Why Can’t the West Build Anymore?

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1:24David McWilliams: To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast. How are you? I hope life is good. The podcast is coming from New York today, from New York City, from the Big Apple. The Big Red Apple. The big red apple, exactly. How are you, Ed? I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. You've got a big New York head on you. I have a big New York head on you. Just before we start bantering, just dear listener, what we're going to be talking about today is something that I think is really fascinating. And we will explore a wee bit more over the coming weeks with the author of an amazing book that I'll tell you about in a couple of minutes.

2:13But the idea is the following.

2:14David McWilliams: When you are in New York, what you see is a country or a city that used to build massive infrastructure, right? Used to, and no longer does. And the question is, why is this? Now, this is not just limited to New York. If you're an Irish listener or even a British listener, you'll know the same thing. You know, Ireland can't build anything, anywhere, at any price, apparently. And Britain, the same. So the question is, why is this? Particularly if you contrast the idea with why can Asia build so much? And there's a new book out by a guy called Dan Wang. It's called Breakneck, China's Quest to Engineer the Future.

2:58David McWilliams: And what he does is he reframes the idea why America can't build and why China can build in the context of who runs the country. He basically says, China's run by engineers and engineers want to build. America's run by lawyers and lawyers want to litigate. Two of these urges are influencing the ability of the countries to deliver infrastructure, to deliver manufacturing, to deliver the prowess that comes with being a big superpower. So it's going to be on that idea is a good explanation of why countries cannot build infrastructure. It's typically the explanation is ideological. It's all well, you know, neoliberal countries don't build infrastructure because they don't care about it and they just care about profit.

3:47Or is it actually got to do with something much more fundamental? So that's, John, what we're going to talk about today. Yeah, yeah, I think it's I think that's fascinating. But before we get there, there's a couple of things I just want to ask you about. One, we're going to come back to, but why is it that the moment that you arrive in New York, Bitcoin takes a nosedive? Is there some sort of correlation there? What's going on? Because I am the grim reaper for Bitcoiners.

4:16David McWilliams: No, I look, what is happening, I think, in Bitcoin, I'll tell you what I actually think. I think Bitcoin can be seen as a bet on Donald Trump. Now, think about this. The rise of Bitcoin and the rise of Trump have been more or less. Now, again, there'll be Bitcoiners out there who'll say, that's not true, right? Let's frame it this way. Let's frame it this way, right? Basically, it's a bet on Trump. It's a bet on MAGA. It's a bet on the New World, all that sort of stuff. It's a bet on crypto in general, not just Bitcoin, but crypto in general. And I know Bitcoin and crypto are not part of exactly the same, but they're part of the same family.

4:56It is a bet on the disruption, the dislocation, the dissonance of the Trump world. And of course, in the last couple of weeks, what you've also seen is a lot of the shine.

5:09David McWilliams: You really feel it in the States. A lot of the Trump magic seems to be wearing off or a lot of people are saying, well, hold on a second. Grocery prices are still very, very high. The cost of living is still very, very high. The rate of inflation seems to be problematic. The tariffs aren't delivering, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the government shutdown had a big impact there. Yeah, of course, it's a big impact on the background noise. And of course, you have the fall in tech stocks or the suspicion of the fall in tech stocks where Bitcoin sometimes lies. I always found that sometimes if you're in America, there's two perceptions of Bitcoin.

5:46If you're on the East Coast, the conversations you have with Bitcoiners tend to be anti-establishment. If you're on the West Coast, the conversation you have with Bitcoiners tend to be pro-technology. So for a lot of West Coasters,

6:00David McWilliams: Bitcoin started as a technological fascination of play. For a lot of East Coasters who are, by definition, more political, it's an anti-establishment play, it's an anti-government play, it's an anti-Wall Street. That was in its very, very beginnings. Now, of course, that's all merged together. But we will do definitely a piece on Bitcoin when we have come up for air. I think we should definitely do a piece over the next couple of weeks. I'd be totally up for that, yeah. But on the other issue of crypto, I mean, there are loads and loads of people who are rightly saying the monetary world is going from a world of cash to a world of digital.

6:40as we become more digital, various different platforms will emerge, will be used, okay? The blockchain will be useful for certain people. There will be a digital revolution in finance as there was a digital revolution in telecoms, as there's a digital revolution in music industry, as there's a digital revolution in entertainment. It's happening all the time.

7:02David McWilliams: So there is a role, and I always say this, right? There will be a role for crypto in the future of money. I just would advise the crypto enthusiasts and the bros to stop suggesting it will be an alternative to money. I think it is an innovation. It's an innovation like a deposit account was an innovation, like a mortgage was an innovation, like a perpetual loan was an innovation. All these things are innovations in money that keep going. Crypto will find its place there. But will it replace the dollar? Will it replace fiat currency? Will it replace the state's ability and enthusiasm for printing currency because currency is so incredibly powerful?

7:45Absolutely not. And I think we'll leave it there. But we will watch the Bitcoiners and we will come back to them. But again, as you said, you know, when you're in the United States,

7:54David McWilliams: it feels that Bitcoin's kind of intertwined with Trump. It's intertwined with MAGA. It's intertwined with a whole kind of cultural background noise. You know, there's a sort of, you know, when the culture changes, when the sociology changes, when the demographics change, and they obviously all feed into political change, what happens is various different other financial iterations change as well. And that's my sense is that look at Bitcoin as a bet on Trump as well as anything else. And when Trump's star is rising, Bitcoin rises. When Trump's star is falling, Bitcoin falls. Why does Trump's star fall?

8:32David McWilliams: it's because perceptions of risk are elevated. So when there's no risk, what they call in financial markets, a risk-off moment, that means that all sorts of speculative assets of which Trump has won, right? Their star rises, okay? When there's more risk on, people are worried about, are we making the right decisions? Is the economy going the right way? Is the United States on the right path? When the risk goes back on and people's appetite for risk dissipates and their appetite for security increases, all speculative assets, whether it be Donnie Jay and our Bitcoin, seem to fall. So again, there's lots going on there.

9:13David McWilliams: That's not a 100 % satisfying explanation, and I take that, but it is an interesting way of looking at the whole Bitcoin phenomenon. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. But let's just stay on the subject of money for a moment. You were launching your book, on the stage of Beckett, Money and the Story of Humanity. How did it go? That was, it was, so in the States, the book's called A History of Money. It's been getting great reviews, which is really fantastic. When we got this morning, it's been made, Kirkus, which is K-I-R-K-U-S, which is a very influential literary publication in the United States.

9:54It kind of sets the tone, has just made a non-fiction book of the year here, which is a big deal. I mean, it's not the only one. There's a list of non-fiction books of the year, like books you must read in the non-fiction space. So that's really great. I feel like staying in America. America's the only place they welcome you with open arms. In Ireland, you get fucking hammered and hoes. Look behind you. Ice are at the door. But you know what I mean? Like in Ireland, you take off, you ship so much criticism and there's pylon, there's this and that. In the United States, they're like, oh, great, we'll take it.

10:27David McWilliams: Anyway, so the Irish Arts Centre, is a new theatre. So last Monday night, we did the launch of the book on the stage of Endgame. So it was a real... So the Druid Theatre, you know, in Galway, the most probably, you know, the most famous, most innovative, most groundbreaking theatre. The director there, Gary Hines, has been around for a long time, has really changed the face of Irish theatre. They are doing Beckett's Endgame, which is the one with the two dustbins, John, and then, right? Yes. I wanted to jump out of the bloody dustbin. That's how I wanted to open the thing, but they wouldn't let me.

11:03Anyway, so that was a bit of a sort of a dream of mine to sit on the Beckett stage and present. And we did it. It was great. It was a full house, lots of books, lots of signatures, lots of questions, interestingly, on Bitcoin and crypto and the future of money and all that sort of stuff. But it was a wonderful night out. And then we headed out into the New York nighttime, ended up in Little Bar on 14th Street called Grace's, which is a shout out to Grace's. Got a snog there. But my friend of yours, Peter Bannam, snog, you fucking snog. Got a shift, John. But fascinatingly, a couple of our old friends came to the gig.

11:45What they didn't realize is that on stage, even though the house lights are lowered, your eyes adjust eventually so you can actually see the very darkened auditorium. And one of our oldest friends, Peter Bannam, the man who owns Frawley's Pub in Le Hinch, a fine spot that we hope to go down to at Christmas and maybe do a live podcast from the back of... Indeed. ...was asleep for the entire fucking show. Come on, Pete. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. His head is nodding off. And, you know, he was fighting sleep for a minute and the chin was sort of rolling around the chest and eventually he just kind of, he shuddered and he just nodded off.

12:24He came into it. And I was given all my money about this. And here's the Romans. And here's the, you know, did I tell you the story about the Wizard of Oz? And did I tell you about crypto? And he just snored all the way through. Which is, as a performer, John, I can tell you there is nothing more distracting and annoying as a fucker in the front row asleep. Okay. So let's get on with the podcast. Okay. So after you fell out of Graces with Bannum still asleep, what else was going on in New York? You had your antenna up, your economics antenna up. Tell us, what else did you notice? You know the way I regard the sort of economics I do

13:06David McWilliams: is kind of walk about economics. Yes. So you're kind of walking about, you're getting the feel for places. You say, oh, that's interesting. I don't know what's going on there. So Graces Bar is on West 14th Street in New York, down in the West Village. It also is West 14th Street, the end of the L train. The L train is one of the subway lines that basically goes east to west, goes from West 14th Street in Greenwich Village all the way across to the Rockaways, which is the home of the Ramones and most of the Irish cops and the NYPD are over there in the Rockaways, right? So it's an amazing line.

13:44It goes across Manhattan. It goes out to Williamsburg. It goes all the way through Brooklyn and ends up in Queens and out in that neck of the woods, right? So fascinating line.

13:53David McWilliams: And after Grace's, I'm on the subway going home. And what I'm looking at is, and this has always intrigued me in America, right? Is the New York subway system, which was largely built by Irish people a century ago, is an extraordinary system. Shuttles about 4 million commuters around the city every single day. What I'm always interested in is exposed metal rivets. So you go into New York subway, right? It feels like you're going into some industrial revolution, factory floor, because it's all steel. It's dirty. The rivets are jutting out of the steel girders, right? It's not like any other, like most other subway systems are very aesthetic.

14:35All the engineering works are covered up by mosaics or by art or by at least some sense of things being covered up. In America, you feel you can see the engine. You can smell the diesel.

14:50David McWilliams: You know that sort of way? It's dirty and it's rattly and it's rickety. And the interesting thing is the people who built the American subways, they were people who were obviously much more interested in function than form. Basically, let's just get the thing built. And it looks as if it comes from another age. And that is because it really does come from another age. So when you're in New York, you know, and you see things like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge or the Empire State Building or the New York subway system. Yeah. It's weird because they're kind of like monuments, are remnants of some sort of disappeared civilization.

15:32David McWilliams: Because the United States used to build big, used to build these massive infrastructure projects, used to be run, it seems like an engineering, a building collective that said, look, we will build a subway. We will build the Empire State. We will build the Chrysler Building. We will build these massive, massive bridges. Yeah. steel and iron and all sorts of things. But it feels as if those workers have almost walked off the site sometime in the mid-20th century, right? And America and New York isn't building like this anymore. Like if you contrast, you come into JFK, JFK is for most people, for most people, the first site they will ever get of the United States.

16:17David McWilliams: And it feels like the 1960s. It doesn't feel like the 21st century. But that was the cutting edge of architecture of its day. I'm just saying, I'm making the point that if you contrast JFK and the infrastructure of the New York subway, all of which is amazing, and the Brooklyn Bridge, but was built a long, long time ago, with the high-speed, highly modern airports, infrastructure, train network of America's greatest rival, China. You get the sense is one civilization is on the way down, the American one, and one civilization is on the way up, the modern Chinese one. And the question is then, why can't America seem to build large infrastructural projects while the Chinese seem to be pushing the boundaries of engineering limitations every day?

17:16David McWilliams: And this question is not exclusive to America. I come back to Ireland. There was data last week that shows that Irish rail networks are only 3 % electrified. Right, okay. 3%. The IMF came out with a report suggesting that Ireland's roads, housing and utilities are 32 % below what exists in comparable countries. So, for example, our railway network is ossified, it's ancient, it's backward. All our infrastructure is backward. The question is, why is this, right? Now, typically the lazy ideological answer is that Ireland and America are neoliberal capitalist countries that don't care about infrastructure and we need a more socialist sort of state planning is required to build infrastructure.

18:09David McWilliams: So sometimes we hear that all the time, right? But that fails to explain, for example, why the country with the best railway network in the world, which is Switzerland, has 5 ,300 kilometers of rail entirely electrified, 100%. Really? 5 ,000? And they've got a lot of mountains to deal with as well. Exactly. And they're pushing tunnels through mountains and all sorts of things, right? And yet, if it were ideological and only socialists build good infrastructure, how can you explain that Switzerland has the best rail infrastructure in the world and it is consistently ranked as the most capitalist economy in the world?

18:52David McWilliams: So I think the ability and willingness to build infrastructure can't just be solely attributed to ideology. There must be something else going on. And what is that something else? This brings me to this fascinating book that has just been published, which compares America and China. It also might explain why Ireland and Britain have very poor infrastructure and very poor record in building infrastructure, right? Right. It's a guy called Dan Wang, and we're going to have him on the podcast to go much, much deeper than I'm about to go now into this argument, because I think it's really interesting.

19:24David McWilliams: Right. The book, John, is called Breakneck, China's quest to engineer the future. And this book does something fascinating. He kind of reframes the competition between China and the United States as a clash, not of superpowers, but as a clash of political and technical temperaments and outlooks at the very top. Now, the central thesis of the book is really interesting. It's a simple one. He says that different national temperaments produce systematically different economic and state capacity outcomes. By that, he means that China is an engineering state and it treats big problems with a sort of a builder's problem solving mentality.

20:10David McWilliams: So it's an engineer state. Yeah. I mean, even like taking the Belt and Road Initiative and, you know, all those massive projects that are just beyond anyone's scope, only China's, apparently. And what he says, right, he says this is not some sort of ideological idea. He says it's much more interesting and much more revelatory to see the idea that China, as an engineering state, looks at these big infrastructural problems through the lens of a builder or an engineer and has a problem-solving mentality coming to the project. America, by contrast, is run by lawyers. And what he's saying is that a country run by engineers will build and accelerate into the future, and a country run by lawyers will litigate and decelerate into the past.

21:05David McWilliams: So lawyers, by their very mentality, are not builders, right? And he goes on to say that China, he calls it a kind of a Leninist technocracy, right? So it is centrally planned, but it's a technocracy where technical training and the institutional habit of mass mobilization, of getting people to do this, to move from A to B, matter as much as any ideology. It says that this engineering impulse is cultural and historical, and many of China's leaders come from an engineering background, right? Okay. And that gives them this, imagine a country run by fellows who used to have train sets when they were kids.

21:44right yeah i had a train set i loved my train set yeah but there you go sort of an engineering

21:50David McWilliams: mind you look you're a sound engineer it's no reason that you there's no it's not a coincidence that you produce things that you technologically make things work that you're you're interested in the sound and how it works and the machine and like i'm much more interested in the kind of the performance the editorial they're like the and you're saying yeah but that's one part mac but you need to get the technology right at the back. So this is all a piece, right? Which is why I think this works so well because your interest is in one general area, your competence, and mine is in a different one.

22:22David McWilliams: Yeah, that's very true. And what he says to Chinese, it is true. So you say to me like lots of things, oh, we've got this new machine, we've got this new mic, and this doesn't sound so well, do that again. Because what's grating you is engineering perfection, right? And what's grating me is editorial notions and ideas but the two competences fuse very nicely. And what he's saying is that China is run by engineers and the engineers have a different way of looking at the world and they want things to work, right? He says, by contrast, the United States is dominated by a legalistic ruling class. Now, imagine this.

23:00Since independence, more than half of United States presidents,

23:05David McWilliams: vice presidents and members of Congress have come from a legal background. That's amazing. Yeah. Even more importantly, in the last three decades, every single Democrat presidential and vice presidential nominee from 1984 to 2020 went to law school. Every single one. Yeah. Apart from, of course, our friend Donny Jay, who is a builder. And in fairness, whether you like him or not, and we generally don't, but he is a bit of a doer. And he does it for himself. He's a doer. Yeah, he is. He does it for the family. He is a doer. But what they're saying is that, you know, on the Democratic side, and this is interesting, on the Democratic side, every single one of the vice presidents and the presidents nominated since 84 went to law school.

23:57David McWilliams: right yeah and half of presidents in general right so what that gives and this is maybe again why trump is such an oddity in america and he annoys so many over-educated yeah legalistic type minds because he is a builder because he does things right but the upshot he's saying wang is saying is that all these different competences and incentives at the very top mean that you end up are two very different societies. Because engineers, they value completion, scale, speed, getting things done, new technology, adding new ways of doing things, right? Lawyers, on the other hand, prize the process, the rights, whose right has been impinged by this, whose right's not.

24:44David McWilliams: This leads to kind of more checks, more litigations, and more ways to delay and block infrastructure. So while engineering in China is surging, in lawyerly America, it struggles to build. Okay, Mark, give us a few figures and data behind all this. Okay, so I'll give you a few figures, right? In the first 15 years of the 21st century, China accounted for nearly half of the world's total urbanization. So the amount of people moving into being urbanized, right? So that's this huge shift from the country to the cities, okay? During the pandemic alone, the Chinese authorities claimed to have built an entirely new hospital in 10 days.

25:26Yeah. Right? I saw a video on that. And it was incredible. It was in 10 days, right? It was incredible. Yeah. Think about Ireland's children's hospital. Think about our debacle, right? Yeah.

25:36David McWilliams: China added nearly 2 billion square meters of floor space in its cities every year. that that is equivalent to creating an urban area the size of London every single year, right? Between 2011 and 2013, two years, China consumed more concrete than the US used in the entire 20th century. Wow. Think about it. Wow, that's a lot of CO2 as well. Oh yeah, I mean, these are not environmentally, this is an entirely different discussion, right? But think about it, right? It accounts for just over half of the world's total consumption of cement. And in 2020, China used, think about this, 2.4 billion tons of cement, which is 23 times the amount used in the United States the same year.

26:33David McWilliams: Yeah. So it's building 23 times the clip of the United States. No wonder there's a housing crisis in America and everywhere else. And in Ireland. And in Ireland. And China have these massive skyscrapers that are just sitting there idle, empty. Oh, yeah. So there's loads and loads of problems there. But it's fascinating when you just stand back and you realize, okay, an engineering mindset at the top has a material impact on the ability to actually get things done. A lawyerly mindset at the top has a material impact on not getting things done. And the result of this, the upshot of this, is that countries like America and countries like Ireland and countries like Britain have a massive infrastructural deficit.

27:23David McWilliams: Yeah. Massive infrastructural gap. And this argument says it's not to do with ideology. It's not to do with left versus right. It's actually to do with the biases, prejudices and competences of the people who get to the top of the public sector and the political world in general. Okay. It's really fascinating stuff. It's amazing. And this is yet another kind of angle on how to look at the housing crisis in Ireland, in America and across Europe. But let's go for a break now and let's come back and talk about Ireland and what kind of mindset is running our country at the moment. All right, we'll do that.

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29:49So, Mike, China has this engineering kind of driving force from the top down. Build, build, build, build. Whereas America and Ireland have, you know, this lawyeristic kind of approach to governance. So, let's talk about the Irish government now and what kind of people we have running our country and how that may be impacting our housing crisis, for instance, and our infrastructure. Yeah.

30:19David McWilliams: Well, it's just the thesis is very simple, that the personalities and the background of the political and technocratic classes matter. Right? Yeah. And engineers are much more likely to find solutions and they're much more likely to be driven by finding solutions, whereas lawyers are much more likely to be driven by finding problems because the law litigates all the time. Covering your ass, I think it's called. Arse covering, yeah, ass covering. So traditionally, Irish politicians are drawn heavily from teachers, farmers, local councillors, and a marked number of lawyers, right? Yeah. And therefore, it is dominated by groups who prefer the legal process and sort of negotiated compromise to a group that prefers large-scale technological project delivery.

31:09David McWilliams: So if all the ministers and the advisors and senior civil servants lack engineering background, the state's default response to sort of complex construction problems and engineering problems will tend to be slower, more legalistic, and much more what you would call risk-averse, right? Now, if you look at the analysis of the Dáil 2020 to 2024, the Dáil for our non-Irish listeners is the Irish Parliament. It reveals that 13 of the 160 TDs, our 8.1 % were lawyers, they practiced law. So 8.1 % of all our TDs practiced law, but less than 1 % of the Irish workforce are in the legal professions. So this means that lawyers are roughly nine times overrepresented in the Doyle than they are in the general public.

32:04Farmers, teachers make up another 8 % of TDs, way out of whack with their proportion of a share in the public in general. Now, in contrast, only 1 % of TDs had a healthcare background, some sort of technical ability in healthcare. and fascinatingly, and wait for it, John, not one Irish TD, which is again for our non-Irish listeners, like an MP or a congressman, not one Irish TD, not one comes from a tech or engineering background and has worked in the tech or engineering sector. Not one. Yeah, I know. That's incredible. And do you know what? When you're talking there, I was kind of thinking about the kind of people that lawyers are.

32:48We know loads of them and they're all lovely people, but it's a bit like the you know okay not all of them but a bit like the Boris Johnson stuff in in the UK you know it's all about argument and it's all about debate and it's all about presentation so therefore they tend to be good talkers and they can lay out a case really well and that appeals to the average punter the average voter as opposed to I'm not saying this is the case for all engineers or tech guys, but they mightn't be as good at communication. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think that we in Ireland and in Britain and obviously in America, favour point scoring and as you say, eloquent presentations and ability to think on your feet, to talk your way out of situations.

33:42So you said it better than me there already. Right, but that's, you know, exactly, exactly. This is this fucking argument in motion, right? To beguile people, to enchant people, to draw people in,

33:54David McWilliams: to get people on your side, all that sort of stuff. These are the skills that we elevate. And these are the skills that we think are needed to win an election or to win a public debate or to go on TV and get a soundbite right and also maybe to knock your opposition slightly off their guard, all that sort of stuff. It's about personal confidence, projection, call it charisma with a small c, right? We are attracted to that because our system is a parliamentary system. It's an adversarial system. It's not a million miles away from the legal system itself. As you said, a lot of the more engineering people, be they men or women, tend not necessarily to be worried about the argument because for them, the argument is already won.

34:44in the precision of the engineering. If you understand, there is no argument for them. Like this is not a matter of opinion whether the bridge stays up or not. It's a matter of engineering precision. And maths. It's not a matter of opinion whether the train goes at 180 kilometers an hour and is powered by electricity. Engineers don't care about your fucking opinion, right? Because for them, it's a matter of engineering facts, right? Yes, yes. So if you have a country which is, frankly, ruled by windbags, okay, you're not going to get these things done. I think it's a really interesting, simple and straightforward way of looking at the world.

35:27And in Ireland, we have biased and favoured talkers who are not doers. And it's very rare you get a doer and talker in the same body. And so what the argument is, is that we need a cultural shift in Ireland to run the place to deliver the infrastructure. We need to make sure that the skill set when you go into a room is broadened where decisions are made to include the engineers, to include the technologists, to include the scientists, to include those people for whom engineering prowess and getting the job done is the ultimate arbiter of success. And that means projects would be fast-tracked.

36:16That means planning would be fast-tracked. You give the engineers power to do things. Sometimes engineers can be a little bit, and I don't mind saying this to our engineer mates, tone deaf to other people's concerns, because what they're trying to say is get it built, right? Yeah, get it done, yeah. We don't have to go full Chinese Communist Party central committee on this, but maybe you can learn from countries like France, John, that have an elite civil engineering regime that comes out of their Hôtel Call that's actually Napoleonic in its origin. And these guys spearhead their grand projet, their TGV, their amazing infrastructure, which you see all over France.

36:54And what they do is they streamline the approvals process. They enforce timelines. They reward completion over perfection. They get it done. Going back to our idea of the New York subway, it doesn't look great, but it works. It's done. by engineers in order. The objective is not to have a beautiful looking subway. The objective is to move 5 million people around the city every day because it's a big place. Now, in order to do that in Ireland, we need to have a cultural shift. But I suppose looking at political life in Ireland and in the UK as well, it's a difficult job for a start and it attracts a certain kind of people.

37:39And it certainly doesn't attract the engineering kind of people. But being a politician is kind of a crap job as it is, you know. So how do you attract in more of the engineering type? Or is that what you mean? Do we need to give up their engineering to become politicians and just apply their knowledge? Or do you change the structure where you have engineering committees? Well, I mean, I'm talking from the United States, which they love a quota in the States, right? You've asked the question now, and I'm thinking about this, right? Affirmative action in the United States was you needed to have a certain amount of black voters, black people in positions of power, right?

38:24Because this was the only way in which you're going to change the racial mix in power in America. Right. Quotas for female participation, quotas for this. Maybe we should have a quota for politicians that we have to have 20 % of all politicians have to be engineers. Yeah, engineers and doctors as well. Engineers, doctors, technocrats, technicians, people who can make things, people who are interested in how we get from A to B. And maybe an economist or two. Well, I was about to say that we are, we are the engineering equivalent, okay? Because we like precision and we like sums and we like doing these sort of things.

39:02But again, you know, by all means have economists but do what they tell you. Don't just have them there. I think there's a lot of window dressing. I think there's a lot. I mean, we can talk about this. Our new Minister of Finance

39:15David McWilliams: doesn't even have a degree, let alone an economic strength. Doesn't even have a degree. And again, I don't, I'm not fucking all about credentials, but I think it's important that your Minister for Finance has a tangential understanding of what is right and what is wrong when they're being advised. and we are now in a position where our new minister of finance our old minister of finance Pascal to your point of maybe politics is too hard decided you know what I've given 10 years of my life 15 years of my life to this I'm out I've done my public service right yeah and he's gone to take a new job I can't remember what it is I think it's the world bank we can talk about that again.

39:57Yeah. But you know, and what we have is a talker, not a doer in the ministry that holds the purse for the state. And what I think we need to do is either have quotas for engineers, which is a big up for our engineering listeners, which we are big lovers of cathedral thinking, and we're big lovers of big, bold projects on this podcast. So quotas for engineers, 20 % of all TDs have to be engineers, but maybe 20 % of all heads of the public sector departments

40:25David McWilliams: have to be engineers. Yeah, yeah. Because that is, the Department of Health should be run by an engineer doctor who understands. Department of Transport has to be run by a civil engineer. Has to be. And they have to be surrounded by civil engineers. So any department involved in building the Department of Housing has to be run by a housing, not a czar, not some guy who worked for NAMA, by a civil engineer, by a builder who actually can build. I mean, that is the way in which we are going to build our infrastructure. People are sick of talkers. We need doers. And if we are able to compete on the basic entry level, which is to employ more doers, more engineers, I think there is a chance that Ireland will and America will recover that infrastructure gap that we have allowed build up.

41:21If we do not encourage engineers to involve themselves in the process whereby decisions are made, we are going to get lawyers and we're going to get school teachers and we're going to get local councillors.

41:36David McWilliams: all of you are driven by negotiation rather than completion. And if we're driven by negotiation, litigation, John, rather than completion and execution, we will be back here in 10 years talking about the same thing.

42:24We'll be right back.

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