Steve Randy Waldman[new draft post] Quietly expensive desperation https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/06/04/quietly-expensive-desperation/index.html
Robert Thau@interfluidity When similar incentives in, say, Africa yield similar results, we call it systemic corruption and say it's the reason those countries can't achieve strong economic results.
@rst we, like they, now have a very hard time making any real progress in aggregate. we just started from a better baseline.
@interfluidity BTW, case in point: France's SNCF (leaders in high-speed rail worldwide) tried to help California. They gave up, and left for North Africa, where they've since built a functional system in Morocco, complaining about California's "dysfunction" -- which largely took the form of local pols demanding diversion of funds, or the trains themselves, to suit local interests. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html
