I'm all for those big projects that will "stand alone" earn money, like a great big damned dam providing electricity and water , and water security.
But am a bit scared about building, for the sake of building, even if the project appears to be a sound infrastructure project, in the hope that it's merits will become so, so abundantly clear, that it will one day, bootstrap a lot of secondary industry so as to ultimately sustain the rationale the initial project.
Partly because it'll be vexing difficult to know what the scale of the project ought to be? Do we build for 5 years, 10 years or 50 years out.
Most capital budgets have a discounted time line not much further forward beyond 10 years, where after the present value of the future uncertain benefits become meaninglessly small or negative, in relation to the outlays & estimates. These budgets will also be worsened by higher systemic interest rates, that must by all accounts, be coming.
Let private enterprise do those projects that do have a decent current benefit, and perhaps for a more unfocused future, government may well have an important role to bolster the financial project, for otherwise unknown outcomes.
But politician's timelines are way, are way shorter than that.
So the commitments must be robust enough to hold a party (rather than a politician) to account. But sadly, there too, with the pivotally close expression of the voting public, party's have the very next election to concern themselves, and not much further out, and hence not much vision elsewhere either.
"Sort the voters out, who'll sort the parties out, who'll sort the politicians out, that they may acquire some vision and then only ... construction will come?"
