[pjc50]

In China, if you're the medium rank politician charged with ensuring that a nuclear reactor gets built in province X, and ten years later there is not an operating nuclear reactor in province X, then the Party tends to get mad. And if they find out you've stolen the money then the consequences can be fatal.

If there's any one thing that's causing a ""decline"" in the west, it's a tolerance for fraud and failure of big projects.

Edit: found a really interesting backgrounder on details of the Chinese nuclear programme. https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Country-Profil...

[Krasnol]

> If there's any one thing that's causing a ""decline"" in the west, it's a tolerance for fraud and failure of big projects.

You should google "Tofu-Dreg". Videos are especially entertaining.

That money get's stolen. You just build it cheaper, get smeared by contractors, employ slaves, etc.

Also, that "tolerance" of the West is surely worth a discussion, but comparing it to the ways a dictatorship enforces their laws and regulations makes it kinda, disturbing.

[fallingknife]

In China there is tolerance for stealing as long as the job gets done. In the USA there is tolerance for the job not getting done, but not for stealing. I used to think our system was better, but it seems like China gets more done when they accept that there will be some losses to stealing.

[whizzter]

Turkey has had the same kind of semantics about getting things done but that recent earthquake did prove fatal though, except in one town where they didn't allow shoddy construction.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/erzin-turkey-earthquake-b...

[fransje26]

> the USA there is tolerance for the job not getting done, but not for stealing.

Well, at that level it's playing loosely with semantics..

The money didn't get pocketed directly, but it got misused to pay a vast amount of costs and salaries with no result. As there are no results, the costs covered can be considered fictional. Which brings us back to bribery and stealing..

[fallingknife]

This is exactly what I mean. Take the Obamacare exchange website for example. It cost $800 million, didn't work, and nobody got so much as fired for it because that money was wasted, not stolen, and the contract was given out in accordance to procedure. If the execs had pocketed any of that money, they would be in jail.

In China it would have been given to a friend of the bureaucrat in charge of giving out the contract, and they would know it would cost $40 million to build, but they can charge 80 and kickback 10 to the official. And more importantly, that friend would be damn sure to deliver a working website because he knows if he doesn't he will be investigated and punished for his stealing.

So while our system is less "corrupt" I guess, China gets a working website for $80 million when we get a broken one for 10x the cost.

[fransje26]

The F-35 program also comes to mind. Or the high speed train effort in California coming in at 10x the price per mile compared to European equivalents..

[spookie]

The F35 is going to make much more money than it ever took to go from drawing to reality. I don't know enough about that California.

Anyhow, being able to fail is a good thing, believe it or not.

[Krasnol]

How does it help you if the job is "done" but causes a serious risk to lives?

As I said: the stealing still happens. It's institutionalized in China.

Your system IS better...or at least, for now. China is a dictatorship. Their way of handling "their" people is mad and dangerous. Even if you get things "done", you better be happy that you've been lucky to live in the US and not be afraid that your house may fall apart, or you disappear in some hole in the road.

[fallingknife]

Is poor construction that needs to be replaced soon worse than no construction at all? I guess that's debatable, but I would have to see actual statistics on Chinese construction failure rates vs the US rather than just a general assumption that China = low quality before it is even worth considering.

[Krasnol]

> Is poor construction that needs to be replaced soon worse than no construction at all? I guess that's debatable

Replaced? I'm talking about parts of the infrastructure or housing literally falling apart and killing people. You should really follow my advice from above and google "tofu-dreg"

> but I would have to see actual statistics on Chinese construction failure rates

Just watch some of those videos where huge parts of infrastructure just collapse. Those things would have been major news for days in the whole western civilization if it'd happen in the US.

Also, how would you verify (any) statistics coming from China? A country where the whole market is based upon falsified statistics? I mean, that's nothing the regime is proud of. Why would they create true statistics about such failures?

[TheCleric]

Since we're literally talking about nuclear power, then which is worse: no Chernobyl or some Chernobyl?

[spookie]

There are plenty of issues with that approach, mind you.

[willcipriano]

Somehow our leadership convinced us that them facing consequences is a bad idea while they erected a police state that would throw us in a cage if we so much as had a plant they don't like in our pocket.

Leaders need to face the greatest consequences. That's the price of leadership. We have things backward.