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The thing is, we used to do this. Walk around London or Florence or Rome and you will see era-adjusted sights that are equally impressive. For that matter, go c
by moomin 1y ago
The thing is, we used to do this. Walk around London or Florence or Rome and you will see era-adjusted sights that are equally impressive. For that matter, go check out Blenheim Palace. It’s a reasonable question to ask: What happened? But the answer is prosaic. These sights all come from times of _incredible_ inequality. Which you don’t see in these pictures but is vastly more relevant to the day to day lives of most citizens.
Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.
- dan-robertson 1y agoI mean, people go hungry today in plenty of places that fail to build (the U.K. for example) and they went hungry or lived in fear of the powerful in plenty of places before they were able to build at impressive scales. I’m not sure if it’s what you are thinking of, but I don’t think the massive expansion of cities in the Industrial Revolution was caused by incredible inequality (unless you count inequality between urban and rural areas?). I guess you could be thinking of ‘monuments’ built by the rich and saying they are due to inequality but I would think the analogue to Chongqing would be the constructing of the ‘megacities’ of the past, which is mostly about building lots of residential, industrial, and office space rather than palaces.
- kubb 1y agoI think it’s a misread to attribute large-scale construction mainly to inequality. While inequality funded grand projects historically, today it’s effective planning, strong state capacity, and streamlined execution that make the real difference. China’s development is impressive because it prioritizes coordination and scale, whereas Europe struggles more with political and organizational fragmentation and lack of initiative.
- yorwba 1y agoThe strong state capacity collects the resources of large areas and concentrates them into large-scale construction projects in a handful of places. China has a small number of megacities with large, wealthy, modern urban cores and a very large population that lives somewhere else. There are about a hundred cities with more than a million inhabitants but only 47 have urban rail transit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_rail_transit_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_rail_transit_in_China That's inequality.
- kubb 1y agoThat's fair, but the number of cities with urban rail transit is increasing over time. Whether it's the smaller cities paying for the bigger ones... I don't feel like that's the whole picture, but I don't know enough to dispute that.
- kelipso 1y agoA first-order evaluation, just looking at yearly income per person, would say that urban centers make more money per capita and thus contributes more money per capita to tax than non-urban centers.
- thelamest 1y ago(Maybe I’m reading too much of a narrative into what you wrote, but–) I don’t think it’s causal like that; it doesn’t have to be. In particular, “wealthy, modern urban cores” tend to be self-sustaining economic force multipliers rather than parasitic resource sinks or vanity projects. Each specific megaproject might be one of the latter, of course. In general, however, I’d be careful about mixing up different public choice failures. How easy it is to: (agree on a fair way to) collect public money, identify and agree on some kind of public benefit, allocate resources to further that interest, execute projects without snags – etc.
- chipsa 1y agoKnowing how China designates cities[0], citation needed on the number of cities. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing > The municipality covers a large geographical area roughly the size of Austria,[14] which includes several disjunct urban areas in addition to Chongqing proper.
- yorwba 1y agoOn this list of Chinese cities by population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_population#Cities_and_towns_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_pop... #100 is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiujiang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiujiang with a total population of 4.6 million, of which 2.8 million live in urban areas and 1.1 million in the metropolitan area, i.e. the fact that cities often administratively subsume neighboring towns is already taken into account.
- oceanhaiyang 1y ago> Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed. I think you’re still speaking about Chongqing. China builds these and closes the wage gap.
- 10u152 1y agoOh come on. Lower socio economic Chinese definitely still fear the rich and worry about being homeless and not getting medical treatment.
- dangus 1y agoTell me one way that your statement doesn’t apply to the US or many other wealthy developed nations. The GINI coefficient is higher in the USA than it is in China. China in recent years has reduced inequality while the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader. Don’t believe me, look up the data.
- graemep 1y ago> China in recent years has reduced inequality After many years of increasing inequality > the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader. I cannot imagine possible definition of "fascist" that would include the US and exclude China. China has far more fascist features than any other major country - personality cult, courts compliant with the government, erasure of minority cultures - and actual genocide.
- GlacierFox 1y agoIt seems some people have claimed the word fascist to mean something entirely different to what it actually means in an attempt to shut down conversations when things aren't going their way.
- lormayna 1y ago> Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed. You are just describing every western European country.
- bojan 1y agoEvery Western European country now. Not in the time those sights were built.
- makeset 1y agoNo true Scotland.
- moomin 1y agoNo, that was the exact point I was making: plenty of places have impressive stuff dating from the days of massive inequality/injustice, we just don’t produce it anymore. Pointing at a 300 year old building isn’t a gotcha, it was literally just the point I was making in the first place.
- chollida1 1y agoI mean, my family and i just spent 5 weeks over Christmas in Rome, Paris and London. I live in Toronto where we have our share of homelessness and those 3 cities put Toronto to shame with the amount of poverty and homelessness we saw. Europe is beautiful and does many things better than North America and Asia but hunger and poverty are area's where its just as bad if not worse.
- mc32 1y agoThat’s something that’s developed over the last couple decades. Europe didn’t have vast amounts of homelessness and poverty. My guess is Schengen plus lax immigration policies. That is compare requirements for entering the UAE vs Europe. Europe is less selective.
- genjo 1y agoit's a social experiment. "if we don't do it top-down, will the educated and driven try to make us do better or do it themselves?". the answer revealed itself when architecture and design remained procedural but failed to emphasize and to build around the goal of social evolution and identity seeking. instead we got Gentrification, efficiency nobody asked for and wealth wasted on uninspired and demotivating pseudo-game theorists. it's funny how nobody noticed in time that the side effects of these many experiments destroyed more beauty & opportunities, especially in urban convolution and social convection than they have revealed in data about human nature and civilized networks ... "we happened to become a community and build around the growing desires of our children and our own" is something you only hear on garden plots, even though on the country side everywhere, people are now third and fourth generation heirs.
- germinalphrase 1y ago“‘we happened to become a community and build around the growing desires of our children and our own’ is something you only hear on garden plots, even though on the country side everywhere, people are now third and fourth generation heirs.” Meanwhile, in the US, small towns across the country are greying and dying out as wealth and opportunity are increasingly concentrated in urban areas.
- badc0ffee 1y agoI don't understand what this means, or how it fits with the comment it's replying to.