They are building super high-rises. Malaysia, for instance, is committed to building the world's most disagreeable city. They're building megalomaniac skyscrapers, the biggest mosque, and the biggest traffic jams. It isn't just the old cities that have become nightmares. The new ones are just as bad.
Government is a growth industry.
With all the talk about cutting government, the governmental share of the total gross national product has actually grown steadily in the last 20 years. It's now about a third or more all over the world. All of business, including farming, is shrinking at the rate of perhaps 1 percent a year, compounded. Look, France under Louis XIV or XV had probably 4,000 central government employees in total. When people talk of Versailles, they think it was an enormous, luxurious castle.