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There are vanishingly few examples of infrastructure spending that don't turn into massive, wasteful boondoggles; perhaps the Interstate Highway system. The na
by gunapologist99 2y ago
There are vanishingly few examples of infrastructure spending that don't turn into massive, wasteful boondoggles; perhaps the Interstate Highway system.
The national railroad system a century prior and even the Internet were nearly entirely built with private funds.
- Qwertious 2y agoThe interstate highway system is arguably a massively wasteful boondoggle - it subsidises trucks at the cost of the far more efficient and less-polluting rail.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoHuge military boon having the interstate as well for our icbm truck platforms.
- massysett 2y agoRailroads got massive subsidies in at least two forms: huge land grants, and the power of the U.S. Army to wage war on the native peoples who otherwise would have stood in their way.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoI thought by the time the railroad came about the US army already did that for the various ranch lands the railroad went through?
- galdosdi 2y agoThe land grant thing is sort of weird though. Hard to think of it as that big of a subsidy when the land was so so low in value prior to the railroad and the railroad's construction is what made the adjoining land so valuable. I wouldn't call it a subsidy at all -- but rather an investment that turned nearly worthless land into much more valuable land and attracted much more investment dwarfing the original "subsidy"
- galdosdi 2y agoI wouldn't say vanishingly few. Seems like the vast majority of infrastructure built before some certain point in the mid-to-late 20th century was cheap and easily worth it (and we built a TON of it all the time) and it's only since then there's been increasing issues. I don't think it's about infrastructure, there's something else causing the cost overruns and we should figure out what it is.