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A comment on Japan's Brand New Bullet Train Is Earthquake-Proof. Parent comment

Re:Japan's Brand New Bullet Train Is Earthquake-Proof by sfifs on Saturday August 01, 2020 @07:02PM (#24024677)
Looking from outside, the ability to act together as a society to achieve a socially desirable outcome seems to slipping in the West. There's a point where the balance in society between duties and entitlements seems to have flipped.
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Re:Japan's Brand New Bullet Train Is Earthquake-Proof by Mirioron on Saturday August 01, 2020 @07:46PM (#24024954)
The issue seems to be scale. Governments aren't willing to take on large scale projects, because they're hard and long. They want to do (new) things that are easy with a short term return on investment.

Thinking about it, it feels a bit like a modern company. Instead of managers wanting to show that they did something good to get a raise, instead we have politicians that try to show that they did something good to get reelected.

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Re:Japan's Brand New Bullet Train Is Earthquake-Proof by mikepurvis on Saturday August 01, 2020 @08:03PM (#24025065)
Plenty of places in Europe are just as diverse as the US and still manage to come together and collectively fund important civil and social priorities.

Maybe you're just trolling; I can't really tell.

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Re:Japan's Brand New Bullet Train Is Earthquake-Proof by rubber_duck on Saturday August 01, 2020 @09:34PM (#24025553)
>Plenty of places in Europe are just as diverse as the US and still manage to come together and collectively fund important civil and social priorities.

Mind naming some ?

Europe is relatively homogeneous ethnically and racially compared to the US. The exception could be largest metropolitan areas, but even there I'd say US is more heterogeneous.

Not saying anything in support of arguments related to this just saying I don't know what plenty of places you'd compare to US.

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Re:Japan's Brand New Bullet Train Is Earthquake-Proof by mikepurvis on Saturday August 01, 2020 @10:01PM (#24025686)
This seems like a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...

Spain is the obvious one that stands out.

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Re:Japan's Brand New Bullet Train Is Earthquake-Proof by rubber_duck on Sunday August 02, 2020 @03:25AM (#24027025)
Spain is a pretty terrible example of "great public cooperation between different groups" - do you know anything about it's history or the situation with Basque ?

Also it's not really a good example of efficient public projects or a well functioning state compared more developed EU countries or the US.

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