[robinjhuang]

Having lived in Shanghai during 2005-2012 and seeing the construction boom there, I noticed some differences immediately after arriving in the US. It's common to hear about transportation projects taking decades to expand a few stations here. Mean while, since the time I left the Shanghai subway station has opened 21 new lines composed of 516 stations.

Certainly, the air/water was worse in China but workers also had to work much harder (later nights, weekends, etc). But perhaps most importantly, the government would waste no time in getting land that it needed, and it certainly wouldn't ask for your consideration if it needs to do construction on a Saturday morning.

While I appreciate that there is an inherent trade off between environmental consideration and speed, I think the author makes it clear that it's reached comic proportions in the US. The article is short, but I think the main premise is overwhelmingly accurate: The system exists to protect the status quo.

There's also the reliance of transportation agencies on consultants: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/21/mbta-o21.html

[secondaryacct]

I live in China, I think the best way to summarise everything we do at all level is: the end justifies the means.

Need to seize power ? Murder all members of the former power. Need to make poor peasants rich middle class ? Build entire cities, put them there, and done. Need to build a metro station ? Take the land, build it. Need to make Hong Kong a more physically integrated part of the country ? Build a gigantic bridge to Zuhai even if nobody actually need to use it.

The problem ofc is that sometimes the means is more costly than the benefit of the end result, and also that the goal of the end result is never debated, but I suppose that will change eventually, once we've incurred too high a cost for too little a benefit overall.

[mmaunder]

In China, authority overcomes any friction and drives a project forward. In the US there is no authority and there is no common purpose or enemy. So thousands of self interested parties abuse the system in a very time consuming way.

If a major war was to break out, that would provide powerful common purpose and mountains would be moved in weeks, as history has shown. Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe.

Encapsulating innovation inside a corporation is the one way in the US to create a common purpose and shield a group from bureaucratic capture.

[nicbou]

The risk with the first method is that if the authority is wrong, no one can correct its course. One unlucky dice roll and you have 30 years of a dangerously incompetent maniac. Some will only judge such countries by their lucky rolls.

While a war unites a nation, it’s offset by the waste and destruction it creates. The cold war didn’t build more school and hospitals. All those resources went elsewhere, with the occasional dividend for civilians.

Mountains do get moved quickly when you sign blank cheques, but at a greater cost, with more waste and corruption. We put way too much faith in crash programs.

[karpierz]

I think this is why authoritarian governments can be more effective at economic growth when they're behind; they just follow the path that a more economically advanced power did, but with more focus and less concern for individual welfare. Hence China's rapid industrialization.

If that's true, then it'd fall apart when the central authority either becomes too inept or corrupt and the path to follow becomes less clear. Essentially, when the low hanging fruit is gone, the corruption/inepts of the authority would become clear.

[kingkawn]

The idea that working people weren’t ruthlessly exploited in the West’s industrial development is a historical fiction.

[nwah1]

Indeed. Quite a lot of Chinese slave labor was used.

[whimsicalism]

Sure, like how when the US let a million people die from a pandemic and China followed along by... averting what would have been 3-4 million deaths.

[seanmcdirmid]

If China only had higher standards for its wet markets and disallowed the wild trade all together, this whole pandemic would probably never have happened. At some point, Chinese medicine (which the wild animal trade supports) is doing much more harm than good (if pseudo medicine does any good at all).

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

> more waste and corruption.

Does the waste and corruption cost more than the checks and balances though?

Looking at government IT projects, it feels like the overhead and paperwork make everything 10x more expensive, and taking a risk that some of the projects will end up "stolen" would still be cheaper. Especially if particularly egregious cases of corruption would be prosecuted after the fact.

[dotancohen]

  > Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe.

I disagree. The current major environmental catastrophe is unfolding right before our eyes. But because there is a lag of years between cause (positive and negative) and effect, the United States has been an example of how to do absolutely nothing substantial.

Sure, when earthquakes level bridges the US pulls out the shovels and starts collectively digging. But mention climate change and suggest that V8 daily drivers might need to change their habits, and they double down on hurting their progressive neighbors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgT1Sjo6u34

(I'd never actually encoutered this video before, I just googled "rolling coal" and saw that the title mentioned Tesla so clicked it.)

[unfocussed_mike]

> I disagree. The current major environmental catastrophe is unfolding right before our eyes. But because there is a lag of years between cause (positive and negative) and effect, the United States has been an example of how to do absolutely nothing substantial.

Right. This is a major failure of US and British culture in particular: the failure to understand how to grasp future exponential disastrous consequences and the exponential impact of our small individual actions in combatting them.

At the beginning of the Covid pandemic I spent a lot of time trying to explain to people that "but it's been weeks and there's only been a few hundred cases" is not a sufficient guide to what is going to come or how to respond to it.

Trying to urge people that they should be more concerned when they have not been taught about things like survivorship bias, the small-world experiment, have never heard of grains of rice or wheat on a chessboard, and were so rushed through school biology that they've missed key demonstrations of exponential growth, etc., is very difficult.

It was not long before we had people and even politicians saying that people like us were over-blowing things when we worried about Y2K, not out of any wise retrospective assessment of real risk but because "after all that, nothing really bad happened". And that is before we in the UK get to the B word.

Basically people need to see real world consequences for themselves or for those they love before they are galvanised into action, and then they galvanise themselves into action in part by blaming those people who tried to warn them and were not listened to, for failing to act pre-emptively to save them.

Edit to add: I don't mean to say that other cultures don't fail at imagining consequences. And indeed in the Covid situation it might be that some of the cultures that did significantly better had more exposure to SARS or bird flu and learned from that. But there is a general lack of cultural understanding of the risks of severe outcomes in the UK and USA

[raldi]

The common purpose is that we're about to ruin the planet's climate if we don't allow more people to voluntarily live in cities and live less car-dependent lifestyles but still we prohibit apartment buildings in many urban neighborhoods and can't build transit projects anymore.

[seanmcdirmid]

The USA has an adversarial political system: half the people associate with Democrats, half associate with Republicans. But in China, you are either for or against the CPC, and being against it almost means being a traitor. The other political parties exist just for appearances. Unity then is just the default.

[dataexporter]

I don't think a country like the US is capable of making any concrete decisions anymore. America's response to COVID-19 is an example of that.

[myth2018]

> Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe

I used to believe in that. After COVID-19, not anymore.

[a0-prw]

If a major war was to break out, the only mountains there would be, would be mountains of dead.

[taylorhou]

Most people in general have a short term cost/benefit analysis period. What China seemingly does different is they have 10, 20, 50+ year plans which in the time horizon of their multi-thousand year history even seems short term.

Your example of the bridge may seem like no one uses it today but most likely in the future, it will be used and the scale will tip towards it being vastly beneficial compared to its cost.

When countries like the USA have an entire history (not including native americans) of ~300 years, planning anything for 30 years out seems relatively crazy in comparison.

All about perspective.

[Retric]

Trying to use a 50 year plan is also a weakness. Technologies developed between now and then will make many goals obsolete before their finished.

China the county younger than the US. Linking the history as a monolithic entity is really propaganda more than anything else. They are sure trying to create a culturural identity across a country with multiple cultures and languages.

[technobabbler]

> Trying to use a 50 year plan is also a weakness. Technologies developed between now and then will make many goals obsolete before their finished.

It's not that simple. If something changes within the 50 years (and it certainly will), they can pivot away and work on something else.

It's more that they have a relatively unified, authoritarian government with absolute power and no external checks and balances.

At our other extreme, we have a two-party deadlock stretching back decades, and every major policy gets turned back after 4-8 years when the other party regains power. It's impossible to plan or build for the future that way.

We used to be able to send people to the moon, develop nuclear power, build interstates and dams, win not just wars but hearts and minds, rebuild Germany and Japan... and now... we can't even evacuate Afghanistan, can't stop our citizens from being so pissed off they storm the capitol, can't do anything about climate change, can't have a sane discussion about educational curricula, can't maintain infrastructure, can't keep our people off the streets, can't deal with a pandemic...

We've become good at one thing and one thing only: allowing private actors to optimize for massive short-term profits at the expense of society and the future. That's no way to run a country. We've turned citizens into gladiators fighting over scraps.

Not saying we should emulate Chinese authoritarianism, but having a national vision lasting more than one election cycle isn't a bad thing. Being able to unite a country behind a major social project isn't a bad thing. Being able to even THINK of a country as a country, instead of warring factions, isn't a bad thing.

[Retric]

Pivoting away still costs the initial investment. Creating canals seemed like an obvious win being a useful technology for hundreds of years which justified extreme investments. Until suddenly rail took over in a relative blink of the eye.

Authoritarianism tends to efficiently solve the wrong problems which results in an overall inefficient system. Private actors aren’t limited to only optimizing for today. Going to collage is a great example of long term optimization as is getting a 30 year mortgage etc. The difference is simply one of scale where private actors may not optimize the global problem, but global optimization is really difficult.

[technobabbler]

Private actors optimizing for their local maximum is in and of itself a sort of inefficiency.

In any case, it doesn't have to be an either-or situation (and arguably shouldn't be). For most of the last century we were able to juggle private needs with public works, using private talent to cooperatively tackle problems of national scale.

It was only in the last 2-3 decades that we really stopped believing in the country, and the government became increasingly dysfunctional. Then the last 5-10 years we really started circling the drain. I don't know what happened. Some of it looks to me like deliberate sabotage, a concerted effort to decrease public faith in government so that deregulation can benefit the elite. Some of it just looks like sheer incompetence.

Maybe it's just the natural end of our golden age. We've hit the limits of the sort of problems our system can reliably tackle, while the nationalists are still on the upward trajectory -- for now. China is especially scary because they've managed to invent a whole new sort of capitalism hybridized with nationalism-authoritarianism. It has the hallmarks of a free market at the lower levels, but the government has the final word on any business and can nationalize/co-opt corporations whenever they want. In that way they get the benefits of private innovation and enterprise along with the ability to essentially eminent domain entire businesses and sectors at will. It's worked scarily well for them, and they are on the verge of eclipsing our model in the next few decades. The severe cost of it, of course, is measured in lives and liberties, something that West would not (and should not) accept.

But the thing is, we have no answer to that at all. We don't really even discuss it anymore as a nation. There is no national debate about public works or long-term planning from anyone except a tiny portion of the left, while the rest of the political class argue about gender and race and toilets and guns and abortions. It's almost like all the culture wars are an intentional distraction from our failing system of government and economics, where the rich keep getting richer every year -- especially during covid -- and everyone else falls further and further down the ladder. We're so fucked without some sort of forward thinking. Wish we could see some actual leadership for once...

[Aperocky]

> China the county younger than the US. Linking the history as a monolithic entity is really propaganda

If you know anything about Chinese mentality and how it deeply affect all level of its society, you'll know that it didn't start from 1949. While the government initially tried to suppress China's historic roots in 1960s and 1970s to install a communist utopia, it failed miserably, and they have stopped trying since and embraced it.

As it stands, the first statement quoted is hilarious.

[Retric]

People defiantly get taught to make such connections and people therefore do feel a connection. But all that proves is propaganda works.

It’s no more accurate to trace China’s history through prior empires covering it’s approximate borders as it is to it through the British empire which ruled some of it’s current territory, subjugated them, and still has a huge influence on current culture. The obvious reason to do so is to suggest a shared cultural identity.

Even just trying to pick which empires to include as Chinese is completely arbitrary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri_66ztYa5o.

[Archelaos]

Germany, with its 200,000 year history,[1] has for its transport infrastructure at least 15 year plans, which are only moderately legally binding. They are readjusted approximately every five years. New 15 year plans are being developed before the new ones expire, and there are is also some overlap between the plans. With this in mind, the current government has a transport infrastructure plan for 2040 on its agenda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis

[smallmind]

In this bridge example, not only did it cost $19 billion to build, but the tolls collected actually do not cover operating costs. Doubt their 20 year plan included having to dump more money into the bridge to just keep it working. There are a lot of Youtube videos about China's similar problems with their large high speed rail network.

[Closi]

To OPs point though, the goal wasn’t to pull a profit it was to build links between the two countries.

[whimsicalism]

Hong Kong isn't a separate country

[Closi]

Ok, special administrative region. It has its own laws, currency etc so I don’t think this changes the overall point.

[Aperocky]

you can say the same about most of China's vast highway network. When they were newly built, most of these didn't have the traffic needed.

Now a few of them are constantly congested.

[HWR_14]

I don't understand your point. The US may not be old, but European and other histories are taught. Meanwhile, how much impact do the war of the three kingdoms have on modern China?

[caycep]

I also somewhat worry the attention to safety standards make Aperture Science seem like a paragon of OSHA compliance....

[Yaina]

Remember: Alert your supervisor!

https://www.deviantart.com/orbital-vector/art/Portal-2-Remem...

[phendrenad2]

Somewhere between US stagnation and China/UAE building for the sake of building lies a happy medium.

[chii]

i bet that happy medium is not a stable equilibrium because any force on one side (or the other) pushes the balance. There's no restoring force.

[maxcan]

Yes, and its called Singapore and Japan.

[roenxi]

It isn't so much that I disagree as I think the frame is a bit skewed. When America is operating at its peak everyone has similar complaints (switching "end justifies the means" with "you can do whatever you like if you have money" because historically the US operates using money as a medium).

Whenever anything happens people complain that some interests aren't represented or that resources aren't being used in the way they'd like. The point of the article is more that the US has systemically made it illegal to deploy resources quickly and effectively.

[throwusawayus]

at all levels ? there must be limits to this approach right ???

otherwise this way of thinking gets terrifying fast and rapidly descends into conspiracy theory land

example: "need to find a socially-acceptable solution to a demographic time bomb caused by decades of one child policy, while still maintaining ethnic homogeneity ? perform gain-of-function research to develop a vector that disproportionately harms the elderly"

to be absolutely clear, I don't believe this was actually the case in 2019 at all - but as an no-limits "end justifies the means" thought exercise - it is easy to arrive at inhuman dystopian nightmares

[stathibus]

It should surprise nobody that an authoritarian, centrally planned, and massively resource-rich country can perform infrastructure miracles. You don't have to stoop to conspiracy theories to understand this.

[chii]

> can perform infrastructure miracles.

Some of the infrastructure has lead to extra economic benefit beyond just the infrastructure stimulus. But other infrastructure might not - and i would call them economic waste (but not political waste).

Have a look at the train projects described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvXlax4ZXk

The building of those rail networks is meant to achieve a political purpose, rather than an actual productivity increase. Perhaps their leadership thought it was worth the spend, but this sort of spending would unlikely work in the US imho.

[lazide]

We literally did that with the US highway system, it was just right after WW2.

Same goals, same trade offs, same sometimes major wins, sometimes pointless spending.

[ggm]

Rail > Road for freight, and efficiency. America underfunded rail and the Eisenhower highway initiative demanded it, to justify the investment.

Chinese new year, more people travel in China than the whole of the USA, homecoming notwithstanding. It's mass transposition, there and back again.

They need trains. I've used them shanghai to Beijing, great service. I wish I'd been able to use the maglev in shanghai

[dotancohen]

  > The building of those rail networks is meant to achieve a political
  > purpose, rather than an actual productivity increase. Perhaps their leadership thought
  > it was worth the spend, but this sort of spending would unlikely work in the US imho.

You might want to read a bit about the Space Launch System, a well-known political jobs program that many consider a hindrance in advancing the art of space flight.

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html

[secondaryacct]

Yes at all levels, do you want me to tell you what we do to kill a virus ? :D

For natality dont just think today, think 50 years ago when the goal was to reduce it: forced abortion, abandonning your newborn at the nearest wet market (high volume of people) was very common. It's harder to force people to copulate, but I trust our overlords to find a way ahah

The virus however, I m more of the opinion that to fix SARS we decided to import thousands of vietnamese bats to study or such thing and fucked up one way or another. I dont think it was made to kill old people, it was a crazy large scale risky project to prevent the next SARS - the end justifies the means, but this time the means were very costly to foreigners. We dont care yet, or at least we managed to pretend our costs were still low enough not to execute every single person involved, as one should have done if millions of Chinese had died.

[Robotbeat]

China’s ZeroCovid policy worked pretty well, but it’s failing with Omicron. And unfortunately, the nonMRNA domestic vaccines aren’t terribly effective. So it’s possible millions of Chinese people will still die. (I hope not.)

[secondaryacct]

You're right, I think we dont prepare for the worst case. Im in HK and just today our dear leader said nobody could have predicted 2 millions HKers would be contaminated (5000 deaths).

Well, let s give her that but then the central gov, surely NOW they can predict 25% of China being contaminated ? How are they preparing ?

[Retric]

> demographic time bomb

China actually solved the excess men problem problem via ethnic cleansing.

Send men to reeducation camps while you import surplus men from another location to eliminate a minority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

It’s even more disturbing when you read up on the details, and consider the elderly aren’t yet a problem.

[ashwagary]

>China actually solved the excess men problem problem via ethnic cleansing.

How would the US behave if it had Wahhabist extremists near one of its borders? We've only seen how the US responded to some 6000 miles away in Afghanistan, most of them were brutally executed, not deradicalized or reeducated.

[kortilla]

“Here’s an unrelated thing an unrelated country did, therefore it’s okay.”

[makomk]

The US did not, in fact, brutally execute most of the population of Afghanistan. Remember, it's the Ugyur population as a whole that China has "deradicalized or reeducated" - not just active terrorists, not even religious extremists, but everyone.

[savingsPossible]

Are the Ugyurs comparable to Wahhabists?

Also, does the US uniformly target Wahhabists ?

[ashwagary]

The Uyghurs being targeted for deradicalization are Wahhabist (an offshoot of Salafism) that have a lot in common with, and in many cases directly trained by, Al Qaeda.

Granted, the net may be slightly larger than it needs to be due to China's high population density and the resulting fact that terroristic acts have a high human cost... but it's nowhere near the scale of our (US) net across Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan.

The vast majority of muslim communities in China have nothing to do with this kind of extremist ideology, don't commit acts of mass terror, and are not part of these deradicalization programs.

[throwusawayus]

i agree that is disturbing but it is not what i was referring to, sorry I meant excess old people - age demographics - not excess men.

based on projections china's population peaked ~last year. it is a shrinking population from here, and while this will be a huge problem in most of the world (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735230 discussed recently) but it is happening MUCH sooner in china, and at an unprecedented scale.

it is an existential threat and i am sure their government sees this, and it is scary to think what an "ends justify the means" way of thinking leads to with this problem

[Retric]

Yes, my point was that’s a looming problem but not currently an issue so we can only guess how their going to solve it. But, the options considered are anything up to including say romanticizing elderly suicide.

[jokethrowaway]

If we're lucky they'll pioneer growing babies entirely in vitro, no humans needed besides their DNA (which is branch of research I'd really like to see but morals in the West prevent that)

[mensetmanusman]

That is a good joke.

[droptablemain]

China is dealing with terrorism in a far more graceful way than the U.S. ever has. They're doing it with education and jobs.

[tsol]

Forcibly re-education and forced jobs(read: labor) is more accurate. Graceful isn't the right word. They're certainly more efficient, but their efforts are not without vast international condemnation. As much as I deplore the US response to terrorism, China's response isn't exactly a breath of fresh air

[bllguo]

what do you propose? because this all just sounds so naive. obviously the methods are horrible but there is no feel-good response to terrorism. can you really blame a nation for taking a zero-tolerance approach?

"international condemnation" is hardly a meaningful metric. It comes from 1. countries that have done and are doing far worse (slaughter, invasion, fomenting regime change), 2. countries that are sitting there wringing their hands as internal strife mounts over the increasing culture clash, and 3. countries that are lucky enough not to have these problems.

[Retric]

Forced abortions are a little more than just education and jobs.

[FredPret]

Jobs in a concentration camp though

[misslibby]

Suppose you are an elite that wants to control the global economy, and you hit upon the idea that a "Great Reset" would be necessary.

How do you build a reset button? A "mild" pandemic seems like an interesting approach.

Also not saying this was the case at all. However, it is a fact that gain of function research was being conducted, sponsored by the USA.

Oh, and if the modern biotech solution fails, WW3 might do the trick the traditional way.

[technobabbler]

Man, this shadowy cabal was so good, they started a global pandemic that brought the world economy under its control, made everyone fall in line behind pandemic mandates, shut up all dissent and turned everyone into zombies who now work three times as hard.

That's exactly what happened, right?

[misslibby]

It kind of happened? Many countries established new levels of censorship and control. People installed tracking apps and got used to constant surveillance. All sorts of things. But not good enough, hence the need for WW3.

Anyway, not saying it was or is a master plan. Just saying that if you were hypothetically thinking about a reset button, a pandemic would be a clever approach, and within technological reach.

"The Great Reset" was the official motive of the World Economic Forum. They absolutely do want a reset.

[ip26]

Yeah, this framing was taken in a piece a few years ago about the failure to revitalize a rail project [1] in New York, which ultimately pinned the blame on tipping the balance too far in favor of private property rights. A single person/holdout can grind a project valuable to millions to a halt. It's the most compelling explanation I've read.

In short, if private property has absolute veto power, you can never get big public projects done. (This is why eminent domain exists) There's a balance between private property rights & public good; in the times of great public works, the public good was given more sway, while recently private property rights have been given more (and stifled public works).

[1]: I think it was https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

[z1nc]

Then the important thing is that a process of weighing those rights/costs/benefits and so on exists. e.g., if they needed to tear down a couple of apartment buildings and disrupt hundreds of folks, I could see an argument against that. But for just one guy? Eh...

---

That article has a lot of disturbing things in it- 200 extra workers (that even the union guys said weren't needed), inflated costs, low competition driving up bids, gifts given to government officials from contractors, and so on.

This bit is the most concerning:

“Is it rigged? Yes,” said Charles G. Moerdler, who has served on the M.T.A. board since 2010. “I don’t think it’s corrupt. But I think people like doing business with people they know, and so a few companies get all the work, and they can charge whatever they want.”

If you gotta play semantics on whether you're in a rigged system or a corrupt one...

[parineum]

> In short, if private property has absolute veto power, you can never get big public projects done. (This is why eminent domain exists)

I wish they'd modify the language of eminent domain to reward double, triple or even quadruple market rate. I want people being _happy_ to have their property seized.

[BHSPitMonkey]

This would be a great way for corrupt politicians to funnel large sums of real estate money to their friends and donors (or to trigger wild speculation bubbles anywhere people think eminent domain is likely to be applied).

I do think these payouts need to be well in excess of market rates (in order to properly compensate people for inconvenience / related expenses / opportunity costs, but tripling or quadrupling property values is a bit far fetched.

[technobabbler]

Whatever, pork-barrel corruption is already an everyday part and parcel of our system. Paying 2x-4x for some piece of land is still waaaaaaaay cheaper for society than drowning in decades-long quagmire while infrastructure falls apart everywhere.

Any time you have a massive building project you're going to get corruption. If you can't even eminent domain it through useful areas, you're just going to get developers buying land in the middle of nowhere and selling it back to the government as the only remaining viable route.

[randbox]

>Paying 2x-4x for some piece of land is still waaaaaaaay cheaper for society than drowning in decades-long quagmire while infrastructure falls apart everywhere.

Eminent domain is not only used to acquire owner occupied homes for infrastructure. In some cities it is used to purchase poorly maintained properties from slumlords.

Landlords get what rent they can and don't invest anything in upgrades because they know they can cash out with the city government or public land bank. Promising to pay 2-4x may make the problem worse.

If a building is nearly fully depreciated, and has $0 building value, and the landlord invested closed to $0 in maintaining it, but the land is worth $200K, why should they get 4x whatever they claim the gamed comparables are and $800K from the public for doing nothing?

Maybe 150% of the building replacement cost for owner occupied homes makes sense, but ideally absentee investors holding depreciated properties and vacant lots wouldn't get paid a dime for the land value.

[technobabbler]

Because otherwise it'd be a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good? That scenario would happen anyhow even at market rate.

As a taxpayer I'd rather see some money wasted, and some progress being made, rather than nothing getting done ever.

Corruption and waste are tolerable to some degree, IMO. "Government wastefulness" is too often code for not letting the government do anything at all.

I just don't think our current societal bottlenecks are due to a budget or GDP crisis. There is so much wealth locked away, I'd rather it be spent on public works even if it means losing a few cents on the dollar to corruption along the way.

It's not like the private sector is risk free, or that the government doesn't waste money on wars and questionable foreign aid already.

There is such a backlog of infrastructure to build, whether roads and bridges or prisons and schools and climate change mitigation or renewables or nuclear... we gotta do something about that. If that means a slumlord getting rich, I guess it's a cost of doing business?

Or what's a better alternative?

[DennisP]

I used to know a former state senator, who would say "the road to riches in this state is cheap land and cheap politicians."

She had a background in forensic accounting, was instrumental in getting a particular state senator convicted of corruption, and lost the support of the state party in the process.

[technobabbler]

> She had a background in forensic accounting, was instrumental in getting a particular state senator convicted of corruption, and lost the support of the state party in the process.

You point out a different, and arguably way more important, problem in our politics: we have no real pathway for domain experts to become powerful representatives and provide meaningful oversight. Instead you just have corrupt lawyers vouching for other corrupt lawyers, writing corrupt laws and appointing corrupt judges, all with the active approval and participation of the two major parties. It's just evil all up and down the chain.

[ip26]

Blessing graft & corruption is weirdly popular on HN.

[technobabbler]

I think it's just an acknowledgment and acceptance that the system is thoroughly fucked, and there's no public will to overthrow it or clean it up, so seeking incremental gains where possible is better than nothing.

If you do nothing, there corruption will still be there, but nothing will improve.

If you try to push things through, the corruption will still be there, but maybe small things will get built here and there.

What do you think is a better solution to corruption? Starve the state? We've been doing that for decades and that just further empowers private interests, the same people who've benefited from and furthered corruption in government. shrug No easy fix. Every country has corruption, but the highly functional governments tend to have less of it because they attract more well-intentioned career civil servants instead of powermongers.

[tinco]

You could make it conditional on some things. The goal is to compensate for discomfort, not to compensate lost income. So you could say you only compensate primary residences and self operated businesses, both occupied for 3+ years.

Or you could approach it from a different angle and compensate each resident and business operators with $10,000 relocation cost (in addition to buying their property with a 5% extra). That has the added benefit of eliminating more of the market price risk from projections.

[datavirtue]

I think the optimal course is to have a very painful eminant domain process that pays a crappy above market rate so that government is incentivized to offer actual market rate (big project wants your land so market rate is vastly increased as a result). I have seen corn fields sold for millions because a state college wanted it for a new campus. The market rate was well under $1MM. For that land eminant domain would have been a nightmare because of the particular politics and unimproved nature of the site....so they had to offer actual market rate...which is the rate demanded of someone when they know it's a monied developer that wants it.

[icelancer]

Exactly. "Market rate" is ridiculous, and justifiably private property owners should be able to hold out sine market rate doesn't factor in switching costs, both financial and emotional.

I think 3x market rate is a decent starting place.

[notreallyserio]

I think the amount paid should be based on the average market rate of properties where the person must move to have the same commute and amenities. If the government wants to destroy the poorest area, at least folks there can move somewhere nicer without much inconvenience.

[zdragnar]

That is an incredibly easy way to waste money.

Political donor: Hey Mr. Politician, I am going to buy some massive apartment complexes. Do me a favor and put a road through them, would you?

Politician: Sure thing, there's an election coming up and I do so love helping out our citizens! holds out hand to receive wads of donations

[p20z]

The current model enables the same behavior and makes it harder to track. Stalled projects have ongoing costs that make the project developers real money in exchange for no real effort. The same donor simply says “hey mr politician, give my company the exclusive contract and never mind that my aunt owns a building in our way. I’ll only charge you 30% for each year we are stalled.”

We burn money on these projects either way. A good windfall to property owners gives regular families a chance at enjoying some profits… and makes donors who block progress just a little easier to track!

[technobabbler]

This is in fact how many projects get built today, even without eminent domain.

[zdragnar]

If graft is a problem, the answer should not be "make graft easier and more common"

[technobabbler]

Graft is just one problem out of many though. Lack of public investment in public institutions, I'd argue, is another, bigger problem.

I'd like to see graft tackled by more competitive elections (multi-party, ranked-choice, easier voting processes, etc.) rather than simply gutting the government so it can't do anything at all... I think the conservatives call that starving the beast? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

That just puts government in a death spiral and drags huge swaths of society down with it.

By comparison, a small degree of graft is an inefficiency inherent in any large organization. As a taxpayer or customer, it doesn't necessarily matter to me whether $20 of my $100 goes to a politician's vacation home or the CEO's yacht, as long as the shit gets built effectively. If it gets to $50 or $80 of that $100 though... yeah, shit's broken.

[rootusrootus]

Given how the sheer amount of money wasted when even one property owner holds out, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to justify a serious premium on the amount paid to those whose property is seized. In most cases I imagine it's just a small part of the overall cost of the project.

[IggleSniggle]

Don’t want them to be TOO happy to have property seized. Creates a bunch of perverse incentives

[scarface74]

What happens historically that if a government has a choice between destroying wealth in a minority neighborhood or destroying wealth in a non minority neighborhood, it’s usually the minority neighborhood.

[slothtrop]

New York has an interesting History of projects being ramrodded through dubious means (at the expense of the public) under Robert Moses in the early 20th Century, I imagine stops were put in place to prevent that from occurring again.

[Spooky23]

The Moses story is more nuanced than that. Read the Caro book.

Ultimately the triumph of Moses was understanding the nature of power and making key friends and allies who helped him wield it. He got shit done. In the beginning, this was enormously beneficial - the state and city park systems, key bridges, and the framework of competent engineering that blunted the impact of the depression… New York was uniquely able to benefit from New Deal programs, because of Moses. We remember the exclusionary bridges of the Northern State Parkway, but forget that these highways broke the Dutch legacy of quasi-feudal great estates and baymen who kept the public from the seashore.

The problem is that his acquisition of power transitioned from triumph to tragedy. His friend Gov. Smith gave him ironclad control of key public authorities - he held 100 different jobs at one point. As in all cases, unchecked, unlimited power corrupts. Only Gov. Rockefeller was able to break the guy, and only because his family was his bankers. Moses’ empire ultimately saved NYC, as the subways would have been bankrupt without the toll bridges supporting the rail system.

Today, New York has a murky soup of laws that give certain unions a lot of power, and require that projects are bid out with multiple prime contractors, etc. Between that and the political dynamic from the transportation system being controlled by the State (the governor controls the MTA) and the complex home rule of NYC, it’s a complicated mess.

That said, NY is more functional than most other places when it comes to transit.

[specialist]

Much belated. Apologies.

> Moses’ empire ultimately saved NYC, as the subways would have been bankrupt without the toll bridges supporting the rail system.

Moses did the opposite. As detailed in the book The Power Broker.

He looted mass transit to fund sprawl. At one point, he even had a secret deal with the Republican leadership in Albany to redirect subway revenue into some bond finance scheme. (I don't recall the details.)

He did much the same with the toll booths. That revenue was used to finance bonds, which were then spent on more sprawl. Very little of it was spent on improving the city's core. He worked very hard to hide the details.

In fact, my hunch is that Moses' various finance schemes and exfiltration of monies is directly responsible for NYC's financial troubles, which almost caused that government to default on its debt. I really wish someone would followup on Caro's work, connect those dots.

Moses' strategy of looting urban centers to fund sprawl was then replicated everywhere.

[deanCommie]

Complex historical men need deep layers of evaluation (See also: Columbus, Washington, etc)

Layer 1: This is a great man who did great things (Moses: public projects)

Layer 2: He was discriminatory, racist, and optimized for his ilk/kind whether it's racially, genderly, socio-economically, etc. (Moses: Focus on white people or at least those of sufficient socioeconomic class)

Layer 3: Progress for SOME people is better than nothing. Improving public access and transportation for poor whites is better than not having anything at all.

Layer 4: Partial progress is often used as an excuse to stop further progress. And if you promote one group at the expense of another, you arguably create MORE inequality not less.

etc.

[slothtrop]

I read the same book you did and your impression of him is too generous. Moses lied, cheated, and strong-armed his way to "getting things done".

[bradleyjg]

It’s common wisdom to say these projects were dubious. There’s no question they came with costs—-but would we rather not have the BQE, Cross Bronx Expressway, or Brooklyn Battery Tunnel? I don’t think we would. It’s easy to fantasize about public transit alternatives but even with Robert Moses NYC is a significant outlier in the US for public transit both in the city and in the region.

[Spooky23]

There’s a tail wagging the dog factor to the highway stuff. The FHA sealed the fate of those neighborhoods by cutting off the oxygen.

I live in a small city that was carved up by redlining. My block was in the “yellow” zone, and the houses built after 1935 or so are very different than the houses on the next block, which is in the “green zone”.

Yellow = Italians and Greeks, 1 and 2 family small houses. Green = old money types, bigger houses on fancy lots.

[DogOfTheGaps]

BQE and Cross-Bronx Expressway definitely not. Building highways through cities is extremely damaging and exist only to ferry suburbanites into and out of the city. Moses wanted to build a highway through Greenwich village. That would have been devastating for lower Manhattan. Intra-city Highways destroy the very vibrancy required for them to adapt and change.

Brooklyn Battery Tunnel? That is a good project. Connecting different areas across bodies of water is good.

[bradleyjg]

That’s ideology over common sense. Which suburbanites are being ferried in and out of the city over the BQE?

Hint: what it connects is right there in the name.

[DogOfTheGaps]

Fort Lee, NJ to Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

[lupire]

Easy to say when your neighborhood wasn't the one destroyed.

[bradleyjg]

NYC is about change. If you want stability there’s the whole rest of the country. I have no patience for people that want it both ways.

[treeman79]

Is there any other way to actually get things done in such a dense area?

[throwaway290]

IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them (are those holdouts being paid or otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized? do they have pathological distrust to the government, how can that be worked out? etc.) rather than the governments not having the crazy power to just do anything they want if they think it is "public good". The latter is horrifying, I fail to see how it is ever desirable (even if it occasionally leads to positive outcomes, it cannot be trusted to do so reliably).

[fpig]

Usually they're trying to profit by being the last holdouts, hoping they will be able to get more money this way. It may not be worth paying everyone 3X, but if everyone except one person agreed to X, then paying the last holdout 3X is not a huge expense and gets the project going. At least that's what they're hoping for.

There was a case in my city where they wanted to build a shopping mall and offered the people who owned homes on the plot a deal. Only 1 person refused and asked for much more money (in his words "Who accepts the first offer??"), and since this plot wasn't critical for the project, they never even contacted him after that and just built it without his plot: https://www.vecernji.hr/media/img/38/97/a9f29b9fca44602d5b41... (the lone house in the "corner"). He got mad, sued them, etc.

This was a private company; I'm not sure why the government would have this problem, since they can exercise eminent domain for stuff like infrastructure, it's literally why it exists.

[lupire]

Because government abuses its power, and the US still as a bit of anti-totalitarian DNA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

[retrac]

> why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them (are those holdouts being paid or otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized? do they have pathological distrust to the government, how can that be worked out? etc.)

A highway extension here in Ontario was blocked for years by homeowners who, as far as I can tell, just didn't want their community bulldozed to put in a highway. An entirely reasonable position to hold, regardless of whether the highway is to the public good. There is no reasonable incentive you could give to get some people to give up land they have been on for their whole lives. When one is talking hundreds of properties as in the case of that extension, you will absolutely find a stubborn person who will say no.

[throwaway283929]

The cool part of that story is where they seized property with eminent domain, built the toll highway with tax money, then sold the whole thing at a discount to an international conglomerate, to be a toll highway for the next 100 years.

[seanmcdirmid]

What’s wrong with toll highways. The tax money is still needed to build it, the company operating it isn’t making so much money as to negate that, and eventually the money is replenished through usage fees. By making it a toll way, the people who use it will pay for it eventually, and it discourages low value usage of the road.

[throwaway290]

In this particular example can't the holdout see how it would benefit the economy (as roads do) that they're part of, possibly reduce emissions into the environment they live in, etc.?

If the government provides them with replacement property, why would they object so strongly?

And doesn't the fact that everyone else agreed make them consider that perhaps it would be public good for some reason?

[7steps2much]

> In this particular example can't the holdout see how it would benefit the economy (as roads do) that they're part of, possibly reduce emissions into the environment they live in, etc.?

Zou are trying to use logic here, but the simple truth is that a lot of times people don't care about that. They are emotional beings. They simply do not care about any of the points you made, they want to keep their house/property/whatever. They don't care.

Smoking is bad for people and the people around them, yet many don't quit. Wearing masks is great for the public good, yet many do not. One could go on about vaccines and other topics but the simple truth is: They do not care.

That is why laws exist to take these properties from them. If they are absolutely opposed to the offers made, unwilling to sell and can't be moved then you take the property, hand them what others agree is a fair price (or at least the fairest they can come up with), and go through with it anyways.

[throwaway290]

I disagree that this is acceptable status quo. Emotion has roots, and people can be reasoned with. Lack of care is a threat to democracy.

It looks like if underlying issues are resolved, then there would not be a need for such overreach.

[retrac]

If you don't feel strong emotional attachment to some particular property, I'm not sure I can explain it to you. There is no monetary value that can replace the living room where you watched your kid take their first walk, or the field where your grandparents are buried, if you happen to be that kind of person.

An analogy: why not make taxes voluntary? (Eminent domain is conceptually most similar to taxation, after all.) Surely after you explain that it's to the public good, you won't have any holdouts, right?

[throwaway290]

I understand emotional attachment to property. I also understand that nothing is permanent and it may be necessary to let go.

Since I was a child, family moved and sold previously used estate/flats more than once. Yes, there are memories and my grandparents built and lived there. Now other people build and live there. Life goes on.

We are not talking about somebody persuading you to sell your property to satisfy their fancy. It is a cause that will have positive effects on the region and the country.

And you personally, meanwhile, get a free chance to move and find an even better spot that doesn't have the shortcomings of the previous one. I recall that's sort of how USA started.

Framing emotional attachment as an overriding motive and purpose strikes me as an excuse for complacency, aversion to change, laziness.

[jolux]

> why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them

Because if the government can't exercise eminent domain then those people are incentivized to extract maximum value from the government over the land. They may not want to sell it, or they may charge an exorbitant price.

[imtringued]

It's kind of strange how the law recognizes that land ownership is a source of power yet does absolutely nothing against it. If the government has to override the law, just imagine how much they distort the private economy, where there is no easy way out. So many apartments couldn't be built and so many people could not be housed.

[jolux]

Land value tax would solve this.

[ip26]

There's a host of problems. A simple example is a holdout who sees they are the only remaining obstacle to a project, and demand ten million dollars for a fifty thousand dollar plot of land the government needs for the project. A very capitalist mindset! But poison to public works. There's no "working with" someone who thinks they are sitting on a winning lottery ticket.

Another simple problem is that of guarantees. If the government is certain to be able to secure the land in a reasonable timeframe, they can structure the whole project on top of that certainty, planning from start to finish, establishing financing, signing contracts... If acquisition is an open-ended negotiation in which the holdout can linger for decades, either nothing can be done until every last square foot of land is secured, or else you risk suspending everything halfway (very expensive).

[imtringued]

This problem wouldn't exist with a land value tax because he would get a $200k tax bill every year (2% LVT).

[notahacker]

It's not that simple when the plot of land is developed, because you can't build an expressway without also buying whatever structures sit on that land, which aren't rateable for an LVT and may genuinely be worth much more. Holdouts argue the lot is the same low value land it always has been for LVT purposes but they want $10m to sell their beautiful ancestral family home that sits on it...

A traditional property tax rating encompassing the value of the lot and everything that sits on it works much better for compulsory purchases.

[narag]

IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them...

I suspect the legal system is one of the reasons. Judges and precedents carry more weight than in other countries, where parliaments can just pass a law that's unassailable.

On the other hands I read here news about authorities summarily seizing (not just freezing) assets from people that are only accused. That's unconceivable in other jurisdictions.

[patentatt]

Your comment about the Shanghai subway sparked my curiosity. Wikipedia says the Shanghai metro consists of 396 stations across 19 lines, and has been operating since 1993. How does that square with "since [2012] the Shanghai subway station has opened 21 new lines composed of 516 stations"? Especially when Wikipedia also says "During Expo 2010 the metro system consisted of 11 lines, 407 km, and 277 stations." Seems like they opened 119 stations and added 8 new lines since 2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro

[dwohnitmok]

Parent misspoke. It's been 21 lines consisting of 516 stations in total since inception (really since 2000 since there was a long lull of little activity in the 90s). The discrepancy in lines comes from whether you count certain rail-based transportation lines as part of the subway system or not. The discrepancy in subway stations is mainly due to whether you count interchange stations as single stations or multiple stations. I think the former is the one that is usually quoted for other subway systems in the world so makes more sense (so ~400 is probably the more appropriate number of stations to state).

I also wonder if the Wikipedia article may be out of date? IIRC there were some new stations added in the last few months. But even if that were the case it's just a couple of stations, so the numbers should still be close.

More impressive to me is the pace of construction in smaller cities which have also been rapidly building out subway systems (e.g. Hangzhou comes to mind, getting around Hangzhou on public transportation has drastically improved in the last five years, likewise I've personally seen the same immense improvements for Harbin).

[watersb]

> The discrepancy in lines comes from whether you count certain rail-based transportation lines as part of the subway system or not.

Ah, that makes some sense.

Like in San Francisco, there is the regional BART light rail, but also there is the hybrid bus/rail Muni metro transit for local service.

https://www.sfmta.com/muni-transit

https://www.bart.gov

[gernb]

I'm sure Japan is not at China's levels but in the time I lived there are I saw several lines get completely, several stations get rebuilt (A good example would be Shinagawa Station) and an 11km underground highway built. Meanwhile it's taken SF 10 plus years for SF to build a tiny 4 station line (the Central Line) and it's not done.

[joe_the_user]

The thing is, Europe, where the environment is a significant consideration, also builds subways (and other things) at significantly faster speeds and lower cost than the US.

If you look in any detail, it's not a matter of some magic the Chinese or whoever have, it's matter of the corrupt nexus of interests that have come to soak up any transit spending in the US, in particular.

[thiscatis]

No they don't. Typical bureaucratic examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterweel_Link

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/berlin-brandenburg-ai...

[joe_the_user]

Those are just anecdotes. You can google up ten articles verifying US transit construction costs are higher per mile - and the US is much more spread out too.

Random article.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/us-rail-projects-take-...

[thiscatis]

maybe because a mile is longer than a kilometer...

[nouveaux]

"an inherent trade off between environmental consideration and speed"

It's not just environmental consideration. Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt behavior. Evergrande is a great example of speed. Banks in China made the same mistakes that banks in US made in 2008. If banks in China had tight regulations for the last 20 years, real estate growth would be significantly hampered.

China should be given credit in that their leaders learned from other countries and leveraged their population size to grow with incredible speed. However, I would argue that China's rise to power has less to do with their efficiency and more to do with laws of growth. If we exclude Covid, I am willing to bet that China will not be able to sustain double digit growth ever again. In fact, I am willing to bet my house that when China achieves US's per capita GDP levels, China will never achieve double digit growth ever again.

[_dain_]

>Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt behavior.

Slowness is surely even better for nepotism and corrupt behaviour.

[nouveaux]

I'm not familiar with this so if you can help me understand, I would appreciate it.

From my understanding, one of the causes of slowness in US is waiting for bids. Government related work is required to open projects up for bids for a period of time, review all the bids and document the process. In many other countries, the project goes to the company with better relations to the project manager or the companies with the best bribes.

[_dain_]

The longer something takes, the longer it is expected to take. Delays compound on themselves, it becomes harder to plan further into the future. Costs skyrocket. More opportunities for bad actors to enrich themselves.

[nouveaux]

Maybe. The way I see it, transparency and fairness takes far more time than nepotism and corrupt behavior. How would you suggest that the government be more fair, transparent and fast?

[bluGill]

Trying to do too much in one large bid instead of splitting out to smaller companies doesn't help either.

[kitsunesoba]

It creates more room for other problems too.

More time for obstructionists to find footing, increased chance of loss of political will, and more opportunities for public opinion to sour among other things.

While rushing isn’t good, protracting the process is also a likely death sentence for the project in question.

[oblio]

China will most likely never reach US GDP per capita levels. Japan or Germany or Sweden aren't.

Maybe GDP per capita PPP levels, even though that's also debatable.

[socialdemocrat]

Many have reached US levels of economic output per hour. The key difference is that while Europeans have opted for better work-life balance, Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends.

The other challenge is that many other countries are more aggressive about keeping resource usage to a minimal. Compare e.g. usage or resources, water, land and energy per dollar of GDP and the US is really high.

European countries, Korea and Japan may not have as high GDP but is often on a far more sustainable path.

[smegma2]

Japan has better WLB than the US? Are you sure? This sounds very anecdotal.

> Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends.

My counter: I don't know a single person working like this

[Spooky23]

There’s two americas.

You have the people upset that their big tech employer won’t do their laundry anymore. Then you have the underclass of people who can lose everything if they get hurt or show up late for work a few times.

[bluGill]

I've heard a few like that. They are in the early years of founding a business, their day job is unpaid, the 2nd job is so they can eat, and theweekend job is more money to invest in the main one. The plan is in a few years the first job makes money and they quit the others.

Or sometimes someone who is laid off in a downturn and works like that for a year while waiting for things to improve so they can return to their previous high spending lifestyle with lots of vacation to enjoy the toys they are now just able to make payments on.

[lupire]

"Early years of founding a business" is not a substitantial part of the population.

[whimsicalism]

Jesus christ, it's like large parts of HN don't even realize people exist outside of their affluent west coast bubble.

[arvinsim]

Do you think it is because they need it?

Or is it because hustle culture has become so normalized that people could not conceive of the alternatives?

[ClumsyPilot]

Is GDP per capita appropriate metric? Japan has higher median salaries than US does.

How much of thay GDP is down to US being a global center of finance and location of corporate HQ of most gl9bal firms, pulling in wealth from across the world?

Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people?

You may argue those things shouls not be remoced from GDP, but if we are discussing working life on an average person, this GDP number might not be reflective of it

[chii]

> Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top 0.1% of richest people?

those richest people don't personally contribute that much to GDP (their companies they own do). Removing them would make not much difference - their spending might be 10x or may be even 100x the average person, but there's so few of them that barely worth mentioning. It's not like they eat more food than normal people, nor wear out cars more than normal people. A few yachts and fancy cars notwithstanding, GDP is a measure of output, not wealth accumulation.

[ClumsyPilot]

Fair enough, but how is this discrepancy between wages and GDP explainable?

[mrep]

> Japan has higher median salaries than US does.

Where do you see that? Wikipedia says the US has 2x the median income PPP than Japan [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

[systemvoltage]

I'd honestly prefer the hard working ethic of Americans over lassie-faire hierarchical orthodoxy in EU. No one works to the bone, hard work is also rewarded. They choose to do it. The ease of business is amazing.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I lived in the USA for 32 years, after growing up in the UK for 24. I don't see a "hard working ethic" in the USA. What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today.

Lots of people in the USA work to the bone. Maybe you don't work with them, or see them when and where they work, but many books and articles have been written by people who've been deep inside this phenomenon. "Nickel & Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich is a great example.

Yes, entrepeneurialism is easy here, and that's a good thing. However, I refuse to believe that this requires the rest of the system to remain as it is, or that by itself it justifies the suffering of the majority of people who do not "make it".

I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA. I have tried hard to to allow that to blind me to the fact that it was mostly luck, nor to the immense, unnecessary suffering that our economic and political system imposes on millions of people (even just within the country).

[systemvoltage]

> What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent political change seriously and also empowers them to believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than today.

I disagree with your premises. I love the way things are. I do not agree with current progressive agenda, I stand by the old liberal values.

> I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the USA.

Sorry about your situation. I am an immigrant that came from a place I never want to go back, this land has given everything I asked for in return of honest, good day's work.

Most importantly, I enjoy the freedoms that other nations do not grant.

[grog454]

What is the difference between a "hard working ethic" and "work[ing] to the bone"?

[seibelj]

I’ve met quite a few executives at US companies who emigrated from Europe. At the high end, America kicks the shit out of Europe in every regard. The high end people create the new companies, and thus America has far more equity value than Europe, and new innovative companies, and cutting edge research, etc. etc. Europe might be better for the average person but the hyper successful generally opt to leave.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

We don't need the hyper-successful, certainly not the way you're defining them.

In a society of 350 millions people that is vaguely capitalistic, there will always be people who "win big". The "high end" people are just the living manifestation of serendipidity. If it wasn't Bezos, it would have been someone else.

Also, "the high-end people create the new companies" is almost complete BS. The mythology of the exceptional individual that dominates the USA promotes this story, but the reality is that successful companies are the result of the collaborative, cooperative efforts of many different people (many of them not "high-end"). A company like Amazon was created by a constellation of people with very different backgrounds, socio-economic status and intent.

[jokethrowaway]

You could have been #2 at Amazon but I've seen plenty of companies to fail because their founders screw up the company.

Saying Bezos just won is simply dishonest. His ideas and approach had an impact.

[seibelj]

Disagree entirely. Yes, a company is an assemblage of people. No, the guy working the warehouse couldn’t have built Amazon. Bezos is special talent.

[lupire]

USAmerica's great successes are largely in wealth transfer from lower class to upper class, and selling vices. That's why GDP is so much higher than quality of life -- the economy is largely people paying each other to hurt each other.

[seibelj]

America’s greatest success is the rule of law, stable republican government, and the protection of private property. America continues to outdo the rest of the world because it is better.

[xvector]

I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as terribly in the US. The corners are simply cut slower, because everything here is done slower.

For example, electronics built in the US are typically shittier than electronics built in China, despite taking significantly longer to build and employees being paid orders of magnitude more (as noted by companies like Apple, Purism, etc.)

Within our culture in the US there is a clear and comically obvious problem of bureaucracy and red-tape. This doesn't really exist in software yet, but the day our government gets its claws into the software industry is the day that innovation in the US can be put to rest. (Well, it's already happening - if you try to create a software startup that processes user data, you are probably breaking tens of laws you don't even know exist.)

There is also a cultural difference. One thing I have noticed when working with my Chinese coworkers is that they do not bullshit nearly as much as my other coworkers. They get straight to the point, deal in metrics and facts, and don't try to inflate their accomplishments. Maybe that's just my current work environment, maybe it's a cultural thing - I suspect the latter.

[nouveaux]

> "I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as terribly in the US."

I would agree with you. The bay bridge had issues with the steel[0]. The millenium tower[1] also has corner cutting problems. The question is the frequency. I believe corner cutting happens far less in the US than say China.

As a Chinese person in the US, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that people in China would prefer foreign products over Chinese ones across the board. The last time I was in China, my friends tell me that they prefer products from Korea over ones in China. The problem is the cost.

> "Within our culture in the US there is a clear and comically obvious problem of bureaucracy and broken red-tape."

People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-tape in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the more efficient governments in the world:

1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow my government is so efficient that it's more efficient than the corporations in my country."

2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks, military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department, FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they actually accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the world or near the top.

3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/mystery-brand-new-bay-bridges-...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/10/san-francisc...

[BlargMcLarg]

> 1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow my government is so efficient that it's more efficient than the corporations in my country."

Quite a few. This isn't unique to the US, and quite a few corporations do not drive themselves to bankruptcy being extremely inefficient or even malicious for multiple years. We've seen plenty of examples in the last few decades.

> 2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks, military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department, FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they actually accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the world or near the top.

You could replace "the US" with any Western/Northern European country, Japan, Korea, Oceania, Canada and quite a few other countries and they would fit the bill pretty well, give or take a few aspects.

> 3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.

Same as the above. The US isn't the only country maintaining a democracy. The US has also been leagues behind on several countries in some aspects for decades.

Meanwhile, most of these European countries face the exact same problem the US will in the future if things continue the way they are. Doing things "better" or "best" is not a cop-out for letting problems continue to the point of a crisis. Housing in Europe is a prime example of this, where regulations are arguably hurting us more than they are helping, but the majority of the population still believes we'll be living in rundown apartments if we don't keep these regulations (often citing the US as 'evidence', ironically).

[tablespoon]

> People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-tape in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the more efficient governments in the world:

In a lot of cases, I think US complaints about "bureaucracy and broken red-tape" are more a function of anti-government ideology. It's not like businesses don't have annoying bureaucracy, but the complaints tend to be selectively directed at the government, because for many people government is a boogeyman.

For an example, take Google. Wouldn't it be light-years better if they had customer support that was as good as the the worst DMV's?

[bluGill]

Which DMV? I've been to several different offices in my life. Some were worse than Google, (you have a chance of your story getting noticed and Google helping), some were very nice and friendly.

[bregma]

Government processes tend to be open and accessible so people can see how they work (or don't). Large corporations are closed and secretive so out of sight, out of mind.

[boulos]

The Bay Bridge faults have non-trivially been blamed (rightly or wrongly is unclear) on Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company who provided a lot of the materials [1]. The Wikipedia article doesn't talk about the steel itself (surprisingly!) but does mention they did the deck work, the automatic welds, and so on. There was plenty of blame to go around though.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_...

[robinjhuang]

When’s the last time you were back in China? That used to be the case, but increasingly less so. Especially after Trump’s trade war. Chinese people I know proudly buy Huawei and Nio cars. Even American products that Chinese people love like iPhones and Tesla are produced in China now…

Also 1. I don’t think people generally say that.

2. CDC made a huge mess of the pandemic (eg not stocking enough PPE). USPS is in big financial trouble.

3. This is huge topic but I’m inclined to say US messes up as often as it succeeds. Afghanistan will have 22 million people starving this year because of US sanctions. They promote democracy, but not human rights.

But overall I think you’re right to say the US government is one of the “more” efficient ones.

[vkou]

USPS is in big financial trouble because half the government is actively trying to kill it, by not allowing it to raise prices.

[nouveaux]

"USPS being in big financial trouble" should be considered a crazy idea. To me, it's like saying the "Senate" is in big financial trouble or the Federal Reserve is in big financial trouble. USPS should be a federal entity. They should be managed just like the State department.

What the USPS accomplishes is amazing. For a few dollars, you can send anyone a letter or a package to anywhere in the United States. The amount of productivity and the improved standard of living they provide incredible.

[jamie_ca]

Not to mention a level pension funding obligations that no other government agency has to suffer through.

[BobbyJo]

> They promote democracy, but not human rights.

A point of contention: Democracy is the surest way to safeguard human right long term in a nation. Historically speaking, there isn't even a second place when it comes to other forms of rule operating effectively on the necessary timescales.

Promoting democracy is promoting human rights the same way promoting exercise is promoting health and well-being.

[sudosysgen]

Democracy is far from the surest way to safeguard human rights. It's just a game of definitions that whenever a democracy commits atrocities, it retroactively stops being a democracy, even when the people are on board with it.

[incompatible]

You'd have to define "democracy" in some meaningful way. Is Russia a democracy? Was Iraq under Saddam Hussein a democracy? Elections were held, he won about 100% of the vote. Is the US a democracy? The winner of the presidential elections doesn't always get the most votes, and is in practice obliged to be a member of one of only two parties.

[robinjhuang]

I think this might be true. But the USA is not simply a democracy. It’s a liberal hegemony, and that brings a whole set of other problems.

I believe that an objective look at US foreign policy shows that US always looks out for #1 (itself).

It helped overthrow an elected socialist leader in Chile in 1973. It made up reasons to invade Iraq. It defended Kuwait, a monarchy. It interferes in other countries all the time. When the dictator supports US interests, it leaves them be. When a democratically elected government resists them, they try to tear it down.

So I think what you mean is democracy is good for advancing human rights for CITIZENS of that country. The empirical evidence is not super strong for advancing human rights in general.

[jokethrowaway]

No government is as efficient as corporations (hard to get anything done when you're eating doughnuts on tax-payers' money and you can't fail or be fired!) but I agree the us government is not the worst.

If you want to see real bad go to some southern European country.

[csomar]

> USPS

You certain? I used them a couple times and they are the most ridiculous postal carrier I've ever interacted with.

[sudosysgen]

I can honestly say that many agencies of my goverent are more efficient than the private alternative.

As far as pioneering human rights around the world, a few million dead innocents disagree. People who say the US is good at human rights always limit it to within their own borders. Internationally, the US has caused more death and destruction than almost any country.

[analyst74]

> Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt behavior.

Compare that with SF bay area politics, I don't think speed has any effect on corruption.

[taurath]

In the US bribery is just legal, and harder to access

[dv_dt]

While acquiring the property takes more time in America, I can't help but notice once construction starts it also takes a ridiculously long time too. It really seems like the interests of the power brokers in various areas are far outstripping the interests of the utility to society in multiple areas in America.

[rubicon33]

The problem is the massive bureaucracy / government we have today. Massive swaths of government workers literally being payed to sit all day in zoom calls on "meetings" talking about approving projects and budgets, from local infrastructure to schools, to medical, etc.

Source: Live with someone with said job. See them in meetings all day long, accomplishing nothing other than getting their paycheck.

[tchock23]

It’s funny. My partner has a government job and works much harder than anyone I know in private industry (as do her co-workers). Also, it is a better organized place to work than most enterprises I’ve consulted for.

Goes to show YMMV and it’s not worth making sweeping generalizations about a sector of workers.

[rubicon33]

Of course "sweeping generalizations" aren't always right. That's obvious.

It doesn't mean that generalizations themselves aren't worthwhile, and sometimes accurate enough to frame a problem. Exceptions to the rule shouldn't completely invalidate the rule.

In this case I also never said anything about them working hard per se. No doubt they work very hard, but seem to accomplish nothing. Working hard, not smart.

[bluGill]

It is possible to work very hard without doing anything worth doing.

[tchock23]

True, but is that unique to government jobs? I know plenty of people shuffling papers around in private industry and academia.

[chii]

In private industry, the owner(s) takes on the losses of such people who get paid doing nothing. With enough losses, the owners will run out of capital and go bust.

In public service (and academia i guess, which is often funded publicly), the "owners" don't get a choice and have to eat a loss - it's not as if i can stop paying my taxes. A gov't does not go bust.

[fuzzfactor]

Yes, environmental bureaucracy like the article is focusing on is only one of many which have continuously strengthened as they circled the wagons around the status quo more and more in so many other areas besides just public works projects.

But public works projects in particular are handled by government bureaucracies, one of the least accountable kind.

Environmental is just one of the obvious bureaucracies that was not there for the older ones of us who remember what life was like before the EPA was formed.

Lots of other little bureaucracies had already been established decades before anyone living at the time had been born. People were just expected to accept those because no remaining person could say whether things were better or worse beforehand. It could often be seen that they were still in the relatively flat portion of a multigenerational exponential growth curve, and so it goes.

Remember people have to build things and after the mid-1970's there was no more money to do that with inflation.

Before then people who worked manufacturing or construction jobs in the US had never been getting ahead at all very often unless they were unionized, but this was the straw that broke that by driving manufacturing to other countries and construction to unskilled workers from other countries.

It was strong enough to break the unions so you can imagine the devastating effect it had on everyone else.

At this time it was still accepted that an American manufacturing worker, maybe with overtime, would be earning more than an average office worker since it was just plain harder work. University education was not yet common enough to be structured into the systems as very much of a ticket to higher pay.

And government office workers had always had to accept lower pay than their counterparts in the private sector, since less skill & work was actually required and these were the candidates who couldn't quite get hired by bureaucracies like Sears or big insurance companies.

Either way the need for people sitting in offices accomplishing nothing can spiral out of control, even without the occasional effort to consume increasing yearly budgets or risk losing the yearly increases. And government workers got the upper hand with earlier formalization of university requirements for so many positions, at the same time the private sector had so many challenges to survival of its revenue streams that the governments did not face.

By now this trend has government workers making more money than their counterparts in the private sector, plus having more institutional power dedicated to preservation of the institution itself rather than what the institution should actually stand for. Much less what the institution should accomplish if that means physically building something.

Stagnation became the acceptable foundation on which to instead build virtual structures ever more resilient to change.

At one time the people who built stuff had generations of bulding legacy and knew how to do it already, they were the backbone of society, and got paid more than the people in the offices who shuffled the papers which expedited the process.

Now the people in the offices who don't know how to build stuff get paid more than the unskilled workers who try to do it anyway, after the bureaucrats finally finish shuffling the papers needed to delay or derail the project according to somebody's agenda in a chain of command that didn't previously exist when things could actually get done only a few decades ago. Bureaucrats can be most skilled at building more bureaucracy, and they are good at it after making multigenerational efforts, so that's what they more often build.

[vkou]

And it's possible to work very hard, doing something that's very worthwhile for your employer, but very detrimental to society.

[throwaway4220]

My department has four managers that do this and I work in a private hospital. We’ve been asking for a break room for two years.

[agumonkey]

I'm curious if it's not time to solve the chronic manageritis in large workplaces. It pains me to know end that resources are wasted on babbling while people doing the work are on their knees.

[whimsicalism]

It's not the massive bureaucracy. It's that civil service-style systems (as in China) and pay-for-performance are both basically illegal in the federal government.

Big government is not necessarily flawed, but big govt as we have structured it is just incompetent.

[dixie_land]

> government would waste no time in getting land that it needed

by blackmailing, intimidation, and literally murder by bulldozing houses with people in them when they refuse to leave

[qiskit]

> by blackmailing, intimidation, and literally murder by bulldozing houses with people in them when they refuse to leave

That doesn't explain nail houses though...

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...

[cscurmudgeon]

That explains them though.

[winrid]

Source?

I have relatives in China that got paid to leave their house last year.

They had actually just built it, but the local government offered enough to build 3 more, so they took it.

[dixie_land]

Here's one from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/893113807/china-speeds-up-dri...

and simple Google searches yield many results.

Undoubtedly some people greatly benefited from the land purchase, when such offers are made. I've also heard of stories (friend of a friend kinda, I do not directly know one) of people actually getting rich (not middle class, like rich rich) by having properties in areas that the government happens to like. (more so in suburbs of big cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen)

However the point is even one forced eviction is one too many and the people who come out better for it (good for them) does not justify the poor treatment of people who simply dare to say no to the communist party.

[winrid]

Well, I've had cops break into my house in the US and mace my sister and I when we were little. So, I won't say I stand on much of a high ground here in the US. But yes, local governments in China should do better with this kind of thing.

[kortilla]

That’s not the same thing at all unless the cops also stole your house and never let you return.

[nosianu]

Like asset seizure?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/09/01/police-seiz...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/s...

[sudosysgen]

The cops don't steal your house, they pay you for it, and it happens in literally every country in the world.

[vkou]

> However the point is even one forced eviction is one too many

People get evicted all the time, for all sorts of reasons that may not be their fault. Why do you draw the line at eminent domain?

[sudosysgen]

You don't get to simply say no to eminent domain in any functioning country in the world, and neither should you be able to. I don't see the problem as long as you are properly compensated.

[White_Wolf]

Saying no to just block a public infrastructure project is just malicious. As long as people are paid for a new property and inconvenience it's fine. Nobody should be able to block a project that benefits the society as a whole. Communist party or not, a person should not be capable of blocking a project that benefits the whole country just because <insert random reason here>.

Romania does have a lot of issues with motorway developments because of speciments like this. After the first major one that blocked the Bucharest-Constanta motorway for years, the gov't passed a law that allows them to just take the property and pay market prices. As it should be.

[robinjhuang]

I think this is a question worth asking. Should we let a small number of people hold hostage over public projects?

[nouveaux]

This is a good question. Where do we draw the line at human rights? Should land ownership be a protected right? It would cost a lot less if the government just took the land instead of paying fair market value.

It would also cost a lot less if we forced all criminals to work for free (though right now, they practically work for free). The problem is that we would quickly run out of criminals since there are so many projects that needs work. We could just randomly enslave people to do work for free.

Enslaving citizens wouldn't be fair or popular with the citizens of our country. Another option is to use our military might to subjugate other countries and bring them over to work, say to work on our farms. That would allow for very high gdp growth.

So where do we draw the line and who gets to draw that line?

[BlargMcLarg]

We draw the line where there's an obvious problem. For every reductio ad absurdum looking at slavery and trying to put down another country's citizens at the benefit of our own, there is a counterexample looking at how ridiculous it is we have ultra-rich deciding their little game of looking at numbers going up and people living in McMansions just to show off being more important than a giant middle class unable to afford housing where their grandfathers and grandmothers could living a lower class lifestyle.

Surely somewhere we can accept that a bunch of wealthy playing the investment game on very limited resources instead of the realm of producing solutions or improvements isn't the way to further society as a whole. We don't have to put down those already in the ditches further, we got a swat of people above to look at.

[nouveaux]

I think we both agree that we shouldn't be protecting the wealthy. I just think we should do it another way. IMO, high housing prices exist because of the lack of supply. I think it's possible for the government to increase housing stock and have reasonable property rights.

[amrocha]

"Property rights" are not human rights, stop conflating the 2.

And the absurd examples you tried to come up with are literally things the US is doing today, you're just being sinophobic.

[xvector]

There is a balance between letting a single individual stall progress for all of society, and respecting human rights. A single individual certainly should not be able to block the construction of a public transit system that will bring jobs and improve the livelihood of millions. At the same time, the government can provide reasonable alternative accommodations or pay market value (not decided by the individual in question.)

Eliminating NIMBYism and individuals' selfish obstinacy does not need to lead to a global hegemony enslaving billions.

[imtringued]

Maybe you should be a sane human being and tax the privileges that land ownership provides.

[rcpt]

Bringing up Henry George is easy mode in these threads

[cscurmudgeon]

Do you say that applies to pipeline projects too?

[robinjhuang]

Oil gas pipelines? Sure. The reason I say this is because it seems to me that democracy is a system designed to favor the majority over the minority. So why not for public projects?

[Dylan16807]

That depends on how you're defining "small number of people". If a big fraction of the people in the way of a segment object, then that's probably not small. If a couple family farms object, then that's not very important.

[jdasdf]

Offer to pay them what they want.

[Dylan16807]

That's an awful solution. Some small fraction of people in the way shouldn't get an enormous multiplier over market value, in some kind of giant prisoner's dilemma auction.

If you offer the group a certain percentage of market value, that could work out well. But unanimous consensus is not a reasonable way to get land for big public projects.

[kortilla]

> an enormous multiplier over market value

“Market value” requires willing participants. If a seller doesn’t want to sell at a particular price and the good isn’t fungible (which housing is not), they aren’t getting market value by being forced to sell at a price determined solely by the buyer.

[Dylan16807]

Do you want me to say "taxable value*" instead?

If you think it's impossible to assess the value of a property, the whole legal world disagrees with you.

And yeah, the point of eminent domain is to force the sale on unwilling participants. If used sparingly and without discrimination, it's a good power, and part of living in a community that will undertake community projects.

* the underlying assessed value, excluding artificial caps like prop 13

[hackerfromthefu]

Well market value plus some premium for inconvenience of not being able to choose sounds fair, perhaps FMV + 20% or perhaps up to 30%. These are large amounts of money so perhaps the premium should be an absolute not percentage value.

FMV +10% for tolerance of estimate of FMV + 6 months average salary in the area would be generous enough to recompense the hassles of relocating.

Remember surrounding society, that is hundreds of thousands of other people, benefit from the infrastructure being developed.

[jdasdf]

Market value requires willing participants, so that's whatever value they want.

[dixie_land]

> Should we let a small number of people hold hostage over public projects?

I think by phrasing the holdouts as "hold hostage over public projects" is misguided if not disingenuous. This is a common propaganda used by authoritarian regimes to paint anyone they don't like in a bad light: surely they're not victims of government brutality if they're "enemies of the common good."

But if we accept we can discard one individual's (or a small group of individuals') rights, then it's not long before everyone's rights become disposable. That's how people like Putin and Xi justifies their aggression (surely I can kill millions of people in Taiwan if it stands in the way of "progress" of 1.3 billion mainlanders!)

P.S. As someone as pointed out, this is not a China/US or eastern/western issue. The U.S. has its own fair share of blatant violation of private rights too.

But my point is that it's wrong when U.S. does it, it's wrong when China does it, it's wrong when anyone does it and it shouldn't be something we aspire to.

[zeruch]

"While I appreciate that there is an inherent trade off between environmental consideration and speed, I think the author makes it clear that it's reached comic proportions in the US."

The quote I think that encapsulated it best was:

"And this is where I feel that lawmakers of the 1970s made a huge mistake. Rather than accept the need for general rules, or choices by accountable elected officials, the lawmakers built a dispersed power structure filled with veto points that lends itself to analysis paralysis"

Given how trash the environment is becoming due to various forms of intransigence, there is an interesting trade off to be made in more ambitious projects that actually move the dial, which ironically might require tinkering with same said systems that currently are at the root of (a phrase change I would make) "decision paralysis".