It’s shocking how difficult countries are able to achieve in terms of building infrastructure.
The easy culprit is higher construction costs but there’s also some change in the air, it’s like the world has collectively lost its appetite for large infrastructure projects.
It doesn’t just appear to be a problem in the developed world. People in Nicaragua — one of the poorest countries in the world — are protesting because the Chinese want to build a canal and it might spoil some farmland.
Nicaragua canal
The obvious exception to fear-of-infrastructuritis is China but that only seems to prove the rule. The Chinese are showing that dramatic construction projects are possible in incredible timeframes but I’m not sure what’s more amazing: that it takes Chinese construction workers 6 months to build a highway, or that it takes Canadian construction companies 6 months to build a highway overpass. And that’s being generous.
The protests in Panama shows China can’t even export its incredible ability to build. For the canal, the Chinese will pay for it and turn over operations in 100 years. That’s a sweetheart deal and the $27 billion spent to build it will bring thousands out of poverty.
Another easy culprit is the environmental movement and that shoulders plenty of the blame. That people would think it’s better for the environment to transport oil across a country by rail than a pipeline is ghastly. To think that shipping raw crude to be refined somewhere in the developing world, rather than a regulated environment in your own back yard is better for the planet is backwards.
The oldest and most-proven way for bringing human prosperity — it’s brought us from caves to skyscrapers — is building things. What happened?
When the United States built the Panama canal people there were literally willing to turn over the country. They split away from Colombia and essentially gave the US the keys to the castle for eternity so there would be something to bring commerce to the land. That turned out the be a great deal for Panamanians as evidenced by the vastly better economy there compared to neighbours like, you guessed it, Nicaragua.
Now the people won’t let anyone dig a goldmine in their own backyard even if they promise to give them half the gold.
