Jack Ma: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

China has been ramping up their own military spending like crazy the past few years. Plenty of articles from CNN and other media "The US should be scared of the Chinese military because of XYZ". Their infrastructure programs are just as bad as here. Difference is, we have actual code enforcement and building regulations that, yes, raise the price and increase in time to build/repair. But that also ensures that you get fewer buildings and public projects that crumble after a few years.

I also find it interesting that a lot of people jump on public transit as a poster child of "infrastructure". The economics for mass transit over large stretches SUCKS. It's one of the worst investments into public good.

Let's take a place I use to live in just 6 months ago, Colorado Springs. It's about 60-70 miles south of Denver. The Springs is a decent sized city (270k population). Roughly 21% of springs residents work in the Denver area. This was evaluated because I-25 is the main road between the two cities and a majority of it is just 2 lanes. Back ups. Oh my God. The back up traffic was so fucking bad. If I had to do a contract in Denver and had to be there at 9am, I had to be out on the road at before 6:45am to make it around 8:45am. That's if there wasn't an accident along the way. Anyways, a cost analysis was done to either provide mass transit between the two cities or give I-25 another lane on a ~50 mile stretch.

So, let's see, that's about 56,700 people that have a nearly daily need of going back and forth. To make it attractive for people to use, it has to be cheaper than standard car fuel costs. Yes, there's maintenance costs that SHOULD be considered. But normal people would never figure that in. That's like expecting people to "Read the terms and services". Driving my Jetta, it's about 4 gallons round trip. Between 8-12 bucks a day in fuel, depending on gas prices. Now, a car provides a level of freedom too. I can leave whenever I want. Go when I want. If you ever relied on mass transit for work (I did when I lived in Seattle and in Portland), you spend a lot of hours waiting. You show up early for the bus to take you to the WES train, which you wait for, that takes you to the Blue Line tram, that you have to wait for, that you then go to roughly where you need to be on foot. Essentially, you save little practical time. Yes, you can read. My answer. Library card and free audio books. Maybe if the cost is $5 for the day between CS and Denver. But more than that. I'll drive. I like sleeping when I can.

Oh and commuters don't run all day. Just the peak hours to and from work. As in. You don't get to "stay in the city for a little while". You have to go. Immediately after work. There's no waiting around. Have to work late? Got to call a friend with a car. You owe him gas money now as well.

Okay, now to the economics. IF, major if, 56,700 people take the commuter everyday at $5 X about 20 workdays a month X 12 months = $6.8 million a year. Let's say $7 million. Every year. Revenue generated. Now, minus fuel. Minus train maintenance. Minus employees. Even a $10 daily ticket only gives $14 million. For a how big of an initial investment? A billion dollar one? Even at half a billion, that's 35 years to break even if all the employees volunteer and the fuel was free. Shit, I forgot about insurance for whoever runs that train. In 35 years, you'd probably need a major revamp again. It's like being on a tram or train from the 80s/90s at this point. Another major cost sink.

But some of those 56k+ commuters, still need their cars. I built custom servers, delivered and installed them in Denver. You ever carry a 3u filled with hard drives? A lot of commuters are manual laborers too. You know, poor, hard working folks. Guys who do plumbing or electrical work. Dry wall. Carpenters. Those are just the commuters that pop in mind. They have too many tools and materials to ever imagine using public transit if their job requires them to actually carry their own gear. Plus, they have to travel around on a moment's notice.

Or spend the $350 million to expand the interstate which nearly everyone uses ALREADY. Logically speaking, what would politicians approve? You think they're going to risk having their heads roll for a half billion dollar investment that SOME people MAY use? Or expand what people ALREADY use?

You can apply the same logic to easily 90% of the rest of the country and come to similar results. There are definitely outliers to where it works. But let's not shoehorn ideas where they don't belong.

In reality though, being in the lead of commuter train technology is a lot like being in the lead of horse drawn carriage tech.

Are there infrastructure problems here? Fuck yea there are. The aging water system is major one. Electrical grids are being upgraded but there are trouble spots. Same with gas lines. Telecomm needs an over haul. Too many cities are also bottle necked on highways. If a natural disaster happens in certain cities, there's only one way out. Plus, just in time inventory causes major issues when these places do get cut off due to flooding. I'm not even getting started on social issues. Legit issues of dealing with foster care, criminal rehabilitation, mental health facilities, etc. Oh fucking hell, what about education? That too is a shit show. But to cry that other countries have "better trains"... seriously? How about we first deal with an aging water system before we shed tears for high-tech trains.

Also, wrong towards "It doesn't matter who says it". It really does. Because the connotations start to pop up. People start to bring up what that person "does right". It burns my ass that yes, the right conversation finally starts, then red herrings out to some bullshit territory like "more mass transit". No. We don't need that. We shouldn't solve Chinese problems in America. Trains are not our damn focus. Let's not forgot, they are sinking in debt just as bad as us. They've postured for a long time of being a "cash society". That little fairy tale is unraveling on them. They're not magically better. Factories closing. Human rights violations up the wazoo. Let's not miss how xenophobic they are. You think non-Han Chinese have a wonderful time? Hell, there's a government program to end their own Muslim communities in the western parts. They have, essentially, government minders that report on their non-party-approved activities. A forced assimilation program in essence. Oh, and that island that was "always there and always Chinese territory".

It's also funny, "invest in the Mid west". Really? I thought you all hate the mid west for mostly voting for republicans. Now, it's "Ma is right. We need to invest in the mid west" Come on! Seriously? And people also thought we should all politically follow Zuckerburg since he's rich and techie. How'd all that work out?

I'm all for investing into different parts of America. But shouldn't we invest in the Mid West because it's part of America and is struggling and we should help each other out? Not because some rich guy said so?

This got off to rant territory pretty bad. But this is silliness and someone needs to call it out. The comments in HN to this article is a prime example that the one problem this country has is too many people look elsewhere for answers instead of internally. It's complained that companies hire from the outside to lead/manage instead of internally. That thought process is represented here too.

WWII is what enabled the US to adopt this position, and its memory, rapidly fading into history, are why the US chose involvement and leadership of the world instead of isolation. Before WWII the US was (relatively) isolationist. You can claim that it would have been better off staying that way, but given the way things spiraled into WWII, the conclusion of US leaders was a reasonable one: we must lead, or else things will spiral into conflict once again, and we will not be able to contain, control, or ignore it.

How could they come to any other conclusion? They had already tried the "let's try to avoid picking sides and please can't we all just get along" option in WWI and it turned out, shall we say, badly.

None of this excuses the absolute folly of the US' many military misadventures, and likely huge amounts of waste (in terms of people and treasure) in pursuing them. I am merely pointing out that the idea that we could abolish most military spend because somehow the world will just get along by itself, or even that we can just ignore what happens elsewhere, is just not the case and hasn't been for a long time.

American defense spending spends lesser on the poor, and the country does not even get bridges or trains in return.