Can the US do that? Or even the EU? It will cost more, it will take longer, and it will be smaller. This is, IMHO, why China tops all of the charts lately. The democratic, federal west simply cannot compete on scale.
It is, fundamentally, a choice. The UK has been cutting off megaproject funding since the APT (and before): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Passenger_Train
But it's not just a government choice, it's a choice of whole echelons of society. There are plenty of people who still get paid if the megaproject fails. We've seen a lot of that in the COVID response; pretty much every minister has been accused of routing hundreds of millions to their mates for items that were never delivered.
(To me, the unique thing about WW2 was that it forced the UK out of complacency and into employing diverse talent as a matter of raw necessity, because suddenly it was no longer possible to buy your way out of it as an individual. Suddenly the establishment would let a woman fix the Spitfires, a gay man break the codes, and nobody complained about all the Poles coming over here defending our country.)
And this is why western nations should not allow China unilateral trade freedoms until it's government addresses the human rights of its own citizens. To do so, imperils the progress human rights (esp. workers' rights) within western nations. While China's ability to marshal it's resources in awe-inspiring, I'm certain no average worker/citizen in the west wants their freedoms to go retrograde... until it's too late and it's the only way to get a job.
If you live in the west, and you like your lifestyle, you ought to be worried about what's coming, and for the US, regression of workers' rights in the name of being globally competitive is already in full swing. If you had the option of being able to challenge your government in a democracy, or a centrally managed autocracy that might throw you in jail, which do you choose?
> if you can't open criticize a government, you have little recourse if it decides to put your interests last in the name of, say, moving some economic lever that profits people in wealth and power
> The western world has funnelled much of its money into a China, and this has given China the economic resources to uplift its own citizens out of poverty
We had "liberal democracy" in the last decades. This has lead to the outcome of outsourcing most of western manufacturing to China and handing them our trade secrets, because that was the game-theoretic optimum of the ideology of free trade, equality and universalism.
If liberal democracy means putting the people's interest first, why have the policies of the last 30 years actively worked against the interests of the average american employee, and benefitted mostly capital? Once you take the question serious, you will find some interesting hypotheses, some of which will be hard to empirically argue against. I will not go into those.
Note that this is not an endorsement of Chinese-style autocratism, but meant to challenge preconceived notions on what the current state of affairs is actually like.
I detest state overreach, centralism and the absence of liberty, and therefore I would detest Chinese-style government. But standing where we are, right now, it takes a lot of chuzpah to claim that our system is working as intended, meaning it is effective, just, leads to prosperity and has the interest of its people in mind.
The US and even other countries like Australia, UK, France etc. are willingly voting in governments that dismantle social policies and workers' rights for 'more jobs'. Without protectionist policies, there's no way to reconcile the increased labour costs in western nations, let alone personal liberties. If China is permitted to ascend without improving the rights of its people, that's the country we will have to match.
There is another angle to this, which is that China won't have to fight the red tape, regulation, NIMBYism, being stuck in local maxima and the general lack of vision, optimistic outlook on the future and belief in the system working that has befallen western countries. All we do is to pump ever more money into the markets and go deeper into debt. At one point, this will stop working. Some say this is already happening: is inflation real, or not?
China needs it's version of Chernobyl before people would be ready to risk their lives to change the government, the problem is that the new failure modes have global impact. And as we've seen with the spread of Covid, China has actually gained political capital from its mistakes, at least domestically, and also harmed the political situation of it's western competitors. Perhaps China will now wait long by the river while the rest of the world cannibalizes itself.
This is very much a deliberate decision.
I'm all for more offshore wind, but onshore wind will have to play an important role for future energy.
Privatized taxes as in when the government needs to buy land for something it has to pay inflated prices inside a ginormous real estate bubble. Labor is expensive because laborers have to pay 50% of their wages as rents.
The biggest roadblock is opposition from industries that profit from the past energy system. This combined with listening too much to vocal opposition to renewables, which is usually loud, but a minority (local exceptions exist).
US HAS decided to lose leadership on ecology. HAS decided to underfund fusion and renewables research.
There is opposition but where is it when $$$ are poured into unnecessary wars? When the taxes are increased? When scam happens?