There's a reason by China is having no problem rolling out high speed rail across the entire country on the order of a decade while California can't even roll out a single line in the same time.
China can just bulldoze entire villages while the little people have no recourse to resist. That power is incredibly useful for getting things done, but the big problem of succession makes that level of power incredibly dangerous, fickle, and fragile.
1) it’s all good until you’re one of the ‘little people’
2) succession/plan B is always the problem with dictators/dictatorships.
If you’re lucky, the interests of those in power are genuinely aligned with your best interests and they’re competent - (Singapore/PAP, at least historically), but nothing lasts forever.
Don't forget in China these little people have way higher attachment to their homes. They are often ancestral homes. The people that would be happy to be 'forced to move' have already moved to the city in most cases, with only those with high connections to their home remaining. In the USA we don't really have the same sort of attachment to ancestral homes and would be more receptive to paid relocation and view it way differently. Those that celebrate China's way and say the relocated people are happy to be moved from their ancestral homes and communities to concrete block apartments don't understand Chinese culture and provide cover to how soul crushing relocation is for those impacted.
At the end of the day, it either happens or it doesn’t - and that has pros and cons either way.
You’re correct on the impact to those folks, but there are also a LOT of other folks who benefit from the new rail (or should, anyway!).
At the end of the day, their strategy works for the majority better.
We’re deadlocked trying to not offend anyone (and get scammed by the contractors in the process). They say ‘fuck it’ and pave it over, and then tuck the little people in a closet and tell them to shut up or else.
But if they didn’t, they’d have no rail where they need to go, like…. us.
Eventually, without some compromise or balance, either system reaches a breaking point. Ours, we’ll eventually be so mired in shit not working that people will leave to somewhere different (if they can) wherever it’s really bad. Think NYC/Detroit/LA/etc. in the 70’s and 80’s.
In China, they crack down too hard (or stay too focused on ‘the plan’) that they destroy what they are trying to preserve/create. Either Violently (Russia), or by going broke/financial crisis (Japan).
It’s way easier to tie everyone up in manipulative bullshit court proceedings in the US, and no one has the incentive/interest in stopping it right now.
It isn’t even about 10-100x cost, if it was straightforward cash. It would be resolved in weeks if that was the case. In many of these equivalent situations, it drags out for decades. At that point, it’s a toss up if the project even makes sense anymore, since everyone who needed it when it was voted in/started has moved on (by necessity) to something else.
In China, the courts basically just say ‘which way does the CCP want this to go?’ and voila, that happens. For better or worse.
There's a reason by China is having no problem rolling out high speed rail across the entire country on the order of a decade while California can't even roll out a single line in the same time.
China can just bulldoze entire villages while the little people have no recourse to resist. That power is incredibly useful for getting things done, but the big problem of succession makes that level of power incredibly dangerous, fickle, and fragile.