{"id":928,"date":"2011-07-29T15:36:56","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T19:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=928"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:28:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:28:48","slug":"all-aboard-the-democracy-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/07\/29\/all-aboard-the-democracy-train\/","title":{"rendered":"All aboard the democracy train"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yevgeny Shrago\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

While markets anxiously\u00a0watched<\/a>\u00a0America\u2019s debt ceiling debate and Europe\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0another round of bailouts for Greece in the hopes of saving Greece\u2019s increasingly rickety monetary union, the big news out of China carried a more tragic cast: 32 people died and another 200 people were hurt when one of China\u2019s new high speed trains\u00a0rear-ended<\/a>\u00a0another train that had lost power. This collision culminated months of unreliable service on the main Beijing-Shanghai line.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s national sport these days, at least in some quarters, appears to be counting the ways in which China is catching up to or surpassing us. Those who fear China love to worry about our massive trade\u00a0deficit<\/a>, China\u2019s\u00a0burgeoning<\/a>\u00a0manufacturing industry or China\u2019s million man\u00a0People\u2019s Liberation Army<\/a>. Even those not looking to score political points by railing against China note with envy its ability to spend $120 billion a year on railway construction, while America\u2019s\u00a0big move<\/a>\u00a0toward modernizing it\u2019s rail system ensures that Amtrak\u2019s locomotives will\u00a0remain<\/a>\u00a0obsolete for another 30 years.<\/p>\n

But these worries about China are largely overblown.\u00a0<\/span>The trade deficit calculations ignore the fact that much of the deficit is funded by American companies selling goods they\u2019ve made cheaply in China, which keeps the profits from this so-called deficit in America. America\u2019s industrial productivity still exceeds China\u2019s by an order of magnitude. As long as we avoid a land war in Asia (such a war should be inconceivable), the PLA can\u2019t hurt us. \u00a0But ah those trains, envy of all the cool, urbanism savvy progressives. \u00a0If only we had those trains.<\/p>\n

This crash illustrates what we should already know about China: the fact that it can spend $120 billion easily doesn\u2019t mean that it can do it effectively. Institutions matter and Chinese institutions have no voter accountability. It\u2019s much easier to please your boss when he doesn\u2019t worry about keeping the electorate happy. Furthermore, without robust political discourse, there\u2019s much less incentive to ferret out corruption, so when the Chinese do discover that someone\u2019s hand has been in the till, it\u2019s inevitably spectacular. China already fired one railway minister this year for \u201csevere disciplinary violations.\u201d China\u2019s trains may be pretty and fast, but their reliability falls far below American standards.<\/p>\n

Yes, it would be wonderful if stodgy old Amtrak would buy some new lightweight (or even mag-lev!) trains so that the so-called high speed rail can beat the regular trains by more than 20 minutes. The political process, particularly at this moment, means that such advances are unlikely. But American politicians can\u2019t funnel millions of dollars to their buddies (or the people who bribe them) without someone noticing, and the things that our democracy does manage to build aren\u2019t usually an accident waiting to happen. If the voters really want high speed rail, it will happen and it will happen well. Until then, it\u2019s on progressives to keep making the democratic and Democratic case for rail, instead of envying China\u2019s autocratic speed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yevgeny Shrago\u00a0 While markets anxiously\u00a0watched\u00a0America\u2019s debt ceiling debate and Europe\u00a0announced\u00a0another round of bailouts for Greece in the hopes of saving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-eY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}