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The various water districts and governments within U.S.A. operate close to half a million miles of water mains, enough to circle the earth 15 times. The problem is that this system is so old and corroded that it suffers one break per year for every 3.7 miles, for a total of over 125,000 water main breaks occurring each and every year. Much of the aging system is implemented in cast iron piping that is 100 to 140 years old, which far exceeds the design life of the system. The current rate of replacing the system is a minuscule 2,300 miles per year. This means, that some of the aging pipes will have to remain in the ground for another 200 years before they may be replaced. Unfortunately, cast iron pipes simply don't last this long.
The aging water system can be replaced in short order in the society wishes. It costs less than one million dollars per mile. Except the funding is not available. The total bill for the entire repair project would add up to an amount that is 10 to 20 times greater than the cost of the Apollo space project. Also, this is only the cost for catching up. On top of this, the system needs to be expanded to meet the society's increasing requirement.
Should this challenge not be met? On the feudal platform, where a society must 'rent' the life-blood for its existence, this may not be possible. On the infinite platform, on the other hand, this effort is carried our naturally as part of a much larger stream of essential development projects that a society must engage in to protect its existence.
Another huge maintenance deficit has been building up in the electric power industry. Here the same story unfolds. The reliable production of electric power is fast becoming a thing of the past. Since the 1970s, the construction of 100 nuclear plants and 80 coal fired plants has been cancelled. These plants were required to maintain normal service, but they were not build. As the result the nation lives with shortages, brown-outs, and catastrophic failures, and no spare capacity for development needs.
Ironically, the nation that prides itself to be the most advanced in the world, relies on an inventory of aging equipment for its vital energy needs, with some of its plants dating back to the turn of the century. The largest operating hydroelectric plant in the country was built in the 1920s.
The deficit is actually more serious than it appears to be, as the country's energy supply capacity is no longer sufficient to meet the real need of society, much less provide for the far greater energy demands that would be required for the much needed redevelopment of the economy, were this goal pursued. Any meaningful economic redevelopment is, therefor, presently impossible without a concurrent huge investment in the energy supply sector.
That this investment cannot be expected from the present platform, which is bankrupt itself, is self-evident. By a financial system that demands a society to 'rent' its money from a finite pool of rentable resources in a competitive setting, the society has committed itself to an accelerating form of economic devolution. Infrastructure development is capital intensive, thus a nation has little hope that the needed structures will be built on the feudal economic basis where 'investors' see better returns in the speculative markets. Thus, for the love of money, the society has committed itself to a state of great poverty. This is how the feudal economic system works. This is how it has always worked. This is how it deals with the society. This is why the society and the world-financial system collapsed in 1345-47, and why both are collapsing again, soon to disintegrate completely.
The transportation industry presents much of same picture in maintenance deficits that the other infrastructures present. The railway system, which is by far the most cost efficient land carrier of goods in existence, has shrunk to half of what it had been in the 1950s. Its primary track milage has shrunk by 73%, its employment has shrunk by 59%, its freight car inventories have shrunk by 45%, only the rail-carrier's profits have not shrunk. They have doubled.
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