Naval divers working to clear fishing nets from the HMAS Toowoomba's propellers were forced to exit the water when a Chinese warship began operating its hull-mounted sonar, in an incident labelled "unsafe and unprofessional".
I wasn’t talking about the cities per se. But their overspending on high speed rail etc. In terms of housing. There is no one size fits all. And urbanization is not acceptable for everyone. There will always be people who reject it and they aren’t necessarily wrong for doing so. You have to build infrastructure where people are. And the infrastructure they need. Not just where you want them to be or think they need. So in that sense they may have housing for everyone. But they are still occupied by ghosts seeing it’s not the housing they need or want. But one size fits all thinking, along with social oppression and a healthy dash of torturing and murdering those that disagree. Have always been core problems of leninism and those inspired by it. So it was always going to be the sort of mistakes the party makes. Because they don’t, and have no need or incentive to actually serve the people.
I mean, objectively Chinese HSR is cheaper per unit distance than California’s or London’s by… I think an order of magnitude? They can afford to build additional infrastructure at scale.
China connected basically all major Chinese cities for less than 10x the cost of California HSR or HS2.
I’m not decrying investment in infrastructure. But rather the types and ways China has done it, specifically with propping up their faltering economy in mind.
I’d also love to see nationwide build out of quality desirable public housing in the US. To put landlords out of business and bring housing costs back to reality. But it would be silly to build it all in Wyoming where most people don’t want to live. Or as Brutalist architecture which most people don’t enjoy.
High speed rail and public transportation too. But building high speed rail to villages that don’t need or want it. Just to prop up the economy. Is again wasteful, not actually serving their needs, and only going to make their problems bigger in the end. The party is serving the party and not the people.
I mean, I think it’s just a completely different development model.
China develops for future demand, while the US develops for past demand.
Invariably, developing for future demand sometimes leads to poor development, but those cases are not the norm. What it does allow is taking advantage of economies of scale to improve net efficiency (again, in the HSR example, China incurred 10x the debt to build 50x the rail of California and 150x the rail of the UK). Even if half of your buildup is useless, it’s still more efficient than the American approach.
I’m sure there’s some optimal point in the middle and I don’t think China’s hit that, but I think you’re conflating different issues to justify the lack of infrastructure investment in the US. The thing is, with the massive rural-urban migration in China, it was always better to have excess capacity than insufficient capacity: the urban population is the key driver to economic growth.
For what it’s worth, you can ask people in SF if they’d prefer to live in brutalist buildings for $500/month or pay the exorbitant rents in the area…
I wasn’t talking about the cities per se. But their overspending on high speed rail etc. In terms of housing. There is no one size fits all. And urbanization is not acceptable for everyone. There will always be people who reject it and they aren’t necessarily wrong for doing so. You have to build infrastructure where people are. And the infrastructure they need. Not just where you want them to be or think they need. So in that sense they may have housing for everyone. But they are still occupied by ghosts seeing it’s not the housing they need or want. But one size fits all thinking, along with social oppression and a healthy dash of torturing and murdering those that disagree. Have always been core problems of leninism and those inspired by it. So it was always going to be the sort of mistakes the party makes. Because they don’t, and have no need or incentive to actually serve the people.
I mean, objectively Chinese HSR is cheaper per unit distance than California’s or London’s by… I think an order of magnitude? They can afford to build additional infrastructure at scale.
China connected basically all major Chinese cities for less than 10x the cost of California HSR or HS2.
I’m not decrying investment in infrastructure. But rather the types and ways China has done it, specifically with propping up their faltering economy in mind.
I’d also love to see nationwide build out of quality desirable public housing in the US. To put landlords out of business and bring housing costs back to reality. But it would be silly to build it all in Wyoming where most people don’t want to live. Or as Brutalist architecture which most people don’t enjoy.
High speed rail and public transportation too. But building high speed rail to villages that don’t need or want it. Just to prop up the economy. Is again wasteful, not actually serving their needs, and only going to make their problems bigger in the end. The party is serving the party and not the people.
I mean, I think it’s just a completely different development model.
China develops for future demand, while the US develops for past demand.
Invariably, developing for future demand sometimes leads to poor development, but those cases are not the norm. What it does allow is taking advantage of economies of scale to improve net efficiency (again, in the HSR example, China incurred 10x the debt to build 50x the rail of California and 150x the rail of the UK). Even if half of your buildup is useless, it’s still more efficient than the American approach.
I’m sure there’s some optimal point in the middle and I don’t think China’s hit that, but I think you’re conflating different issues to justify the lack of infrastructure investment in the US. The thing is, with the massive rural-urban migration in China, it was always better to have excess capacity than insufficient capacity: the urban population is the key driver to economic growth.
For what it’s worth, you can ask people in SF if they’d prefer to live in brutalist buildings for $500/month or pay the exorbitant rents in the area…