Thoughts on Infrastructure
Warning: unedited rambling ahead
Like most nerds (you), I care about transit. From logistically near-flawless subways and bus systems the world over, to the high-speed reality of domestic rail in Pacific countries, to Stephensonesque vacuum airship futures. And, like most American nerds, I am incredibly disappointed by the lack of transit investment in the United States. I could get into the "why don't we build things anymore," but Ezra Klein just did that pretty well and put a snazzy name on it too. Infrastructure is more than just transit, of course. A country refusing to do 'obvious' infrastructure investments is a failure. Not only are we failing to plant trees whose shade we will not sit in, we are failing to plant trees that we personally can sit in just a little bit later.
A specific example might be helpful. Imagine for a moment you are a superintendent of a large high school. There is an opportunity to hire a very experienced teacher. In fact, at his previous school this teacher single-handedly decreased absences, decreased suspensions even more, and raised math scores schoolwide. His asking salary is 100k for a 10-year stint, high for a teacher, but with a track record like this, who's to say no?
You would probably hire this person, right, if they existed? For the same effect, you could just improve your HVAC system. For similar effects, you could also consider teaching phonics or doing ability grouping rather than age grouping. Rarely are these things actually done. Positive EV policies fail for a few reasons. Things like HVAC improvements or phonics can be seen as a big investment for “only a few percentage points” (despite the fact that the progress of the world has mostly been sequential minor improvements). Some things, like ability grouping, trigger irrational responses due to going against the intuition of the average. And some things seem so boring that they couldn't possibly have a huge effect (Georgism). Underlying all of these median-mind syndrome issues is the matter of money. While budget concerns are real, the short time horizons and relationship to dollars of the average person (five years and a million dollars both being seen as large amounts) make town halls essentially useless. Opposition to clear improvements due to irrational median voters almost makes one wish for a Platonic philosopher king or a benign technocratic magistrate.
Most people do not have a sense of second-order effects. Things do the things that they do, and no more. Things usually do more than you expect and also do the things you expect more powerfully than you think. This is where a misguided opposition to a lot of interventions comes from. Transit investment is seen solely as improving the user experience of transit users.
So if you're someone who doesn't use it, why would you care about your tax dollars going to it?
What you don't see is the land value uplift near new stations, increasing the amount of future property taxes for the services you do care about.
What you don't see is the improved allocation of people to jobs that they are good at, and as a result, opportunities for new businesses that you or your loved ones may work at or own.
If ability grouping drops your kid down to a class full of kids two years younger, your kid is going to feel stupid!
What you don't see is that your kid is now going to actually learn the things they need to and greatly increase their chance to graduate and go to college, since they will no longer have a fundamental gap in their knowledge fostered by a fragile ego.
I'm sure those of you who have found this blog probably don't disagree with me on these points as broad strokes, but I'd once again like to put it in some clearer terms to address the thoughts of the average person. Let's look into the question of what it actually looks like for a society to do these sorts of things or not.
The average age that you have your first child in the US is about 27. Assume that line holds, and assume the drinking age stays the same, and rather than talking about 75 years (a big number), we can talk about the difference in the world between when you were born and when your first grandchild has their first beer. As a toy example, let's broadly say that a society (world, nation, state, city. It doesn't matter for this example) that goes on with the way things are and doesn't care about these sorts of investments still broadly improves at 3% per year (Scenario A). And let's say that doing all these extra improvements changes that to about 3.3% per year in the long run (Scenario B). In Scenario A, the world improves 8.7× over that window. In Scenario B, it improves 10.8×. Flying cars aren't only cooler in this scenario. They're cheaper, safer, and more widely adopted. Every domain gets a few more doublings. It adds up. That extra 0.3% means the Scenario B world reaches Scenario A’s level of progress seven years earlier. Your grandkid gets a safer birth, better schools, and a cooler job market. The other child endures the wait.
All that from HVAC and some trains.