State Capacity

How Amsterdam invented the fire departmentTwo Dutch brothers invented a system that transformed a city previously ravaged by firesWhy the West stopped making landLarge swaths of America’s cities were originally underwater. We stopped half a century ago, but there is plenty more land left to take.Why American data centers can’t plug inThe AI buildout is bottlenecked by energy. But America has the electricity to power its data centers; the problem is getting it to them.How smashing the NIMBYs created modern capitalismIn 1688, England swept away the encrusted vetocracy that had held back economic growth for centuries. Could we do the same today?Why we should vaccinate wild animalsVaccinating wild animals can protect human health, and spare animals from extinction and suffering.How Alberta eradicated ratsRats have conquered nearly every place on earth where humans live. Only Alberta soldiers on.Should European housing politics be Americanized?Europe’s housing shortages are even worse than America’s. So why does nobody there talk about zoning?Samurai cityFor three hundred years, Japan enjoyed enviable stability and peace. All it took was locking up its warlike samurai elite in the world’s least efficient city.How Britain learned and unlearned nuclearBritain gave an elite group of engineers sweeping power and massive resources to deliver a nuclear power revolution. But their nuclear dreams crumbled. How Australia really stopped the boatsMany countries want to copy Australia’s immigration rules. But its most-copied border policy is not the one that worked.Why Japan has such good railwaysJapan’s railways are the finest in the world. Other countries can copy its formula.Why Communist reforms nearly always failedCommunism had reforming optimists too. Understanding why they failed can help today’s reformers to avoid the same fate.The NIMBY problemNot all NIMBYs are alike. Dividing the most unreasonable ones from the rest might be the key to getting homes built.Why Europe doesn’t have a Tesla Europe’s cutting edge firms are falling far behind the American frontier because of restrictive labor laws. The dysfunctional tigerHong Kong has land to build on, an autocratic government, and the world’s most expensive housing. Why doesn’t it build more?Urban expansion in the age of liberalismMany Victorian cities grew by tenfold in a century. Could ours ever do the same?The gold plating of American waterClean drinking water is a modern miracle. But it has become expensive, and it doesn’t need to be.The United States needs fewer bus stopsBus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective. It can turn a service people tolerate into one they’re happy to use.Two is already too manyEvery hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them. The rest of the world can learn from Korea’s catastrophe to avoid the same fate.How to spot a monopolyCompetition makes capitalism work. A new method for measuring it may be the holy grail of economic regulation. The Great DownzoningIt was once legal to build almost anything, everywhere. Then, in the space of a few decades, nearly every city in the Western world banned densification. What happened?How Airbus took offAirbus is an example of successful industrial policy and the rare European company that is better than its American rival. Could its success be copied elsewhere?How market design can feed the poorAmerica’s food banks had a broken distribution system. University of Chicago economists fixed it.Rivers are now battlefieldsChinese dams will hold billions of people downstream to ransom. Could solar-powered desalination make them irrelevant?Magical systems thinkingSystems thinking promises to give us a toolkit to design complex systems that work from the ground up. It fails because it ignores an important fact: systems fight back.Liberté, égalité, radioactivitéFrance built 40 nuclear reactors in a decade. Here’s how they did it, and how the world can follow their lead today.How to redraw a cityJapan faced some of the world’s toughest planning problems. It solved them by letting homeowners replan whole neighborhoods privately by supermajority vote.How one Kiwi tamed inflationInflation targeting is now standard in central banking. But it began with an offhand comment and a political gamble in New Zealand – long before economists took it seriously.The secret fast track for animal drugsAnimal drugs are approved much faster than human drugs. Perhaps we could adopt the same model for humans without compromising on safety.The bad science behind expensive nuclearHow a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing program came to be – and why its time may now be up.The rise and fall of the Hanseatic LeagueThe Hanseatic League united merchants to bargain with kings, blockade cities, and even win wars. But when technology changed, defections began and the coalition fell apart.Chinese towers and American blocksChina builds towers in a park, while America, and nearly everyone else, builds squat mid-rise blocks. The difference comes down to regulation, not culture.How Madrid built its metro cheaplyMadrid tripled the length of its metro system in just 12 years — faster and cheaper than almost any other city in the world. What can its expansion teach other cities?How to start an advance market commitmentAdvance Market Commitments allow us to buy technology from the future to support its development: vaccines, carbon capture technology, and even spacecraft. Here’s how you can start your own.New York’s long road to congestion pricingIt has taken almost 60 years to bring traffic congestion pricing to New York. This is the story of how politicians and advocates built the coalition it needed to finally happen.How the war on drunk driving was wonDeterrence alone might not stop crime. But, as the campaign against drunk driving shows, it could help create the norms that do.The road from serfdomUnwinding Russian serfdom took half a century. To eventually do it in the face of powerful opposition took a remarkable approach that let peasants vote themselves into freedom.How Israel turned homeowners into YIMBYsHomeowners are often the biggest opponents of building new homes. An Israeli reform reversed this by making homeowners the main beneficiaries of development. The entrepreneurial stateWar is hell. But by allowing more effective states to rule productive regions, it may have been a catalyst for Europe’s early modern advancement.Upzoning New ZealandNew Zealand passed the most ambitious upzoning reforms in the world. Now comes the backlash.Growing the growth coalitionLocal government faces incentives just like everything else. If we want voters to encourage growth near them, we need to make it worth their while.Houston, we have a solutionHouston was notorious for its sprawl. But it has seen a gentle density revolution since the 1990s. Allowing neighborhoods to opt out of citywide reforms was crucial in its transformation.How Mexico built a stateBuilding a state is not a matter of copying first world institutions. It is a tough process of deals and compromises. 19th century Mexico is a good example.Why Britain doesn’t buildThe history of attempts to reform planning in Britain is proof that political willpower is not enough: you need to be smart, not just brave.How DC densifiedWashington, DC, has avoided the worst price rises that have plagued many other growing American cities. Arlington’s transit-oriented development might be the reason.The end of acid rainEnding acid rain was one of humanity’s greatest environmental successes. Here’s how it happened.Gentle DensitySamuel Hughes, a contributing editor at Works in Progress, visits cities around to learn about gentle density.Building back fasterBuilding infrastructure doesn’t need to come at the cost of the environment. But it does need smarter rules.Every generator is a policy failurePower outages force businesses across Africa to rely on expensive, dirty diesel generators. Price caps block improvement, but removing them isn’t easy.A look at Britain’s new DARPAARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big bold bets on the scientific trajectories it thinks will benefit Britain – and change the future. We interviewed chief executive Ilan Gur and chairman Matt Clifford, to better understand what inspired ARIA and how they aim to make it a success.The story of VaccinateCANobody had a plan to get vaccines out of freezers and into Americans’ arms – except VaccinateCA. Its CEO tells the story of how a small team brought order to a chaotic rollout.Pandemic prevention as fire-fightingFire has almost disappeared as a cause of death in the developed world. A similar approach could do the same for infectious diseases.AI from Superintelligence to ChatGPTBreakthroughs in artificial intelligence are forcing skeptics to eat their words. We should take its risks seriously too.Anti-growth safetyismIs a build up of generic regulations together causing us to be three times poorer than we need to be? Probably not. But the insidious rise of risk aversion is still a big drag on economic growth.Interview: J. Storrs Hall on getting lost in stagnationStripe Press’s Tamara Winter sits down with J. Storrs Hall, whose book ‘Where is My Flying Car’ inspired this issue, to talk about stagnation and the possibility of progress.Planes, claims and automobilesAmericans famously love to sue one another. Are out of control product liability lawsuits the to blame for the crash of the personal aviation industry?London’s lost ringwaysA monstrous plan to build major motorways through some of London’s greatest neighborhoods fell apart. But the price was the birth of the NIMBY movement, and a permanent ceiling on Britain’s infrastructure ambitions.Why skyscrapers are so shortThe height of skyscrapers is limited by physical, economic and regulatory barriers, but we should want to overcome them and build taller. Here’s how we can do it.Parenting as a public goodSociety has free-ridden on women for millennia, benefiting from the children they’ve had while bearing few of the costs. But as women have gained other options, birth rates have fallen.Natalism for progressivesWithout new humans, growth will slow, and we will be less likely to reach the stars. But pro-natalism has been captured by a range of unsavory voices. There is an alternative.Buyers of first resortHow do technologies get off the ground? As well as seed funding, many of the best technologies require Buyers of First Resort, which buy products until they improve enough to get to efficient scale.Asteroid spottingCould an asteroid wipe out human civilisation like it may have eliminated the dinosaurs? Big asteroids come along extremely rarely and our monitoring systems are effective and well funded.How we fixed the ozone layerThe story behind humanity’s greatest environmental success is too rarely told and too often taken for granted. This is how humanity fixed the ozone layer and why it matters.Burying the leadResearchers have known for decades that lead poisoning damages brains and worsens crime, but millions of Americans still drink contaminated water every day. Here’s how we can fix that.How I learned to stop worrying and love the debtProtecting people’s health during the pandemic will increase debt, but the economic consensus is that we shouldn’t be concerned. Build state capacity by building charter citiesMany low-income countries are unable to provide effective governance for their citizens, trapped in a cycle of slow growth and persistent corruption. Charter cities may provide an answer.How to build a stateThroughout history, states struggled to maintain power, having to rely on private agents and enforcers to fund themselves and govern their citizens. Epidemic disease and the stateWestern democracies appear to have floundered in their responses to Covid-19. Is there a relationship between health and freedom, and can it be unraveled?