We can comprehend just fine. There’s a project, California High Speed Rail, under construction to connect these two cities. The trouble is that our political and economic systems have become so sclerotic that China has built an entire HSR network since work on this line began, and it won’t even be done before 2031.

We can still build highways, because the political and regulatory mechanisms to create them were fine-tuned as the system crystalized into inflexibility.

Frankly, this exact inability of U.S. society to change and adapt to new conditions was the signal indicator of the incipient collapse, for me.