James Fallows recently gave a talk in San Francisco and I read a summary. He argued that infrastructure is often under invested in in the modern world. I know that Fallows is always wrong so I have thought about this issue.
My history with Fallows goes back to the 1980’s when he and a friend of mine were Japan Foundation Fellows for a year in Japan. Fallows was a terrible guest who demanded that the Foundation provide a chauffeur and car to take his children to school every day. Ever since hearing that story along with a few worse ones, I have known him to be a simple minded cad.
I’ve never met him.
The issue of infrastructure is interesting. America has under invested in airports and intra-urban highways, especially automobile tunnels. There is a reason.
We have laws of all sorts making this kind of infrastructure investment too costly for the past half century. First, union wages are always required and costly. Second there are U.S. tariff barriers around construction materials and heavy equipment significantly raising the costs. Most importantly, environmental barriers are enormous and can triple and quadruple the cost of any infrastructure.
I’m sure Jim Fallows, a Lefty fundamentalist, never dwelt on these central barriers to infrastructure investment.
On the other hand, America has built an extensive telephone cell system, microwave, water system, electric network, natural gas pipelines, oil transport network and most importantly a fiber optic network all with private funding. Superb infrastructure.
The government usually fails on infrastructure, like our imaginary high-speed trains and congested airports. Meantime private investment for private corporations builds the necessary infrastructure rapidly and quietly.
Fallows wouldn’t notice that.