this possibly depends on how you define "infrastructure"
is education part of the infrastructure?
is healthcare part of the infrastructure?
Opinions will probably differ wildly on this, but it seems to me that education is the most basic infrastructure there is. I'm not sure where I'd draw the line on some others.
Let's put it this way. Some things are done better than others by government. I would rather have a dam, a canal, a highway, or even a railroad built by a government than a school or a hospital. There is perhaps arguably equal potential for incompetence, and immunity against tort compensation for various possible catastrophes or mere personal losses when the government does any of these things.
It all has to do with trust. If the people are willing to trust the government but they fail to exercise actual oversight of government, what recourse do they have when the trust is betrayed.
Our trust has been massively betrayed by the legions of government employees at large as well as by our supposedly democratic "representatives", mostly because we do not actively manage our government. In fact, under public educational programs we have largely been misinformed, and conditioned to be compliant. It all began with the advent of John Dewey's British socialist elitist model for "education" reduced from the classical model of developing the individual to his/her capacity for self-directed creative activities to the present "squirrel in the cage" model where we are trained to do what the boss wants and do it faster and faster all the time. Used to be just "train to the task", fitting workers to serve industry or provide superior-compliant management without faltering. . . . but nowadays human beings are mere "resources" to be exploited by the masters.
When we have a government education program passing out citizenship grades and otherwise laying down the law for the masses, along with a whole raft of indoctrination, the proper relation of the people as the source of legitimate government is broken.
Same thing when we have government panels making decisions on the medical care to be allowed to citizens. It's all upside down and in fact the opposite thing from democratic government "of the people, by the people, for the people".
But we are a long way from the central ideas of the American revolution, and as long as people can be drubbed into compliance it's just not going to get any better yet.
At the very least, when the taxpayers pay for a Hoover Dam, they get to go on tours around the structure and can legitimately feel like they have a stake in it.
If education were designed with an intent to support and develop human liberty and human capacity for understanding and competently dealing with national policies, and so well done that a strong majority of us could respectfully discuss the various ideas that might apply to the situation, it would all be different.
If our medical cartel managers were not basically harnessing the government taxation powers to compel citizens to patronize their "services" on their terms, it would be different too.
At least in a free market, consumers can just not buy the product when it isn't what's needed.
On the other hand, if a private or corporate organization wants to use a river, or take private land or resources for a dam, canal, highway or other "public" infrastructure facility, and is going to profit from the operation, the public resource is going out of the public's hands in some extent.
But back to the Nate Silver article. . . . it's what we do with what we have that wins out in the end. . . . I think the loss of credibility that the professional governance crowd both republican and democrat have experienced should result in a massive "change" in government personnel. If we don't fire these incompetents, we have no hope. Even the tea party newbies have largely rolled over into compliance with the failed system which should just be replaced.
