[HN Gopher] So You Want to Do an Infrastructure Package [pdf] ___________________________________________________________________ So You Want to Do an Infrastructure Package [pdf] Author : ruddct Score : 110 points Date : 2021-03-16 20:49 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.niskanencenter.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.niskanencenter.org) | chiefofgxbxl wrote: | This paper addresses bureaucracy and its effects on expense, but | it sort of makes the assumption that lowering the price is the | goal. It seems to me that high cost is convenient to artificially | "create jobs" and bureaucracy, hence it's a feature, not a bug. | | An example from my local city: our small city (33k pop) won a | $10mil grant for downtown revitalization. The money is supposed | to help stimulate small business growth in the downtown. The | administration spends $1.1 mil tearing down a parking garage, | another $600k building a parking lot on _the same piece of land_ | of the garage, and they 've got their fingers crossed they can | get a developer to build an apartment complex there, which means | they'll have to tear up the parking lot. The cherry on top is | knowing we also commissioned a report to study downtown parking | trends, and know that even on the busiest day up to 80% of | parking spaces are unused. But the administration celebrated the | 10-12 construction jobs they created. | | Anyone who has taken a basic economics course would recognize | this as the Broken Window Fallacy, but our officials either don't | know or don't care (my guess is the latter). Spend lots of money | - create useless jobs - that's how a productive economy is | supposed to work, right? | tolbish wrote: | And what happened to the other $8.3 million? Isn't the root of | the problem then corruption? | newsclues wrote: | Sounds like the dealership controls the local politics. | notacoward wrote: | > high cost is convenient to artificially "create jobs" | | Is that where the money actually goes, though? Serious | question. | stretchwithme wrote: | Compared to what other countries? | | I think a lot of waste and corruption is due to winner-take-all | elections. A representative that represents one party has to | answer to that party. If he does not represent its interests, | they will elect someone else next time. | | In winner-take-all elections, you vote for your least worst | option and representing one perspective doesn't as matter as | much. It's easier to sell your vote to lobbyists. | | But people are convinced that our elections were implemented in | the best possible way, so there is a reluctance to even weigh the | options. | megiddo wrote: | Monopsony | dnprock wrote: | I follow cryptocurrency and they usually say: Bitcoin Fixes This. | It sounds pretty silly. Bitcoin hasn't really fixed anything. | It's just a generalization. But the motto draws attention to the | cause of many problems in America: the US Dollar monetary system. | The Dollar's reserve currency status causes other countries to | flood the US with goods in exchange for the currency. It causes | trade balances. | | The US over time loses its manufacturing and tooling | capabilities. Most infrastructure work is custom. You can't build | a bridge overseas, ship, and install it in the US. You can build | the parts overseas. But it'll take a lot more time and resources | to design and assemble them into a bridge in the US. So the final | cost ends up being more. | | I live in a neighborhood built in the 1980s. Up the hill, there | are neighborhoods built in the 1990s and 2000s. After 2000s, | houses look pretty much the same. The houses are more expensive. | But the amount of custom design decreases over time. It's got | more and more expensive to build custom things in the US. | | I don't think it's possible to fix these infrastructure costs | until we can fix the monetary policy. I think a new crypto system | can provide a solution to this problem. Until then, we're stuck | with cheap and unnecessary goods while our infrastructure is | slowly deteriorating. | munk-a wrote: | Quality Assurance is also a pretty big cost along with labor and | materials. The cost of living in America isn't cheap and the | materials you're working with (due to their size and weight) were | likely manufactured domestically or, if not, were handled | domestically during import. | | America is also super litigious but I don't believe that | contributes significantly to _public_ works due to the limits on | state and federal liability. | santiagobasulto wrote: | The paper is VERY interesting, but oh boy, how bad is that first | visualization... https://imgur.com/8P7Sqop | | It doesn't include units in the axes and the labels are just | centered there. And what do those dots even represent? | ur-whale wrote: | >Why is American infrastructure so expensive? | | Unions | fennecfoxen wrote: | Unions may be part of the costs, but please don't underestimate | infrastructure failures that arise from in the project planning | and execution phases. | | For instance, the construction union may mean that you pay a | man to just stand around and do nothing, but when the MTA | doesn't have any idea what people on site are supposed to do to | begin with, and when they scrupulously dispose of all the | people with project expertise the moment Phase I of the project | is over (with no concern at all for Phase II), it's hard to | assign that as the root cause for the billions in cost overruns | on the Second Avenue Subway. | afavour wrote: | Didn't feel like reading the article then, I take it? Just the | text extract in the link provided would be a start. | ThrowawayR2 wrote: | Maybe they did? Quoting from the PDF: | | > " _It is unclear to what extent union labor is a problem | outside New York, but within New York it has contributed to | rampant overstaffing and wages in the building trades that | are well above market rates._ " | | Don't shoot the messenger, that's a direct excerpt. | | [EDIT] For the curious, the full list of reasons is | overdesign, poor procurement practices, poor project | management, labor, NIMBYism, politicization of projects. | afavour wrote: | That hardly makes it an accurate summation of the article, | though! If the reading process is "open report, Ctrl-F, | union", then I'd say the result has already been decided. | diob wrote: | It's the only mention of union, and it has zero references | or numbers included. | beastman82 wrote: | It does have adjectives and nouns, and they are worth | considering. | topspin wrote: | Why bother? You tell me who funds Niskanen Center and I'll | tell you what the article's conclusions are. | runako wrote: | This is linked in their top-level menu: | | https://www.niskanencenter.org/financials/ | | Donation history (> $5k): | | https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp- | content/uploads/2021/01/Ni... | chickenpotpie wrote: | [citation needed] | musicale wrote: | Page 15 of the report: | | "It is unclear to what extent union labor is a problem | outside New York, but within New York it has contributed to | rampant overstaffing and wages in the building trades that | are well above market rates. Prevailing wage laws should be | used to ensure local workers earn a fair and competitive | wage, not to reward special interest groups and other | political insiders." | chickenpotpie wrote: | Top level comment was that unions were solely to blame for | the rising infrastructure costs in America. There's 14 | other pages of causes and those two sentences don't even | address outside of a single state. | nonameiguess wrote: | Until what? 20 years ago if we're generous, New York | construction was specifically controlled by the mafia, | which controlled the unions and drove up costs by | restricting in a rather extra-legal manner who was even | allowed to bid on a job. | | Painting capture by organized crime as some necessary | feature of all labor unions is probably not fair. They | captured a lot of the politicians, too, and often also | owned the construction companies. | missedthecue wrote: | I think it's interesting how over time, prices for goods have | gone through the floor for many things (food, electronics, | clothing, even automobiles, etc...) but prices for services have | gone parabolic. | | Construction, education, and healthcare costs have risen _well_ | above CPI for several decades, not just in the US, but in most | developed countries. | bsamuels wrote: | A lot of the problem in the US has to do with the petrodollar | system. OPEC has only been allowed to accept US dollars for | their oil since the 70s. | | That generates massive demand for dollars outside the US. | Foreign countries obtain the dollars they need to buy oil by | converting their currency to USD or by exporting goods/services | to the US. | | As a result, the value of the US dollar gets inflated and large | parts of the US economy get "offshored" thanks to the favorable | conversion ratio. | | On the bright side, this system means you can import foreign | goods very cheaply - but on the downside, it means exports are | often not viable. | | There are several industries in the US that don't reap large | benefits from cheap imports. Education, healthcare, | construction, and child care just to name a few. | | I hope this adds some color to the phenomenon you've observed | dantheman wrote: | I'd say it's just inflation in industries that haven't had | any made any progress in efficiency - it takes the same or | more effort to do the same/corresponding activity. | Productivity in manufacturing has increased a massive amount, | so the inflation has less of an impact. | Ericson2314 wrote: | No, it's definitely dutch diesease with our dollar exports | too. See https://phenomenalworld.org/reviews/trade-wars | willcipriano wrote: | This effect was noticed by Baumol and Bowen back in the 60s. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease | notacoward wrote: | It would be really hard to cite Baumol's cost disease too | often. It's a key part of many things we see going on in the | economy, and therefore in society more broadly, today. | kodablah wrote: | Makes sense that cost is proportional to skilled/local humans | required. | legitster wrote: | https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost... | | >I don't know why more people don't just come out and say | "LOOK, REALLY OUR MAIN PROBLEM IS THAT ALL THE MOST IMPORTANT | THINGS COST TEN TIMES AS MUCH AS THEY USED TO FOR NO REASON, | PLUS THEY SEEM TO BE GOING DOWN IN QUALITY, AND NOBODY KNOWS | WHY, AND WE'RE MOSTLY JUST DESPERATELY FLAILING AROUND LOOKING | FOR SOLUTIONS HERE." State that clearly, and a lot of political | debates take on a different light. | heavyset_go wrote: | > _but prices for services have gone parabolic._ | | A few years back, I had a chat with someone who helps | developmentally disabled people with job training. The company | she worked for billed the state $90/hour for her work, but paid | her $15/hour. I'd love to know where the rest of that money | went, because it certainly didn't go to those performing | services, nor to their professional development, nor to | disabled people. | akvadrako wrote: | A lot of it is surely the expertise to navigate the | bureaucracy. It's not like it's simple to setup a competing | service and manage to get a government contract. | Ericson2314 wrote: | Americans love to through around "beauracracy", but the | article states we have too _weak_ and balkanized a civil | service. This is a very different issue. | willcipriano wrote: | > It's not like it's simple to setup a competing service | and manage to get a government contract. | | In Nebraska you have to ask your competitors permission to | compete with them: | | "If you are allowed to drive a home health patient to get | groceries, can that passenger also get her prescription | filled? In Nebraska, that would be against the law unless | you had permission from the government to operate a non- | emergency medical transportation company. And, by the | state's certificate of need or "CON" law, the only way to | get permission is for the existing transportation companies | to allow you to operate." | | https://ij.org/press-release/new-lawsuit-challenges- | nebraska... | | Things like this happen all over the place nationally. To | me much of it looks like garden variety corruption as | opposed to some kind of reward for figuring out how to work | with the government. | | https://ij.org/pillar/economic-liberty/?post_type=case | quickthrowman wrote: | > The company she worked for billed the state $90/hour for | her work, but paid her $15/hour. I'd love to know where the | rest of that money went | | I can tell you without looking, overhead and profit | javajosh wrote: | I encourage you to look into it yourself, and if you find | something egregious (and it looks like your odds are good), | make a ruckus in the channels that matter to the decision | makers. (Finding the decision makers will take time, too!) | | Complacency in government contracts is standard, and you have | to make noise before anything changes, and its work that does | NOT scale. (Although I'd love to see standard data practices | help reduce the time commitment required to do this kind of | data activism.) | | One of the best things you could do with this information is | _show up and yell about it_ at any and all public hearings. | Anyway, I wish it was "sexier" to make trouble for local | government that deserves it, but really its always a long | paperwork slog. | javajosh wrote: | The economy is diverging on things vs. services because | services require finicky human cooperation, understanding and | knowledge, and "things" do not. Things can travel and stay on | shelves, services can't. | | And also, humans will tend to cheat when they can, and the | longer lived a game is, the more specialized it becomes, and | the harder it becomes to even recognize what is cheating and | what is just "regular practice". You get something like | "regulatory capture", but worse, because every element of the | entire society captures another, forming a Gordian knot. Yet | another path to Collapse, I'm afraid (probably a common one, | I'd guess). | Sevii wrote: | It's the post-scarcity trap. We spend more on services merely | because we can. | [deleted] | DonnyV wrote: | Multiple issues and its actually not labor. | https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c... | [deleted] | panic wrote: | The author of that blog is also the author of the linked | report! | king_magic wrote: | From the PDF: | | > Labor: in New York, the productivity of construction labor | seems unusually low and wages high. | beastman82 wrote: | In a word: unions | ralusek wrote: | > bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe tend to be | better-staffed and more empowered to make professional decisions | | The key word here is "more empowered." If the state could just | say "okay we're transplanting all of the people that live here | out of the way so that we can put up a hyperloop, and these are | the people who are going to do it, and we'll pay them this | much..." infrastructure would move a lot faster, for much less | money. | | Because the US government tends to have far less authority over | its citizens than Europe, and especially Asia, it has many free- | marketish half measures that create the worst of all possible | outcomes. Because the US has to pretend to be market-driven, by | allowing private companies and unions to bid on projects, as well | as offer people fair market values for their properties in the | way of infrastructure, you get all sorts of problems. The main | one is that the government is not a normal buyer, and completely | throws most markets out of whack. Just look at the "cost plus" | sort of funding schemes that have existed in aerospace contracts | for decades, a concept that would never in a million years have | existed in the free market. | | I'm not saying that the European or Asian models are better, | there are definite benefits to the liberties afforded to | Americans...but it is without question far worse if the objective | is timely and affordable infrastructure. | markus_zhang wrote: | US elites have managed to cut a deep gap between themselves and | the ordinary American people, so that they are protected well | enough to NOT worry about the reaction of middle-low class | people. | oblio wrote: | > I'm not saying that the European or Asian models are better, | there are definite benefits to the liberties afforded to | Americans | | I'm curious, what liberties do Americans have compared to | Europeans? The only thing that comes to mind is owning guns, | and I'm quite convinced that's a net negative, a tragedy of the | commons (everyone gets theirs and the community suffers for it, | as a whole). | ralusek wrote: | Freedom of speech is the most notable. In general, lower | taxes, fewer regulations regarding building, starting | businesses, more checks and balances to government. Again, | I'm not saying it's better or worse, the United States | government is just more restricted in its capacity to impede | individual liberties than European states, and far more so | than Asian states. The rise of automation and increasing | wealth inequality is putting the American model through the | ringer, so we have yet to see if there's a place for it in | the future. | | Unfortunately, it looks like what was perhaps in need of a | correction is being leveraged by the sort of authoritarian | overcorrection that has been the downfall of more modern | states than any other philosophy. | oblio wrote: | You do know that there is freedom of speech in Europe, | right? | | European tax rates are comparable with American ones, out | of the rest only the bureaucracy aspect seems valid. | zhdc1 wrote: | Europe is more heterogeneous than the states, so it's not a | fair comparison. | | However, if it's worth anything, there are no capital | requirements for starting a company with liability | protection, which isn't the case in several European | countries. | | Americans also aren't required to register or deregister | themselves with the local government whenever they move. | | I can think of other examples (the lack of television taxes, | religious taxes, &c). Again though, these examples depend a | lot on each country, so I'm sure you can find exceptions for | each of these depending on the European country you look at. | watwut wrote: | It is easier to become prisoner in America. | zhdc1 wrote: | > bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe tend to be | better-staffed and more empowered to make professional | decisions | | Not from what I've seen. The highway I drive every day is in | the middle of an extensive refurbishment. The local government | (I currently live in Europe) was given the option of shutting | it down for a month, which was completely untenable, but in | line with what I think the author was trying to get at. They | were also given the option of keeping it running at full | capacity and doing the construction work over a several year | period. | | They chose the latter, for obvious reasons, at a significantly | higher cost, since the highway has to be rebuilt and demolished | several times over to keep all lanes of traffic moving at all | times. | | The difference between here and the states is not the level of | empowerment or the level of staff competence. They simply have | a lot more money to work with, which lets them build to a | higher standard of quality, do preventative maintenance on | time, and refurbish or outright rebuild when it becomes | necessary to do so. | Aunche wrote: | I think the problem is too much pathos is used in political | debate. It's easy for the opposition of emanate domain point to | an old lady being forced out of their home as an example of | government overreach. Meanwhile, for every one of those out | there, there are a dozen more people stuck in poverty because | they have no means of commuting to a better paying job. This | doesn't make for as compelling of a story though. | ghaff wrote: | >If the state could just say "okay we're transplanting all of | the people that live here out of the way so that we can put up | a hyperloop, and these are the people who are going to do it, | and we'll pay them this much..." | | That is particular is definitely a tradeoff. The US did do it | with things like the Interstate Highway System but I'm actually | OK with Eminent Domain being difficult to exercise today. | Anechoic wrote: | _The US did do it with things like the Interstate Highway | System_ | | Which in part resulted in the passage of NEPA and our current | morass. | ghaff wrote: | Of course, even the Interstate Highway System followed | existing railroad right of ways a lot of the time. Although | exit ramps and feeder roads still required a lot of eminent | domain exercise. (The house I grew up in lost a bunch of | property to eminent domain for this reason.) | takk309 wrote: | As someone that works for a civil engineering consultant in the | transportation field I can attest to the bureaucracy from the | State leading to higher costs. We routinely increase our bids | because we know that the amount of time spent dealing with them | will be large and delt with by a high paided, often highest paid, | person on the project. There are quite a few things that we do to | appease them people at state DOTs that we don't have to worry | about when working with a City or private entity. | | It come down to two things, in my opinion. First is the nightmare | that is Federal funding. The State administers the funding and | has to take funding for multiple Federal programs a put it toward | a given project. Ultimately they pass the paperwork off to the | consultant instead of doing it themselves. | | Second is the number of people in positions of power that are | only in that position due to time spent with the State. These | individuals are ineffective at their job (see point 1), and feel | they have to justify their position by critiquing stupid things. | One example is when we tried to use a different san serif font | and column justification on a report. We got a stearns talking to | about how ariel is the preferred font and left justified is the | preference of the individual. This of course took a half hour | meeting that likely cost north of $500 when you account for the | wages of the engineers involved. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | I am genuinely curious. How did the meeting end? Did the font | get changed? Did anyone say 'really?'? Obviously, the story is | ridiculous, but I can't help but wonder how it worked out. | m0llusk wrote: | Much interesting analysis, but some strange mistakes as well. | When NYC's Second Avenue was first proposed it was concluded that | such a project was possible but would be far too complex and | expensive to be reasonable. Over the next hundred years the | Second Avenue Subway in NYC would be repeatedly proposed, | analyzed, and then rejected as too complex and expensive to make | sense. Finally the work went ahead and as usual this analysis | claims that this was just another infrastructure project and that | despite one hundred years of analysis revealing the extreme | complexity and cost this paper claims that the work could have | been done cheaply with cut and cover construction despite a | hundred years of analysis rejecting the possibility of cheap and | easy construction of the Second Avenue subway. Rejecting so much | history seems like an awkward way of going about this analysis. | joe_the_user wrote: | This situation shows many aspects of American governance reaching | a pathological level. | | You have the patchwork of local, county, state and Federal | government. You have the adversarial legal and regulatory | framework. And you have a powerful "anti-government" ideology | that fails to even understand that most projects happen through | the cooperation of industry and the state. And on the other hand | you have a "left" that wants to cheer sticking-it-to whatever | given corporation rather than pushing sane regulation. And you | have dysfunctional ideologies around both taxation and government | spending. And NIMBYism but with the opposite being developers | wanting no fetters at all, etc, etc. | yks wrote: | I see American governance being stuck in different situations | without a possible way out. For example, Prop 13 in California, | it is clearly not a good idea long term, it will keep | suffocating the state and yet I don't think it is possible to | repel it, game theory is just that strong. | distribot wrote: | Many of the places in the world with better infrastructure than | the US have more strict industrial regulation and, in some | cases, a government that is much further to the left. | DamnYuppie wrote: | I feel all of those are underlined or caused by corruption. The | left sees corruption of corporations, the right sees corruption | of politicians. All of which leads to exactly the fracturing | and ideological positioning that you describe. No nation can | survive systemic corruption for very long, it is a cancer that | eats away at everything. | watwut wrote: | I mean, right pick Trump for president I doubt they worry | about corruption. | | Imo, things would be more solvable if people reacted to what | parties do rather then bs they say. | dgellow wrote: | > No nation can survive systemic corruption for very long, it | is a cancer that eats away at everything. | | While I appreciate the sentiment, I'm not sure that's true: | | - China is managed by corrupt elite since the last century | | - Russia is completely corrupt (as was the USSR) | | - India seems to have systemic corruption issues | | - France politicians are well known for their corruption | scandals | | ... | himinlomax wrote: | > France politicians are well known for their corruption | scandals | | No, the typical scandal is about them lining their pockets, | which is related but not quite the same crime. | nine_k wrote: | Russia is not corrupt in the same sense the US is. | | In Russia, the bureaucrats can bend and break local laws, | siphon out some funds, etc. But they are pretty strictly | controlled by the "power vertical", up to the quasi-tzar | who is Putin. This structure does not tolerate breaking | _its_ internal rules, not keeping promises, etc, and is | quick to unseat a bureaucrat which failed to conform, no | matter how high in the hierarchy. | | This is why a number of things in Russia can be done | quickly and relatively efficiently, when the higher-ups | demand it. It, of course, is not very democratic and does | not always align with the desires of the population, but in | many cases it does. | | I suspect China has a similar structure: a bureaucrat may | engage in corruption as long as he fulfills the orders of | CCP; if corruption interferes with it, it is eliminated. | | This is the well-known efficiency of authoritarianism, e.g. | of monarchy: if the monarch desires something good, that | good thing can be completed very quickly and allocation of | resources won't be a problem. (The trouble is, of course, | that when a monarch desires something bad, the bad thing | gets implemented as efficiently, for there's no | counterbalance.) | dantheman wrote: | Except that corrupt corporations go out of business... | munk-a wrote: | It's true - Standard Oil was just minutes away from closing | their doors before the breakup happened. | | It depends what kind of corruption we're talking about, | nepotism and waste tend to get cleaned out pretty decently | in private enterprise, but exploitation along with anti- | competitive and unsafe business practices thrive. | arkh wrote: | Because no one has to gain from low prices. Not the people | getting the contracts, not the politicians and their committee | getting back donations, not the neighborhood associations suing | to get compensation. | | That's why they want the money coming from the federal level even | if it's just for some state infrastructure: the more "fly-over" | state people pay for some SV vanity train line, the better. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | The better for who? Certainly not the people from the fly-over | states. | colinmhayes wrote: | Fly over states are all net takers. California is a net giver. | chickenpotpie wrote: | Even more, they're net takers partly because they're have | more expensive infrastructure. Lots of long roads and bridges | that are infrequently used | legitster wrote: | From the paper: | | >Overdesign: American infrastructure is often overbuilt, not out | of higher quality but out of agency turf battles, obsolete | standards like NFPA 130 that have better foreign replacements, or | scope creep. | | >Poor procurement practices: there is improper supervision of | private contractors, and things are getting worse as public | agencies offload more risk to the private sector, which responds | by bidding higher to hedge against the risk; there are also some | one-bid contracts, for example the 7 extension in New York, | leading to even higher costs. | | > Poor project management: design review teams are usually | understaffed and cannot respond to contractors fast, so there is | little institutional capacity to build big projects. Wages for | office workers are below market rate and hiring is difficult. | | >Labor: in New York, the productivity of construction labor seems | unusually low and wages high. | | >NIMBYism: the United States makes it easy to sue, for example | NEPA is enforced by lawsuit, whereas its Italian equivalent is | enforced by the administrative state. Lawsuits in the US and | other lawsuit-happy countries like Germany rarely win, but do | delay projects, so there is defensive design, including | unnecessary scope in order to buy off political support. Leah | Brooks and Zachary Liscow have a paper on the growth in | Interstate construction costs over the decades, blaming citizen | voice lawsuits for the increase. | | >Politicization of projects: the civil service is weak compared | with both elected politicians and their unelected political | appointees, and there is not much continuity in design. | | One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies (that | aren't even associated with reduced environmental impact!) I | remember Seattle's light rail project included 8 years of | environmental impact review of a light rail extensions along | routes that were planned along existing rail corridors! | | Also, relating to overdesign, I think younger generations suffer | from a cult of perfectionism. But perfect is the enemy of good. A | streetcar might seem so much cooler, but a dedicated rapid bus | can do more with less money! | alpha_squared wrote: | > One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies | (that aren't even associated with reduced environmental | impact!) | | The Atlantic has an article about exactly this happening in | California[0] with increasing frequency, mostly fueled by | NIMBYism. | | [0] | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signature-... | BitwiseFool wrote: | Maybe this is an additional component to NIMBYism, but I've | often noticed how public works projects get derailed from a | myriad of busybodies coming out of the woodwork to halt the | project based on some hitherto unknown concern. I can't help | but think our public works projects are too public and it's too | easy for some random Joe/Jane to have an outsized impact on the | project planning. | missedthecue wrote: | American Electric Power Corp found that they could produce | renewable hydro power in rural West Virginia for a few | pennies per kWh and sell it in Washington D.C. for about | twice that. To do this would require 85 miles of high voltage | transmission line to transport the electricity from WV to | NOVA. Guess how long it took them to build this? | | 17 Years. Almost all of which was permitting and licenses. | Construction took 11 months. | | Meanwhile, when China needed to buy greater volumes of | natural gas, they set up a purchase agreement to buy it from | Turkmenistan and completed a _2900km_ pipeline project start | to finish in just 22 months. | | Obviously, we don't want to ignore civil rights, but it | really is absurd that to build anything in this country | requires you to retain half the state bar association for the | inevitable endless NIMBY lawsuits. | [deleted] | bombcar wrote: | The railfication and arguably much of the settlement of the | West in the USA happened because the government said | "here's a swath of land 20/50 miles wide, go hog wild". | That type of activity isn't really possible anymore, unless | the government itself steps in. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | It is hard to argue with that. Anecdote time. My neighbors | were petitioning against a library being built next to them, | because: | | 1. It would add noise to otherwise comatose street 2. It | would serve as a gathering ground for kids | | Both are true complaints ( and to an extent I would even say | valid ). | | What happened was what seems to happen in similar cases. They | were assured, the library would only remain so big, but those | promises were quickly abandoned in ways not dissimilar to the | way US handled Indian treaties. | datavirtue wrote: | None of these are valid complaints akin to their rights. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | I disagree. You buy a house in a given location based on | its current or future properties ( say, relative silence | of the surroundings ). If that property is altered in a | way that does not benefit you, it could affect their | property rights. | | For the record, I think library is a good thing, net- | wise. I understand their line of reasoning though. | danbolt wrote: | I've never been so yearning for Japanese-style federal | zoning laws in North America until the past year. | katbyte wrote: | By this reasoning nothing should ever change ever lest | someone's property rights be infringed? | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Well, that is basically why, as a society, we have | devised ways to deal with disagreements over the nature | of what should be. In US that does mean civil suits if | all else fails. | | Not to search very far, in Colorado neighbors sued for | lowered property values due to marijuana smell from | dispensary. | | For better or worse, US property values do make a | powerful argument for people to take their rights rather | seriously. | burkaman wrote: | > it could affect their property rights. | | I don't think "rights" extend that far. That's like | saying if you buy stock in a company and then a | competitor does something to drive the price down, that's | violating your property rights. | | It's a reasonable thing to discuss and bring up at a | meeting, but it's not an issue of property rights. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Yes, and note how many laws are on the books ( and how | many scams exist ) that deal with falsely inflating and | deflating the value. It is absolutely a property rights | issue. Just because it seems minute to you does not make | it less of a right. | burkaman wrote: | I feel very strongly that value and rights are not the | same thing. Nobody has a right to future value. You have | a right to own stuff, and a right to speak freely about | how you think the world should be, but you don't have a | right to your investment paying off. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | I think agree with statement as written. That said, what | happens when bad actors conspire to artificially | lower/increase the value? Or are you arguing laissez- | faire? | himinlomax wrote: | Having a pig farm setup shop next to your property | reduces the market value significantly. Having a library | does not, quite the opposite. | | Property should be protected by law so that people are | not deprived of it, but it does not follow that owning | property gives you the right to be capricious. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | It is a good argument, but it does not apply. Their | complaint is about the increased noise-level, which, as | far as humans go, we can agree it can become bothersome. | We typically disagree over how much and when is too much, | but noise absolutely affects property values and | potential resale. Take me for example, I did not purchase | a place by highway. Extreme example, but same principle | applies. | himinlomax wrote: | Aren't library the place where you're precisely not | supposed to make any noise? | iancmceachern wrote: | But isn't #2 a good thing? Like what's wrong with kids | gathering at the library, isn't that the whole point of a | library? | scottious wrote: | That's exactly why NIMBYism is so destructive -- overall | it probably would be a net positive for the community. | However one very loud resident (I'm exaggerating a bit) | says "nah, I don't want the noise" and then the whole | thing gets stalled. | | But that library has to go somewhere. It has to be in | somebody's backyard. Just not MY backyard. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Is the NIMBYism that is so destructive or the fact that | the terms of the agreement between were not upheld. As | much as I don't see an issue with a library, I assure you | after I learned of that story, I watch moves by my local | city hall a lot more carefully since I know I cannot take | them at their word. | | Trust is everything. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Yes and no. They don't like kids gather, because kids | gathering in their mind equals trouble ( and, well, some | summers I did see a swarm of kids jumping over fences and | stuff; we actually had to call the cops -- but you know, | kids will be kids ). | | But I take your point, kids attracted to a library tend | to be less likely to cause trouble. Frankly, any non-idle | hands activity is better than nothing. | analog31 wrote: | It could certainly be a good thing, but what strikes me | from the description is promising one thing and building | another. | | And I would add my own anecdote. The state decided to | build a new office building by "selling" the land to a | developer, who built the new building, that the state now | leases. Also, the state passed a special law exempting | this site from city zoning restrictions. The developer | took out the parking lot and put up a multi level garage, | for which they charge the office workers an annual fee. | So the workers fanned out and park their cars along the | streets in the surrounding neighborhoods, leading to | congested streets and more traffic. The residents | petitioned for "no parking" and "2 hour parking" signs | along the streets in front of their houses. So now | there's a 2-hour parking sign in front of my house, which | I didn't ask for. | | My point is that an innocent measure to enrich a | developer had a spillover effect into the entire | neighborhood. And there's still a bunch of undeveloped | land on the lot, which the developer will be free to do | with whatever they want. This kind of stuff fuels | NIMBYism and the need for precise specifications hashed | out in painful detail. | fennecfoxen wrote: | This sort of opposition is usually effected through the | environmental review phase, as noted. It's a cleverly named | little barrier that lets a lot of meddling happen -- because | after all, only evil people who hate the environment would | oppose environmental review. In places like San Francisco, in | particular, there are many "stakeholders" who use the threat | of litigation in this phase to extract concessions, whether | that's NIMBYism, or preferring union labor, or some | "environmental justice" concerns that can only be remedied by | paying someone's favorite nonprofit -- it's a shakedown. | jeffbee wrote: | It is legalized extortion. Every utility-scale solar | project in California has at some point been sued under | CEQA by labor unions looking for more money. | | Same for urban housing projects and "community benefit | organizations" aka neighborhood shakedown outfits. | quickthrowman wrote: | > Every utility-scale solar project in California has at | some point been sued under CEQA by labor unions looking | for more money. | | Which union? IBEW (electrical, wireman not linesman) has | solar project labor almost completely locked down, | electricians assemble the racking and panels, run all the | conduit, pull all the wire, and terminate everything. | Site work/concrete/buildings are the only work that falls | outside the IBEW scope. | | Edit: My employer does 8 figures worth of solar panel | projects with union labor a year | | Second edit: So CURE is a coalition of labor unions that | sue to hold up solar projects while they try and force | the developer to hire union labor. That's pretty shady, | there's plenty of work to go around for everyone, no need | to do shakedowns to get contracts IMO. There's plenty of | facilities that only hire union MEP contractors because | the job will get done correctly, nearly all Class A | office space, for example. | lettergram wrote: | To me this all reads as corruption. You know why SpaceX can | build a new rocket, faster, better, cheaper? Because there's | little corruption - aka bureaucrats, who's sole job is to | justify themselves. | himinlomax wrote: | The point of this paper is precisely that bureaucrats, at | least the right type of bureaucrats, are necessary for public | works to proceed smoothly. Without (qualified, motivated) | public servants, public works are driven by politics and | lawyers instead of domain experts. | | I've seen the same kind of things happen in the private | sector. A company with no in-house IT expertise regularly | gets fucked over by their contractors. This is less common | now but this was rather the norm 20 years ago, even for large | enterprises. | temp8964 wrote: | Not really. China's big projects all have corruptions, but | corruption can help sort things out. Read my comment above. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26483703 | munk-a wrote: | SpaceX wouldn't exist without NASA sinking a lot of money | into very risky R&D and training up a whole fleet of | engineers capable of doing the work that SpaceX does. The | public sector can be insanely bloated and slow - that's quite | true - but it's necessary and contributes a lot to society | that the private sector would never deliver. | | We need balance in all things. | megaman821 wrote: | The Government should do things it is uniquely suited to | do. Like risky, multi-decade R&D that launched the first | satellites and delivered men to the moon. Once these feats | become more common-place, let private industry take over | and put the cost-savings into new R&D. | [deleted] | munk-a wrote: | >Politicization of projects: the civil service is weak compared | with both elected politicians and their unelected political | appointees, and there is not much continuity in design. | | This one may be especially relevant as the green line extension | mentioned in the paper as possibly concluding in 2017 would've | been under a new administration that especially worked to undo | a lot of Obama era policies. | Anechoic wrote: | _One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies_ | | It's mentioned in the NEPA discussion on page 9, and in the | litigation discussion. | WalterGR wrote: | For those who haven't read the article, before talking about | the above reasons - which are indeed important - it leads with: | | "The difference in costs often boils down to domestic state | capacity: bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe | tend to be better-staffed and more empowered to make | professional decisions. The details are naturally more | complicated, but the pattern is nonetheless clear: the | countries with the lowest infrastructure costs are also the | countries where the state acts swiftly, with mechanisms that | limit the lag between financing and construction." | nine_k wrote: | I wonder why various administrative approvals don't have a | time-out built-in. I would suggest that an approval process may | take, say 6 months, and unless during this time good grounds | for disapproval are found, the approval is considered granted. | | This will not work, of course. Bogus disapprovals will be | issued at the last minute, then likely taken to court, which | again can take arbitrarily long. | wahern wrote: | > One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies | (that aren't even associated with reduced environmental | impact!) | | That wasn't missed. That's what NEPA is implicitly referring | to. Environmental protection legislation is usually structured | to first require the developer to create an environmental | impact report (EIR). Thereafter almost everything revolves | around the EIR, including the regulatory agency review as well | as the lawsuits. Environmental lawsuits invariably challenge | the accuracy of the EIR, or the application of regulatory | agency rules to an EIR. | | An EIR is to environmental regulation what construction | blueprints are to the building code. You need the paperwork, | otherwise you just have a bunch of people shouting and pointing | fingers and making wild claims. | | The issue with EIRs is who gets to challenge the accuracy of an | EIR. Imagine if any old interest group could challenge | construction blueprints for accuracy in court. It'd be a | nightmare. Well, in some jurisdictions, like California, pretty | much anybody can challenge an EIR in court. By contrast, under | the Federal NEPA and most state regulations, the parties with a | right to challenge an EIR are few--e.g. usually just the | government agency in charge of approving it and maybe any | adjacent landowners potentially impacted. | | I know somebody who is a low-income housing developer in | California. According to her, the cost of compiling and getting | approval of an EIR under NEPA is de minimis, with very low-risk | if the reviewing contractor doesn't uncover any serious | problems. By contrast, because almost anybody can challenge the | EIR submitted under the California Environmental Quality Act | (CEQA), and do so without any risk of punishment for frivolous | or vexatious challenges, one of her biggest risks and costs is | dealing with CEQA. (Because nobody wants low-income housing | near them, any remotely nearby upper-income neighborhood will | instinctively challenge her EIR, causing mult-year, even multi- | decade delays. And this is even when zoning boards and every | other government agency are 100% behind a project.) | extrapickles wrote: | Another facet is that the private companies are very good at | finding ways that off the self designs are not suitable so they | must make bespoke equipment when its not needed. For the | streetcar they recently installed in Seattle, off the shelf | rolling stock was not suitable because someone _really_ wanted | it to be battery powered for part of the trip and they had to | extensively modify an existing design, leading to all sorts of | problems. | | What makes this even worse is that Seattle has extensive | trolley bus (electric bus powered by overhead lines) | infrastructure that works just fine, so they could have taken a | trolley bus, put train wheels on it, and we would have had a | faster and cheaper streetcar. Trolley busses are much safer for | cyclists or anyone else sharing the road with the streetcar as | the tracks pose a hazard to pretty much all other uses of the | road. | notJim wrote: | IMO streetcars in general are a pretty bad investment, as | they are generally just a way of making a bus, but more | expensive and stuck on rails. (Streetcars are not usually | grade-separated.) | | I learned recently that part of why streetcars have been in | vogue is that the Obama administration made a big push for | them in order to have some visible progress on their transit | plans. | throw0101a wrote: | > _IMO streetcars in general are a pretty bad investment, | as they are generally just a way of making a bus, but more | expensive and stuck on rails._ | | The value of a streetcar or a bus depends on the volume of | passengers that are served. The more people, the more a | streetcar (maybe) makes sense. | | At some point you have so many buses and so many drives | (salaries, benefits, 401k/pensions) that the main cost on | the line becomes people and not equipment. (More buses also | need more mechanics, etc.) | | There is a range of average daily ridership where buses, | bus rapid transit (single/double lanes), light rail, and | heavy rail each make sense. | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_dir | ect... | iggldiggl wrote: | > they could have taken a trolley bus, put train wheels on | it, and we would have had a faster and cheaper streetcar | | I don't think this'd work quite as easily as you'd imagine. | If you'd literally take a bus, take out its steering and | replace its wheels with train wheels, the resulting | contraption would have diabolical cornering abilities with | regards to the tight curves typically encountered on | streetcar networks. | | Two-axle streetcars typically don't have a wheelbase much | above 10 or 11 feet at most (and that's already pushing it - | there's a reason why everybody moved on to vehicles with | bogies or otherwise steerable axles), whereas modern buses | have a wheelbase closer to 20 ft or so. | datavirtue wrote: | Don't forget rampant corruption. In my sleepy little town of | Cincinnati the FBI has been jailing city council members for | colluding with contractors and taking bribes. It is so bad they | said it seemed to be ingrained into the culture. Pan over to | somewhere like New York that is many factors worse than | Cincinnati as has been documented in The Power Broker and has | likely gotten worse since. I now consider local development | corruption to be the norm over the exception. | | It is VERY difficult to get shovel ready for a two bedroom | house, let alone a new bridge. | kgin wrote: | I will say that choosing light rail is helpful in that it | forces a certain minimum amount of infrastructure to be built. | Dedicated BRT _can_ be a good experience, but rarely is built | that way. The same cost-cutting forces that drive the choice of | BRT over rail usually keep on pushing until all you 're left | with is a glorified bus stop. | king_magic wrote: | It blows my mind that an environmental impact study for a | single light rail system can take 8 years, when multiple | coronavirus vaccines were created, safely reviewed, then safely | administered to hundreds of millions of people in record time. | | Edit: yes, I get the different level of scale/need between | them. My point is: big things _can_ be done safely & | responsibly without criminally wasting massive amounts of time. | thereisnospork wrote: | That's because environmental impact studies aren't really | about studying environmental impact. | dgellow wrote: | What do you mean? That it is used as a political tool? | Arrath wrote: | In a lot of ways, yes. Kicking projects back for more | environmental review has recently become a method to | delay/soft cancel projects that are now out of vogue. | FERC recently kicked a proposed LNG terminal in Oregon | back for more environmental review[1], the Biden admin | revoking the permit for Keystone XL, and so on. (I would | note I am in support of both of those moves) | | Combined with a rising 'consulting class' if you will | where it is only to their benefit to drag out these | studies and billable hours. | | [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lng- | jordancove/u-s-fe... | api wrote: | It's used as a political tool to block construction for | NIMBY reasons, and as a way to line the pockets of those | involved in the study. | danaliv wrote: | Yes. As a survivor of one of these battles, when the | neighbors don't want you to do something, they will throw | every wrench they can find into the works. "Good faith" | is nonexistent. I'm very, very sympathetic to | environmental concerns, but the way I've seen this sort | of thing used in real life is absolute nonsense. | dgellow wrote: | Do you have some examples, just to get an idea of the | problem? | tomc1985 wrote: | My high school was a bunch of trailers on a large tract | of unused but school-owned land that would eventually | become a full-blown high-school. It sat next to a Tractor | museum and a small marsh-type thing the opposite side of | its access road. The footprint of the planned | construction was only maybe twice the size of the | trailers, and didn't stretch across the access road, and | the land it occupies now was mostly disused fields of | dirt and shrubs. | | We were promised that our senior year would be in the new | facility. However the school got hit with environmental | studies around a specific species of endangered frog that | was known to inhabit the area, and construction did not | complete until 5 years later | himinlomax wrote: | What's crazy, viewed from outside the US, is that this | kind of roadblocks seems to only apply to public works | but not to private developments, or less so at least. | | In Europe, public works have less barriers of that type, | as it's assumed they are for the general good, whereas | private projects are required to demonstrate it. | danaliv wrote: | I'm afraid I can't get any more specific than that. | There's still a lot of bad blood, and it might not be | over yet. | nym375 wrote: | https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/25/sunnyvale-drive- | throu... | danem wrote: | Plenty of examples in this recent article: | | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signatu | re-... | Lammy wrote: | It is unknowable. People who truly want the best for the | environment obviously exist, but the outcomes of our | environmental policies have secondary and tertiary | effects that would also benefit people who wanted to make | population growth and population change difficult for | other reasons. | | Apologies for the gross long URL, and as always | correlation is not causation, but correlations are still | worth thinking about: https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra | ph?content=redlining%2Cen... | rollinggoron wrote: | No, there is a lot unnecessary red tape involved with | them. They aren't used as a political pawn. | Anechoic wrote: | As someone who works on EIS/EIRs it blows my mind as well. | But I do think that it's important to balance the interests | of the community with the project, and I'm not sure that | limiting litigation (as the paper suggest) would help with | that. | [deleted] | twinge wrote: | An EIS can be useful cudgels to impede construction. In | Seattle, one portion of a very controversial multi-use trail | had an EIS that took "more than three years at a cost of $2 | million. That's less than 7 feet of trail studied per day at | a cost of $271 per foot. And that doesn't include any | construction." [1] And that's from 2015, and the trail still | isn't completed (lawsuits are still ongoing). | | 1: https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2015/06/19/18-missing- | link-v... | detaro wrote: | There is a _slight_ difference in effort expended for the | latter, and in effort expended and priority granted to make | it _fast_. (And less legal system involved, which to a degree | by principle is not fast) | Griffinsauce wrote: | Comparing constantly ongoing processes with an emergency | response doesn't really stick. | | It's an exception that got elevated to the highest priority. | There must have been some efficiency gains as well but the | prioritization part doesn't scale by definition. | | That all said, 8 years is ridiculous. I have to wonder what | work actually happened in those 8 years. | temp8964 wrote: | Maybe most of them stem from one common cause: large interest | groups. | | On the other hand, there are also deep corruptions behind large | projects in China, but they get to move forward fast. | | Things in the U.S. is strange, large interest groups | (regulatory agencies, all kinds of big contractors, political | parties) all want to take a piece from the big pie, but they | don't care to move things forward. Maybe because everybody | knows the things are overcomplicated anyway, and nobody is | going to take the project away from them. If the heads of the | large interest groups can take bribes (above millions) as those | in China, I guess the projects can move much faster. | | More, because bribe money is out of sight, the game becomes all | about power, i.e. politics. So instead of all sides comes | together to take money, they fight for power, political | influence. So comes backstabbing, sabotaging. | | In the old days, there were gangsters and big unions, whose | lives were depended on those big projects, so they actively | engaged in "persuading" politicians to push the projects and | they resourcefully removed obstacles. Nowadays, gangsters are | long gone, unions declined, politicians come and go, nobody is | actively pushing those projects anymore. | abarringer wrote: | There are lots of dumb reasons but there are also things like | we require Fire Extinguishers in our data centers to get a | certificate of occupancy. | PEJOE wrote: | Fire extinguishers could come in handy [0] | | [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2B20NU | austincheney wrote: | So common are absurd freeway interchanges in Texas that we have a | local term for them: _mixmaster_. If you search Google for that | term you get results for the only interchanges Wikipedia knows of | in Texas, both in Dallas. One of those is the only 5 level | interchange I can find on Google: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Five_Interchange | | Ironically, though, the largest freeway interchange in the DFW | area, actually 3 almost conjoined separate interchanges occupying | a tremendous land area, is only 3 levels near the DFW airport | north entrance. At the widest the freeway there is 7 lanes each | way, plus 2 lanes of toll each way in the center for a total of | 17 to 18 lanes of traffic. Yes, it still gets gridlock. You can | see it here: | | https://www.google.com/maps/@32.93809,-97.0628477,4001m/data... | sillyquiet wrote: | Tangential, and not a comment on the linked report, but it's | interesting to see discussion of a multi-faceted complex problem, | if you want to call it that. | | Everybody seems to pick out the pieces that confirms their | personal opinions about What's Wrong With America, where the | truth in almost all cases is 'sorta, but it's more complicated | and nuanced than that'. | [deleted] | whydoineedone wrote: | Simply put, there's no accountability. Nobody really wins if it | gets done under budget and ahead of schedule. Lots of people make | out like bandits if it takes forever and never gets done. | | Bureaucracy and ridiculous regulations are true but with | accountability these types of problems can be surmounted. | Government and government contracting attracts a lot of lazy | people who under produce because they're not compensated on | output but rather hours worked. Petty grievances between | departments and individuals can tank projects just because some | woman felt slighted by what some guy said to her in a meeting a | year ago and they both have to approve a project etc. | | Companies literally get paid millions to build websites that most | talented fresh college grads could handle in a few months. | However, thanks to the arcane compensation laws, these kids have | no experience so their labor category is low and they will not be | compensated relative to their older, useless colleagues. | | The entire system is set up so that the government officials find | a few competent individuals to do work and then try to keep them | and the smart individuals build these relationships, start their | own contracting shops and field out the work to smart fresh | college grads and pocketing more than half of the pay they pass | along. | fungiblecog wrote: | Because when your entire culture is based around the idea that | making as much money as possible is a virtue greater than all | others, there will be plenty of people breaking your systems in | order to make as much money as possible. | geodel wrote: | The reasons in this report are like root cause analysis of | failures in big companies. They are not usually false but still | kinda bullshitty and rarely enlightening on why things happen the | way they happen. | | Simply saying that 6 billion dollar project will cost 400 million | in Europe so a wastage of 5.6 billion is hilarious until they | give detail breakdown of costs. Maybe they can come out and say | all american companies, government authorities, public, | politician/ political system are dumb or just corrupt. For now I | will just say they are just repeating lazy, half-assed cliches | and presenting it like a report. | | From this report : | | "Building back flexibly requires empowering low- and mid-level | civil servants to work flexibly and at arms-length with private | contractors." | | What does this even mean? | | Should they work closely? from far to maintain impartiality? just | give them verbal directions with no written record to move fast? | Or it is just put all good sounding words with no cohesive | meaning at all. | himinlomax wrote: | The thesis I believe is that in the US, the public service does | not have the resources to do project management and outsources | that, typically to those who also do the work and have an | incentive to overcharge. | | In other countries, not only are there people employed by the | state who do said project management and have the | responsibility and expertise, but when outside PM work is | required, it has to be done by a different entity. | | Nothing to do with being dumb, everything to do with bad | incentives. | markus_zhang wrote: | Don't know anything about American infrastructure but knows a bit | about Canadian ones, or to be more precise, Quebec ones. | | In short: Corruption. | williamsmj wrote: | "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth: How excessive | staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic | rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York" | (2017) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york- | subway-... | magwa101 wrote: | Cost plus contracts, duh. | davidw wrote: | Anecdotally, I was writing some side-project code to help learn | about new housing to support where I live, and I found this | project. In the middle of a new piece of the university campus | they're building, they want to use a 35 foot flag pole, instead | of a 25 foot flag pole. Look at all the paperwork that generated: | | https://cityview.ci.bend.or.us/Portal/Planning/StatusReferen... | | Notices were put up, letters mailed, comments sought (I wrote in, | in favor!). | | All of that for a flagpole with a US flag right in the middle of | the property. | cs702 wrote: | > The difference in costs often boils down to domestic state | capacity: bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe tend | to be better-staffed and more empowered to make professional | decisions. The details are naturally more complicated, but the | pattern is nonetheless clear: the countries with the lowest | infrastructure costs are also the countries where the state acts | swiftly, with mechanisms that limit the lag between financing and | construction. | | In other words, states with bigger _and better-run_ governments | have lower infrastructure costs. | dang wrote: | We changed the URL from https://www.niskanencenter.org/report-so- | you-want-to-do-an-i... to the actual report. | | We also changed the submitted title ('Why is American | infrastructure so expensive?') to the actual title. Note the site | guideline: " _Please use the original title, unless it is | misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._" | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-16 23:00 UTC)