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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

Megaprojects are mostly wasteful and don't deliver on their promise. They appeal to dreamers and idealists, and the GCs make out like bandits while residents are harmed and the promised benefits don't arrive. We don't build because private industry would rather issue buybacks to the oligarchic class in Arkansas and Kansas than invest in infrastructure used by the rest of too stupid to be born generationally wealthy with family offices.

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I have to disagree with you on the mega projects being wasteful. Here in Switzerland we dug a 57km train tunnel [1] which has enabled a large number or cargo to be put on rail and travel at much higher speed.

Another large project at Zürich main station involved digging an additional underground station with a tunnel up through the mountain underneath a river. [2]. It has enabled a much tigher train schedule especially for intercity trains which can now travel through the main station instead of having to back out. Well worth the 2 Billion it cost.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel

Some aren't wasteful. I could have written my post more clearly, because I was talking about all proposed megaprojects, not just those that have been built.

I think this could have used a bigger disclosure, too. The author, Brian Balkus, works for a major construction company, MasTec (which has had its issues with labor law violations). There is a clear editorial bias.

Without megaprojects, we'd all probably still be living a subsistance agrarian lifestyle. It's hard to tag specific dollars to a specific public project, they often work as multipliers across the economy.

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