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 wouldn’t be amazed if some Americans imagine coolies from the 1900s whenever there is talk of railway construction in China
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
i think this is spinning gently towards the “anything impressive built by non-whites was done by aliens or slave labor” thing.
meanwhile the US was literally built on slave labor of course…
It feels like extrapolating from how chinese people were treated building the USAs railroads except you figure the problem is the chinese people and not the USA
He’s also making it sound like America doesn’t bulldoze entire neighborhoods for infrastructure projects (highways)
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?
You don’t understand, the less high speed rail you have the more democratic and free you are. This is like, a mathematically proven fact.
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 :(“
Nah, let’s add fuel to the fire. Skip unions and move straight to a state owned enterprise.
You can’t say “protect property” and “defend workers rights” in the same sentence LMAO
Those hard working landlords ya know. Also acting like eminent domain doesn’t exist in burger land lmfao
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.
Ruthless efficiency- trains work and don’t take two extra hours for private freight monopolies to run their unsafe trains with priority on the same century-old tracks.
Trains running on time is totalitarian.
There’s a joke about Germans in here
Trust me, i can tell you from first hand experience there is no danger of that kind of totalitarianism in today’s Germany. Since DB was semi-privatized our train schedules have become more free and democratic than ever. Sometimes there is so much democracy that the train doesn’t even come at all. But we can still improve on this because it’s not fully privatized yet and according to econ PhDs: “Privatization May Result in Poorer Service, and That’s Good”
Yes, that is what I was referring to. Thank you for more information, though!
If I was a politician, I would probably approach this something like this, imagine I’m in a seersucker suit, standing on a pine box.
Whatever happened to American gumption, man? Whatever happened to wanting to be number one, fucking winning something, right? Whatever happened to getting on the damn gridiron and wanting to be the damn best, wanting to pull through and win the damn trophy? Whatever happened to that? It seems like in America, we’ve convinced ourselves, like an off-season player, that we’re number one, we’re the best there ever was, so we don’t need to practice, we don’t need to work.
Meanwhile… Meanwhile… They got high-speed rail that moves 350 miles per hour. Meanwhile, they got the first fourth-generation nuclear reactor. The first fifth-generation microchip facility. What do we got? KFC in parking lots. It’s a cope. It is pathetic. Whatever happened to wanting to be the best, whatever happened to wanting to see America on top? Nah, the only thing we can do is bomb people. We can’t build anything, we just blow it up. That’s the problem with this country. I’m sick and I’m tired. I’m tired of people talking about, well, they’re China, they can just do it better. They got more people. Oh, well, they’re communists, so, you know, they’re more efficient than us. Hogwash. Ridiculous. Shows me a lack of fucking gumption. It’s a cope. It’s a fucking cope. Makes me feel pathetic. I don’t want to feel pathetic, I want to feel like a patriot.
Ruthless efficiency > ruthless inefficiency
Unironically “we may be poor and homeless, but we have FREEDOM (also we’re a police state)”
the… only… system… that… works…
UNTIL IT ISNT
They don’t defend worker’s rights in the US. Worker’s have virtually no rights in the US. Classic
