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> There are even benefits to authoritarianism - for instance Chinese infrastructure is in many cases far better than US infrastructure and built far more effici

> There are even benefits to authoritarianism - for instance Chinese infrastructure is in many cases far better than US infrastructure and built far more efficiently. The US has about 49.9 miles of high-speed rail while China built 25,000 miles in the last few years. They've even got maglev trains. We've got the diesel Caltrain (for now! electrification is finally happening). [edit] (And soon the Bakersfield-Merced Express - stopping at every cow paddock along the way). The PRC built a bridge from Hong Kong to Macau, 34mi long, and built islands along the way to support it. I don't see how that can be explained by authoritarianism. All you've arguably shown is that today China is more efficient at building out infrastructure than the US.

cromwellian 4y ago
The US built infrastructure efficiently too back when it was a developing country. From 1940-1980 the US built an incredible amount of infrastructure. It’s must more efficient to build where there was nothing before than build where there is already something. Even China faced this issue with Three Gorges which took then decades just to get started.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  I can accept that one point doesn't make a line. However, I think it's also worth mentioning since you call out the 1940-1980 period, that a lot of that infrastructure was built thanks to, to my knowledge, the federal Declaration of Taking Act, 1931. It was put on the books to enable faster confiscation of land for public use by the government. Unlike state eminent domain laws, the federal law gives the government the right to take the land first, tell you to vacate immediately, and have the courts set a price later. The government acquired land area under the declaration of taking act roughly the size of South Carolina (20 million acres). [1] Meaningful infrastructure projects require setting aside individual rights for the collective good, and in the last few decades the US lost its taste for doing so. Now even building a basic over-land high-speed train is a morass of litigation and whining which balloons costs, reduces state capacity and leads to ridiculous compromises. In my opinion it's not a question of whether theres "something there" or not - there's nothing in the Central Valley or along either the I-5 or the CA-99 corridor of any particular note. Building along it efficiently requires some authoritarian land-taking that the US has long since lost its taste for, despite having the capacity to carry out. Many today would consider collecting 20M acres of land, telling people to get off, and eventually paying them out some amount set by the courts to be an act of authoritarian government imposition on private land incompatible with a western liberal democracy. In my opinion it's silly that one dude's cow paddock and one dude's fear it might make some toads sad can hold up high-speed rail between the two of the biggest economic powerhouses in the world. [1] https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-domain https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-dom...

cromwellian 4y ago

The US built infrastructure efficiently too back when it was a developing country. From 1940-1980 the US built an incredible amount of infrastructure. It’s must more efficient to build where there was nothing before than build where there is already something. Even China faced this issue with Three Gorges which took then decades just to get started.

arcticbull 4y ago
I can accept that one point doesn't make a line. However, I think it's also worth mentioning since you call out the 1940-1980 period, that a lot of that infrastructure was built thanks to, to my knowledge, the federal Declaration of Taking Act, 1931. It was put on the books to enable faster confiscation of land for public use by the government. Unlike state eminent domain laws, the federal law gives the government the right to take the land first, tell you to vacate immediately, and have the courts set a price later. The government acquired land area under the declaration of taking act roughly the size of South Carolina (20 million acres). [1] Meaningful infrastructure projects require setting aside individual rights for the collective good, and in the last few decades the US lost its taste for doing so. Now even building a basic over-land high-speed train is a morass of litigation and whining which balloons costs, reduces state capacity and leads to ridiculous compromises. In my opinion it's not a question of whether theres "something there" or not - there's nothing in the Central Valley or along either the I-5 or the CA-99 corridor of any particular note. Building along it efficiently requires some authoritarian land-taking that the US has long since lost its taste for, despite having the capacity to carry out. Many today would consider collecting 20M acres of land, telling people to get off, and eventually paying them out some amount set by the courts to be an act of authoritarian government imposition on private land incompatible with a western liberal democracy. In my opinion it's silly that one dude's cow paddock and one dude's fear it might make some toads sad can hold up high-speed rail between the two of the biggest economic powerhouses in the world. [1] https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-domain https://www.justice.gov/enrd/history-federal-use-eminent-dom...