It is now five years later and the disparity between the US and China in this respect has only gotten worse. But hey, that’s a good thing right?
given the rule of law, the need to protect property and defend workers’ rights
He’s making it sound like there are roving bands of lawless of engineers that are press ganging people into building railways in China. Very cool and punk, but not very factual.
Worse than press ganging people, China is forcing machines to build their railways! They are making these poor robots lay thousands of kilometers of track and not even paying them!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The implication to me was that China would just pave their HSR lines over whatever was in the way, which is exactly how America built its highway system. But of course China has a longstanding tradition of so-called “nail houses”, where a single homeowner refuses to sell to the government thus forcing them to build around the house because they respect people’s right to live where they want too much to just pave over it.
When Japan had HSR, they would argue America can’t have it because America is large.
With China having HSR, that argument no longer works.
They’re pivoting to the standard argument about how America is “too diverse” for infrastructure projects now, but eventually will probably just land on HSR being a racial trait of the inscrutable asiatic or some shit.
Never mind the fact that when America wanted to build highways it paved over black neighborhoods without a second’s remorse - meanwhile in China there is a long running tradition of so-called “nail houses”, where a single homeowner refused to sell to the government so they had to build around it because they respect people’s right to live where they want too much to invoke eminent domain.
They used the same argument about medicare for all.
This model works in small Nordic “socialist” countries because they’re homogenous and small!
I still don’t really understand how that logic was self evident? Why does the size of the country affect whether social programs can work? If anything it will be more efficient due to economies of scale.
Is it the ““homogenous”” part? That always sounded like a dogwhistle for saying it works in Nordic countries because they don’t have those “minorities” dragging everyone down. Or maybe it’s because wealth inequality is too extreme in the US? I still don’t see how that logic holds, I mean just fucking take the wealth from the people who have it, if inequality is what prevents a functioning society.
That always sounded like a dogwhistle for saying it works in Nordic countries because they don’t have those “minorities” dragging everyone down
That’s exactly it.
And it works, since our health care and ““socialism”” is getting dismantled while immigration is increasing. So when they say it’s the fault of the immigrants, that we aren’t homogeneous enough, they can point and it will seem true.
Why is it always the whitest white men ever trying to convince us we don’t need the innovations of other (better) countries when our own ‘innovators’ are only innovating how much of our money they can steal?
Subtle propaganda to lay the blame for infrastructure issues on unionization and labor rights.
Indeed, he’s a Cato institute fellow. A Koch brother funded “think tank”.
Pieces like this are intended to move the focus of the conversation. It’s sheep in wolf clothing shit.
“It’s such a good thing that labor rights and powerful unions stop us from being competitive with China. It’s so good. If you wanted to stop that you’d have to undermine labor rights, which would be awful. Please don’t undermine labor rights, that would be ruthless and authoritarian. Please please please don’t be ruthless and authoritarian against unions, like obviously it would make America better and able to compete with China which would be good but me, Cato fellow member, I just love unions so I’d hate it if you did this necessary thing :(“
Unironically it is good that America is shitty and inefficient. A weak evil empire is preferable to a strong evil empire.
Agreed. May AmeriKKKa never have high speed rail, never re-industrialize, and continue to have its infrastructure crumble, further and further, until it undergoes the revolutionary change necessary for socialism and de-colonization. If it takes 100 years (hopefully not, doubt it’ll has half that lifespan left), so be it- the empire’s decay is an undeniably good thing for humanity.
I don’t know if the lack of public infrastructure keeps the country weak. It helps keep the inhabitants poor, separated, and not rioting. That’s the main function of it. You know why there are no trains? Because the feds and rich don’t want poor people moving around in groups. They want people stuck in one spot and never sharing a breathing zone with someone wealthier.
in any case I don’t know if the things America needs to exert global dominance are related to its internal infrastructure at all. Manufacturing is done overseas. Most Americans have jobs that are pointless. The entire economy runs on real estate scams and complicated logistics chains the rely on things cheap Honduran labor. America exerts dominance through lines of credit and dumping tax money into aircraft carriers.
