The US also has billionaires and billion-dollar companies deliberately trying to sabotage these sorts of issues. Elon Musk and his 'Boring Company', for example, going around promising a revolution in transportation and then just... ghosting people.[0] "Don't start your public transport infrastructure, we'll build you something objectively worse and far less scalable for a fraction of the price! Uh actually never mind though."

US ISPs also have a history of lobbying to prevent municipal broadband projects, which could provide faster speeds cheaper than large monopolies can. They get the projects blocked by promising to solve the problem themselves, then once the block is in place they just yolo out. Verizon takes massive grants to improve broadband in areas, doesn't do it, and then just... nothing.

Even H&R Block is lobbying to prevent making tax returns easier so that they can continue to be one of the only companies that can file people's taxes without screwing it up (which they do anyway).

China certainly benefits from cutting huge corners, but we also need to remember that every time there's an opportunity to make people's lives better in the US, there's a rich corporation lobbying against it to preserve the profits they're milking out of people's suffering or desperation.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musk-boring-company-tu...