is sharing content made available by a copyright holder or a licensee for free on the Internet or via freely available broadcast television or radio.

* There should be a mechanism for mandatory licensing of orphan works and for translations of works that are not available in a particular language.

* There are overly expansive protections for derivative works in areas such a fan fiction that should be dialed back.

* Statutory damages in lieu of actual economic damages, and the availability of attorneys' fees in actions for copyright infringement, should also be greatly curtailed. In general, copyright remedies and rights should be closer to an unjust enrichment tort remedy and less like a property right. 

* Rights of publicity should be governed by a single, preclusive, federal law, not by a mishmash of state laws.

* Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is far too expansive and far too protective of privacy rights to the detriment of other legitimate interests.

* The scope of the applicability of the GDPR to people who are not in Europe, but can have dealings with Europeans over the Internet is far too unclear.

Traffic Laws

* Speed limits should reflect the speed that an ordinary reasonable driver would travel on a road as it is designed. Local governments should not be allowed to set lower speed limits than the road conditions reflect in response to local community pressure. If a local government wants traffic to move more slowly than the legally authorized speed limit given the road conditions, it needs to redesign the road, rather than just creating a speed trap.

* When push comes to shove, bicycles should be regulated as pedestrians not as motor vehicles. They should go on sidewalks and designated bike paths in most cases, rather than being expected to share designated highways and arterial streets with automobiles. A bicycle crashing into a pedestrian is much less serious than a car crashing into a bicycle.

Debt Collection

* It should be a serious offense to try to collect zombie debts that are barred by the statute of limitations or have been discharged in bankruptcy.

* It should be a serious offense to try to collect debts from the next of kin of debtors who have not guaranteed the debt in writing, rather than the decedent's probate estate.

Medical Billing

* Until the day when we have universal health care, health care providers to patients with health insurance should be forbidden from trying to collect their bills directly from the patient beyond a health insurance policy authorized co-pay to be paid at the time of service. Any provider that accepts any payment from that patient's health insurance should be required to honor the health insurance company's disallowance of their charges. And, health insurers should have to pay the full allowed charge to the health care provider and then collect the patient's share of that charge under the insurance policy from the patient. Patients shouldn't be put in the middle and as a guarantor in the face of disputes between health care providers and health insurers. A patient should be able to know exactly what he or she will owe simply by reading their health insurance policy.

* Emergency rooms shouldn't be allowed to charge more to someone who errantly went to an ER instead of an urgent care facility for the same services. The task of getting someone to the right level of care takes medical knowledge and should be the responsibility of the health care provider.

* Health care providers shouldn't be allowed to charge different rates for the same work done at a hospital affiliated facility (which is often billed at a higher rate) than at another facility.

* When there are contingent fee lawsuits for personal injuries, health care providers with health care liens on the recovery should have to share the risk in a way that afford the injured person some benefit of the lawsuit according to a standard formula that doesn't have to be negotiated on a case by case basis.

Court E-Filing Discrepancies

* Court E-Filing systems should have much less authority to just reject filings. Instead, if there is problem with the way that the filling was put into the e-filing system, that correction should just be made by the system, and if there is a problem with the document filed itself, it should issue an order to show cause directing the filer to correct it in a clearly described manner before a reasonable deadline to prevent it from being stricken with a loss of the original filing date.

Municipal Ordinances

* Municipalities and local governments should not be permitted to punish ordinance violations with incarceration or arrest. Incarceration should be limited to violations of state laws.

* Colorado should abolish municipal courts and require municipal ordinance violations to be enforced in civil actions brought by city attorneys in county courts that are part of the state court system.

Motorcycles Are Still Dangerous

 

Stray Thoughts

* The U.S. does a horrible job of using contraflow (i.e. having major highway have some lanes run in the opposite direction to accommodate the needs of people evacuating) when it is appropriate for things like people evacuating from Hurricane Milton in Florida. It also greatly underuses this tool to manage day to day shifts in the direction of traffic in and out of central cities with commuters. This should be standard operating procedure in both cases and would not be expensive. It could save hundreds of lives a year and get people where they needed to be much faster with existing infrastructure.

* Similarly, the National Guard underinvests in resources for evacuating people from natural disasters and places with civil unrest, despite the fact that this is one of its core missions. Amphibious all terrain buses with light armor sufficient to deal with debris and distant civilian small arms fire, for example, is an asset almost every National Guard could use.

Image from here.

Image from here.

* Search and rescue drones for the National Guard (e.g. small ones like the one in the link that can go into small spaces that may be unsafe) should also receive more funding.

* Self-righting boats are cool. They are mostly used as lifeboats. Being on a cruise ship in the direct path of a Category 5 Hurricane on the other hand, is terrifying.

* There is a $4000 device that prevents people from dying while they are trapped in a flood of grain in grain elevators. It should be much more widely used.

* Poor training and tactics for responding to people with mental health crises or who are suicidal, who don't have firearms, is one of the biggest unnecessary source of deaths caused by police. Colorado Springs police officers provided us with an example of this just after midnight this morning.

* For a lot of reasons, I favor abolishing municipal courts in Colorado. Some abuses in Pueblo illustrate the problem.

* The U.S. economy is extremely healthy. Crime is down dramatically to the lowest levels since 1969. We are not at war for the first time in more than twenty years. The fundamentals couldn't be better. This should not be a close election.

* Denver Ballot Issue 309 is probably a constitutional taking as it would shut down the sole slaughter house in Denver, potentially exposing the City and County of Denver to hundreds of millions of dollars of inverse condemnation liability.

* The U.K. has conceded it is not sovereign over Diego Garcia, while retaining its military base there.

* The U.S. Navy recently rescued some civilian Iranian mariners who were in distress.

the brand-new destroyer received a fresh tasking: deter aggression and protect “the free flow of commerce” in the waters of the Middle East. While there, the crew heard an emergency call. “A distressed mariner is a distressed mariner,” Cmdr. Kevin Dore, the commander of the Inouye, said Friday after his ship and crew tied up at their homeport here. “If an emergency like that happens, it is ‘Get there as fast as you can and do everything you can’ to save what, in this case, was two distressed mariners who happened to be Iranian.” The crew sent search-and-rescue swimmers out in a small boat, rescued the mariners, and gave them medical assistance.

* Quality pre-school is more beneficial to a child when the child's peers in later grades also went to quality pre-schools. When the child's peers in later grades didn't receive the same quality pre-school, the benefits of quality pre-schooling "fade out."

* Wars involving Israel are ongoing a year after October 7, 2023. It is simultaneously fighting in Gaza against Hamas, against the Houthis of Yemen, against Iranian missile strikes, and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. It's military is remarkably effective on all fronts and it is stopping something like 99% of inbound missiles and drones. It is fighting lower key fights against Hamas in the West Bank. Despite the devastation in Gaza, Hamas was still firing missiles at Israel this week.

* Russia has been clamping down on reproductive rights and now bans even talking about why someone might want to not have kids at all. 

* Seriously underwater mortgages are, surprisingly, most common in places that don't have particularly high housing prices.

* This could be true:

* Fewer high school and college students are also working than there were thirty years ago.

* A downtown Denver high rise office building recently sold for 80% less than it was purchased for. Vacancy rates in downtown high rise office buildings are at record highs in most major U.S. cities, mostly due to the rise of remote work that reached a tipping point during the pandemic.

The Unattainable Possible

Lots of the things I'd like to see in the United States already exist elsewhere.

If you want to look at societies with almost no civilian gun ownership, you need look no farther than Japan and the United Kingdom. No other country is as gun ridden as the U.S.

Just about everyplace in the developed and developing world has more affordable, universal healthcare that also happens to produce better results. Most developed countries also make higher education more affordable than the U.S.

There are dozens of countries with society in general, and the election administration and the courts in particular, are less corrupt and partisan.

Lots of countries are better at not punishing innocent people in their criminal justice systems. Few countries are so extremely punitive in their criminal punishments.

Only a handful of societies have as many Evangelical Christians or comparable religious fundamentalists as the U.S. does, and a great many societies have more secular populations than the United States.

Few Western countries are so plagued by having massive shares of their electorates that are deeply disconnected from reality.

Many countries translate the popular will into legislative power more accurately in their political systems than the U.S. does.

Many countries have lower drinking ages and don't have almost fully criminalized prostitution. A number of countries have less punitive approaches to drugs.

Most developed countries treat workers better, and have a better work-life balance.

Japan does a better job of providing affordable housing in major cities. Lots of countries are better at land use regulation. China does a better job of building major construction projects quickly and efficiently.

France and many other countries use more nuclear power and use less coal than the United States. Several countries have a bigger market share of EV vehicles. Many countries have better high speed rail systems.

Most developed countries do a better job of taxing the rich, maintaining a social safety net, and discouraging extreme income inequality. Few developed countries have the serious homelessness problem that the U.S. does.

All but a couple countries use the metric system, while the U.S. is one of the countries with a mostly non-metric hybrid system.

Many countries do a better job of preventing consumer/investor/ordinary person oriented fraud and deceptive trade practices. Most countries have posted prices that are the real price of a good and services being purchased, which are not adjusted up to reflect sales taxes and tips. 

The U.S. is hardly the worst place in the world. It is affluent and economically productive. It has a grossly disproportionate share of the best colleges and universities in the world. It has the most advanced air force, the largest navy, and some of the most well-trained ground troops. It's financial markets generally work pretty well. It has a large foreign born population on a percentage basis that is quite well integrated into society (which isn't to say that it doesn't have political tensions over immigration). There are developed countries where the far-right movements are worse and more powerful although the U.S. is right up there among them. The products of its entertainment industry are world class. The U.S. is among the most protective in the world of free speech and religious freedom (even to a fault). The U.S. is one of the best places in the world to be a Jew and is home to about 40%-45% of the world's Jews.

But knowing that goals for the U.S. are attained elsewhere, but are unattainable in the U.S. despite being possible, is very frustrating.

The Decline Of U.S.-Flag Merchant Ships

Only 80 merchant ships fly under the American flag in international commerce. Mostly, this is a function of "race to the bottom" regulatory choices.

U.S.-flag merchant ships since 1960:

U.S.-flag merchant ships since 1990:

The leading flags of merchant ships as of 2020 (there have been few major changes since then, although Hong Kong is, of course, a political subdivision of China):

U.S. Barge Traffic By Commodity Type

Google AI says this about U.S. barge traffic (of freight) by commodity type:

Here are some commodities that are transported by barge in the United States:

Coal

In 2007, coal was the primary commodity moved by barge, accounting for 29% of all tonnages.

Petroleum

Petroleum was the second largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 27% of all tonnages.

Crude materials

Crude materials, such as forest products, sand, gravel, ores, scrap, and salt, were the third largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 18% of all tonnages.

Food and farm products

Food and farm products were the fourth largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 12% of all tonnages.

Grain

Corn and soybeans are the major bulk grain commodities moved by barge along the Mississippi River.

Fertilizer

Fertilizer is another farm product that is moved by barge.

Heavy bulk commodities

Heavy bulk commodities, such as cereal grains, processed agricultural goods, animal feed, fertilizer, and sand and gravel, are commonly moved by barge in the rural area of the Mid-America Port Commission Region.

Machinery and equipment

Large and bulky pieces of machinery or equipment, such as giant cranes, steam generators, automobile plant presses, military vehicles, and rocket boosters, are also transported by barge.

The Geopolitical Impacts And Timing Of The Decline Of Fossil Fuels

Colorado will not use any coal for electricity generation by 2031. It currently has ten coal fired power plants. It will take three of them off line in 2025. The rest are scheduled to be taken off line in the five years that follow.

Colorado will be more aggressive than most states in this time frame, but some states are already coal free, and almost all states are reducing the extent to which coal powers their electrical grids.

Greatly improved solid state electric vehicle batteries will start coming on line in 2025 and vehicles powered by them will make up a large share of new vehicles by 2031, greatly reducing gasoline and diesel consumption.

These developments, taken together, will greatly reduce U.S. fossil fuel consumption over the next seven years, and the reduction will be particularly dramatic for coal consumption. The falling demand for coal will hit Wyoming and West Virginia hard, because they are the two dominant producers of coal right now in the U.S. (the U.S. imports little, if any, coal). This will also heavily impact freight rail and barge transportation demand, because those are the two main ways that coal is delivered to power plants. Coal is the single largest revenue stream for both means of transportation.

The coal fired power plants are being replaced largely by wind, solar, and natural gas over the next seven years. So, the U.S. is going to see continued strong demand for natural gas, which is mostly sourced from North America, but should be seeing a gradual decline in petroleum demand (a fuel that the U.S. is largely self-sufficient in now, although global oil prices still influence domestic oil prices). The energy self-sufficiency of the U.S., however, buffers it from major macroeconomic shocks driven by rising oil prices like those seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The increase in the share of vehicles that are electric, spurred by solid state batteries, will be global. Indeed, many places in Europe are already in the lead on this front. And, since gasoline and diesel powered vehicles are the predominant end use of oil, this should drive down the price of oil in the global market. This will make high cost oil producers, like fracking wells and off-shore oil rigs, uneconomic first.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine War has put intense pressure on Europe, which has cut off or reduced access to Russian oil and gas, to be more efficient in order to reduce its fossil fuel consumption, to increase it share of renewable power, to delay shutting down coal fired power plants, and to keep its nuclear power plants on line. This may mean more insulation, more blankets and sweaters, more heat pumps, more electric vehicles, a shift to buses and trains, and fewer natural gas power plants.

China is in the way of these developments strongly addressing global warming, because it seems to be increasing, rather than decreasing, its coal consumption in the short to medium term. 

But China is also a world leader in electric car production and in building a high speed rail network, so China may play an important part in reducing global petroleum consumption. And, China's path in electric vehicle development is likely to heavily influence countries in Southeast Asia that in its sphere of influence, and to a lesser extent, may influence Africa and South America in which China has attempted to expand its economic influence.

China is also a leading producer of high efficiency, low cost solar panels, and eventually this, together with its rapidly declining fertility rates and starting to shrink population, may make its current round of investments in coal fired power plants short lived.

As oil demand and prices fall, this will eventually undermine the often authoritarian leaning countries with heavily oil dependent economies, in the Middle East, but also Brunei, Russia, Venezuela, and Nigeria. It will also impact Norway, the U.K., Canada, and U.S. states like Alaska, Louisiana, and Texas that are major oil producers. Oil wealth is what has made ultra-conservative Islam feasible in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. It has been central to the economies of Iran and Iraq. It has been an important factor allowing Russia and Venezuela and Iran to continue to be authoritarian.

These countries will see a collapse in their standard of living and they will face intense pressure to convert to a commercial economy. Most of their "guest workers" will be sent home for good.

Urban Density Is Green

 This is the biggest apartment building in the world.

The colossal Regent International apartment building in Hangzhou, China, is is the largest residential building globally and hosts over 20,000 residents! Initially designed as a hotel, this 36-story architectural marvel was transformed into a self-sufficient community, boasting high-end residential apartments, a vast food court, swimming pools, salons, supermarkets, and more. 

Designed by Alicia Loo, the chief architect behind the world's second seven-star hotel, the Singapore Sands Hotel, this S-shaped giant stands 206 meters tall. He has dominated Hangzhou's central business district since its inauguration in 2013. 

Home to a diverse community, from young professionals to influencers and small businesses, the Regent International building spans over 260,000 square meters, reshaping the skyline and redefining urban living in China.

Rent ranges from about $200 a month for an interior windowless apartment to $550 a month for apartments with a balcony. 

I posted this meme on Facebook and a friend of mine left the comment: "To me it is a symbol of the overpopulation that is killing the planet."

I responded (with minor editing for a blog format):

It shouldn't be. 

First of all, global population is nearing a peak and leveling off - the places that are still seeing surging population, especially sub-Saharan African and Afghanistan, have profoundly lower population density. 

China, in particular, has plummeting fertility rates and is far below the replacement level. It is at 1.4 billion people now, but actually lost population in the last year or two and will continue to. China has a fertility rate about half of the replacement rate, so its population will probably fall by close to 400 million people in thirty years and that's at current rates which are still plummeting. 

High density urban environments have the lowest total fertility rate. 

Second, the environmental impact of people in extremely high density environments is much lower per person than if they are spread out - they use less heating/cooling energy (especially in multifamily housing like this since there is less surface area to lose/gain heat per capita due to shared walls, and shared ceiling-floors), produce far less global warming air pollution, use much less transportation energy, build fewer cars per capita, use less water, destroy less land/sensitive animal habits than lower density development, etc. 

I'm sure it has lots of elevators, which are one of the single most energy efficient means of transportation other than bicycles, almost all power used to go up is recovered going down. And, people in densely populated areas can also use more efficient intercity transportation - this part of China has high speed electric rail that is faster and has less environmental impact than intercity transportation by cars or airplanes for short to medium distance intercity trips (admittedly China's electrical grid has way too much dirty coal, but that isn't an urban density related issue). 

Manhattan, for example, has better energy efficiency and overall less waste production and pollution per capita than any other place in the U.S. 

There is also an iron rule in economics that the bigger and more dense a city is the greater its per capita GDP in a very systemic, cross-cultural, cross-time period way. It is a power law relationship, so more dense urban areas are exponentially more productive per capita with no upper limit observed to date. So dense cities also greatly reduce environmental impact per $1 of GDP by both being more productive and less polluting per capita. 

More density means a smaller human footprint on the Earth. Put 20,000 people in suburban tract homes and you'd eat up 3+ square miles of land instead of one city block of maybe 1% of a square mile (6.4 acres), so that's a 99% reduction in habit destruction that can be left for open space, parks, and farming. 

Sure, the 6.4 acres for this high rise produces way more waste, energy consumption, and water consumption than my urban residential neighborhood would with 180 or so people in the same area of land, rather than 20,000 people, and far more than a suburban neighborhood with maybe 20 people in that land area, or an exurban neighborhood with 4 people in a mini-mansion on a single 6.4 acre lot. But per capita, it is much, much better for the planet.

Amtrak Ridership By Route

By comparison Greyhound served about 25 million passengers in 2023 and commercial airlines served about 369 million passengers.

Which Countries Are Most Technologically Advanced?

Which countries are most advanced technologically, or at least, more advanced than the U.S., in various areas?

Civilian technologies

Civil engineering

* Rapid construction of public works and high rise buildings: China

* Earthquake resistant construction: Japan

* Dikes and canals: Netherlands

Electronics, digital technology, and consumer products

* Software and Artificial Intelligence: U.S.

* Technologically advanced voting systems: Estonia 

* 5G cell phone networks: Finland

* Wi-Fi and broadband access: Lithuania and Finland

* Satellites (GPS, communications, Earth monitoring, and "telescopes"): U.S.

* Cashless consumer transactions: Sweden, Finland, China, South Korea, and the Netherlands

* Computer chip manufacturing and advance electronics design: Taiwan and Japan

* Cell phone design: U.S., Sweden, Japan

* Toilets: Japan

Medical and biotechnology

* Trauma centers and stroke centers: U.S.

* Using drones to deliver medical care: Sweden (e.g. to deliver AEDs or drugs to medical emergency scenes)

* Public health, epidemiology, and health oriented population genetics research: All Scandinavian countries (including Iceland)

* Pharmaceutical development: U.S., Denmark (e.g. inventing Ozempic), Finland, Germany

* Ancient DNA analysis: Germany

* Animal Cloning: South Korea

* Cannabis horticulture and processing: U.S.

Energy

* Fracking: U.S.

* Geothermal energy: Iceland

* Tidal energy generation: South Korea, France, and the U.K.

* Co-generation (efficiently using waste heat from power plants): Germany

* Nuclear power and nuclear fuel reprocessing: France

Transportation

* Commercial aircraft manufacturing: Europe (Airbus) and U.S.

* Civilian supersonic aircraft: U.S.

* Electric car batteries: Japan and the U.S.

* Electric car adoption: In order by market share: Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Germany, and China.

* High Speed Trains: Japan, France, and China

* Ferries: U.K. and Australia

* Airport Security Technology: U.K.

* Ice breaker ships and civilian nuclear ships: Russia

Pure Science

* Particle Accelerators: Switzerland. The U.S. and China are in second place.

* Moon exploration: China

* Mars and other solar system exploration: U.S.

* Space telescopes: U.S.

* Graduate science and engineering education: U.S.

Military technologies

Naval

* Diesel-electric submarines and air independent propulsion: Sweden

* Military nuclear submarines: U.S.

* Anti-submarine warfare: U.S.

* Aircraft carriers: U.S.

* Amphibious assault ships: U.S. and China

* Missile boats: China, with Iran also leading the U.S. in this area

* Torpedos: Russia, China, and U.S.

* Littoral patrol warcraft: Sweden and U.S.

Air Forces

* Military carrier based aircraft: U.S.

* Maritime patrol aircraft: U.S.

* Warplanes (including stealth): U.S.

* Military helicopters: U.S. followed closely by Russia

* Military transport planes: Europe (Airbus) followed closely by the U.S.

* Guided aircraft launched bombs: U.S.

* Military aerial drone production: U.S., followed by Turkey and Iran

Missiles and strategic weapons and counter-missile systems

* Tactical nuclear weapons: Russia

* Active defense systems to missiles and rockets: Israel and U.S.

* Localized active defenses (e.g. against artillery and anti-tank missiles): Israel

* Anti-aircraft missiles: Russia, U.S., Israel

* Artillery missiles and long range artillery rounds: U.S.

* Anti-tank missiles: U.S. and Germany

* Hypersonic missiles: China

Ground military systems and small arms

* Tanks: Israel and Germany, followed by U.S. and Russia.

* Recoilless rifles: Sweden

* Mortars: Finland

* Small arms (e.g. machine guns): U.S. and Israel

* Mine resistant armored vehicles: South Africa and U.S.

* Sniper and gunshot location: U.S.

* See though wall and around corners tech: Israel

Other Military Technology

* Military field medicine: U.S.

* Electronic intelligence and cryptography: U.S.  

How Will The Future Look And Feel Different?

This trend will be one of the biggest visual differences between life in the late 2020s and 2030s and the period from about 1980 to the twenty-teens – in addition to the shift to now ubiquitous cell phone presence, the relative absence of roaming tweens and early teens roaming the streets when school isn't in session, fewer people carrying disposable coffee cups, and more men with beards, that have already happened.

Other pervasive change in how life feels in the late 2020s and 2030s will be a great increase in the number of people living in central cities relative to office space, more protected bike lines in cities, and the rise of recycling and compost bins. 

Fashion

Ever fewer men wearing neckties and business suits. More men and more women are wearing short sleeves in the workplace as air conditions are set to less chilly temperatures during hotter summers. Watches are returning, but are smarter now, monitoring your health and sleep.

Younger adult women are much less frequently wearing bras, other than sports bras while exercising, especially in casual settings, and have been doing that for a while. Women and girls who would have worn one piece bathing suits in the 1980s often wear two piece bathing suits that providing varying degrees of coverage now. Adult women's panties have also been trending towards being more skimpy. Yoga pants and tights for women increasingly substitute for jeans, slacks, shorts, or a skirt, without anything over them. 

Contrary to many people's conventional wisdom, however, more affluent countries and communities tend to become more gendered in dress and education and professional roles as people feel more free to put self-expression over economic priorities, not more androgynous.

Food

Diners and diner-like restaurant chains like Perkins and Village Inn are fading away. Fast casual restaurants like Chipotle have become common place. Ethiopian, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and vegan food has entered the urban American palette, as Mexican and Chinese food did before it.

The remaking of a shared, cosmopolitan American establishment culture diet is has been ongoing for some time now and continues. This is a question of multicultural integration, of changing lifestyles, of food economics, and of health. 

We know we have an obesity problem, and we seem to be homing in on an overemphasis on simple carbohydrates, too many "ultra-processed" foods, and a more sedentary lifestyle as some of the main culprits behind this, although it is still somewhat puzzling and intractable trend that we don't really understand well. Old conventional wisdom, like the importance of a low fat diet, hasn't stood the test of time.

Drugs

Marijuana dispensaries are now pervasive and common place and are on the brink of becoming much more mainstream since the federal government is likely to reclassify it from a Schedule I Controlled Substance under federal law to a lower schedule which will end the punitive taxes of Internal Revenue Code § 280E on dispensaries and will allow marijuana firms to use banks, declare bankruptcy, apply for federal patents and trademarks, and avail themselves of the federal courts. About half of the states have legalized THC at the state level, almost all of them have legalized CBD at the state leve, and the rest will probably follow suit quickly when marijuana is rescheduled at the federal level.

Other formerly illicit drugs are also gaining respectability in medical niches that will become a part of people's daily realities. Ketamine is now available as a fast acting, short term antidepressant and is also being widely used as an anesthetic used by first responders in trauma cases. LSD and peyote are being explored as PTSD treatments. A significant small percentage of older children, adolescents, and adults routinely take amphetamines for ADHD.

Semaglutide drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic are proving to be wonder drugs for Type II diabetes, obesity, addiction problems, cardiovascular diseases, and even enhancing executive function in people with ADHD that have surged to widespread use very rapidly despite their very high sticker price.

Surprisingly, the religious moral crusade against drugs, like the anti-gay efforts of religious conservatives (as distinct from anti-transgender efforts), seems to be a war that religious conservatives have largely conceded, at least on the political front. 

Six months away from the 2024 election, no prominent Republican politician has made the war on drugs an important part of their campaign, and this is not a drum beat which conservative media outlets are pounding any longer. There has been sharp rhetoric aimed at Latin American drug cartels with a strong xenophobic bent, an instinctual desire to crack down on the fentanyl trafficking that is behind so many drug overdose deaths, although this has finally plateaued. But few political arrows have been aimed at U.S. drug users, or harm other than opioid addition by mostly white and often working class Americans, that drugs themselves, as opposed to foreign drug cartels as sources of organized crime, have caused to the United States.

Moral resistance to marijuana legalization has been undermined by the legalization of marijuana in about half the U.S. states without any clear and shocking ill effects. Indeed, marijuana legalization has coincided with a dramatic decline in illegal opioid use by minors despite a relentless surge in adult opioid overdose deaths fueled mostly in recent years by growing illegal distribution of fentanyl, often by dealers who don't disclose that fentanyl has been cut with other drugs from heroin to meth, in non-laboratory conditions.

Red states have softened overly punitive incarceration sentencing for drug offenses as much or more than blue states have, despite their strongly conservative politics, in part, to save on the staggering costs of having the world's highest incarceration rates that has been mostly financed with state tax revenues. Red states have lagged in legalizing marijuana, but his seems unlikely to persist and all or almost all of them have already legalized  CBD cannabis products, which are more medicinal than psychoactive. Bipartisan federal legislation has mildly relaxed sentencing for drug offenses.

Demographic Trends

This said, however, the global demographic transition that has emerged hand in hand with economic development all over the world in every religion and culture that has experienced economic development shows no signs of abating. 

The average age of marriage has risen a lot hand in hand with a larger share of women attending college and weaker economic prospects for couples who don't have college degrees. The percentage of men and women who never marry has surged, as women choose not to and men can't find partners to marry as a result (and as more men who don't have college degrees can't fulfill a role as a primary economic provider for their families). Couples who do marry are increasingly close in age. Men and women are having children later in life. A large share of children in the U.S. are born to unmarried mothers, although many of those mothers are cohabiting with the fathers of their most recent child at the time. 

While divorce rates for college educated couples have plunged to levels not seen since the 1960s, divorce rates for couples without college degrees have reached unprecedented levels despite falling marriage rates (with a majority of these couples having a first child before rather than after getting married). This is driven mostly by the economic stagnation experienced by men without college degrees as the economy has developed greater intellectual requirements in a modern, automated and computerized work environment in a sophisticated complex bureaucratic society. Black families started experiencing these trends in the 1960s and have reached the most extreme realization of them, with children raised by unmarried mothers becoming the norm. But working class white families and Hispanic families are following suit thirty and forty years later. Strong social welfare systems have also made this pattern viable and the norm for lots of middle class Northern Europeans. 

These factors combined have led to a marked drop in the total fertility rate (roughly speaking the number of children per lifetime per woman) almost everywhere worldwide outside of non-elite families in sub-Saharan Africa, and outside of Gaza and Afghanistan. The decline has been seen in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world, in East Asia, in Europe, in Latin America, among Protestants and Catholic alike.

There have been subcultures, especially among religious conservatives, pushing "tradwife" traditional housewife roles and pro-natalist agendas. But the Mormons are real the only organized movement that has had any success in implementing this agenda. And, they have seen their share of Americans decline by a third over the last fifteen years to a mere 1.2% of religious adherents in the United States. 

It is unclear if the Dobbs decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ended the constitutional right to an abortion, and other ruling of an ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court will turn the tide. Courts and voter initiatives in several Red States, and a handful of dissenting GOP legislators in Arizona, have restored some or all of the abortion rights that Dobbs took away. Abortion drugs for some early term pregnancies, and interstate travel from states where abortion is banned to those where it is legal have caused the number of abortions carried out to decline far less than was anticipated in the wake of Dobbs. Even Donald Trump has bucked the Republican grass roots by taking the position that abortion laws should be decided on a state by state basis and not strongly advocating an anti-choice position. All of this suggests that Republican efforts to roll back the clock of reproductive rights and women's rights may not be the major step backward turning point that it seems once the dust settles over the next few years, regardless of who wins the Presidential election.

East Asian total fertility rates have fallen to the lowest levels because all worldwide, because the factors delaying marriage and child birth are present there in spades, but out of wedlock births remain extremely rare there. Out of wedlock births are rare there, in part, because neither the social safety net nor family law rules provide nearly as much support and protection to single mothers there, and because abortion is less taboo there.

For example, in Japan, much of the social safety net provided by government in Western Europe is provided by large corporate employers, to whom single parents have no access, there.

Concretely, in people's daily lives, this means smaller families, more only children, fewer siblings, far fewer families with three or four or five or more kids (especially, in couples that have not recently immigrated from countries where larger families are common) and far fewer cousins, aunts, and uncles, although longer life spans mean that more children know not just their grandparents but their great-grandparents well. In working class America, it means that lots of kids are raised by single mothers with little contact with with their fathers or father's side of the family during their childhoods. Part of the reason that housing supplies are tight in many areas is that smaller households required more distinct housing units to house the same number of people, as typical family households now have three or four, instead of four to six family members. This trend toward smaller families muddled somewhat by complex blended families resulting from fragile marriages and even more fragile cohabitations that produce children.

It will be interesting to see if polygamy laws change anywhere in the U.S. as this becomes an issue of Muslim immigrants and leftist polyamory advocates, and not just vanishingly few Mormon fundamentalists in a handful of distinct geographic places.

Shrinking families make community and government safety nets and support more important, and reduce the relevance of nepotism and clannishness in American life. This is also impacted by the fact that Americans are among the most mobile people geographically in the world. Less than 59% of Americans age 25 or older live in the state where they were born, far less comparable mobility levels in any country in Europe, and especially in Western states there is even more mobility. Less than 20% of people aged 25 or older in Nevada were born there and more of these adults in Nevada were born outside the United States than were born in Nevada.

Race

Interracial couples, married and dating alike, are no longer as striking, and mixed race children are much more common. Interracial marriage rates of native born Hispanics, Asian-Americans (including East Asians, Southeast Asians, and East Asians), Native Hawaiians, and Native Americans are all very high, and interracial marriage rates for whites (who have few non-white prospective marriage partners in some parts of the U.S.) and blacks, while lower, are at record highs. Jewish outmarriage rates to non-Jews are also very high.

The U.S. is basically seeing shrinking proportions of purely white European stable proportions of black Americans, and a rapidly growing share of mixed race, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Native American, and Asian Americans, as well as African immigrants, who are starting to blend into a "brown" plurality that is not starkly internally divided by race or deeply separated from or antagonistic to white Americans, in a manner similar to how Catholic immigrants, especially from Ireland, Italy, and Spain were assimilated into a pan-ethic white American identity. 

The cultural divide in the U.S. between native born black Americans and those of other races is higher, but not as high as it has been for most of American history since the abolition of slavery in 1865 that was replaced by de jure and de facto segregation until long after the victories of the Civil Rights movement a century later. The emergence of significant ethnic populations that are neither black nor white has helped bridge the cultural racial gaps between blacks and whites in the United States.

Homosexuality And Transgender Realities

Homosexuality and same sex couples are unremarkable, and not that controversial. A conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court established a right to same sex marriage, and there are a number of high profile politicians and celebrities who are gay or lesbian. They haven't abandoned this fight entirely, but they have deemphasized it.

The Christian conservative right has diverted its current efforts to scapegoating transgender people instead focusing on homosexuality, which is more common, more mainstream, and easier to understand.

It isn't clear how successful and sustained the religious conservative scapegoating of transgender people will persist. Those targeted don't have much of an ability to fight back on their own, and have broad but not very intense support from much of the rest of the political left, which is impotent at the state level in many Red States.

Housing, Land Use, and Remote Work

 

Land use regulation reform and New Urbanism seems to be finally hitting their stride in response to an affordable housing crisis, with state laws forcing major liberalizations of zoning regulation of residential development density in states including California and Colorado, and local municipal reforms in cities like New York. We're seeing more townhouses, more midsized apartment buildings, more conversions of office buildings to residential use, and more apartment buildings with first floor retail. 

Accessory dwelling units (i.e. "granny flats" and "tiny homes" on existing single family home lots) that are built as extended family housing or rental units are being legalized in more places and need just a little nudge to take off exponentially. Parking requirements are being dispensed with, especially near major transit lines and in walkable developments. 

There hasn't yet been much restoration of pre-zoning law land use patterns like single occupancy hotels and boarding houses, but the legal authority to do that kind of development is quietly being put into place. The same legal developments are also laying the groundwork for another round of cooperative housing with shared kitchens and common areas in basically an owned boarding house arrangement that flourished briefly in the late 1960s and 1970s before the governance and social interaction issues associated with them took the shine off of them. But the less ambitious project of having single family homes with multiple unrelated households in them, either by subdividing them physically or just having the room tenants share a house like college students is also supported by these land use reforms and is already quietly becoming more common.

We are still working out the remote work issue. But the pandemic gave videoconferencing the boost it needed to become a part of every day work life and extended family interactions. The percentage of office workers who work remotely at least part of the time has surged, although probably less than half of them are fully remote workers. A pandemic generation that attended school remotely makes this way of working a lot more familiar.

Religion

Plenty of people still attend church with some regularity, but it is no longer socially assumed that everyone does, even in the South and rural America. It is also increasingly no longer assumed that everyone is Christian. 

"Nones" and Muslims make up a growing share of Americans, while almost all forms of Christianity have a decreasing percentage of Americans who adhere to it (apart from some definitional arbitrate as Evangelical Protestant denomination adherents rebrand themselves as non-denominational Christians).

About 30% of adults view themselves as "not religious" and almost half of young adults identify that way, in a dramatic growth over the last half century.

Muslims have become much more common due to immigration and to a lesser extent due to native born African-American converts, and are increasingly a visible presence in daily life. Halal food offerings are now almost as common as Kosher ones, and institutions like schools now have to be conscious of Muslim holidays and holy days (although public calls to prayer five times a day, which are pervasive in Muslim majority countries, are absent).

Mormons have resisted the trends of late marriage, fewer marriages, less stable marriages, and fewer children, more than any other faith in the U.S. But while natural growth from these natalist attitudes has helped to keep the number of Mormons declining as much as mainline Christians, white Catholics, and white Protestants, neither natural growth nor a massive missionary effort deeply ingrained in this faith, have been enough for them to increase the share of Mormon adherents in the overall population much. For example:

Between 2007 and 2022, the percentage of Americans who self-identify as Mormon has dropped from 1.8 percent to 1.2 percent (according to an independent tabulation of election survey data) - a percentage decrease of one-third over 15 years.

Via Wikipedia.

Communication, Transportation and Energy

Other look and feel changes in daily life already happened a while ago. 

Landline phones are almost gone. Fewer and fewer people read dead tree newspapers. Broadcast and cable TV have already been replaced by streaming to a great extent. Satellite radio and apps like Spotify have gradually undermined major radio stations that used to be a pervasive sound track to almost everyone's life.

Paper checks and postal money orders sent in the mail are becoming a thing of the past, while cash apps have started to become mainstream even though they are somewhat uncommon. Invoices and appointment reminders now come via email and text rather than snail mail. Email and texts have also increasingly replaced letters. Court documents are now usually e-filed and the service has been made available to non-lawyer litigants in many cases. Tax forms are usually e-filed too, and sooner or later, the IRS will cast aside the fax machine - a technology that is increasingly used by no one else - in favor of secure online portals. 

Parcel post from the postal service has increasingly lost market share to private delivery services as online shopping has led to a resurgence in package deliveries. Homes increasingly have front porch video streaming, in part, to deter porch pirates who steal those parcels. Quality photography and videography from cell phones, pervasive security and laptop cameras, dash cams, and body cameras, cheap and small tracking devices, cell phone GPS and Wi-Fi locator technology, and digital payment systems have made a well documented surveillance society an every day reality.

As typing has replaced dead tree writing, cursive writing has waned as well and will soon go the way of the slide rule. Voice operated computer system are already common in big business phone systems, where they compete with international call centers in India and the Philippines. Dictation, now done by computers instead of secretaries, is making a gradual return. And, real time voice to voice language translation is on the brink of becoming commonplace - it is already widespread as a cheap and fast way of doing text to text language translation.

Most cars are now keyless and manual transmission has virtually vanished from the United States. A modest but growing share of vehicles are plug in electric. We are on the brink of widespread use of self-driving vehicles, although we aren't quite there yet. When the do arrive, this will have a profound effect on the long haul trucking industry, as robots replace humans on our interstate highways (probably with greater safety).

Smart phones, GPS, and computer networks with AI features, have already enabled ride sharing that has effectively restored decentralized, thinly regulated taxi service to much of the U.S., and has facilitated easy scooter and bicycle and e-bike rentals. Online real estate sharing services like Airbnb have vastly increased the supply of hotel and bed and breakfast type services on a decentralized basis, with vacationers now as likely to stay in an online brokered short term rental of a private home as they are to stay in a hotel.

Life in 2024 is full of battery charging. Laptops, smart phones, smart watches, headphones, toothbrushes, shavers, cars, and even device and home backup power systems, all have batteries that must be regularly recharged with customized power charges, and can even pose fire hazards on commercial airline flights. But this part of daily life will soon make some subtle but noticeable changes. Spurred by the demand for better electric car batteries, several new game changing battery technologies for electric cars, like solid state batteries with different raw materials will enter the marketplace in the mid- to late-2020s. The new batteries will store several times more energy than existing electric vehicle batteries, will have longer lives with less depletion in capacity as they are recharged repeatedly, will recharge more quickly, will cost less, will have less of an environmental impact, and will be safer. This will make electric vehicles in every context where internal combustion engines (ICEs) running on gasoline or diesel fuel more competitive vis-a-vis ICE vehicles - cars, trucks, buses, delivery vehicles, construction equipment, farm equipment, military vehicles, boats, and even propeller driven short haul aircraft and drones. It will make electric lawn mowers and leaf blowers and snow blowers more attractive via existing two stroke engine models. It will mean that laptops and cell phones and smart watches and headphones and toothbrushes and shavers that used to have to be charged daily will be able to manage with a couple of rounds of charging a week.

Supersonic commercial airline flights across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are on the brink of returning after the supersonic transatlantic Concorde flights from New York City to Paris and London were discontinued after a couple of decades of limited and unprofitable service.

Intracity passenger rail has experienced a minor resurgence over the past few decades although this trend may have neared its peak for a while. There are a handful of intercity high speed passenger rail corridors in the U.S. which are built or in progress, although few meet the standards of Western Europe, Japan, and China, and it will still be many decades before this really becomes an feature of American life for most people.

Modern heat pumps are replacing air conditioning and gas forced air HVAC systems in homes. Home and business solar panels are now common and meet a decent share of household electricity demand, sometimes feeding energy back into the grid. Trains full of coal to deliver to utility power plants are a lot less common, while large utility company wind mills to generate electricity are common worldwide.