Re:China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains
by SmirkingRevenge on Friday October 04, 2019 @12:02AM
(#21154667)
This is my hunch as well. Innovation comes with built-in technical debt and it is often invisible at the time. Years later, when the inefficiencies are more apparent, those with the opportunity to start with a blank slate, can avoid many of those mistakes, and make something better.
I think that a big reason for this is that the US already has a half-working solution in place. Some infrastructure already exists that fulfills this role. China, on the other hand, didn't have much of an alternative in place, thus it was easier to find the will to build it.
We saw the same thing with internet connectivity and government services in Eastern Europe. Governments built much more modern infrastructures and offered more modern services because they weren't burdened by the past.