> Despite our superior technology, there are many things that Western countries could do in the past that we can’t today—e.g. rapidly build large-scale infrastructure, maintain low-crime cities, and run competent bureaucracies.
Which seems to be objectively false. There is a huge range in terms of infrastructure capacity, crime rate and bureaucratic competence in Western countries. Cities in the Netherlands, Norway, Estonia, Croatia, are among the safest in the world. Spain has doubled its amount of high-speed rail since 2010 to nearly 4,000km while the UK’s HS2 is a disaster. Nordic countries have very efficient, streamlined bureaucracy while Portugal or Italy are a Kafkaesque nightmare.
At first it seemed more defensible if one considered the West to only consist of the US, but even this is completely inaccurate given that crime rates in US cities have plummeted to historic lows in the last 3 years.
”According to Asher’s analysis, Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago, Newark, and a handful of other big cities recorded their lowest murder rates since the 1950s and ’60s. “Our cities are as safe as they’ve ever been in the history of the country,” Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton who studies urban violence, told me.”
You start the curriculum with the following:
> Despite our superior technology, there are many things that Western countries could do in the past that we can’t today—e.g. rapidly build large-scale infrastructure, maintain low-crime cities, and run competent bureaucracies.
Which seems to be objectively false. There is a huge range in terms of infrastructure capacity, crime rate and bureaucratic competence in Western countries. Cities in the Netherlands, Norway, Estonia, Croatia, are among the safest in the world. Spain has doubled its amount of high-speed rail since 2010 to nearly 4,000km while the UK’s HS2 is a disaster. Nordic countries have very efficient, streamlined bureaucracy while Portugal or Italy are a Kafkaesque nightmare.
At first it seemed more defensible if one considered the West to only consist of the US, but even this is completely inaccurate given that crime rates in US cities have plummeted to historic lows in the last 3 years.
https://archive.is/OO3bE
”According to Asher’s analysis, Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago, Newark, and a handful of other big cities recorded their lowest murder rates since the 1950s and ’60s. “Our cities are as safe as they’ve ever been in the history of the country,” Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton who studies urban violence, told me.”