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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

What's more impressive is that China can build a cloning factory for ~$30mil CAD, yet it costs us ~$20mil to build a small pedestrian bridge.

http://www.cp24.com/news/city-unveils-designs-for-19-7-milli...

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While I agree this is kind of a silly comparison, my brother-in-law has shown using historical records of various infrastructure projects that the real cost of building things (roads, sewers, bridges, Etc.) has in fact gone up over time rather than down as everything else has. He attributes that rise by misalignment between the interests of the tax payer, the government funding agencies, and the engineering companies that do the work.

What it sounds like you're saying is "I believe I know how a bridge is built, but I have no idea what a cloning factory entails, so the latter is more impressive."

Fair enough! I figure a cloning factory requires some expensive machinery and electronics, notwithstanding already expensive things like climate control, power, and lighting. And it's not like people have built cloning factories before, so you can't exactly look up plans on the internet. By comparison, bridges are fairly well understood and much simpler.

A cloning factory is private property, a bridge is public access.

Presumably you think the technology in a cloning factory is more expensive than bridge making equipment, but maybe you're not taking into consideration the various codes and legal requirements that are necessary to build a bridge.

Haha what about the legal mess around cloning... seems like that would be a tad more expensive process than getting a licence to build a bridge...

The Chinese government is the one providing all of the money and pushing the program. I have a feeling that red tape is not as much of a problem for them as you assume.

Two bridges and as pedestrian bridges go, I wouldn't describe that design as small.

China's economy is teetering near recession; labor and materials are super cheap at the moment, except for perhaps domain-specific equipment (which China may simply be copying from competitors).

No doubt, but what does it say about the Canadian economy? Slapping a couple steel girders together for pedestrians costs $20 million? How can we get anything done if something so simple is so expensive?

What's so impressive about a shack with test tubes, compared to building a long bridge over functioning train tracks without disrupting traffic?

Bridge could be pre-fabricated and dropped into place overnight. The train tracks there are primarily for commuter trains, which don't run between 1am and 5am. I know I'm being an armchair engineer, but I just thought the contrast between the two was funny.

Very few safety, industrial, or environmental regulations; and for those that might exists, if you know somebody you can get around them.

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