[secondaryacct]

I live in China, I think the best way to summarise everything we do at all level is: the end justifies the means.

Need to seize power ? Murder all members of the former power. Need to make poor peasants rich middle class ? Build entire cities, put them there, and done. Need to build a metro station ? Take the land, build it. Need to make Hong Kong a more physically integrated part of the country ? Build a gigantic bridge to Zuhai even if nobody actually need to use it.

The problem ofc is that sometimes the means is more costly than the benefit of the end result, and also that the goal of the end result is never debated, but I suppose that will change eventually, once we've incurred too high a cost for too little a benefit overall.

[mmaunder]

In China, authority overcomes any friction and drives a project forward. In the US there is no authority and there is no common purpose or enemy. So thousands of self interested parties abuse the system in a very time consuming way.

If a major war was to break out, that would provide powerful common purpose and mountains would be moved in weeks, as history has shown. Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe.

Encapsulating innovation inside a corporation is the one way in the US to create a common purpose and shield a group from bureaucratic capture.

[nicbou]

The risk with the first method is that if the authority is wrong, no one can correct its course. One unlucky dice roll and you have 30 years of a dangerously incompetent maniac. Some will only judge such countries by their lucky rolls.

While a war unites a nation, it’s offset by the waste and destruction it creates. The cold war didn’t build more school and hospitals. All those resources went elsewhere, with the occasional dividend for civilians.

Mountains do get moved quickly when you sign blank cheques, but at a greater cost, with more waste and corruption. We put way too much faith in crash programs.

[dotancohen]

  > Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe.

I disagree. The current major environmental catastrophe is unfolding right before our eyes. But because there is a lag of years between cause (positive and negative) and effect, the United States has been an example of how to do absolutely nothing substantial.

Sure, when earthquakes level bridges the US pulls out the shovels and starts collectively digging. But mention climate change and suggest that V8 daily drivers might need to change their habits, and they double down on hurting their progressive neighbors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgT1Sjo6u34

(I'd never actually encoutered this video before, I just googled "rolling coal" and saw that the title mentioned Tesla so clicked it.)

[raldi]

The common purpose is that we're about to ruin the planet's climate if we don't allow more people to voluntarily live in cities and live less car-dependent lifestyles but still we prohibit apartment buildings in many urban neighborhoods and can't build transit projects anymore.

[seanmcdirmid]

The USA has an adversarial political system: half the people associate with Democrats, half associate with Republicans. But in China, you are either for or against the CPC, and being against it almost means being a traitor. The other political parties exist just for appearances. Unity then is just the default.

[dataexporter]

I don't think a country like the US is capable of making any concrete decisions anymore. America's response to COVID-19 is an example of that.

[myth2018]

> Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe

I used to believe in that. After COVID-19, not anymore.

[a0-prw]

If a major war was to break out, the only mountains there would be, would be mountains of dead.

[taylorhou]

Most people in general have a short term cost/benefit analysis period. What China seemingly does different is they have 10, 20, 50+ year plans which in the time horizon of their multi-thousand year history even seems short term.

Your example of the bridge may seem like no one uses it today but most likely in the future, it will be used and the scale will tip towards it being vastly beneficial compared to its cost.

When countries like the USA have an entire history (not including native americans) of ~300 years, planning anything for 30 years out seems relatively crazy in comparison.

All about perspective.

[Retric]

Trying to use a 50 year plan is also a weakness. Technologies developed between now and then will make many goals obsolete before their finished.

China the county younger than the US. Linking the history as a monolithic entity is really propaganda more than anything else. They are sure trying to create a culturural identity across a country with multiple cultures and languages.

[Archelaos]

Germany, with its 200,000 year history,[1] has for its transport infrastructure at least 15 year plans, which are only moderately legally binding. They are readjusted approximately every five years. New 15 year plans are being developed before the new ones expire, and there are is also some overlap between the plans. With this in mind, the current government has a transport infrastructure plan for 2040 on its agenda.

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

[smallmind]

In this bridge example, not only did it cost $19 billion to build, but the tolls collected actually do not cover operating costs. Doubt their 20 year plan included having to dump more money into the bridge to just keep it working. There are a lot of Youtube videos about China's similar problems with their large high speed rail network.

[HWR_14]

I don't understand your point. The US may not be old, but European and other histories are taught. Meanwhile, how much impact do the war of the three kingdoms have on modern China?

[caycep]

I also somewhat worry the attention to safety standards make Aperture Science seem like a paragon of OSHA compliance....

[Yaina]

Remember: Alert your supervisor!

https://www.deviantart.com/orbital-vector/art/Portal-2-Remem...

[phendrenad2]

Somewhere between US stagnation and China/UAE building for the sake of building lies a happy medium.

[chii]

i bet that happy medium is not a stable equilibrium because any force on one side (or the other) pushes the balance. There's no restoring force.

[maxcan]

Yes, and its called Singapore and Japan.

[roenxi]

It isn't so much that I disagree as I think the frame is a bit skewed. When America is operating at its peak everyone has similar complaints (switching "end justifies the means" with "you can do whatever you like if you have money" because historically the US operates using money as a medium).

Whenever anything happens people complain that some interests aren't represented or that resources aren't being used in the way they'd like. The point of the article is more that the US has systemically made it illegal to deploy resources quickly and effectively.

[secondaryacct]

Need to stop a student uprising ? Roll the tanks. Once I understood that about the country, I stopped discussing morals and instead focus on debating cost.

[throwusawayus]

at all levels ? there must be limits to this approach right ???

otherwise this way of thinking gets terrifying fast and rapidly descends into conspiracy theory land

example: "need to find a socially-acceptable solution to a demographic time bomb caused by decades of one child policy, while still maintaining ethnic homogeneity ? perform gain-of-function research to develop a vector that disproportionately harms the elderly"

to be absolutely clear, I don't believe this was actually the case in 2019 at all - but as an no-limits "end justifies the means" thought exercise - it is easy to arrive at inhuman dystopian nightmares

[stathibus]

It should surprise nobody that an authoritarian, centrally planned, and massively resource-rich country can perform infrastructure miracles. You don't have to stoop to conspiracy theories to understand this.

[secondaryacct]

Yes at all levels, do you want me to tell you what we do to kill a virus ? :D

For natality dont just think today, think 50 years ago when the goal was to reduce it: forced abortion, abandonning your newborn at the nearest wet market (high volume of people) was very common. It's harder to force people to copulate, but I trust our overlords to find a way ahah

The virus however, I m more of the opinion that to fix SARS we decided to import thousands of vietnamese bats to study or such thing and fucked up one way or another. I dont think it was made to kill old people, it was a crazy large scale risky project to prevent the next SARS - the end justifies the means, but this time the means were very costly to foreigners. We dont care yet, or at least we managed to pretend our costs were still low enough not to execute every single person involved, as one should have done if millions of Chinese had died.

[Retric]

> demographic time bomb

China actually solved the excess men problem problem via ethnic cleansing.

Send men to reeducation camps while you import surplus men from another location to eliminate a minority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

It’s even more disturbing when you read up on the details, and consider the elderly aren’t yet a problem.

[misslibby]

Suppose you are an elite that wants to control the global economy, and you hit upon the idea that a "Great Reset" would be necessary.

How do you build a reset button? A "mild" pandemic seems like an interesting approach.

Also not saying this was the case at all. However, it is a fact that gain of function research was being conducted, sponsored by the USA.

Oh, and if the modern biotech solution fails, WW3 might do the trick the traditional way.