Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

I'll bite. He is probably talking about Hongkong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China. They all build infra much faster than the US. If we move south, then Malaysia and Singapore also build very fast. For Europe, France builds much faster than the US, but it is more centralised.

View on HN

What's their secret? How do they keep their standards up, but still build so fast, and so cheap (compared to the US)?

It would be amazing if someone could research this, and publish a paper on exactly what reforms the United States needs to make†.

† to get to the same speed/quality/cost-efficiency as these countries

There is no secret. They're pretty normal developed countries.

The weird outlier is the US!

And the UK.

Check out https://transitcosts.com/ - it's a huge study of projects in many countries, broken out by budget line item.

Part of it is the fact that they do it so much so they’re very good at it. China has laid more concrete since 2000 than the rest of the world combined prior to 2000. So the Chinese have a lot of expertise and a lot of the supply chain, and for example in Singapore the Chinese have built a lot.

By the way, much of the same can be said about manufacturing.

In the US a lack of construction has caused the industry to atrophy.

It's a bit like the baby boom. The US built a lot in the 50s and 60s. Especially road construction, most of the road infrastructure was built over a short period around the 50s-60s.

There was a long period where very little maintenance or construction was required.

Now we are seeing the structures all start to deteriorate at the same time.

Singapore has relatively efficient bureaucracy and few private landowners with few rights to challenge projects, but it also has low wage migrant workers from India working all night on them.

A functional central government comes to mind.

I wouldn't mention Malaysia and Singapore in the same breadth. Even if compared to Singapore, they both look fast.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com