> Maybe it's just the natural end of our golden age.
Alternatively, America simply lacks obvious large scale investments to make.
High speed rail seems like a winner, but is it? We have a very efficient national train network for goods and both an interstate highway system and airlines. As a practical matter HSR is unlikely to change much and is really expensive to build and maintain.
Similarly rural high speed internet is pushed as a must have, but 5G and Starlink are much cheaper solutions to the same problems. Getting wired high speed internet to central Alaska for example is extremely expensive and probably not worth it. Where to draw this line in pure economic terms probably isn’t exactly where telecom companies picked, but there wasn’t a clearly better option.
Bridges and Dams have similarly been added to all the obvious locations. Should we build X is again a really difficult choice.
I would rather have a government that tries and builds solutions that are not the most optimal rather than giving up and not doing anything. Solutions do not have to be the best all the time, just better than what exists. Constant iterative improvements over time
The political will to do it, fund it properly just is not there.
Many want private entities to do it, many do not and that logjam has gotten in the way of a lot.
And there are teardowns. The Post Office has been damaged for politics, for example. Private entities want more of the business and do not want to compete with the PO. Or, they want the PO to work for them at a loss or as a subsidy.
There is a reluctance to make big public investments. There should not be.
Those are more complicated than just building infrastructure. Take healthcare, having more hospital buildings or equipment isn’t a fix. Same with education we don’t need more school buildings. Cybersecurity is again not solved by building more servers.
Carbon sequestration is an open technical problem without any known scalable solutions.
Under grand power lines and roads run into the same issue, building more means you need to maintain more. The solution to pot holes and old bridges are to remove old bridges and roads until we can afford what’s already built.
Renewables are the only pure infrastructure problem, but we are actually building a lot of Renewables. Look at the ratio of new wind/solar vs new coal/natural gas and the grid is only going in one direction. We could spend a lot more going faster, but the end result would be the same.
In term of infrastructure: I would be happy with roads without potholes that are large enough to damage my car, schools, and a semi resilient power grid.
Alternatively, America simply lacks obvious large scale investments to make.
High speed rail seems like a winner, but is it? We have a very efficient national train network for goods and both an interstate highway system and airlines. As a practical matter HSR is unlikely to change much and is really expensive to build and maintain.
Similarly rural high speed internet is pushed as a must have, but 5G and Starlink are much cheaper solutions to the same problems. Getting wired high speed internet to central Alaska for example is extremely expensive and probably not worth it. Where to draw this line in pure economic terms probably isn’t exactly where telecom companies picked, but there wasn’t a clearly better option.
Bridges and Dams have similarly been added to all the obvious locations. Should we build X is again a really difficult choice.