How little infrastructure works they have if they had to pay for it to be 1000x overbuilt?

there probably is a middle ground. Just because i disagree with the rather radical opinion that claims it's most efficient to just barely fulfill minimum requirement and that throw-away & buy-new should be considered for civil engineering doesn't automatically mean i favor the radical extreme opposite opinion.

I am just stating the very obvious problem.

I think ultimately the problem is that infra is an investment in future growth, but the decision makers aren't accountable on failure.