Infrastructure

Recently, there was a large gas pipe explosion in San Bruno, California that leveled an entire neighborhood damaging close to 40 homes, injuring 60 people, and killing 4. (Here's a nifty article about how news reports are often wrong and sometimes make things worse.)

Last night I watched a program on the History Channel about America's failing infrastructure.

One of the interesting things we will see in our lifetime is the collision of people's views on taxes and their need for infrastructure. It is quite commonplace for people to complain about their tax burden, and levies for schools and infrastructure fail so often it is almost cliche. The current climate in America leans heavily toward the idea that our resource distribution systems (gas lines, sewer lines, electrical lines, roads, dams, levees, waterways, etc.) are automatically granted us as citizens. Their continued existence is not something we need to concern ourselves with. These things are somebody else's job and are taken care of for us. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our infrastructure, like all structures, require maintenance and replacement. This is true for fire alarms, toilets, refrigerators, stoves, cars, houses, boats, and so forth all the way up to roads, dams, bridges, sports teams, governments, and the environment. And just like all our in-home amenities, our out-of-home amenities like our free highways (freeways, get it?) must be maintained by us. We as individuals are responsible for the maintenance of everything we use. It may be someone else's "job" to do the actual work, but if we don't fund it and oversee it, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Currently our infrastructure is unfunded and we as a society are not looking after it.

Oh, Burn Notice is on, see ya...