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There has been a general vibe that America's infrastructure is old and decrepit. An alternative way to look at it is the USA doesn't build something until it's

There has been a general vibe that America's infrastructure is old and decrepit. An alternative way to look at it is the USA doesn't build something until it's needed, and you don't know it's needed until people are complaining that the existing situation is bad. Additionally, every piece of infrastructure that is built needs to be maintained or it will decay. Sure, not every airport in America is shiny and new, but if you can land there safely then it is in good working order. Why build a new one just to one-up a communist dictatorship, wasting tax dollars? In China there are giant airports with barely any traffic to justify their existence https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-07-11/china-s-hidden-debt-problem-laid-bare-in-city-s-empty-housing-unfinished-roads https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-07-11/china-s-h... This is the fundamental problem with centrally planned economies. The malinvestment is insanely high, and while building new airports and high-speed rail gooses the GDP for a bit and makes for great politician PR, if no one actually needs this stuff then it's simply a huge waste of money. White Elephants will be stampeding all over China in the coming years.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
It really feels like we can't have nice things anymore. Seattle goes way over budget and time on all its transit projects, to the point that it just feels like we can't get anything done anymore. In contrast, China builds subways and rail lines for a reasonable price, even if they aren't always needed. My wife's hometown (Chenzhou Hunan, 4.5 million, although just 1 million urban) just got an airport, so no more flights to Changsha or Guangzhou and then a 1-2 hour HSR connection into the city. I guess it seems a bit pointless, because HSR made the lack of an airport completely reasonable, but what do I know. But there are definitely enough people to justify an airport, like that airport in Guizhou...it serves 6.6 million people...so in 10 years they might think they didn't build it big enough.
- downrightmike 3y ago
  Pesky land rights owned by individuals can muck things up
- Belopolye 3y ago
  > It really feels like we can't have nice things anymore. Economists talk about the middle-income trap, but I feel there’s another trap in developed economies. The economics of low-cost, high-skill labor that made the public and private architecture of the past (my small city of around 70,000 people has a gorgeous post office that was built in the early 1900s in a grand neoclassical style) so comparatively extravagant and beautiful just doesn’t work today. Blame doesn’t lie with the high-skilled working class for not wanting to work for what would amount to poverty wages, but at the same time shareholders and city council meeting-goers refuse to pay the correct price to build beautiful things anymore. It’s a cycle that nobody wants to (or can) give ground on.
  - lazide 3y ago
    That’s BS. Very little of the cost of these projects is labor actually doing the work. Most of it is planning, admin, and opaque costs nowhere near labor costs to subcontractors.
    - Belopolye 3y ago
      If you believe that’s the case why aren’t you founding a disruptor to the construction industry with high-skilled, highly-paid labor? Should be easy to eliminate those “opaque costs” and undercut all of your competition, right? Easy money.
      - lazide 3y ago
        Hahaha, the money is going to the folks playing the games with procurement and management. My skill is actually building things. Which is completely uninteresting to all parties involved in that mess. Often actively avoided, actually, as it tends to ruffle feathers. Similar to Beltway bandit type software work. That isn’t going to change until there is clear motivation by taxpayers/constituents to actually get something done quickly that doesn’t suck, and they can agree on what that is. Which isn’t going to be anytime soon. In the mean time, plenty of folks happy to sit back and cash paychecks ‘helping’ the various entities.
- jandrese 3y ago
  A lot of cost savings come from just producing things in volume. The Chinese may be way over-building the infrastructure, but they're building so much that their industry is quite good at it. Contrast that with the US where these infrastructure projects are relatively uncommon and the industries that support them are small and high cost. If you have to keep an industry alive on only a handful of projects each decade then those projects are necessarily going to be expensive, probably outrageously so.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Yep, that makes sense. Seattle can’t get enough firms to bid on projects, and there aren’t enough civil engineers to go around (the ones that exist are retiring), kids these days see computer science as the only way to make money since we’ve been underpaying civil engineers…etc…
- waterheater 3y ago
  All your points are true, yet remember that China has over 4x the US population and a higher overall population density. Also, if your wife is from the PRC, you obviously know how the CCP will ram through any project they deem necessary, regardless of what the locals think. Construction is expensive in the US because the cost of living is expensive, primarily due to continuous inflation over the past 60 years. To my knowledge, the majority of construction costs are worker pay and worker health insurance plans, not equipment and building materials. China's cost of living is still low, so worker pay stays relatively low, and though I know almost nothing about the Chinese healthcare system, I can't imagine their healthcare costs are comparable to the US. I am genuinely surprised an urban population of 1 million people just got an airport in 2023.
  - kiba 3y ago
    Construction is expensive because in large part we became a society of NIMBYs, especially when compared to other countries with high labor cost. At the same time, we're also wasting money on unnecessary infrastructure. Labor costs are manageable by itself. But the sheer ineptitude, obstructionism, excessive goldplating, and changing your mind every five minutes is going to balloon project costs, especially when they're not routine affair. At the same time, we're adding parking lots and expanding and adding additional roads. They're not really needed and contributed to excessive pollution, urban decay, and maintenance issues.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      Setting aside the rest, NIMBY's are part of why we don't have projects like the Three Gorges Dam that displaced over a million people from their homes. Sure, a lot of it is just wankery, but a certain amount of input from the people who will be harmed by social projects is a good thing.
      - kiba 3y ago
        Doesn't prevent road expansion, rampant parking lot construction, and urban sprawl. They're only NIMBY against certain projects. Some environmental destruction are more acceptable than other.
est 3y ago
> giant airports with barely any traffic to justify their existence Like ghost cities reported a decade ago?
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Aren't there still plenty of ghost cities - like Kangbashi in Ordos? China's population is in decline. The ghost cities are unlikely to become less ghostly any time soon.
  - est 3y ago
    > like Kangbashi in Ordos a random search yields https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/China-s-largest-ghost-city-booms-again-thanks-to-education-fever https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/China-s-largest-gh...
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      An even quicker search yields a population of 100k (even by China's numbers) - when it was planned for 1M: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangbashi_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangbashi_District I guess if you consider (optimistic) 10% occupancy rates a Boom Town, then - yeah - maybe there aren't any Ghost Towns in China. Kangbashi cost $161B. Forest City cost $100B and it'll probably be a decade before they get the funding to finish it, and then probably a decade after that before it gets to 25% occupancy (optimistic). Who knows how many other $20B+ investments will be sitting at <20% occupancy for decades - and at least the ones in China are unlikely to ever get higher than that (since population is rapidly declining).
      - est 3y ago
        > yields a population of 100k (even by China's numbers) - when it was planned for 1M The Kangbashi was empty only because the "old Ordos city" was supposed to move there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos_City#Administrative_subdivisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos_City#Administrative_subd... Ordos itself had a population was 2,153,638 as of the 2020 census. The planned 1M was not that exaggerated

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

It really feels like we can't have nice things anymore. Seattle goes way over budget and time on all its transit projects, to the point that it just feels like we can't get anything done anymore. In contrast, China builds subways and rail lines for a reasonable price, even if they aren't always needed. My wife's hometown (Chenzhou Hunan, 4.5 million, although just 1 million urban) just got an airport, so no more flights to Changsha or Guangzhou and then a 1-2 hour HSR connection into the city. I guess it seems a bit pointless, because HSR made the lack of an airport completely reasonable, but what do I know. But there are definitely enough people to justify an airport, like that airport in Guizhou...it serves 6.6 million people...so in 10 years they might think they didn't build it big enough.

downrightmike 3y ago
Pesky land rights owned by individuals can muck things up
Belopolye 3y ago
> It really feels like we can't have nice things anymore. Economists talk about the middle-income trap, but I feel there’s another trap in developed economies. The economics of low-cost, high-skill labor that made the public and private architecture of the past (my small city of around 70,000 people has a gorgeous post office that was built in the early 1900s in a grand neoclassical style) so comparatively extravagant and beautiful just doesn’t work today. Blame doesn’t lie with the high-skilled working class for not wanting to work for what would amount to poverty wages, but at the same time shareholders and city council meeting-goers refuse to pay the correct price to build beautiful things anymore. It’s a cycle that nobody wants to (or can) give ground on.
- lazide 3y ago
  That’s BS. Very little of the cost of these projects is labor actually doing the work. Most of it is planning, admin, and opaque costs nowhere near labor costs to subcontractors.
  - Belopolye 3y ago
    If you believe that’s the case why aren’t you founding a disruptor to the construction industry with high-skilled, highly-paid labor? Should be easy to eliminate those “opaque costs” and undercut all of your competition, right? Easy money.
    - lazide 3y ago
      Hahaha, the money is going to the folks playing the games with procurement and management. My skill is actually building things. Which is completely uninteresting to all parties involved in that mess. Often actively avoided, actually, as it tends to ruffle feathers. Similar to Beltway bandit type software work. That isn’t going to change until there is clear motivation by taxpayers/constituents to actually get something done quickly that doesn’t suck, and they can agree on what that is. Which isn’t going to be anytime soon. In the mean time, plenty of folks happy to sit back and cash paychecks ‘helping’ the various entities.
jandrese 3y ago
A lot of cost savings come from just producing things in volume. The Chinese may be way over-building the infrastructure, but they're building so much that their industry is quite good at it. Contrast that with the US where these infrastructure projects are relatively uncommon and the industries that support them are small and high cost. If you have to keep an industry alive on only a handful of projects each decade then those projects are necessarily going to be expensive, probably outrageously so.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Yep, that makes sense. Seattle can’t get enough firms to bid on projects, and there aren’t enough civil engineers to go around (the ones that exist are retiring), kids these days see computer science as the only way to make money since we’ve been underpaying civil engineers…etc…
waterheater 3y ago
All your points are true, yet remember that China has over 4x the US population and a higher overall population density. Also, if your wife is from the PRC, you obviously know how the CCP will ram through any project they deem necessary, regardless of what the locals think. Construction is expensive in the US because the cost of living is expensive, primarily due to continuous inflation over the past 60 years. To my knowledge, the majority of construction costs are worker pay and worker health insurance plans, not equipment and building materials. China's cost of living is still low, so worker pay stays relatively low, and though I know almost nothing about the Chinese healthcare system, I can't imagine their healthcare costs are comparable to the US. I am genuinely surprised an urban population of 1 million people just got an airport in 2023.
- kiba 3y ago
  Construction is expensive because in large part we became a society of NIMBYs, especially when compared to other countries with high labor cost. At the same time, we're also wasting money on unnecessary infrastructure. Labor costs are manageable by itself. But the sheer ineptitude, obstructionism, excessive goldplating, and changing your mind every five minutes is going to balloon project costs, especially when they're not routine affair. At the same time, we're adding parking lots and expanding and adding additional roads. They're not really needed and contributed to excessive pollution, urban decay, and maintenance issues.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Setting aside the rest, NIMBY's are part of why we don't have projects like the Three Gorges Dam that displaced over a million people from their homes. Sure, a lot of it is just wankery, but a certain amount of input from the people who will be harmed by social projects is a good thing.
    - kiba 3y ago
      Doesn't prevent road expansion, rampant parking lot construction, and urban sprawl. They're only NIMBY against certain projects. Some environmental destruction are more acceptable than other.

est 3y ago

> giant airports with barely any traffic to justify their existence Like ghost cities reported a decade ago?

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Aren't there still plenty of ghost cities - like Kangbashi in Ordos? China's population is in decline. The ghost cities are unlikely to become less ghostly any time soon.
- est 3y ago
  > like Kangbashi in Ordos a random search yields https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/China-s-largest-ghost-city-booms-again-thanks-to-education-fever https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/China-s-largest-gh...
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    An even quicker search yields a population of 100k (even by China's numbers) - when it was planned for 1M: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangbashi_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangbashi_District I guess if you consider (optimistic) 10% occupancy rates a Boom Town, then - yeah - maybe there aren't any Ghost Towns in China. Kangbashi cost $161B. Forest City cost $100B and it'll probably be a decade before they get the funding to finish it, and then probably a decade after that before it gets to 25% occupancy (optimistic). Who knows how many other $20B+ investments will be sitting at <20% occupancy for decades - and at least the ones in China are unlikely to ever get higher than that (since population is rapidly declining).
    - est 3y ago
      > yields a population of 100k (even by China's numbers) - when it was planned for 1M The Kangbashi was empty only because the "old Ordos city" was supposed to move there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos_City#Administrative_subdivisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos_City#Administrative_subd... Ordos itself had a population was 2,153,638 as of the 2020 census. The planned 1M was not that exaggerated