The structure of the United States government is a compromise balancing large vs. small states interests and slavery.

The core defect in the design is the Senate and the way states were admitted. We have a territory/colony with limited political rights that has a population greater than the bottom four states.

Those small states exert enormous influence and essentially ensure a weird conservative dynamic that anchors a lot of social issues.

Not because of the politics of the day - because resource extraction is always conservative by nature as the core aspect of the business is minimizing overhead cost. Agriculture flipped into a purely extractive business as people have been removed from it.

> Those small states exert enormous influence

It's called the United States for a reason, not the United People. What you're obviously desiring would result in a series of vassal states (large cites governing themselves) with most of the country (rural) acting as feudal serfs.

Rural voters are not most of the country unless you believe geographic area is more important than people. There are better ways to address the concerns of rural interests than enshrining gerrymandering along state lines.

I said nothing of the sort. All things have ups and downs. Many entities, both historically and globally have managed similar problems with varying methodologies.

If you think the current governance scenario in the United States represents the apex of republican democracy, your patriotism is clouding your judgement. The current trends as they are have been devastating to rural people. I live in a county that had 500 dairy farms in 1970, 80 in 1990 and 2 today. Just that industry represented probably about 10k good paying jobs.

Most rural areas are the economic equivalent of inner cities with more space. But of course, if you don't care about people, just the sacred abstraction of "states", so I suppose that's ok.

I think it’s likely you are just not familiar with examples of U.S. long-term planning if you’re citing water movement as an area where China is doing better.

While there is certainly an argument to be made that many contemporary “Western” Pseudo-Christian Superempire nations face a crisis of short-termism, there are also ancient bits of “Western” infrastructure like the Roman aqueducts still in use today - off the top of my head, the Aqua Virgo which supplies Rome’s Trevi Fountain, dated either 19BC or 19AD, I forget; Spain’s Segovia Aqueduct from the first century AD; and the Pont du Gard in Nîmes, from the same period.

Not quite as old, or at the scale of the Dujiangyan system, but still evidence that the “Western” culture did once build for long term. Less ancient, but more indicative, are the European cathedrals built by multiple generations over a century.

For an even closer example, the US interstate system was a monumental long term focused project.

Good point!

Sanitation and road infrastructure built during the Roman Empire is still in use today.

In the USA, any non-private government investment is considered to be foolish and doomed at best, and an existential threat to business at worst. The best we can do is “public-private partnership” where all the profits get absorbed by middle men, preventing virtuous cycles and still leaving a cap on risk and future planning.

The West have been executing a long-range plan for 30 years on this one, the lack of power plants is intentional. There have been any number of roadblocks and people working hard to prevent the West doing specifically what the Chinese have done with the goal of maintaining the high air quality that Western countries tend to enjoy.

If anything the West's culture has been doing more long term planning. It is quite difficult to force an economy not to produce something.

Any idea who's been doing this long term planning to kneecap the West? What do they get out of it?

The environmentalist movement. There is a clear trade off between environmental and industrial success, humans don't know how to do both.

https://aqicn.org/map/world - US is generally green and yellow, China tends to dip into the oranges and reds, especially in the industrial zone. It is tightly linked to the fact that China has a powerful electricity grid.

is a powerful electricity grid bad for the environment? is the environment worth sacrificing to make the numbers go up? do you want oxygen bottles to be a subscription service?

Yes, yes, no. Nobody has figured out how to run a powerful grid without eating a lot of environmental damage. That is a significant factor in the article headline of "The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over".

The main public reasons for preventing expansion of power infrastructure were environmental. That's at least nominally very forward looking. Ironically if we had taken China's "burn everything today and figure tomorrow out when it comes" approach we'd actually be better prepared for this.