did we really go to the moon?

What went wrong?
 

God, I totally agree.

The values of a society are expressed in its architecture. No question. And I don't mean the monumental type buildings but the vernacular ones - where people actually live their lives (homes, shops, workplaces, schools, etc.). Ours is clearly about cheapness and phony veneers. It's about creating an illusion of importance for everyone - gestures traditionally reserved for conveying wealth and grandeur without the underlying cost that has traditionally given those sorts of expressive gestures their value and "wow" factor. When every Tom Dick and Harry can "afford" (really get a crummy loan for) a mansion, is there anything special about mansions anymore? Not really.

As an architect myself I am really saddened to see how our profession is so undervalued now - relegated to specific niches because our society at large doesn't value good design anymore - just what's fast, cheap and disposable - and bigger and brasher than one's neighbors. I'm thankful I work for a developer now and can at least impart some architectural expression into my projects via the power of the purse (we have the money so we set the standards). If I didn't, the designers would have no incentive to deliver anything but more of the same old crap. They've become afraid to be bold and to push themselves. They all default to playing it safe, lest they exceed a budget by $1 or run afoul of some stupid bureaucratic rule or code requirement.

In my heart I wish the "good old days" were still around when architects were respected and deemed to have value - and had some latitude to actually design expressive and beautiful spaces. Everything now seems comparatively so dumbed-down and the "design" process is all about code compliance (Christ almighty it's gotten frikkin ridiculous what the codes are mandating these days...) and budgets and kissing contractors' asses in the interest of preserving their schedules and lining their pockets...

I wish we were different and a society that valued beauty, permanence, quality and all the rest but we increasingly just don't. So much is cookie-cutter crap and it's because people just don't demand any different. It's sad really - certainly not how I'd like to see it, but as I said above - what we build and leave behind tells the story. It's brutally honest about us and our values. It memorializes what we demand, which is a direct reflection of those values.

There's still a market out there for good design (just as there's a market for good art and music) but for every person that appreciates such things there are 50 others who are content to live in a sterile, engineered plastic box and watch American Idol and eat their crappy nutritionless, flavorless processed crap from the nearby drive-through night after night. I hate to sound like an Apple fanboy but I think a perfect example is the iPhone versus the Galaxy. The iPhone is a beautiful product - wonderfully presented and incorporating really thoughtful industrial design. Then along comes Samsung who says "hey, ours is bigger - and it's cheap!" And the masses flock to it as a result. Telling, no? I know there's more to that particular story and I'm being a little simplistic but it's a convenient example of how idiotically short-sighted people are and how quick they are to sacrifice design and quality standards on the altar of cheapness image / appearance in order to flaunt fad status symbols and feel important.

Sad what we've become. Truly.

I blame it all on iDrive.

Personally I think corporate greed has become epidemic.

Drop the word corporate and I will agree. Corporations aren't greedy, people are.

And no one has mentioned the short term outlook required to keep share prices high. I work for a publicly traded company that constantly makes decisions based on the next 90 days, there is no long term plan. It makes me sick.

I'll tell you what happened:

Bill Watterson decided to retire Calvin and Hobbes. We've been spiraling the drain ever since.

I've seen the assembly lines, and some sub-supplier assembly lines. All in China. The assembly jobs are gone. They used to call that the bread and butter work of America.

I believe Apple also minimizes US tax payments by increasing margins in other countries. That never used to happen.

Sure it's good, it's also far less good than it would have been 20 years ago.

Borrowing. That's what went wrong. The government swept aside fiscal responsibility for immediate gratification. The nation has indentured its own children's futures.

The nation admits to $16T in debt and is ignoring the other $40T* not on the books. We've been partying for 40 years!

*i.e., unfunded liabilities (SS, SSI, Medicaid, Medicare, public sector pensions)

But aren't corporations people?

IMHO, that's a huge part of the problem right there. $750 for a phone--a PHONE!! Not to mention the fact that 73% of that price is pure profit...

I do Marv. (I'm a vet as well.) Welfare programs could certainly use an overhaul. I say we start by slashing--no--eliminating corporate welfare. (We can begin by stopping corn subsidies that put ethanol in gasoline.) Make this a true, "unfettered, free-market" capitalist nirvana with no government financial help allowed. Sink or swim, no government lifeguard with a huge treasury to save you. Want the government off your back? Okay, Wall Street, Monsanto, etc., you're on your own! But you're right, that will never happen. Government of, by and for the corporations and the most powerful. Far easier to pick on the weaker and the helpless. Make us fight among ourselves for the scraps thrown our way.

Again, the postwar period of unprecedented affluence spread among the greater population is over. It ended, for all intents and purposes, by 1980 and we have been coasting on debt and deficit-spending ever since. Both the government and households have been deficit-spending. We used to pay for it with our prosperity but we can no longer do so. The system has been slowly dismantled and rebuilt to favor a few. The rest of us are just going to have to adapt to the new paradigm.

Many of us can remember when TV was free. No cable, just an antenna on the roof that your dad adjusted once in a while. Four or five channels and if nothing was on you read a book, built a model, played a board game or--GASP--went outside. The hard-line home telephone system was amazing. The sound quality was as if you were in the same room. Wasn't expensive either.

The business school boys saw all that and saw that it needed monetizing. Free television? ARE YOU CRAZY? We must make people pay for it. Bell Telephone is a huge monopoly? We must break it apart and spread the money around. (Down goes quality, up goes the price.) The airlines propped up by regulation? Tear it down! We must get people off of Greyhound buses and onto 737s!

Etc., etc.

The baby-boomers who grew up in the 1950s playing Monopoly with their siblings (and up-ending the table when they didn't win) went on to get their MBAs and into business. There were so many of them (and boomer law school grads too) that they had to blow up the old paradigm to make enough money for all of them. Explode the old system and monetize the remains. Down goes quality, up goes the price.

Mass infiltration and brainwashing, turning us against ourselves using the mush-heads as weapons.

America has lost its will. Drive and ambition.
We are chastised for improving.
Everyone is a winner no loosers .
We get taxed for earning more, taxed less for buying bad stupid products funded by politicians
( electric cars farm subsidies )
People get free grants for studying very stupid things.
OMG we do not even have a SPACE SHUTTLE any more !
BUT, We have a military that has to listen to a leader talk about global warming......
Americas kids are taught to underachieve .
We know to start a business is a miracle by the time the EPA, DOT APA, OSHA, NSA, who, TREE HUGER IMPACTS,
wet land study. minority hiring status . Just to mention a few that want a bribe / cut or just show how important they are to stand in front of you for a dick measure contest.
Why does america NOT do it anymore?
Watered dwn edubacation brought to you by idiots!
What was the revolution about ? !!

Going to the moon cost hundreds of billions of TAX dollars, and we got ........ rocks.
Oh and a bunch of people got to yell WEEEEE, WE FEEL ALL WARM AND FUZZY!

Built the fastest plane? Yup. and it cost so much per flight hour (in TAX dollars) is was ridiculous. Hundreds of times more per hour than a conventional fighter jet. It was so ridiculously expensive even for a gubmint designed to hemorrhage money they canceled it.
But a bunch of people got a chance to yell WEEEE, WE FEEL ALL WARM AND FUZZY!

Affordable higher edumacation:
yes it was affordable, and good. But that was back when everyone who attended PAID for the right.
Somewhere along the lines, the racists decided that only a certain part of our population had to pay, for everyone else it was FREEEEEEEE!
And those protected group parasites had a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Nothing is life is free, so you can see what happened.

Same thing happened to health care. it was cheap when everyone paid their share.
Then one day some people didn't pay,and others said they didn't want to pay, and other said it wasn't right that they had to pay, so only a small percentage of people had to pay for EVERYONE ELSE.
and it got really expensive and inefficient. Then the parasite lawyers started suing the doctors so they cound hit the lawsuit lottery, and the low-lifes hired the lawyers to sue, and the whole thing went to hell in a hand basket.

Like I said earlier, mass infitration and brainwashing of the mush-heads until they turned against us.

There was a discussion on the " NASA budget " a couple years ago . Seems the number was not even a 1 % of the gross.
looks like 20 million ?

What happened???

during the cold war - it was beat the Russians.
The 70's - OPEC, we became dependent on others. High inflation, the beginning of outsourcing, the shift from being a manufacturing to a service economy and the beginning of 2 income households (the wife's income was counted for home buying).

All down hill after that -

Pretty much

Listen to Bill Graham's commentary in this video....I think he makes some valid points.

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Frivolous lawsuits

Lack of personal responsibility/accountability


It's always someone else's fault/who can I sue?