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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 o

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.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
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.
a0-prw 5y ago
If a major war was to break out, the only mountains there would be, would be mountains of dead.
nicbou 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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).
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        My understanding is that the lab studying coronaviruses situated in close proximity to the wet market is the much more likely source than the wet market itself. And as labs in western countries have had similar leaks (see for example Foot & Mouth disease in the UK), I'm not sure we can really blame the Chinese.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        The best info we have is that it was a bio lab release, just an unusual transmission from wild bats to humans in a wild animal market. And really, for all the authoritarian power they seem to have, sanitation standards are shockingly low, and with their density, these kinds of things will keep happening until they basically go with Japanese level cleanliness standards. Given its situation, china really had no choice but to go with a zero COVID policy. If they tried to handle it like the Americans did, 10s of millions of people would have died, if not more (because their density is higher with lower hygiene standards, not a good combination).
        Nekhrimah 5y ago
        > The best info we have is that it was a bio lab release Did you perchance mean wasn't a bio lab release?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  > 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.
- jsnodlin 5y ago
dotancohen 5y ago
> 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 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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
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.
myth2018 5y ago
> Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe I used to believe in that. After COVID-19, not anymore.
dataexporter 5y ago
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.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

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.

a0-prw 5y ago

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

nicbou 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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).
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      My understanding is that the lab studying coronaviruses situated in close proximity to the wet market is the much more likely source than the wet market itself. And as labs in western countries have had similar leaks (see for example Foot & Mouth disease in the UK), I'm not sure we can really blame the Chinese.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        The best info we have is that it was a bio lab release, just an unusual transmission from wild bats to humans in a wild animal market. And really, for all the authoritarian power they seem to have, sanitation standards are shockingly low, and with their density, these kinds of things will keep happening until they basically go with Japanese level cleanliness standards. Given its situation, china really had no choice but to go with a zero COVID policy. If they tried to handle it like the Americans did, 10s of millions of people would have died, if not more (because their density is higher with lower hygiene standards, not a good combination).
        Nekhrimah 5y ago
        > The best info we have is that it was a bio lab release Did you perchance mean wasn't a bio lab release?
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
> 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.
jsnodlin 5y ago

dotancohen 5y ago

> 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 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 5y ago
> 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 5y ago

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.

myth2018 5y ago

> Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe I used to believe in that. After COVID-19, not anymore.

dataexporter 5y ago

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.