Comment by legacynl
5 days ago
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things
Lmao. Says the country that is to politically paralyzed to even maintain roads and sewers.
5 days ago
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things
Lmao. Says the country that is to politically paralyzed to even maintain roads and sewers.
Hey not fair! We’re building a really big wall right now ok!!!! It’s super important.
We're not paralyzed, we just delay and delay until it breaks and costs a lot more to fix.
For the cynical but factually curious look up the history of the ARC project, and NJ governor Chris Christie who canned it - this was to upgrade the tunnel that hosts the biggest train lines in the country (Northeast Corridor). Guess what - it has to happen, just at a much higher costs.
The United States fails at infrastructure because it's too decentralized. You don't build with anything four year terms and corrupt politicians. It's too short-term.
Hey, roads are the only thing we actually maintain
We have the best stroads in the world.
hi, it’s Hammersmith Bridge and every water company in the UK on line one for you.
The UK famously left the EU (likely due to the same external pressure that delivered trump to the US)
We’re still a European country.
6 replies →
External pressure in the form of disinformation disseminated by American propaganda platforms utilising Cambridge Analytica style techniques
> Says the country that is to politically paralyzed to even maintain roads and sewers.
German here, to be fair, we have our difficulties with that too, thanks to 40 years of neoliberalism and tax-cutting orgies eroding the financial base making that possible.
Not replacing expensive infrastructure before it really needs to be replaced is simply the economically better choice. If you replace it earlier, you have all the same issues with not being able to use it while construction is ongoing and the same costs and so on, so all you achieve with a replacement ahead of schedule is to artificially cut short the lifespan of perfectly usable infrastructure.
> Not replacing expensive infrastructure before it really needs to be replaced is simply the economically better choice.
I'm not talking about replacement. I'm talking about basic maintenance, because turns out when you don't go and, say, regularly paint over steel parts to save money, eventually rust will creep in and force an expensive replacement of the entire structure that would not have been needed with regular maintenance.