People like to think the pendulum will always swing back. That is because of survivor bias. They have always seen it swing back. Every fallen civilization believed in the pendulum theory too, until the last one. You can't magically remake our forests. We are just stupid.
US is one of the very few countries that is left with irreplaceable natural beauty. It is sad that we’re at a point where a multi trillion dollar economy cannot leave this public treasure alone because private interests want everything to be a race to the bottom.
This seems opposite to my experience. Sure, the US has beautiful places (and national parks), but also many visually polluted spaces with ads etc.
I see many other countries in LatAM, Asia etc having just as many beautiful places of nature. And then in Europe there’s the beauty of e.g Gothic architecture in cities that are kept (mostly) clean.
No matter how beautiful architecture is it's still not natural beauty.
I do agree there's plenty of places in other countries that have natural beauty, but the US has a combination of very large natural spaces, kept in a mostly natural state (not over developed), and does a decent job maintaining it. This is relatively rare (although the US is not the only one).
The US Forest Service has nothing to do with the amount of ads and billboards in US cities.
Budget for an entity costs far, far, far more than just salaries alone. Also, all in cost on a salaried employee is usually 2-3x their actual salary cost… this isn’t 100k people. It’s roughly 35k people (per their own publicly available info) as well as presumably a large amount of actual physical costs. You gotta pay for offices, equipment, consumables, etc etc.
People like to think the pendulum will always swing back. That is because of survivor bias. They have always seen it swing back. Every fallen civilization believed in the pendulum theory too, until the last one. You can't magically remake our forests. We are just stupid.
US is one of the very few countries that is left with irreplaceable natural beauty. It is sad that we’re at a point where a multi trillion dollar economy cannot leave this public treasure alone because private interests want everything to be a race to the bottom.
nitpick: I think almost every single country has irreplaceable natural beauty.
It is incredibly sad that the US has come to this though. Yet another example of the country self-harming in ways that will leave permanent scarring.
A quote I've repeated before: "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment".
> private interests want everything to be a race to the bottom
This is also about rich guys wanting to play rancher.
This seems opposite to my experience. Sure, the US has beautiful places (and national parks), but also many visually polluted spaces with ads etc.
I see many other countries in LatAM, Asia etc having just as many beautiful places of nature. And then in Europe there’s the beauty of e.g Gothic architecture in cities that are kept (mostly) clean.
No matter how beautiful architecture is it's still not natural beauty.
I do agree there's plenty of places in other countries that have natural beauty, but the US has a combination of very large natural spaces, kept in a mostly natural state (not over developed), and does a decent job maintaining it. This is relatively rare (although the US is not the only one).
The US Forest Service has nothing to do with the amount of ads and billboards in US cities.
Isn't there a losing war going on to focus on?
What better time to do deeply unpopular things than when everyone is looking the other way?
in FY2024 the entire budget for the Forest Service was $10.8B
no idea how big or small that is, so here's my OoM analysis:
10B$ is equal to 100k people with 100k$ a year salaries
that's 2k such salaries per state, I guess half or more can be counted for buildings/traveling/equipment expenses
no idea what to do with "1k people per state" estimate tho
Budget for an entity costs far, far, far more than just salaries alone. Also, all in cost on a salaried employee is usually 2-3x their actual salary cost… this isn’t 100k people. It’s roughly 35k people (per their own publicly available info) as well as presumably a large amount of actual physical costs. You gotta pay for offices, equipment, consumables, etc etc.
So less than 0.03% of the national debt?
1 day of military special operations?
Have to pay for the pending war with Cuba somehow.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626641
Vile
Let’s not forget all the upstanding tech leaders that stood next to Trump and smiled.
Thanks guys. Thanks for fucking nothing.
More vile destruction from the Trump admin.
Wonder who will help for fires now? Conservatives do hate trees I guess.