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> the dominant ideology of our time is a mix of utilitarianism without the ability to calculate utility, and cost-benefit analysis without the ability to calculate benefits

This is the crux of the issue. Assessing the “business case” will vastly underestimate the upside and overestimate the downside of infrastructure projects. There are emergent effects that businesses never get to tap into but governments can, because they have a monopoly on being the government. It’s a scarcity mindset.

Compare with various Chinese megaprojects like the infrastructure connecting Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Macau, and Guangzhou in China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong%E2%80%93Hong_Kong%...

Aside from transforming the region into an economic powerhouse (most of your electronics were probably manufactured there) better transportation makes it easier to attract talent, lowers the cost of housing, and makes a generally more productive workforce. It makes businesses possible that would otherwise not be.

How many Americans have turned down jobs in nearby cities because poor transportation options force a choice between family and work? Hell, even though San Jose and San Francisco are basically neighbors commuting from one to the other (2+ hours in traffic) is a non-starter.

Further, because the Chinese have built so many railroads, China can export their expertise to other countries. Chinese subway companies built metros in Portugal, Mexico, and Turkey.

If Western governments instead had a growth mindset for their economies I think we would see a lot more infrastructure being created because they enable network effects in which the whole is better than the sum of its parts.

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tim333 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>transforming the region into an economic powerhouse (most of your electronics were probably manufactured there)

I'm in favour of infrastructure but I think the history of Shenzhen is more market capitalism made it an economic powerhouse and then the government cranked up the infrastructure. From the Wikipedia page

>in May 1980 the Central Committee designated Shenzhen as the first SEZ in China, which was promoted by then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping as part of China's reform and opening-up. Its objective is to be an experimental ground for the practice of market capitalism within a community guided by the ideals of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

And then the capitalism experiment worked. It benefited a lot from being near Hong Kong where people had money and skills while Shenzhen provided cheap labour and a place where Chinese entrepreneurs could go and build stuff.

	▲	janalsncm a day ago \| parent [-]
		For sure. Being an SEZ put Shenzhen on the map. Infrastructure was an additional boost and raised the ceiling on their growth. In the US we already have market capitalism so there’s not much to gain there. But infrastructure is lacking. That’s the key takeaway.

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inglor_cz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Let's not pretend that autocracy doesn't come with downsides. The same ease of decision that leads to the ability to build quickly (opposition is illegal) can lead to a fatal miscalculation like Putin did in February 2022.

Democracies are messy, but a lot less warlike. Current peace in Europe, after centuries of endless bloodshed, is nice to have. NIMBY is a bad problem for growth, but I am positive we can overcome it one day. Some places already did, by clever legislation (NZ, Israel, several cities in the US).

Even without wars, you can have autocrats making stupid economic decisions. I am not convinced that a septuagenarian apparatchik like Xi can wisely decide that software bad, manufacturing good. And yet he makes such decisions on behalf of 1,5 billion people and thus shapes the investment flows and future of the Chinese economy for decades to come, decades that he personally won't even live in.

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janalsncm 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I feel like this is one of the many places on the internet where people see “China” and instinctively feel the need to give some variation of cocktail party nationalism. I’m hoping HN can tolerate a little nuance here: acknowledging that China did a smart thing isn’t an endorsement of autocracy. In freedom-loving countries we should figure out if their ideas are compatible with our values on the merits of each idea itself.

To be more direct, the ability to build infrastructure that benefits a region or the whole country is entirely orthogonal from the style of government. It’s a matter of vision and political will. The US built the interstate highway system and plenty of other infrastructure projects.

	▲	Eddy_Viscosity2 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The downside of infrastructure projects, aside from environmental, is that they can sometimes be huge sources of corruption and waste, like bridges to nowhere. This happens in all styles of government.
	▲	inglor_cz 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		" is entirely orthogonal " I think it is somewhat separate from the style of government, but not entirely orthogonal. It is obviously easier to build infrastructure and to keep building it for decades and decades, if you can disregard much of the popular backlash. The golden age of Western infrastructure building ended with people electing all sorts of NIMBY or Green-adjacent politicians who imposed a lot of bureaucratic rules on further development. Such a thing is basically impossible either in China or in places like Saudi Arabia (cough NEOM, cough). There, you can either try to "petition the court" somehow (only works for certain people and their interests), or, in much more risky way, try to cause some unrest and hope that the authorities will back down instead of responding by crushing you. It was similar in late stage Communist Eastern Bloc; and the comrades were rightly afraid, because the eco-movement played some role in bringing down the system.

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rKarpinski 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Democracies are messy, but a lot less warlike. Current peace in Europe, after centuries of endless bloodshed, is nice to have

Democracies are much nicer places to be citizens of but not particularly less warlike. And the more peaceful times in Europe isn't because of democracy it's because of US hegemony

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inglor_cz 2 days ago | parent [-]

"And the more peaceful times in Europe isn't because of democracy it's because of US hegemony"

Is it?

The US is very lightly present on the continent, as it has significantly would down its forces since the end of the Cold War. Its influence on most European affairs is mostly soft power than hard power.

If Italy and Austria wanted to duke it out over who owns South Tirol, the putative US hegemony would not prevent them from doing so, much like it didn't prevent the almost full decade of regional wars in the wake of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

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rKarpinski 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Soft power and the institutions of the west are a big part of the US power projection that prevents war. Those countries are very lightly militarized (<2% of GDP on military), and it's because they are under US protection not because they are democracies.

Yugoslavia was basically outside the US sphere or influence, and it was a regional conflict(not of vital importance) so the actions by the US were more limited. Also that's a weird example to bring up in support of Democratic peace theory as "Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro and the Serb Autonomous Regions were all formal multiparty democracies" [1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_democraci...

	▲	inglor_cz 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		"Formal" does quite a lot of heavy lifting there. Within the community of formally democratic countries, countries that democratized only very recently (last 10 years of their existence or so) form a very specific sub-club. Some of those might be autocracies by other name, some others too chaotic to be even a -cracy. It takes some time, I would say, at least three or four full election cycles with peaceful transfer of power, before a people learns to be a democracy.

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tim333 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The EU is probably more effective at stopping Italy and Austria having a go over the Tirol. The US are quite helpful at deterring Russia from doing it's thing though.

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jahewson 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Current peace in Europe, after centuries of endless bloodshed, is nice to have.

It’s like 80 years, let’s not get carried away. Europe seems woefully unstable to me.

	▲	inglor_cz 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Let's also not get cynical. 80 years of young men not being shred in the name of some Prince, King, Führer or Duce is a lot. And very untypical in our history.