[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...

[Retric]

> Maybe it's just the natural end of our golden age.

Alternatively, America simply lacks obvious large scale investments to make.

High speed rail seems like a winner, but is it? We have a very efficient national train network for goods and both an interstate highway system and airlines. As a practical matter HSR is unlikely to change much and is really expensive to build and maintain.

Similarly rural high speed internet is pushed as a must have, but 5G and Starlink are much cheaper solutions to the same problems. Getting wired high speed internet to central Alaska for example is extremely expensive and probably not worth it. Where to draw this line in pure economic terms probably isn’t exactly where telecom companies picked, but there wasn’t a clearly better option.

Bridges and Dams have similarly been added to all the obvious locations. Should we build X is again a really difficult choice.

[0ldskool]

I would rather have a government that tries and builds solutions that are not the most optimal rather than giving up and not doing anything. Solutions do not have to be the best all the time, just better than what exists. Constant iterative improvements over time

[technobabbler]

Healthcare? Renewables? Carbon sequestration? Cybersec? Underground power lines? Housing? Repairing existing roads & bridges? Education?

There is so much we could & should build, but we don't...

[dopidopHN]

In term of infrastructure: I would be happy with roads without potholes that are large enough to damage my car, schools, and a semi resilient power grid.

[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?