Half-Assing the Belt & Road
The Belt and Road Initiative was pitched by Xi Jinping as “the project of the century.” Ten years in, it has hardly lived up to the hype. What happened?
Building big things
FDR Had Macro Tools, We Need Micro Tools
With the development of Gross Domestic Product, New Deal state planners had the macroeconomic tools they needed to take on the Great Depression. To better direct its firehose of public investment, the modern state needs new microeconomic tools and its own mechanics to work with them.
Harold Ickes's Watchful Eye
Harold Ickes—FDR’s Interior Secretary and director of the Public Works Administration—was a contradictory figure: a true believer, consummate cynic, loyal public servant, and fiercely independent malcontent. We’ll need many more bureaucrats like him if we want large, effective public programs again.
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A Great Satan in this Grave
Why is Saudi Arabia, possibly the worst and most repressive country in the world, also the only place still keeping the modernist ethos alive?
Big Public Power from the River
The Tennessee Valley Authority was about more than electrification. It was a complex project of building state and public planning capacity geared toward rapid ecological restoration of the entire region. For impoverished farmers, it was nothing short of life changing.
Big Public Power from the Atom
Big public power in the last century applied the elemental potential of water toward social ends. The big public power of tomorrow should revolve around the elemental potential of the atom.
