Getting the Job Done

How can America stay competitive in the global marketplace when the infrastructure in America is wearing out, and it’s time consuming and frustrating to get anything done?

John Hockenberry–a former ABC and NBC reporter and now the host for a New York public-radio morning talk show–had the answer. He said on his show that he was yearning for a Chinese dictatorship in America to get things done.

John Hockenberry

What Hockenberry said was true. The Chinese do get things done. He was wrong about one thing. China is not a dictatorship.

A few years into the 21st century, we were in China sleeping on the blanket-covered floor of my father-in-law’s flat in the old French sector of Shanghai. His three rooms were on the second floor of a three-story building that once belonged to a French family prior to World War II. Now seven families lived in that building. What had been a walk-in-closet had been converted into a kitchen/bathroom. The balcony had been closed in—that’s where we were sleeping.

High block walls surrounded the houses in the French sector. When we woke up and left the flat to visit the local farmer’s market, the walls were gone as if they’d never been. 

Later, we learned that the Shanghai city government decided to open the city and the best way to do that was to remove the walls. An army of workers came in the night and removed the walls without waking us up.

That’s what John Hockenberry was talking about. The ability of China’s government to move fast.

Follow this link to learn more about high-speed rail in China.

One Response to Getting the Job Done

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lloyd Lofthouse. Lloyd Lofthouse said: Getting the Job Done: http://wp.me/pN4pY-vS […]

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