> Most of the time aspect comes from excessive regulations and approvals

Well... given you're comparing to China... regulations and approvals have a point. China just openly sharts on nature, the environment and the rights of its citizens - the Party and its interests always come first.

> I visit China sometimes and it's seriously just wild seeing a town suddenly have a metro system go from not existing to being fully functional and world-class compared to anything in the west within the span of a few years.

Easy to do when you got the perfect combination: a lot of young single poor men that can be shuffled around the country because they got nothing tying them down to a specific place, combined with a lot of hard dollars from exports.

And China has another incentive... the threat of gulag. When a project gets screwed up, someone or their entire family ends up gulaged, and usually it's going to be someone from the CCP when someone higher-up thinks it's a good time to audit projects of the underlings to have some fall guys to take the usual "corruption" blame.

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akudha 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

okay, can't we have a middle ground then? On one side, nothing happens because of corruption, regulation, partisan interests etc. On the other end, there is authoritarian regime that can get things done at insane speed but at the cost of the environment and its people. Is it that hard to build stuff for the greater good of the public but respect mother nature and workers' rights at the same time?

	▲	bluGill 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes it is hard. What makes it hard is the analisys of the problem is wrong and so we don't know how to fix it. Some of the problems were hinted at above, but the response of why we do it that way was also hinted at and should give anyone wanting to fix the problem pause. There are many other problems that are at fault too that were not hinted at. Some of them I know (but I'd need a book to write out), but there are hints of more things that I'm not aware of. I also have reason to suspect some of what I "know" is actually wrong, but I don't know what and cannot know until someone tries it thus showing why it is wrong.
	▲	mschuster91 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Is it that hard to build stuff for the greater good of the public but respect mother nature and workers' rights at the same time? It is, it takes political effort and most importantly it takes adequate staffing on the state/local government for supervision and proper tender processes, and both is really short in supply - one might say that the latter is done on purpose as an excuse to privatize yet another piece of public infrastructure. Of course a private toll road company can build faster and keep up with maintenance, it doesn't have to deal with tender bullshit, it can hire enough of its own staff to make sure vendors don't screw them over, and if it's a large enough company they can hire their own construction crews. Oh and obviously it can provide a source of extra income for the grifter politicians that vote for the privatization...

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forgotoldacc 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Well... given you're comparing to China... regulations and approvals have a point. China just openly sharts on nature, the environment

These ones aren't really accurate in this century. China is making massive gains in clean energy and undoing a lot of the mess they made in the 20th century. I'm honestly blown away by how clean the water, air, and everything as a whole is over there. And I'm a freak who loves visiting places in the middle of nowhere, so it's not some Potemkin village stuff like YouTube China Truthers(tm) pretend is widespread.

> When a project gets screwed up, someone or their entire family ends up gulaged

Yeah, you watch a little too much YouTube. That stuff doesn't happen. Why would anyone be stupid enough to be an engineer if they risk having their entire family being arrested? Seriously.

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mrguyorama 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>China just openly sharts on nature

You say this like China is the country openly flaunting the climate, purposely pushing for more carbon emissions to enrich a few people, calling climate change a hoax, 1984'ing all government research and policy on climate change, and forbidding agencies from even researching it, selling off public lands for profit.

That's not China, that's the good ol USA

Oh, and the USA also sent multiple completely innocent people to gulags.

Where's your high horse now?