Equipment & Modernization
Capital ages; replacement is a policy choice
Every province's machinery and infrastructure quietly ages every year. Whether you keep up with it — or fall behind — is a policy choice with consequences that don't show up for a decade.
How it works
Aging capital is a real cost
Every province tracks how outdated its equipment and infrastructure are, from fresh to obsolete. At its worst, that drags growth down substantially. At the 1949 start, the United States begins in excellent shape, the Soviet Union already noticeably behind, and most other countries somewhere in between. Left unaddressed, it only gets worse over time.
How it works
Replacement is a lever you control
Policies that support capital investment, technology transfer, and industrial renewal push back against that aging — enough of them and you can actually reverse it over time instead of just slowing it down. Push harder than that and you modernize faster, at some cost to growth today; ease off and you can squeeze out short-term growth while quietly building a problem for later.
Design choices
A twenty-year story, not a today story
At the 1949 start, American policy is set to roughly hold its equipment steady, while Soviet policy runs well behind the pace its equipment is aging — meaning the USSR opens ahead on raw growth but is quietly digging a hole. Left on their default courses, the gap catches up with the Soviet economy after about twenty years, and the US pulls ahead unless Soviet policy changes. It's a deliberately slow, compounding choice — what you decide in the 1950s is still deciding the outcome in the 1970s.