[throwaway2037]

    > doing big labour projects in us, EU, UK, etc is too expensive

To be clear, the EU is huge -- 27 countries. In the east, there are plenty of poor and lower income people who are happy to move to other parts of EU for construction work. As for US and UK, I agree: There is no cheap labour. How do you explain why there is so much infra construction in Korea and Japan, but the prices are reasonable? They are both highly advanced nations.

[klooney]

Alon Levy over at Pedestrian Observations has a pretty well developed theory on this. The Anglosphere countries perform worse than Spain, Korea, etc., for a few reasons, some legal- the lawsuit bonanza up thread- and some more specific to the nontechnical bureaucracy in the high cost countries.

[twelve40]

> so much infra construction in Korea and Japan, but the prices are reasonable

Just watched a Bloomberg short about SK where they complain that they are overworked, over-stressed, hypercompetitive, depressed as a people, giving up on starting families out of fear of financial insecurity. (also, seems top suicidal in SK) No idea if it's true, but that all might have something to do with keeping the wages down?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2024-10-31/south-korea...

[FirmwareBurner]

Japan and Korea don't have unions like in EU.

[fakedang]

Japan absolutely has unions which are extremely empowered.