Great public works throughout history have required autocratic power to build.

Evidence

It is no coincidence that, as Raymond Moley puts it, “from the pyramids of Egypt, the rebuilding of Rome after Nero’s fire, to the creation of the great medieval cathedrals…all great public works have been somehow associated with autocratic power.” It was no accident that most of the world’s great roads—ancient and modern alike—had been associated with totalitarian regimes, that it took a great Khan to build the great roads of Asia, a Darius to build the Royal Road across Asia Minor, a Hitler and a Mussolini to build the Autobahnen and autostrade of Europe, that during the four hundred years in which Rome was a republic it built relatively few major roads, its broad highways beginning to march across the known earth only after the decrees calling for their construction began to be sent forth from the Capitol by a Caesar rather than a Senate. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 3547

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier note on Moses as a ‘dictator’ and to the tension between public works and democracy in ch36-37; also parallels the classic governance-cost literature (Olson on stationary bandits). — connects to: People displaced from homes, not physical obstacles, made urban expressways hardest to build. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 3549; A philosophy of necessary destruction can conceal a love of destruction itself. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 3556; Power, not logic or brilliance, is what actually builds public works — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 376 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Enduring in power for decades distinguishes the greatest public builders #expands (0.82) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4414
• Industrial civilization can develop inside a feudal-bureaucratic shell #expands (0.80)
• Colonial compulsion was justified as necessary to fund public works. #exemplifies (0.78) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 822