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Comment by hopyinail | Hacker News Reader

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Anyone from the US who has flown overseas to modern, industrialized countries in the past decades will note the aging look of the US.

Given overall industrial and cultural trends, why wouldn't everyone just keep building new stuff every 15 years? This would certainly fit the Chinese regime's policy of increasing GDP. (We'll have to crack the problem of carbon neutral concrete sometime.)

"Anyone from the US who has flown overseas to modern, industrialized countries in the past decades will note the aging look of the US"

True. Whenever I get visitors from Germany they always comment on how run down a lot of parts of the US look.

I was in Stuttgart in 2001 or so. If that's what a 1st world country looks like, I'm starting to worry about the US.

Most of the Bay Area has that look. Houses built in the 1950s and 1960s.

Landing in any American Airport never fails to shock me. Equally the clash between passport control and the commercialism of the rest of the airport. I was first in SFO in 1995, I'm pretty sure there hasn't been an update to border control since then, and I'm always given a good few hours to study the place.

I haven’t noticed this in my travels. I have seen that the subway and train systems in some countries are leaps and bounds ahead of anything I’ve seen in the US, but what have you noticed beyond that?

This is a crap response. I went to Shanghai about 3 summers ago right when Denver was finishing up the "A Line" train from Downtown to the Airport. This project cost over a billion dollars and the damn thing can't run smoothly or stay operational. Tons of issues. Meanwhile we took the Maglev train from the Pudong Airport to the Shanghai City Center. The Maglev cost $1.2 billion dollars [1]. The train can travel up to 270 MPH [1]; it takes about 15 minutes to get from the Airport to the city. The Denver train? 45 minutes, goes somewhere around 45 MPH for $1.1 billion dollars [2]. The train in China goes 6x faster then the Denver train.

So, tell me again how the Chinese infrastructure is not good?

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/go_east_young_man/2005/03...

[2] https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2016/05/31/otoole-takin...

Remember when they crashed a high speed train and buried all the evidence the next day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

you remind me of this incident as a joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Washington_train_derailme...

Hmm yes, this is exactly the same sort of situation:

> WSDOT announced on December 21 that it would not resume Amtrak service on the Point Defiance Bypass until positive train control is implemented in 2018.

"But America has also had train crashes" is a typical response in this sort of situation, but also typically irrelevant.

As a software engineer, I knew the bug in every software is inevitable. What we should do is learning from each bug and try to find a solution to avoid repeat the mistake, either by some engineering process, or more tests. And blindly blame the engineer who wrote the codes is stupid.

Curious—have you ever actually been to China? Those exist, but a lot of the infrastructure is used a hell of a lot more than most American infrastructure, where passenger trains are so crappy nobody rides them except in a handful of cities, and vast, usually empty roads are covered in potholes.

Yup. At least in the US we use our infrastructure. In China they build stuff just to build stuff.

This kind of blind exceptionalism is exactly why nothing ever moves here. We are stuck in 30 years ago of "we're so much better than everyone" that we're refusing to see how our lead has quickly worsened, and also attacking the messenger's background instead of taking the message to heart.

I think we're still leaders in education, for example, but that's under threat.

China has built thousands of miles of high speed rail in the past 10 years, and the people are using it like CRAZY. There are months-long waits if you want to take the Beijing-Lhasa train, for example.

Yes there's definitely what you're talking about. But I'd rather be lamenting overbuilding than the lethargic underbuilding (or no-building) we have going on in the US.

> We are stuck in 30 years ago of "we're so much better than everyone" that we're refusing to see how our lead has quickly worsened

Those who have lived through the scares geopolitical threat of the Cold War in the 1970's, and the economic threat of Japan Inc. in the 1980's can be a little more circumspect about the growing Chinese "threat". I don't have illusions about "we're so much better", but we do have something special. Market driven economies and stable liberal democratic structures have served us quite well, from the explosion in growth in the Netherlands in the 17th century, through the expansion of Great Britain in the 18th and 19th and down to the United States in the 20th. That Western Europe would rather pay for a social safety net rather than an expansive military is a public choice.

Should the US invest more in infrastructure? Possibly. At the same time, I'm skeptical to things that have a whiff of industrial policy and central planning, it really hasn't worked as well for those who have embraced it.

I agree with that in general, by the way, at least in theory. But those institutions have been tested like crazy in the past few years, to the point where fundamental things are changing (some immigrants going to other countries like Canada, etc).

I just think it's depressing to think that we've built zero miles, ZERO miles of high speed rail in 10 years, when China built 8,000.

Let's be realistic, it's China's embrace of capitalism through Special Economic Zones that's truly led to their vibrant economic growth. So I'm not advocating for central planning. I'm just saying that resting on our laurels based on the idea that America was once so far ahead, without realizing that we're not THAT far ahead anymore, is a mistake. (seems like you're saying similar things though)

In the last fifteen years, the Beijing subway went from a laughable toy with only three lines to the largest subway system in the world. Despite this rapid expansion by an order of magnitude, the system remains extremely busy, with rush hour trains so crowded you can barely move, and off-peak trains still full of people. This pattern is repeated all over the place. “Ghost cities,” if real, are the exception and not the norm.

The US has profited immensely from "building stuff to build stuff" back from the new deal programs in the 30's, wartime factory infrastructure investments in the 40's, as well as massive infrastructure buildout of the highway systems, water and sewers, etc. in the 50-60's. I think coasting on a lot of that build out is what allowed lower than typical infrastructure expenditures for many decades, but also gave us (and our political/business leadership that grew up in those years), a warped low view of how much infrastructure investment is reasonable.

It is totally true that we have wasted trillions on wars we will never win at the expense of improving our infrastructure which is very clearly inadequate.

It is true that our education system (pre college) sucks.

It is true that we don't enable people who don't have money to succeed.

Most of what Jack Ma said was true. Do I think that the Chinese have all the answers, that the Chinese infrastructure projects are all value adding, that the US should behave like China, or that China should take a larger role in the world? No, but that has nothing to do with the truth value of Jack Ma's statements.

You should travel more. Out of your country.

Exhibit A for why the US spends more on war than infra, right here.

Problems at home? Just whip up some nationalism and exceptionalist superiority.

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