if the City were transferred tomorrow to Abu Dhabi That, or something similar, will undoubtedly happen sooner or later. And as I said, the rest of the world gets by without being "the financial capital of the world", and when it happens, so will we.

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There might be three reasons to tunnel through the gnu's mountain. One would because it would cost less because there's something stopping you go by the flat route - that might be some private landowner, it might be some kind of political frontier, or local inhabitants who were strongly enough opposed to the route. Or while flat the terrain might be unsuitable in some other way - impassible marshes maybe.

A second reason would be that the tunnel was seen as some kind of prestige project by the people in charge.

A third would be that building the tunnel would be seen as some kind of make-work solution to unemployment, or something of that kind.

Any of those three situations could arise in either a socialist or a capitalist system.