Having infrastructure survive over very long stretches of time is a nontrivial task. This is either because such infrastructure needs to be built extremely well from the outset or because it requires ongoing maintenance. The former may require prohibitively large initial investments. The latter requires ongoing investment from public agencies over the span of decades or centuries despite the pendulum swings of those governments from contrasting political aims. Without either the very high initial or ongoing investment, infrastructure can fail. Physical infrastructure failure is not inevitable—consider railways in Japan, the Panama Canal, and the U.S. Interstate Highway System.

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关于软件基础设施：开发、证明、盈利？

让基础设施能够长期存活是一项艰巨的任务。这要么是因为此类基础设施需要从一开始就建设得非常好，要么是因为它需要持续维护。前者可能需要巨额初始投资。后者需要公共机构在数十年或数百年的时间里持续投资，尽管这些政府因不同的政治目标而摇摆不定。如果没有非常高的初始或持续投资，基础设施可能会失败。物理基础设施故障并非不可避免——考虑一下日本的铁路、巴拿马运河和美国的州际公路系统。