
The infrastructural humiliation of America - boffinism
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/03/the-infrastructural-humiliation-of-america/
======
coldtea
America stopped believing in public infrastructure -- so it doesn't get any
anymore.

As for private infrastructure, private investors are happy to cut all kinds of
corners. It's all about profit, preferably short term, than making something
lasting, and even less so, about being proud in it.

The funny thing is, not very long ago (well, 30 years or so still) people were
awestruck going into the US from Asia, Europe, etc. I've visited the US many
times in the past decades, but I was more impressed with the past artifacts
(e.g. Route 66, Chicagoan art deco, the fabulous country side, old New York
skyscrapers, New Orleans, etc.) than with modern infrastructure. Heck, third
tier cities in Europe have better subways and airports.

(That said, I did appreciate the abundance of ultra-cheap consumer electronics
compared to old Europe).

The other thing I think (not an expert) is too much bureaucracy -- all the
busy works laws and regulations that quadruple the cost of any project, and
not in a good (e.g. public safety, long term quality, etc) way.

What's funny is the US budget is still huge. Just the stuff going into
military BS could provide for top notch infrastructure, and even create an
environment that could still jobs from China with a better supply chain
(though, of course, the US can never account for the sheer number of Chinese
workers).

~~~
fredley
"The public infrastructure is terrible! Why should our taxes go towards this
awful system?"

Rinse, repeat. There are politicians pushing this in the UK (most notably with
the NHS) - starve [public institution] of cash, make it worse, bring in
private companies to plug the gaps and provide a pathway to privatise the
whole system. Everybody wins! /s

~~~
nostromo
Well, the opposite view, "let's dump even MORE money into this black hole" is
also not a smart path forward.

New Yorkers pay handsomely for their mediocre transit -- an amount that always
seems to be growing beyond inflation. And yet less and less seems to be
returned for their largesse.

~~~
afiori
Partly that is because you need to allocate money for upgrades and maintenance
upfront otherwise you will get stuck in a pit of having no money because of
old infrastructure and having old infrastructure because you have no money.

The only way to make it work is to hold the private sector accountable of the
quality they produce.

------
daenz
Here's an unpopular theory: America is so pitted against eachother along a
number of dimensions: class, race, ethnicity, gender, sex, political view,
religion, etc etc... that we've stopped thinking of ourselves as a cohesive
society. And when you don't have a cohesive society, you don't care about
improving things for everyone, only for your specific tribe. Why should tribe
X care about the quality of life of tribe Y, when tribe Y likely doesn't care
about them?

The article mentions "wealthy Asian nations" as an example of what things
could be like in terms of quality of infrastructure. Do you know what those
nations have in common? Homogeneity. Japan is 98% ethnically Japanese.
Thailand is 92% ethnically Thai. China is 94% Han. It's a lot harder to
consider someone "not of your tribe" when you're less diverse.

~~~
buboard
was america more cohesive when they did the apollo program?

~~~
minikites
Jim Crow still ruled the South, so less "cohesive" and more "forceful
repression".

------
fredley
Flying into America (from Europe) is like landing in an airport stuck in a
time warp from 50-70 years ago, it's so strange. The first time I landed in
New York (can't remember which airport) I was really struck with how _old_ the
place was. It had more in common with fading ancient airports (such as
Bangalore's old city-centre terminal—now replaced) than the (mostly) smart and
clean airports we have this side of the pond (and we're still outclassed by
Asia). It was a feeling that followed me around the whole trip, that America
was still stuck in the era of the 80's films I'd grown up with.

~~~
nostromo
Much like Europe, it really depends on the airport.

New York City has some of the worst (and oldest) airports in the nation. And
yet, if you fly into neighboring Newark it's fairly nice and has great
integration with the train system.

What's strange about America is you see this phenomenon where the richest
cities have the worst infrastructure. As a foreigner, you may think that New
York would be this shining beacon on a hill given its wealth. But, nope, the
infrastructure is old, grimey and gross. Meanwhile, the facilities in smaller
second-tier cities are quite nice.

~~~
alexhutcheson
Newark Terminal C is nice. Terminals A and B are still stuck with a layout
that was designed right before security checkpoints really became a thing, and
consequently doesn't accommodate them well.

Not coincidentally Terminal C is the exclusive domain of a single airline
(United), who could finance the improvements and realize the benefits of a
renovated terminal. Terminals A and B are shared between a bunch of airlines,
so no individual airline has much of an incentive to finance renovations.

IMO Newark's integration with the train system is much worse than JFK's,
because the Newark AirTrain is slow and unreliable, and there are often 40+
minute gaps between NJ Transit trains at the Newark Airport stop. The JFK
AirTrain is speedier and more reliable, and the combined frequency of LIRR and
the subway is much higher at Jamaica.

~~~
nostromo
Good point, I've only been in Terminal C.

The AirTrain is handy, but it costs $5 to go a couple miles, which is absurd.

------
busterarm
People really underestimate how poorly suited our modern political structure
is to accomplishing large scale public works projects.

We have loads of critical infrastructure, namely bridges, dams, etc that are
long past their serviceable lifespan and are accidents waiting to happen. It's
a nationwide problem and we aren't doing anything about it.

Unfortunately all signs point to a scenario where people are going to die
before it gets any better.

~~~
phillipcarter
Back in 2017, we had the deadliest mass shooting in American history - over 50
deaths and over 400 gunshot wounds (!!!!) [0] - and precisely nothing has
happened. The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and other
mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every year.

No signs point towards a scenario where things get better after people die.
Our political system is a sick one. Expect no change.

[0]:
[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting)

~~~
DuskStar
> Back in 2017, we had the deadliest mass shooting in American history - over
> 50 deaths and over 400 gunshot wounds (!!!!) [0] - and precisely nothing has
> happened. The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and
> other mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every
> year.

You're right, we should have immediately banned all firearms nationally to
prevent something like this from happening again, trampling all over the 2nd
amendment. (nevermind how the hell you'd implement it without a thousand Ruby
Ridges and Wacos, or why you expect to find more than a third of the guns in
the first place [0]) It's not like he could have crashed a plane loaded with
AMFO into the crowd instead, right? Or maybe we should just expand
California's gun laws nationally, since that's worked out so well to stop the
mass shootings there.

You say "OMG how haven't we fixed this, it must mean we don't care" while
proposing no solutions, for a problem that might not _have_ a solution.
Britain still has terrorist attacks (vans, acid, knives) and that's after
banning carrying a fucking _butter knife_. Humans will always find ways to
kill each other, (checkout improvised prison weapons sometime) let's not go
too crazy hunting down one of the smallest sources.

So, maybe our response to shootings shouldn't be compared to our response to
crumbling infrastructure. At least with the infrastructure, there's a path
forward that almost everyone would agree would work. That's not the case with
guns.

0: [http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-
have-...](http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-
bred-defian)

~~~
blattimwind
> You say "OMG how haven't we fixed this, it must mean we don't care" while
> proposing no solutions, for a problem that might not have a solution.
> Britain still has terrorist attacks (vans, acid, knives) and that's after
> banning carrying a fucking butter knife. Humans will always find ways to
> kill each other, (checkout improvised prison weapons sometime) let's not go
> too crazy hunting down one of the smallest sources.

Britain, and specifically London, seems to rival Paris and Brussels in terms
of gang violence, but you still get a lot less dead people than in the US.
You're suggesting there might not be a solution, yet practically no Western
state _except the US_ has this problem in the first place.

~~~
DuskStar
There's a whole bunch of proposed reasons for the US's murder rate, and you're
right that one of them is guns. But the US is an incredibly extreme outlier on
a whole bunch of metrics, and gun ownership is just one of them.

------
sosodev
I've noticed that a lot of people want to attribute the public works
shortcomings to a lack of funding.

As someone who currently works for a local government organization that
manages public transportation for the region I'm not sure that's the case.

I think the author correctly recognizes it as America's problem with "cost
disease'". The organization I work for receives billions of dollars yearly and
most of it is pissed away.

Our websites, for example, often get built by consultants. Sometimes to the
tune of millions of dollars. These websites are usually your typical CRUD apps
too so you might think they'd be done well for millions of dollars. Nope, they
usually have garbage for a code base. The code is so garbage that we usually
have to keep paying them to maintain the websites because we don't understand
how their mess works.

The worst part is that these websites are often rebuilt a few years later.
They're built again, by another consultant, with the hopes that they'll better
suit our future needs.

This is just the massive waste of money that I've noticed from within my
department. I can only imagine how bad it is within others.

We all know that large corporations are far less efficient than smaller
companies. So why do we keep letting public organizations turn into bloated
behemoths?

------
mxschumacher
"Paris’s metro was inaugurated in 1900, but its well-maintained system
continues to run excellently and expand continuously."

Any daily commuter in Paris will tell you that this is untrue. Trains are
often extremely full, delays happen frequently and many stations are deeply
run down.

~~~
simias
I also felt that the article made European transport systems appear better
than they really are in order to make a point. That being said it is true that
the metro keeps expanding (they're currently expanding the line 14 towards the
north, hopefully in order to take some of the load of the extremely
overcrowded line 13) and they've also extended one tramway line recently. On
top of that public transportation in Paris is heavily subsidized and pretty
cheap, a lot cheaper than London for instance.

On the other hand it's true that many Parisian stations are simply disgusting
and could urgently use a renovation. Given how hugely touristic Paris is it's
quite shameful really.

~~~
lucb1e
Yeah I'm also not a big fan of the French metro, and as a Dutchman living in
Germany I can say that the German also leaves quite something to be desired. I
can't imagine what the American system must look like if it's made out like
that.

Anyone here who lived in the Netherlands as well as the USA to compare?

~~~
magduf
>and as a Dutchman living in Germany I can say that the German also leaves
quite something to be desired.

Where in Germany do you live? I was just in Munich and the U-bahn there is
fantastic compared to anything I've ever seen in America. It was crowded
during rush hour, but aside from that, everything was clean and organized, and
the trains were really quite smooth to ride on unlike the ones in DC and NYC.

~~~
lucb1e
I guess in big cities like Cologne, Berlin and Munich, it's probably
equivalent. In and around Aachen, the bus schedule is more of a "definitely
not before" schedule (e.g. "09:30 Bushof" does not mean "bus will be around
09:30 at the bushof", it means "bus will definitely not be at the bushof
before 09:30, but some time after that, and before the next one is scheduled
to go").

It's not reliably late, either: some days it's 1 minute late, some days 10.

You also can't see when it will be late: there does not seem to be live
tracking that tells you within a minute when the bus will actually be there. I
only recently found the website from the local company that can tell the
difference between "within 5 minutes on time" and "more than 5 minutes late".
It tells you "+3" (rounded to the minute it seems) but that could mean
anything between +3 and, say, +8, and after the departure time +3 minutes, it
just removes it from the departures list, even if you're standing at the stop
and you're sure _quite_ sure it hasn't left yet...

Deutsche Bahn and Öffi claim to have realtime data but they don't.

Having to get info from disparate companies is another thing: in the
Netherlands there is a collective of public transport companies (iirc it's
NDOV) that creates a common standard that apps and websites can use for
information (things like the coordinates of all stations and stops, schedules,
and delays precise to a few seconds).

It just seems like a big mess, probably due to the lower population density.
On the upside, that lower density means you actually have nature: I can drive
an hour and be in the middle of nowhere. Having that space is kind of nice.
That just doesn't exist in the Netherlands (there doesn't seem to be any place
more than 500 metres removed from any road, path or building).

That said,

> compared to anything I've ever seen in America

I haven't been to the USA so I can't make that comparison. Like I said, I
can't imagine what the American system must look like if it's made out to be
so much worse than Germany.

------
crazynick4
The Moscow subway is quite beautiful as well. My grandparents were shocked
when I took them into the NY subway for the first time. I guess they were
expecting something like this:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=moscow+subway&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=moscow+subway&tbm=isch)

------
ian1321
As an expat living in Zurich, I can say that it is difficult to explain to
American's what they're missing.

~~~
mberning
Population density, small landmass, and extremely high per capita GDP?

~~~
m_mueller
I really don’t see how this keeps coming up as an excuse. East coast corridor
is at least as dense and is not far off in purchase power per capita. Plus you
could as well compate to China, another huge country with low density of
purchase power, and look how they‘re charging ahead in infrastructure. It‘s
the political system - not to say that the US should adopt China‘s of course,
just that it‘s a better explanation of what goes wrong.

~~~
theredbox
All chinese subways are in large densely populated cities.

~~~
aylmao
> low density of purchase power

I think the commenter was referring to the fact purchasing power is not dense
(ie, dense areas don't have as high a purchasing power)? A little confused by
this too.

~~~
m_mueller
just to expand on this a bit:

I like looking at purchase power in general, rather than GDP - the absolute
numbers don't matter so much as long as your domestic market is large enough
to produce most things people need.

Secondly, the density of savings and taxes per square kilometer is giving you
an idea about how much potential for development a current settlement has.
That's the capital that can be drawn from directly. Density of spendings
(train tickets, consumer goods etc.) is the driver for outside capital to come
in trying to get a dividend. Taken all together (savings + spendings) you get
the density of PPP adjusted GDP per square kilometer as a figure that matters.
As you can see in [1], US and China is actually quite similar in this metric,
and it's probably also still similar if you just take its coastal regions. I
also think that this metric is very similar for the population belt between
London and Rome, and the East Coast corridor in the US.

[1] [http://mecometer.com/topic/gdp-ppp-per-square-
kilometer/](http://mecometer.com/topic/gdp-ppp-per-square-kilometer/)

------
dimillian
While America have a big problem in public and private infrastructure, I've
been wondering in my head about the problem even at small scale in cities and
village here in France.

We have a ton of old buildings, privately owned. Mine included, where it's a
small building of 4 floors and 4 owners. One appartement per floor. It's so
hard to get people into investing money without any monetary return. We fix
problems after they happen. We waited for the rain pipe to break to fix it, we
waited for the balcony to leak in order to fix it etc..

In Marseille two buildings collapsed right in the center of city. They were
decrepit and owned by a company who never invested a dim despite problem
reported. People actually died.

I wonder how many time it need to happen until we wake up?

I'm managing my coproperty, and it's so hard to even find what kind of
local/governmental help we can get. We would be very happy to redo insulation
and building beams if it was possible to co-finance it which public/city
money.

But instead the norm seems to let 150 years old building (built with good
materials) getting destroyed and build new cheap reinforced concrete one.

Is it really cheaper to pop ton of buildings which will not even last 50
years? What is there no incentive to help privately owned building
maintenance?

~~~
abraae
> We would be very happy to redo insulation and building beams if it was
> possible to co-finance it which public/city money.

Hey, I'd be happy to accept public money to fix my own house as well. But
frankly, I bought it cheaper since it had those problems so I don't see how
that would be fair to my fellow taxpayers.

~~~
dimillian
Ha, I have no idea on how to make that happen. But what will happen is that
the city will slap a motion on the door of the building in the coming years,
and we'll be forced to sell for as cheap as possible to city directly or some
cheap promotor.

Which is kinda lame because giving 250K would be cheaper than buying 1M worth
of land to demolish a building and build a 3M building on top of it.

------
theredbox
Living in Seoul a city with an insanely good public transportation I have to
say that it takes me 1,5h to commute to work.

It's crowded, it does not cover everything it's just as good as it can get.

Public transp. is not everything and wont solve all your problems.

------
jandrewrogers
Frequently lost in these discussions is the fact that the US Federal
government does not fund most public infrastructure -- most funding and
virtually all execution is provided by individual States. As a consequence,
cost and quality of infrastructure varies widely by the competency and
efficiency of various States. Road construction costs famously vary by over an
order of magnitude when they cross a State border, and the less expensive side
is often a higher quality product.

Talking about the US government when discussing the infrastructure most people
talk about is misattribution. State policy creates those outcomes and all
politics is local. There is no homogeneous "US infrastructure", there is a
conglomeration of State infrastructures of greatly varying quality and
reflecting the priorities of different States.

All of which is to say that infrastructure is not an America problem, it is a
State problem. If the infrastructure in California, Nebraska, etc is
dilapidated then that is the fault of the people that live in and run those
States.

------
Ericson2314
Conway's law:

> "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs
> which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."

Perhaps that extends to society at large, too. We're still living down IBM's
strawman product of the PC. Everything is legacy and ossificed. Newer open
source stuff, the other half of our commons, is often fad driven and also
doesn't seek to improve/replace the garbage beneath it. Unix is still lauded
in these parts, but it's also long out of date.

Sometimes I think of old school networking to SDNs. A lot of stuff today in
programs and in real life seems overly uncoordinated or narrow-minded. It's
all the downsides of distribution systems without the benefits (not autonomous
or resilient). Perhaps judicious optional centralization (aquaponics +
healthcare co-opt?) Is a path forward?

In the virtual realm, Nixpkgs as a "Domesday Book" (first census in a while)
of the whole realm of software in the commons (how to build, compose, _and_
develop each piece) strikes me as another example.

------
IOT_Apprentice
In Arizona, public road construction, appears to be based on a sub-contractor
ponzi scheme of doing tiny amounts of work all over the state, taking YEARS to
build small roadways, repaving etc.

Tucson had a project for widening state highway 10 that took years, and it is
still not done-- 10+ years after being announced.

Signs, barriers etc. go up for months with no sign of work, or when there is
work going on it takes forever to complete.

As a nation, we are incapable of delivering a high speed rail system to match
those in Europe or Asia.

------
mberning
Here we go again. Let me compare a gigantic country that was industrialized
over one hundred years ago with much smaller and more recently developed
countries. It’s not that we don’t have things that need fixed and maintained,
but the hyperventilating about it is overdone at this point.

~~~
fredley
> much smaller and more recently developed countries

Like China?

~~~
joshuaheard
FTFY: with much smaller and more recently developed areas of countries.

Leave Chinese cities and go into the countryside and there are primarily dirt
roads.

~~~
aylmao
I mean, to be fair they do have more and bigger cities than the US. China
apparently has 102 cities with population over 1 million vs the US's 10 [1].

If we consider "megacities", they are at 15 vs the US's two (NYC and LA) [2].

In fact this is interesting, because although its population is huge in terms
of the rest of nations-- about "a full Brazil" bigger than all of North
America, and Europe (including Russia) combined [4]-- to put things in another
perspective, we're talking about a country that's just 4.3 times the size of
the US [3], yet it has 10x more cities and 7x more megacities.

This makes me think it's less rural than the US, which probably yields more
focus on cities and less investment in rural areas.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity)

[3]:
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+china+%2...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+china+%2F+population+of+usa)

[4]:
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+china+-+...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+china+-+\(population+of+north+america+%2B+population+of+europe+%2B+population+of+brazil\))

------
kolbe
I hate these comparisons. What's the marginal benefit to New York for gutting
its public transit system to build one as nice as Bangkok? What's the marginal
benefit to Chicago of gutting O'Hare to build a new airport comparable to
Beijing's?

Answer: not a lot.

On the other hand, Shenzhen needed to build a new airport relatively recently
to accommodate their rapid economic growth. So, they were able to tap all of
the new design and building techniques that have been learned in the 70 years
since the United States went through its airport boom. And the fact of the
matter is capacity and necessity are what should drive the creation and
updating of airports--not some inferiority complex about some other city's
being nicer.

------
narrator
The second avenue subway extension costs $2.1 billion dollars per mile to
build.[1]

[1] [https://www.thoughtco.com/rail-transit-projects-
costs-279879...](https://www.thoughtco.com/rail-transit-projects-
costs-2798796)

------
mschuster91
> What happened? A cascading series of failures of imagination; failures to
> invest in the future; paralyzed or ideologically blinkered or simply idiotic
> governance; and, perhaps most of all, cost disease

The same thing happened that is biting Italy and soon Germany: Politicians
like to open new buildings/roads/..., but the _maintenance_ budget is often
enough forgotten at best and ignored at worst.

And to make matters even worse: with most infrastructure, continuous
maintenance over 30-40 years is cheap compared to the inevitable outright
rebuild neccessary after the same timespan without any maintenance.

------
mtw
Isn't this because transportation is centered around cars and planes in the
U.S.? You are supposed to have your own personal car to do anything. Nobody
takes the bus, trains or subways, except in a city like New York City or
SanFran, or if you are poor or new immigrant. Whereas in Asia or in Europe,
there's a strong tradition of mass transit. Poor/Rich people take the subway
to go to work, and it's ok for everyone in those countries.

~~~
mixmastamyk
A major portion of this article talks about airports.

------
nowandlater
This is an old but worthwhile lecture on the topic by the, at times bombastic
and over-the-top, James Howard Kunstler:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia?language=en)

------
ohiovr
Maybe their infrastructure is better because it is several decades newer than
ours. If it isn’t broke it doesn’t get fixed here so things have to get kind
of bad before they get rebuilt or improved.

Some parts of Europe look way more modern than the US because it had to be.
Much of it had been destroyed a couple times.

~~~
lucb1e
The "decades newer" argument is mentioned in the article. I don't know if it's
true or false, but please read at least the article before responding with a
common argument (additionally, someone else already mentioned it in another
top level comment).

~~~
ohiovr
Sorry but I did read the article. If I missed that line then it was a good
observation of the article or whatever anyway. What is there to add? Most of
it was built pretty good the first time at least.

PS I am not humiliated by some potholes.

Decades newer is true. WwI destroyed every penny of Europe’s infrastructure.
They did it again less than 30 years later.

------
theandrewbailey
The author wants to express how American infrastructure is bad, but he only
complains about trains of all kinds (with a side of airport security). He
mentions that the roads and phone networks are good, but doesn't touch
anything else. Did I miss anything?

------
mixmastamyk
Almost ten years ago I flew from LAX to Guadalajara, which was new and
amazing, quite a shocker.

They've since upgraded LAX, but the upgrades are more modest, sort of like
gutting a 1960's building and refurbishing it, rather than starting from
scratch.

------
40acres
There's the phrase: "show me your budget and I'll tell you what your
priorities are", look at the federal budget and you'll see that the US
"priorities" are really focused on two things. Maintaining our military and
supporting social programs.

The Trump administration is negotiating a deal with the Taliban to end the war
in Afghanistan, at the end of the day it will have cost us over 2,000 American
lives and 2 Trillion dollars. Imagine if instead we committed 2 trillion
dollars to create a 21st century infrastructure? How much dividend would that
pay off as compared to this war in which we gained nothing? I highly doubt
2,000 workers would've died in the process.

Tackling the military budget is such a political football though, I understand
the geopolitical needs to have such a global military, maintain bases, project
force, and be at the forefront of military tech. But I wonder when American's
will turn an eye and say "hey, why are we spending so much on war when we need
programs at home"? As the nation gets older, inequality rises and growth
maintains is sluggish pace, the American government will need to take a larger
role in facilitating growth. In my opinion de-funding social programs is an
absolute nonstarter, the military approaches the same position but I believe
are more at risk. Time will come where the Pentagon will need to defend it's
budget, especially if you get a future president on the extremes of either
party.

~~~
andrewmcwatters
I used to believe these lies until I actually bothered to take a look at the
federal budget: [https://datalab.usaspending.gov/budget-
function.html](https://datalab.usaspending.gov/budget-function.html)

Could we spend less on military? Oh for sure, but the idea that we spend more
on military than anything else is absolute bullshit.

~~~
treis
There's something funky going on with that chart. Military spending is about
20% of the budget when you include Veterans benefits. You're right that it's
smaller than the ~50% spent on SS and Meciare/Medicaid, but after those it's
by far the biggest budget item.

~~~
justin66
We did not go from 700 billion to 50 billion spent on the military from 2017
to 2018, so yes, that chart (and the associated data) is bullshit.

There are a ton of technicalities involved in government budgeting and
accounting though. It's just not a chart you'd want to share to make an honest
point in a conversation like this.

------
glitchc
Massive infrastructure projects require massive amounts of money nowadays.
Truth is, in North America (U.S. and Canada), the governments at all levels
are effectively bankrupt.

~~~
mxschumacher
if you control the value of the currency you owe money in, you cannot really
go bankrupt.

------
Cieplak
Who needs transportation infrastructure when you have F22s, B2 Spirits, Ohio-
class submarines and aircraft carriers?

~~~
Faaak
What's your point ?

~~~
twoheadedboy
Money spent on defense could instead be spent on infrastructure. Seems pretty
straightforward.

------
RPLong
The author of this article can't seem to acknowledge the evidence staring him
in the face. First, he criticizes public transportation initiatives in the
United States, such as mass transit and airports. Then he says infrastructure
isn't all bad here, and mentions ridesharing and telecommunications. Indeed,
rideshare and telecomm are not public works here in America. Our brightest
lights are the ones supplied by private enterprise. If the author could make
his way outside of public-funding enclaves like New England and LA, he might
also discover the many private airports that dot our country while being run
quite smoothly. It's amazing what can happen when a government committee is
not put in charge.

~~~
azinman2
Yes you end up with such amazing privatized infrastructure wonders like
Comcast.

Privatization isn’t a magic bullet.

~~~
RPLong
1) I didn't say anything about a "magic bullet."

2) Private enterprise is a different concept from privatization.

3) I don't believe it's mere coincidence that everything the author likes
about US infrastructure is privately supplied, while everything he suggests is
"humiliating" is publicly funded -- do you?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Airports are publicly funded?

~~~
RPLong
Gee, folks...

[https://www.faa.gov/airports/](https://www.faa.gov/airports/)
[https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-658T](https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-658T)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Sure there is some funding, but believe a majority is paid for with fees and
taxes.

~~~
RPLong
The exact funding numbers, and the exact extent to which airports are
controlled by the FAA, are supplied in the two links above. There is no point
arguing. If you're under the impression that airports are an example of
private enterprise, I suggest you review the two links I provided. If you
already did, I suggest you do it again. Some things are not worth arguing
about, especially when the facts are right in front of you, and this is one of
them.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Why do you think this is an argument?

~~~
RPLong
You need to read more carefully. There are a series of "if" statements in the
above comment, along with some statements expressing my unwillingness to argue
some points. Only you can say whether the "if" statements apply to you. Only
you can say whether you will try to argue any of those points.

