AMERICA!

There are too many things I could write about today, so I'm going to try and spread it out over the next few days so it looks like I'm coming up with a lot of fresh ideas in a short time span.

Someone needs to turn off America's expansion engine. We are rushing construction projects and continuously building as if we still had a frontier. Bad news guys - we ran out of new land some sixty years ago (note: I am not including recent foreign conquests, because it is pretty clear we're not planning on building anything there at all - except this). Yet we continue to expand throughout the countryside with no regard for civic planning or even actual need. Everywhere I look there are half-finished construction projects spilling over into giant, empty lots with dozens of dusty parking spaces and "Office Space for Lease" signs in every window. Companies are treating the already stressed landscape like a contract crapshoot, just building blocks and blocks of office or retail space that no one requested. These vacant shells wait scornfully for tenants, unapologetic in their uselessness.

To be fair, rapid expansion and construction provides countless jobs and generates tons of money for the economy. Businesses have access to more affordable space, which in turns (ideally) translates to lower prices for consumers. Standardized home construction provides cheaper living space for our growing population. However, as much as I would like to believe that the driving force behind our constant expansion is to create a better society, I can say with certainty that a vast majority of these construction projects do not stem from some altruistic notion but rather for that almighty Dollar. I'm not here to rail on capitalism, which I'm all for, but rather to point out that because construction is so profitable it is that much more resistant to change. Why fix it if it's not broken?

I would like to see the huge economy of construction distilled out into a multitude of smaller economies. I would like to see many local companies that only concern themselves with building in single states (maybe three or four for you tiny statettes in the northeast). I would to like to see the rampant expansion reigned in, to quit building just for the sake of it and refocus that engine inward toward building a local community.

I'm ending this one now because I'm about to shoot off on a completely different tangent, along the lines of the update I wrote called "Countrified Counterculture", which I'll be rehashing and refreshing in a few days. For tomorrow, a comedic update about one of my favorite topics: education!