I'm not familiar with Nicholas Stern, and will look him up, but does anyone here want to elaborate as if you were talking to a five-year-old?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Stern,_Baron_Stern_of...
A somewhat stronger formulation of the same idea is from David Friedman: "People do things for other people for three reasons: love, money, or force."
He asks what the reasons could be, and lists several rejecting each of them. One reason that he rejects for why more building hasn't happened is capitalism.
Andreessen thinks capitalism can't be the reason for us not building because the fields he mentions are places where it's profitable ("highly lucrative") for businesses to operate. Replacing capitalism with another system (say communism) wouldn't solve our inability to build, in Andreessen's view.
Since the PRC's timespan was post-WWII, it's fair to compare them to the Asian tigers and Japan. It's easy to see which did better. Edit: Same goes if we're talking about "building more" rather than doing better.
Capitalism is why we're in this mess - we're valuing short-term gains over long-term/far-fetched/society-changing results - and a16z is part of that system. Sure, he's at the edge of that system, but I guarantee you he would not have invested in a coronavirus vaccine in mid-2019 when there was no market for one.
I would not say it's time to build. I would say it's time to change our system of motivation. Money does not, and will not ever, solve these problems BEFORE they become problems.
In this context, it sounds like he's surprised that investors are waiting for government to bail out any normally-profitable airlines, rather than making an investment or buying in while keeping them afloat. This seems simplistic to me; the cost of maintaining an airline or hotel for the upcoming no-revenue months is so high that your investment would be lost.