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Comment by CleanedStar | Hacker News Reader

"The shift is occurring so quickly, and the potential costs are so high, that some fear rural China is once again the site of radical social engineering."

Yesterday Detroit announced it would be defaulting on billions of debt - just the latest chapter of what is happening in that city, in that state, in the entire old Steel Belt. In the 1960s, Detriot was the center of US innovation and the economic engine of the country - we all know what it is nowadays.

Why is this not "radical social engineering?" The US unemployment rate is currently at a level that has not been seen since five months in 1992, and before that not since 1984. Why is that not radical social engineering? The amount of hypocrisy and double standards in the US media is mindblowing...

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In the USA the last 60-80 years we've had a radical social engineering project to force people to live in suburban areas. Home interest mortgage deduction, demolition of urban neighborhoods for freeways, the funneling of tax dollars away from cities and towards new suburban/exurban development, the wholesale dismantling of public trolley and transit systems..

Detroit is just one example of many.

It isn't even just active money used against suburbia, but the subsidization of urban sprawl by giving everyone "free" roads. In practical economics, it tremendously subsidized the capacity for people to live in suburbia to not have to build and maintain the roads that lead to their doorsteps, and instead let that burden fall to the common man. They weren't making the economic choice to live compact and not pay for connection to the outside world, because the public purse did it for them.

I know nothing of this but I figured that when you build up a new subdivision as a developer you are responsible for the road construction leading to and within the new site. Is that not the case? You just build 200 homes and the government has to pay for all of the infrastructure? Connecting municipal utilities I thought would also be part of the developer's cost - which gets passed on to the home purchasers. So there would not be a "free" road for everyone.

Developers have to pay development fees to cities, who then provide the services. Roads are probably a bit more complex because they are capital intensive, but zoning rules are supposed to keep development in check in this case. A town/city can decide to "expand", perhaps with developer prodding, and in some cases the other way around.

Detroit was utterly killed by its suburbs combined with white flight accelerated by the race riots of the late 60s.

Because the US didn't force Detroit to default on billions of debt? The rural Chinese are being specifically targeted for these reforms, nobody has been targeting Detroit's debt over the past 50 years.

What is happening in Detroit seems to me more like "dealing with a mess" than radical social engineering.

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