Why Can’t the West Build Anymore?

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Reporting from New York, with a Bitcoin slump at his heels and the Hollywood-launch buzz of Money: A Story of Humanity still in the air, we dive into one of the most important economic questions of 2025: why can America, Ireland, and Britain no longer build the infrastructure that made them great? From the riveted, soot-stained genius of the New York subway to China’s ability to throw up a hospital in ten days, we explore a new way of understanding global power: engineers vs. lawyers. Guided by Dan Wang’s Breakneck, we trace how China’s engineer-run state builds at breakneck speed while lawyer-dominated America litigates itself into paralysis, and how Ireland, with a Dáil stuffed with talkers rather than doers, finds itself in the same boat. We dig into the numbers, the politics, the personalities, and the quiet collapse of Western state capacity. If the people running your country don’t know how to build, how can the country itself ever hope to?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
0:07.8	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
0:14.1	How are you? I hope life is good.
0:17.9	The podcast is coming from New York today, from New York City, from the big
0:23.0	Apple. The big red apple. The big red apple, exactly. How are you, Ed? I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.
0:29.0	You've got a big New York head on you. I have a big New York head on you. Just before we start
0:34.2	bantering, just dear listener, what we're going to be talking about today
0:38.0	is something that I think is really fascinating and we will explore a wee bit more over the coming
0:45.6	weeks with the author of an amazing book that I'll tell you about in a couple of minutes.
0:50.3	But the idea is the following.
0:52.0	When you are in New York, what you see is a country or a city
0:59.4	that used to build massive infrastructure, right? Used to and no longer does. And the question is,
1:05.1	why is this? Now, this is not just limited to New York. If you're an Irish listener or even a
1:10.8	British listener,
1:11.3	you'll know the same thing. You know, Ireland can't build anything anywhere at any price,
1:16.1	apparently. And Britain, the same. So the question is, why is this? Particularly if you contrast
1:23.7	the idea with why can Asia build so much. And there's a new book out by a guy called Dan
1:30.7	Wang. It's called Breakneck, China's quest to engineer the future. And what he does is he
1:37.3	reframes the idea why America can't build and why China can build in the context of who runs the country. He basically
1:47.8	says China's run by engineers and engineers want to build. America is run by lawyers and lawyers
1:55.2	want to litigate. Two of these urges are influencing the ability of the countries to deliver infrastructure,
2:01.6	to deliver manufacturing, to deliver the prowess that comes up being a big superpower.
	...

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