3 ms·
Jealousy is a little misplaced. History has seen a number of countries with strongmen and with ambitious multi-decade plans, and generally those plans went up i
by Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Jealousy is a little misplaced. History has seen a number of countries with strongmen and with ambitious multi-decade plans, and generally those plans went up in smoke as soon as the strongman died or otherwise exited the scene. It turns out that the strongman was powerful enough to sustain a marketing push and put some pressure on the state machinery, but society actually wasn’t very united behind the plan after all.
- mindvirus 6y agoI don't know if that's necessarily true though. America had pulled off plenty of ambitious long term things within the constraints of democracy - the Apollo program, the Interstates, the NYC subway system, the internet.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoBut none of those were very multidecade plans. The Apollo program was basically the 1960s before democratic pressures ended it (society no longer saw as much value in space after the first moon landings). The interstates were largely a mid-century project, and they have infamously been neglected since. The internet was only a public project very early on, and most of what we now know as the internet was a product of the private sector, etc.