Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Infrastructure is the name given to the material structures which underlie social functioning, in particular economic functioning. Things like roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, waterways, sewerage systems, phone lines, communication systems, electricity supplies and supply lines. I’d also include social organisations like police, firefighters, health, disaster recovery, social welfare provisions, and defense forces.

Infrastructure does not have to be entirely beneficial for everyone. For example, roads can dispossess people, or split communities.

There are a number of useful articles on the problems of: see The State of U.S. Infrastructure

and the main document it refers to:

ASCE’s 2021 American Infrastructure Report Card | GPA: C-

Also see: The Global Infrastructure Outlook

These document how infrastructure is both failing and not being repaired.

The question is not really how much it would cost to repair failing infrastructure, because that can be relatively little, but whether this repair is likely to happen before it gets completely out of hand.

As the people in the US point out, repair has not been happening until after the damage occurs, for a long while. Consequently, quality of infrastructure will probably keep on declining.

If extra stresses occur such as devastating storms, then the repairs are likely to be put on hold to repair more immediate problems, and even those repairs may become overwhelming. Some say repairs from Hurricane Katrina were sill ongoing 14 years later. Damage has not been repaired and the traces of the storm remain. Some even suggest that the main construction and organisational reasons for the damage have not changed. So the next big storm will not leave the place in good shape.

Repair is not a glamorous occupation in capitalism. It is a cost, an inhibitor of profit, so tends to be delayed. Furthermore people get used to the idea that they should replace things rather than repair them, because that is how contemporary markets work.

As infrastructure is a public good, it probably requires public funding, and if the wealth elites resist taxation, and have the power to prevent taxation, then ongoing decline is probably inevitable.

A failing infrastructure limits what a society can do to face further society wide challenges when they arrive – and arrive they will.

This entry was posted on August 15, 2021 at 1:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.