Discussion

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BoredPositron: Nice maybe we can finally get some old redwoods to make into toilet paper. Normal TP is just not fitting for the rose gold toilet.

nacozarina: Vile

convolvatron: in FY2024 the entire budget for the Forest Service was $10.8B

actionfromafar: 1 day of military special operations?

tayo42: Isn't there a losing war going on to focus on?

BLKNSLVR: What better time to do deeply unpopular things than when everyone is looking the other way?

darth_avocado: 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.

Insanity: 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.

BLKNSLVR: 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".

jmward01: 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.

ChrisArchitect: Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626641

AmVess: Have to pay for the pending war with Cuba somehow.

NooneAtAll3: no idea how big or small that is, so here's my OoM analysis:10B$ is equal to 100k people with 100k$ a year salariesthat's 2k such salaries per state, I guess half or more can be counted for buildings/traveling/equipment expensesno idea what to do with "1k people per state" estimate tho

hackingonempty: > private interests want everything to be a race to the bottomThis is also about rich guys wanting to play rancher.

therobots927: Let’s not forget all the upstanding tech leaders that stood next to Trump and smiled.Thanks guys. Thanks for fucking nothing.

goatlover: So less than 0.03% of the national debt?

Kirby64: 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.

OneMorePerson: 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.

abetusk: The US collected $5.23T in tax revenue in 2025, $2.1T is individual income tax [0]. GDP is estimated at around $30T.Spending on social security is about $680B, medicare is $480B, defense is at $410B [1].Microsoft's valuation is approx. $2.8T [2], Google $3.8T [3], Amazon $2.3T [4], Facebook $1.6T [5] (Linux supply side is valued at approx. $8.8T).The FBI employs roughly 38k people with about $10B in funding [7]. The CIA employs roughly 22k people with about $15B (?) in funding [8].So, from that perspective, $10B is roughly .5% of yearly tax revenue (and about how much the FBI/CIA are funded) and estimated 50k people is about the size of the FBI and CIA combined.[0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/gover...[1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT/key-statistics/[3] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/key-statistics/[4] https://companiesmarketcap.com/amazon/marketcap/[5] https://companiesmarketcap.com/meta-platforms/marketcap/[6] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-038_51f8444f-...[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigatio...[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency

skyberrys: I'm visiting the Los Padres National Forest this weekend, and reading this story makes me cry for the fleeting beauty that doesn't have to be fleeting yet is. In the name of greed an irreplaceable treasure is being lost. I don't understand why we want something when it costs something we can never replace.

csto12: This is kind of one of the points I try to make. All of the damage that is being done right now is very hard to fix when we have sane people back in power (if that happens). It’s 100x easier to destroy than build, and we are seeing it happen in real time.

eucryphia: Hopefully this will end the systematic conversion of the US forest estate into even aged stands of regrowth forest by reintroducing cool burns to remove dangerous accumulations of fine forest fuels.This is a global phenomenon, pushed by socialist activists exploiting the issues for shameless electoral gain in the inner cities.

stfp: Also, attempts to undo the damage will be painted as extreme, whether it’s rehiring / recreating the agencies that were destroyed or prosecuting the crazy corruption and seizing funds.

grebc: Canada & Australia are better examples than the US.