[HN Gopher] Why America can't build quickly anymore
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Why America can't build quickly anymore
Author : burlesona
Score : 427 points
Date : 2022-03-19 14:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fullstackeconomics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fullstackeconomics.com)
| nickdothutton wrote:
| There is an entire economy within the economy, based upon slowing
| things down. This has become so ingrained, and people are so
| accustomed to it, that most can't even see it.
| selimnairb wrote:
| The problem of public input vetoing low-carbon energy projects
| (including transmission) is really a symptom or side effect of
| the fact that we don't have coherent global to national to
| regional to local energy policy. There is no responsibility for
| regions or localities to reduce carbon emissions, so these
| communities are not forced to make tradeoffs when commenting on
| local impacts of projects.
|
| What we need instead is to have carbon emissions reduction goals
| at all levels. Then a suite of efficiency and
| generation/transmission projects can be identified in each region
| that can contribute to those goals. Then, when those projects are
| being designed and approved (via an integrated process), the
| approval process can involve explicit tradeoffs. If the
| community, for example, has an exceptional wind energy resource,
| but doesn't want to develop it for environmental or aesthetic
| reasons, then their regional climate action plan can be updated
| to use other mixes of efficiency and generation/transmission that
| would meet or exceed their goals. The community may then find
| that they would rather have the wind turbines than the
| alternatives.
|
| The "problem" with this approach is that it requires a level of
| urgency and coordination that we have only been able to muster in
| the past using wartime central planning. Not sure how to get
| around this, and this is a major problem given ideological biases
| against central planning in the US.
|
| The other problem is that in practice it will likely not be
| possible for both global and local climate goals to be satisfied
| while also minimizing local displeasure with the tradeoffs
| required. However, no system is perfect, and perhaps this system
| could at least provide a framework for identifying who is getting
| the short end of the stick and therefore to whom some sort of
| reparations can be made for "taking one for the team".
| a-dub wrote:
| the construction of the second avenue subway was slow because of
| hundreds of years of infrastructural technical debt in manhattan
| and reduced tolerance for utility disruptions in an affluent
| area.
|
| you can dig a hole (as elon musk has done) in nevada in the space
| of a few months.
| redisman wrote:
| The Alaskan Viaduct replacement in Seattle also wasn't absurdly
| slow or anything. It's easy to cherry pick a few bad apples
| lamontcg wrote:
| We knew we needed to replace it in 1989 after Loma Prieta. In
| 2001 the Nisqually quake damaged it and made its replacement
| mandatory. It wasn't decided to build the tunnel until 2009,
| it then took until 2019 before it opened.
| dark-star wrote:
| Not just America. I guess most (all?) countries have that
| problem.
|
| In Germany, Hitler built the whole Autobahn system in a couple of
| years. Now it takes 8 years to upgrade a 5km stretch of the
| Autobahn from 2 to 3 lanes.
|
| Yes, Nazi Germany was using lots of slave labor, but these days
| we have so many machines that it would require much less
| workforce to achieve the same result. Yet, you often see
| construction machinery standing idle next to the Autobahn for
| weeks, if not months, with no work being done
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| One thing that's pretty easy to understand is the network effect
| of complexity.
|
| You don't have to check many things if you have few things in
| place. Each item creates an exponential increase in complexity
| for the next one. Another reason why things slow down is that as
| you add things to a system, they have a maintenance cost, the
| more you add the more you approach an equilibrium of costs ==
| capacity.
|
| This is, in part, explains why it becomes inevitably hard to add
| to a very large codebase -- you might have many many scrum teams
| simply maintaining what is, and each Nth new item has to do N-1
| compatibility checks.
| lordnacho wrote:
| An absolutely enormous number of people in our western societies
| are employed in making reports. They don't do technical things,
| like engineers. They don't decide things, like management or
| politicians. They make a living by "contributing" to reports that
| actually do need to be written, essentially by ballooning the
| size and time taken to make the report. There are legitimate
| reasons why doers (engineers) and deciders (mgt, govt) need
| reports, but like advertising there's too much of it and we don't
| know what to cut once it's there.
|
| The reason there's these 575 page reports as mentioned in the
| article is that it's never enough just to say "the bird sanctuary
| will be harmed by this windfarm, let's think about that". You
| need a sweeping survey of how many birds there are, how many
| people visit the sanctuary, how much they spend at the shop, and
| so on. If you try to head this off by saying you want to just
| summarize it, you are the bad guy who wants to trample the rights
| of the kids who enjoy counting the birds.
|
| As mentioned, for large projects this naturally ends up in court
| as well, and that of course takes a long time.
|
| We also live in the age of PR, so it's not really in anyone's
| political interest to make a bunch of enemies. Even if those
| enemies have a relatively small claim to veto a project, it will
| inevitably loom large in the public debate about it. If TV news
| manages to find that a kid who likes the birds, they will put him
| on TV and you will have to find an appropriate face for the
| interview.
| zbrozek wrote:
| The packet for a recent city council meeting in my town of
| ~8000 people was >500 pages long. It's _ridiculous_.
| pishpash wrote:
| They write reports to facilitate communication between people
| who are disconnected by the large number of people in a large
| organization who write reports. Get rid of people who write
| reports (managers first) and magically you will not need
| reports. Of course if you hire badly you'll need this, which
| means the cost of a bad hire compounds.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| There are a bunch of different factors:
|
| - Wages are high, so labor for construction is very expensive
| (not unique to the US)
|
| - It's difficult to acquire property to build new stuff in
| existing cities compared to building in new places.
|
| - It is also incredibly slow/expensive to build subways if you
| try to prioritize minimizing inconvenience to nearby residents
| above all else (cut-and-cover is MUCH faster/cheaper than
| tunneling).
|
| - The US is also not very interested in trying to learn from what
| construction techniques, etc. have worked for public transit in
| other countries
|
| Aside from the first point, a lot of this comes down to the fact
| that even in places in the US that have decent public transit,
| transit is treated more as a toy that is nice to have than a
| serious priority by the government, and it is only built when it
| doesn't cause any inconvenience to residents/drivers/etc.
|
| The US has historically been willing to demolish low income areas
| and force people to move in order to build highways, however.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Is this last point still true? I would imagine most poor area
| land is still owned by rich people?
| prawn wrote:
| They might not care about it being compulsorily acquired at a
| decent price. They'd be less likely to have an emotional
| attachment to an investment property than to their current or
| ancestral home.
| api wrote:
| I'll add one more: there is a strong preference in a large
| percentage of the population for suburban and rural style homes
| and light business areas. We build a ton of that and often very
| quickly. We are very good at building that type of landscape.
|
| The HN crowd tends not to be the target market for this though
| so it gets criticized and downplayed here.
|
| There has been a shift toward urbanism in the last 25 years
| though, and prices exploding in the cities show that the market
| is lagging in satisfying that demand.
| _dain_ wrote:
| > there is a strong preference in a large percentage of the
| population for suburban and rural style homes and light
| business areas. We build a ton of that and often very
| quickly.
|
| Because that's the only thing you _can_ build. The zoning
| regulations don 't let anything else happen easily. You can't
| reason from this that this is what people actually prefer.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You can't reason that that's what most people prefer, but
| it likewise seems clear that if most people in some
| town/city _did_ prefer something else, the zoning laws
| would be changed.
| imtringued wrote:
| California changed zoning laws recently...
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| In a world where there is little to no friction and no
| incentives to prolong the changing of those laws, yes.
| Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. Even
| something as simple as wanting to change it but seeing
| the immense amount of effort to try and get it noticed is
| enough to dissuade most people from trying.
| _dain_ wrote:
| No, that isn't clear at all. Bad and unpopular laws can
| remain on the books for a long time if there is a
| politically powerful minority who benefits from them.
|
| Also it might just be that most people don't even know
| about the problem.
| api wrote:
| There's a huge generational divide here. When Gen-X and
| younger people get control of city governments you'll see
| this shift.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Among young white people, this perception has shifted
| dramatically over the last 15 years.
|
| I was born and raised in a city, never before have so many
| young white people wanted to move here.
| coliveira wrote:
| One needs to consider, however, why people prefer this kind
| of homes in the US, compared to most countries. It is
| probably because life is so hard and expensive on most
| American cities. And I say this as somebody from another
| country, where cities are livable and provide lots of
| advantages -- something that we associate in the US only to
| New York City and its high associated costs.
| api wrote:
| The poor shape of America's cities is both a cause and an
| effect. There are numerous other reasons. Here's the big
| ones in no particular order:
|
| (1) America's very old and ongoing racism problem, hence
| "white flight" and cycles of re-development due to
| segregation.
|
| (2) The "law of rent" and the connection between the growth
| of the middle class and the use of suburbanization to
| escape high urban property prices and eternal rent to a
| landlord class: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent
| -- This one is tough to solve and is still a problem.
| There's a new re-suburbanization trend driven in part by
| young people realizing it's hard to build wealth if you can
| only ever rent. This is also a major driver of remote work.
| COVID just accelerated the remote work trend.
|
| (3) A cultural legacy of preference for the outdoors and
| the frontier and a desire of a large number of people to
| have at least some land. This is a romantic idea in
| American culture that is not as strong in Europe or Asia.
|
| (4) Cities were horribly polluted during the early to mid
| industrial era. Even those who lived in cities often
| maintained country homes or vacationed in the country
| whenever possible if they could afford it, with a major
| driver being to get away from the noise and pollution.
|
| (5) Lastly, cars were invented in the USA and the
| automobile industry was and still is a major economic
| engine and employer in the country. America is where car
| culture really took hold if not originated. Car culture is
| still quite strong even though younger generations seem
| less enamored by it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Fear of racism is a bigger problem than racism itself.
| Most people don't care, but the fear of that minority
| that does causes all sorts of bureaucracy to fight it
| (which in turn needs to feed racism to justify its
| existence). Also fear of that minority is causing lots of
| people to not buy near the out races for fear of not
| being able to sell, thus driving prices down.
| api wrote:
| Racism is like crime. It takes 0.1% violent criminals in
| a neighborhood to make it a "bad neighborhood." It takes
| just a few determined racists to make the entire
| neighborhood racist.
|
| The people who are not racist generally don't know racism
| is even a problem if it's not affecting them. Fighting it
| would require bureaucratic trench warfare, and most
| people don't have time for that shit. There is probably
| an inverse correlation between people who have better
| things to do and racism anyway, since the racists tend to
| be the types who... lets just say have enough time on
| their hands to be actively racist because... well... lets
| just say there's probably a reason they don't have better
| things to do.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Just putting in a quiet vote for Chicago, that most
| underrated and magnificent of American cities. If you don't
| mind the risk of getting murdered once in a while, the city
| is affordable, beautiful, walkable, full of great food and
| good people, and has arguably one of the country's best
| public transit systems. It also has household garbage
| collection, unlike NYC's trash mountains. It reminds me a
| lot of the great metropolises outside the country.
|
| It really makes other US cities like Portland, Seattle, San
| Francisco, etc. seem like quaint little backwater
| neighborhoods. Most of those have become little more than
| traffic-ridden strip malls, preserving a tiny downtown
| district but everywhere else is mostly just a bunch of
| drive-up destinations with little pedestrian activity and
| not much liveliness. Chicago's neighborhoods are still
| super vibrant and full of festivals, and even in the deep
| snow of winter people will bustle on the sidewalks and
| converge on the fun pubs and music venues and such. I've
| never seen anything else like that in the US.
|
| But, yes, walk a few blocks in the wrong direction and
| you'll soon be dead. Despite that, millions make it their
| home. It's an amazing place to live.
| cageface wrote:
| The brutally cold winters are a dealbreaker for me, even
| if they do contribute to Chicago's affordability.
| EricDeb wrote:
| it's so cold though how do you survive the winters?
| [deleted]
| technobabbler wrote:
| Climate change... not so cold anymore. Last two years we
| barely even had a winter
| mrep wrote:
| Clothes.
| osigurdson wrote:
| What are the net advantages of being in a city? It used to
| be access to good employment was the main thing but with
| remote work this often isn't as much of a factor anymore.
| Access to better restaurants, music and sporting events are
| definitely advantages but limited access to nature, traffic
| congestion, etc. are disadvantages. I'd say it is more of a
| lifestyle tradeoff.
| occz wrote:
| >What are the net advantages of being in a city? It used
| to be access to good employment was the main thing but
| with remote work this often isn't as much of a factor
| anymore.
|
| This is only really true for the type of privileged
| person posting on HackerNews (me included), other groups
| don't have that privilege in the same way.
|
| >Access to better restaurants, music and sporting events
| are definitely advantages
|
| Add to this the potential to live without having to own a
| car. The transportation infrastructure of good cities
| beat having to drive all the time.
|
| One other popular thing I've heard is a much larger
| dating pool, which is probably true.
|
| >limited access to nature
|
| Good cities include good green spaces. I can access at
| least two major hiking trails that stretch for about a
| week with public transportation, and also a huge
| archipelago.
|
| >traffic congestion
|
| This is an issue unique to car-oriented development,
| though, because of how poorly this category of
| development scales. Cities with high-quality public
| transportation and bicycle infrastructure don't suffer
| from the same amount of traffic congestion, and the issue
| is less relevant as good alternatives for getting around
| exist.
| almost_usual wrote:
| COVID has definitely slowed down urbanization.
| [deleted]
| yahn00 wrote:
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah. The major slow projects I can think of in recent years;
| Second Ave. Subway, East Side Access, Crossrail, etc. all
| involve deep bore tunneling through some of the most densely
| occupied land on Earth. Utility relocation, minimizing
| disruption to residents and businesses, etc. are the "hard
| part" here. If you could just nuke Midtown, East Side Access
| would have been easy. If you could demolish half of the Upper
| East Side, build a subway in the crater, and then cover it with
| new buildings, it would have been ready sooner. But, that's
| impractical. People are emotionally attached to their homes and
| neighborhoods.
|
| That said, future projects can probably done more cheaply. IBX
| and QueensLink won't involve much underground work, and the
| right of way is already clear. The problem is that the benefit
| isn't clear enough to actually fund the projects and get them
| started. (That is an even more complicated problem. The MTA is
| a state body, subway lines entirely within the city are not
| something people on Long Island and Westchester want to pay
| for. Maybe there should be some sort of Independent Subway that
| the city itself pays for ;)
| bluGill wrote:
| The low cost leader in subway construction is Spain and they
| use deep bore tunneling, and they even use larger tunnels
| than most everyone else (one large tunnel is more expensive
| than two smaller ones)
| pbourke wrote:
| See also Seattle's SR99 tunnel and Boston's Big Dig (though
| the latter is 15 years old now).
|
| Tunneling through an existing city, often near water, is just
| hideously complex and expensive.
| Fomite wrote:
| I remember when I was in Boston a discussion of how to
| expand one of the T-lines under Tufts Medical Center
| _without_ causing vibrational problems for the equipment in
| the hospital right above.
|
| That's a non-trivial engineering challenge.
| xvector wrote:
| Have the hospital cease usage of the equipment and
| relocate appointments for that equipment.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I totally agree, though I think these primarily stem from one
| thing, which is that America hasn't been seriously tested for a
| very long time. When you're not challenged, you can easily
| settle into what is adequate, even if you support progress and
| innovation on paper. America is a great place to live despite
| its faults, but it's also stuck in the past. Take for instance
| our major cities; somehow much older cities around the world
| ironically have more modern elements than cities like Los
| Angeles and New York, which for all intents and purposes aren't
| significantly different from where they were in the 1970s
| (besides greater population and in the case of LA much less
| smog).
|
| If we want to build quickly and actually begin to address
| problems rather than just accept things as the way they are, we
| need to be knocked down a peg. I don't think that means getting
| nuked or whatever, but it would mean that our "too big to fail"
| status would need to actually be jeopardized in a meaningful
| way. Once the current generation of grey-hairs in government
| finally croak and pass on the torch, then there would be the
| chance to garbage-collect excessive regulations and better pick
| and choose what should be regulated heavily or not, rather than
| regulate with a broad brush. Laws and regulations should be
| designed with exceptions in mind, and not just for fat cats in
| the club.
| irrational wrote:
| > somehow much older cities around the world ironically have
| more modern elements than cities like Los Angeles and New
| York
|
| Somehow? Shouldn't this say "Much older cities around the
| world have more modern elements than cities like Los Angeles
| and New York because they were razed to the ground during the
| world wars and rebuilt in modern times."?
| dionidium wrote:
| That wouldn't explain why Phoenix and Seattle and Austin
| and Las Vegas (and other recent-growth cities) lack the
| amenities of similarly-sized European cities.
| bumby wrote:
| For discussion's sake, can you enumerate the amenities
| you're alluding to?
|
| If it's solely in regards to public transit, I think this
| is largely due to cultural differences. The US still has
| the remnants of an individualistic frontier mentality. I
| don't know, but tend to think it's not by coincidence,
| that the better public transit systems tend to be near
| the eastern seaboard.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > public transit . . . individualistic frontier mentality
|
| A century ago, most American cities had some kind of tram
| system. And the cities were connected by railroads -
| actual passenger trains. People were sold the idea of
| automotive independence. That notion was completely
| manufactured for our consumption. We didn't have the
| bureaucracy in place to keep mass transit in place, so
| when people used it less, it lost money and was largely
| torn out. Without bureaucracy in place to give people
| time to think, we're stuck with the swift wisdom of the
| market.
|
| When I lived in Seattle, I was half a block from an old
| commuter line that's buried in asphalt now. The city just
| installed "innovative" light rail a few blocks away.
| Progress! /s
|
| https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-
| demis...
| bumby wrote:
| That's the point I was trying to get across. The
| automobile created fostered an individualistic culture
| related to transport that is very hard for people to give
| up. Most cities still have bus routes, but people
| generally don't want to use them if they can use a car
| instead.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's not just public transit. Walkability. Bike paths.
| High density - potentially mixed use types. No emphasis
| on lowering noise. Etc.
|
| Basically anything you'd normally see in a Not Just Bikes
| video...
|
| It's not cultural btw. It's corporational. It's
| corporations which are driving these things - which don't
| seem to have as significant of a voice in other
| countries.
| bumby wrote:
| Certainly corporations drive some of it. But I do think
| there's also a cultural element. I've lived all across
| the US and the places that lack those amenities simply
| don't want them from my experience. Even when they do get
| implemented by well-wishing civil servants, they are
| often openly mocked as a waste of money.
| bradlys wrote:
| I wonder - do you think that people always loved cooking
| with gas as much as they do now?
|
| https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54
|
| A lot of "cultural" things are corporations at work. This
| is a very small example...
| bumby wrote:
| Do you think social media influencers are what drives the
| selection of gas stoves? That...is a very new take I've
| never heard.
|
| Most people prefer gas stoves because they are better for
| cooking than electric. They are generally considered
| better for cooking because they burn hotter than
| electric. It's been a long time since I've worked in food
| service, but I can't remember a single kitchen using
| electric stoves to good with and for good reason. This
| was when gas was much more expensive than it is now and I
| doubt the natural gas lobby has much influence on those
| choices.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| Gas stoves get hot faster and respond quickly when you
| turn the dial, that's their big advantage. But electric
| is hotter. Even plain resistance coil electric elements
| put out much more heat than gas. Try to boil a pot of
| water on gas vs electric and it's no contest, electric
| wins.
|
| And of course, modern induction electric elements are
| better in every way as long as you don't mind throwing
| out all your cheap alluminum pots
| bumby wrote:
| > _electric is hotter._
|
| In what sense? Both have BTU ratings to determine their
| capacity. Just for kicks, I looked at a few units online
| at a mid-range price point of about $1500. The gas ones
| had 18-20 kBTU burners and the electric were around 10
| kBTU burners, so the gas has considerably higher output.
| As you say, gas is basically instantaneous once the flame
| is present while electric has a lag, so it's going to
| take longer to get to that capacity for the electric.
| Maybe your point is that electric transfers heat better?
| I couldn't find any sources on that. Add to it that the
| colors of the flame/heating element as a general rule of
| thumb for temperature, the gas is higher on the
| temperature spectrum.
| bradlys wrote:
| The thing is - induction is shown to be better now. It's
| faster and more powerful and doesn't create the waste
| heat. There are specialty ones for woks now too - that
| are curved and all.
|
| So really it is the gas lobby that is fueling this
| resistance to the switch. I myself used to buy into the
| cooking with gas was better because of all the media, my
| partner, and so forth. But the truth is - cooking with
| gas sucks for the most part. The newer induction ranges
| with temperature sensors and what not are actually
| better. And no waste heat and no toxic fumes except for
| what you're cooking.
|
| Honestly - I'm a big convert. I just need to move into a
| non-rental so I can install 230v induction instead of
| having to use 120v stuff. (Which is still good but
| obviously 5000w is much better than 1800w)
|
| And if we compare shit electric to a gas stove then yeah
| - gas is better. But once you start using decent
| induction... it's not really a problem unless you like to
| move your pan around _a lot_ and even then - you can
| learn a different technique to get a similar effect.
| bumby wrote:
| I agree and almost put in discussion about induction in
| my first reply. But I think the difference is one of
| economics for most people. I realize HN probably skews
| towards the higher income range, so sometimes I feel like
| this discussion comes across as tone deaf when the median
| _household_ (not person) income in the U.S. is about
| $67k.
|
| The newer induction ranges are awesome. But they are very
| expensive by comparison to a comparable gas range. For an
| average person, they are probably out of range (ha) in
| terms of price point. Add to it that your existing
| cookware may not work with it, and it's a deal breaker
| for a lot of average people. For someone like a landlord,
| they will almost always go with the cheaper option. If I
| was renting and had the choice between an cheap electric
| range or gas, I'd always prefer the gas. I hope the tech
| progresses enough to bring the price down to be
| competitive in the future.
|
| It's a lot like the discussions around heat-pumps. I love
| the ideas of heat pumps in homes. But I also realize the
| initial sticker cost is too much for people to bear. When
| natural gas prices have been as low as they have been in
| the last decade, it's hard to blame people for selecting
| a natural gas furnace.
|
| I love the more efficient options, but I do think people
| don't always recognize they are, to an average consumer,
| a luxury and a hard sell when they are just trying to
| make ends meet. That's partly why some of the talk comes
| across to some as elitist and it hurts the ability to
| convert people.
| bluGill wrote:
| Walkability is the fad now. Just like cars replacing
| streetcars was in the past.
|
| In this case one I'm glad to support.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| As a US immigrant with chronic health issues from walking
| miles to work in a 3rd world country, cars are a boon for
| me now.
| bradlys wrote:
| I think the idea of walkability isn't that you spend
| hours having to walk everyday to do menial tasks. It's
| that you're within very short distances of places.
| bumby wrote:
| I am glad to support it as well, but I can also
| acknowledge a lot of people scoff at it (and bike lanes,
| for that matter).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nah, Thameslink beats any US line and it's from 1988.
| Lizzie line will be better too.
|
| Oedo line too. And Fukutoshin like.
|
| Blackfriars is over the Thames. I don't think there's a US
| station that is as creative in use of space.
|
| Not to speak of the overground or DLR.
|
| I think it's just trade offs. The US gives individual
| power, those other places give state power. Former excels
| in certain places but provides veto when you achieve steady
| state. So things stall here.
|
| Notice that in things which can be done with individual
| power, like developers making housing developments in
| Texas, outcomes are good.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think power to execute is definitely a big part of it.
| A neighborhood can't afford a major work, or organize
| one, so it won't, but when a government entity can afford
| a major work, the neighborhood often has the power to
| stop that. Even though the major work is likely part of a
| larger orchestration of infrastructure, that one
| neighborhood can put a halt to it.
|
| They tried to replace a level crossing with an overpass
| in my city, arguably good for everyone. Well, they did
| argue it, and it didn't happen. Even though there is
| already a train line there, apparently an overpass was
| too much infrastructure for them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't disagree with most of that, but some places in the US
| do put some priority on public transit. Much to the annoyance
| of local neighborhoods, for example, Tri-met in Portland
| regularly proposes and then eventually builds out new light
| rail lines through existing neighborhoods. The bus network
| could be better in outlying areas but in the city proper it is
| pretty useful for many people, not a toy. And Portland builds
| new highways rarely. Aside from small extensions, there hasn't
| been a new interstate-size highway created in decades. It all
| stopped in the 70s (though the final bits didn't get finished
| until the mid 80s).
|
| Edit: IMO Portland could really justify another interstate and
| Columbia river crossing to the east of the city, but probably
| won't do it. It would primarily serve lower income people
| who've migrated out that direction, and they don't really have
| much voting power. I don't envy their commute since so much of
| it has to be on surface streets before they hit a major
| arterial. The light rail has a leg that direction but it's
| slow, and there's just one out there.
| crowbahr wrote:
| Highways do not serve low income areas, public transit does.
|
| Portland is entirely justified in not building expensive and
| low density transit solutions (highways) to service
| communities. A BRT or Light Rail line will justify the cost
| significantly better and lead to denser, transit oriented
| development along the path: All of which better serves the
| poor.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Beaverton, Hillsboro and Washington County meanwhile are busy
| widening roads like always.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "- The US is also not very interested in trying to learn from
| what construction techniques, etc. have worked for public
| transit in other countries"
|
| That would also apply to other areas like health care.
| Exceptionalism is not a good thing to improve yourself.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > Wages are high
|
| Maybe, but I think it's more that the managers/owners are
| greedy and need big profit margins, especially to pay back
| their political connections who gave them the contract to begin
| with.
|
| Corruption exists in some form at every step of a publicly
| funded project. People are too apathetic to care, and the
| process for getting a road repaved or whatever has been made
| almost entirely opaque to the electorate. Especially at the
| county and state levels, where serious cash gets gifted or
| grifted all the time.
| bumby wrote:
| > _the process for getting a road repaved or whatever has
| been made almost entirely opaque to the electorate._
|
| Most government contracts use an open bid process which is
| much less opaque than what happens in private contracts. What
| transparency are you specifically looking for?
| mastax wrote:
| I'm very confident that the amount of greed and corruption in
| New York in 1905 was greater than or equal to the modern
| amount. See: Tammany Hall.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What if there is an overarching malaise of dysfunction,
| inefficiency and apathy towards ambition to build a better
| nation? 1950's USA was very different than today.
|
| I've worked with some brilliant government orgs (NIST) but more
| often than not, many have the problem of top-down management
| and bureaucratic class that has no checks and balances, that is
| impossible to get rid of, and perpetuate dysfunction,
| overbilling, etc. No one questions them, media is busy with
| other things, and we always talk about funding the gov, but
| never asking "Can we do more with the same amount?". At least,
| private enterprises have skin in the game and they'd be toast
| if their products and services does not perform or is
| overbudget. Similar to government agencies, as private
| enterprises get larger (GE, Lockheed, IBM, P&G, Mitsubishi),
| they have exact same problems as governments.
|
| The solution is to completely start over. We did that in 1950's
| when many new agencies were formed. They were vibrant and well
| functioning. Without a garbage-collector process so-to-speak,
| government agencies tend to become dysfunctional.
|
| I love Eli Dourado's blog, particularly these two articles:
|
| How to move needle on progress:
| https://elidourado.com/blog/move-the-needle-on-progress/
|
| Notes on technology in the 2020s:
| https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/
| ehnto wrote:
| Re-orgs are often partially a garbage collection process, I
| have noticed. Lots of talk about "efficiency" and "better
| alignment". All fluff you expect, but in practical terms, a
| lot of people get let go, projects and org units disappear,
| and priorities are reorganized. The whole operation is
| expected to work as if the re-org never happened, and often
| it will.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Here's an inconvenient truth: Building itself is energy-intensive
| and depends heavily on emitting CO2 from the cement kiln to the
| trucks to the excavating equipment etc. Doing it quickly, more
| so. The answer is always to do less. Less travel, less building
| infrastructure for travel, less economic activity, and ideally
| fewer people alive. Nobody wants to hear that. Everything on the
| table in what passes for public debate represents one or more of
| the Kubler-Ross grief stages: bargaining, denial and anger.
| rayiner wrote:
| The end result of that logic is we should all just commit mass
| suicide.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the end result of "systems thinking" is that "balance" is
| found by smoothing out extremes.. it takes a combination of
| capacity, training, inputs and will to use a human mind to
| think in terms of systems, not just yourself, but many people
| are capable of that
| Centigonal wrote:
| We live on a spectrum between excess and efficiency. We could
| move to a point further in the efficiency direction that
| isn't morally untenable.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Why do people keep on reasoning this way!
|
| One must remember the capex opex distinction. Building e.g. in
| electricity generation with fossil fuels can be net negative,
| and even necessary, to bootstrap more electrified activity.
|
| I am not saying some sectors aren't just bad need to shrink,
| but other sectors are good need to grow. That is what Jason
| Hickel thinks too, incidentally!
|
| An across-the-board slowdown of economic activity is a very
| stupid --- both in terms of political impossibility and also
| needless sacrifice --- way to fix our climate issues.
| lamontcg wrote:
| What if we need to build mass transportation solutions in order
| to get Americans off of single occupancy vehicles? What if we
| need to build more housing in our cities so that housing
| becomes affordable and the homelessness problem is reduced?
| What if we need to build solar and wind farms so that we can
| turn off coal and natural gas generators?
|
| I don't know how you can propose doing literally nothing at all
| as the solution to the problem that has us on course for
| disaster.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Not proposing anything. This is the obvious solution that
| won't ever be considered. The disaster is is own solution.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah so "mass suicide" it is.
|
| You'll understand if the rest of the human race isn't quite
| as edgy and nihilistic as you are.
| empiko wrote:
| What about Oroville dam repairs? It was a pretty successful and
| fast engineering project. I think that America can still build
| quickly if she wants to. But most of the projects are not that
| important.
| samtho wrote:
| That's kind of a strange example. Fixing things that provide
| existential hazards is always a priority, not to mention that
| the scope of the damn did not change with the repairs (the dam
| did not get taller, wider, etc). There was no reason for nimby-
| isms, environmental impact reports of building/expanding the
| reservoir, etc, as it was already there. It was a huge, ongoing
| emergency that required action to be taken and only cost the
| state $1.1B, from which they're trying to recover some portion
| from federal funds.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| > There [is] no reason for nimby-isms, environmental impact
| reports of building/expanding
|
| That's probably also the case in China, for everything. Which
| might be why they can build so qyickly and cheaply.
| jansen555 wrote:
| renewiltord wrote:
| MacArthur Maze repair was also under budget and before timeline
| because of the novel contract.
|
| The truth is that most US infrastructure is not required. We
| should let many of these roads rot and many of these super
| projects languish in design.
|
| Notice how CA HSR had delays because they wanted to use "first
| of its kind state of the art signaling system". Why "first of
| its kind"? There exist like a dozen HSR builders. Just copy
| them. But that's because HSR isn't required. So we just use it
| as a modern WPA-style jobs tool.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I think you're actually talking about Caltrain's CBOSS
| system, which while obviously related to the CAHSR,
| eventually, was designed and (not) implemented by a
| completely different agency at a prior time.
|
| https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-end-of-
| cboss.h...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thank you for the correction! I did indeed mean that.
| gkop wrote:
| > The truth is that most US infrastructure is not required.
|
| Would you say more? This is a bold claim.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This comment box is too small to provide a proof ;)
|
| I'm sorry, it's not fair to make a controversial statement
| and then leave it at that but I only had the appetite to
| provide the hypothesis (easy) not the backing (I've got to
| collate my notes on this).
|
| But, if you're down to meet in SF one evening in April we
| could go over it.
| [deleted]
| hervature wrote:
| Maybe most is unwarranted but certainly some [1].
|
| [1] - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/1/23/iowa-
| dot-helps...
| vgel wrote:
| This article is about a road diet in terms of restriping
| an existing road with fewer lanes, but the same amount of
| asphalt (and, given the additional markings, probably a
| similar amount of paint). I don't see what that has to do
| with the infrastructure being _not needed_.
| yobbo wrote:
| The Empire State Building was built, from start to opening, in
| what seems like 14 months.
|
| Mary Poppendieck discusses this from the perspective of project
| management: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/tyranny-of-plan/
|
| I think nowadays the projects are simply more profitable if they
| are long and slow.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| NIRP/ZIRP could be a huge factor for that.
|
| When the cost of money is free / negative - there's less
| incentive to rush to completion.
| imtringued wrote:
| The owners of money get to decide when they are paid and how
| much, if they prefer these low interest rates, then why would
| you care? It's not like it matters.
|
| When interest rates are negative, you are basically in the
| sandbox part of a developed society. You already have
| everything, everything you do afterwards is as pointless as
| existence and the universe. Who cares? Artists don't care.
|
| You know what interest rates also do? Higher interest rates
| punish longevity as future income is discounted, meanwhile
| lower interest rates promote longevity as future income is no
| longer discounted.
|
| It's the opposite. Once there is less incentive to rush to
| completion, interest rates go down. If you are about to
| starve tomorrow, you must rush, interest rates are high
| because you are willing to borrow for food. If you have
| enough food to last a year, you won't borrow, you would
| prefer that it lasted 5 years instead.
| yobbo wrote:
| I think so too.
|
| Also consider this; for buildings/real estate, the market
| value of the finished construction may appreciate faster than
| the negative cash-flow from construction and financing. Just
| adjust rate of construction accordingly.
| bluedino wrote:
| It took us six months to have a local ISP run fiber for three
| blocks in a non-densely populated area. Spectrum wouldn't even
| touch it.
|
| Delay after delay in the permit process. And spent almost as much
| on permits as actually running the fiber. Then to top it off,
| we're near railroad tracks (fiber doesn't go anywhere near it)
|
| No wonder nobody wants to invest money in businesses in the city.
| And how can they attract any companies when there's no decent
| internet?
| jmyeet wrote:
| For public transit in particular, the US has billionaires and
| politicans who actively campaign against such projects [1]. The
| effect of this cannot be overstated. People buy into the
| propaganda that their taxes will go up and/or it will bring crime
| to their idyllic locales (where otherwise property prices keep
| the riffraff out).
|
| Landowners in the US have very successfullly voted in measures
| that limit further construction (including higher density housing
| and public transit systems) and increase the value of their
| holdings.
|
| I've mentioned housing here because it directly impacts a lot of
| potential construction, particularly public transport. You cannot
| build anything other than single-family homes in much of the US.
| This lowers population density and makes public transport less
| viable. It also diverts tax revenue to build infrastructure for
| the required cars: highways, parking lots, etc.
|
| There are a lot of local problems here too eg NYC's scaffolding
| laws [2], corruption in NYC construction projects [3] and CEQA in
| California [4].
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-
| pub...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2020/10/08/585902...
|
| [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
| subway-...
|
| [4]:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signature-...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > People buy into the propaganda that their taxes will go up
|
| That's not propaganda. State and local taxes in Wa state have
| gone nowhere but up for the last 40 years I've lived here.
| Sound Transit has gotten themselves huge tax increases.
| amrocha wrote:
| It is propaganda, the only reason you don't pay higher taxes
| is that car infrastructure is heavily subsidized compared to
| transit.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I certainly do pay taxes for the roads, bridges, and
| infrastructure.
| oblio wrote:
| When you factor in externalities you're living on
| borrowed time, debt and climate wise.
| WalterBright wrote:
| That's a different topic.
| oblio wrote:
| It's related since there's a very strong argument you
| (and Americans in general) aren't paying enough taxes and
| some things should be outright banned (single family
| homes on 75% of built land, in a country with an ever-
| growing population and a housing affordability crises and
| some of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions;
| maybe that percentage should be 50% or 33%)).
|
| But that's political suicide to say out loud as a
| politician.
| boston_clone wrote:
| Propaganda can be true and factual; perhaps what the parent
| comment meant is that a minor detail can be exaggerated to
| dissuade / influence a voter's behavior.
| chii wrote:
| > Propaganda can be true and factual;
|
| so that's what's called a convincing argument then?
| boston_clone wrote:
| when done by a state-entity with the purpose to
| influence, yeah exactly.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Google's definition:
|
| "information, especially of a _biased or misleading nature_
| , used to promote or publicize a particular political cause
| or point of view."
|
| Emphasis is mine.
| boston_clone wrote:
| biased does not mean incorrect. the devil is truly in the
| details, here.
| ilaksh wrote:
| If America cannot continue to evolve, improve, and adapt, then
| its prosperity and leadership role will fade away. It doesn't
| matter how great our ideology or political systems are (or we
| think they are). It doesn't even really matter how many advanced
| weapons we have. You can't fight the whole world forever.
|
| I guess people would literally rather take the chance of America
| falling apart or the earth melting than let someone build a
| subway or new building near them.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| > " This style of thinking is present especially in environmental
| laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the
| federal level, or the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
| at the state level. These laws both require the government to
| conduct an exhaustive review of government projects--sometimes
| even permitting decisions on private projects--that might have
| negative environmental impacts."
|
| There's a reason those laws were passed, and it's because of all
| the massive groundwater and air and soil contamination problems
| created by unregulated free-for-all industrial development that
| have had to be cleaned up at great public expense. Those waste
| problems are solvable but solutions are often expensive, adding a
| large percentage onto the end-to-end cost of a manufacturing line
| for semiconductors, for example:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-...
|
| As far as large-scale public infrastructure projects, a lot of
| that is repair and rebuilding of existing installations (bridges
| etc.), so there's not as much environmental review there - just a
| need to devote resources to the task. I suppose a more autocratic
| country like China (which has rapidly built out high-speed rail)
| wouldn't bother about EPA reviews, but the air in China can be
| pretty bad.
|
| As far as doing things quickly? The global supply chain problem
| is pretty evident right now, maybe offshoring and 'just in time'
| manufacturing wasn't such a great idea due to its lack of
| robustness under stress? Critical supply chains should be located
| domestically. Yes, that would either raise prices or cut profits
| due to increased domestic labor costs and pollution regulations.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| I don't think blaming the supply chain is fair. Big
| transportation projects, big city's housing problems all
| existed way before our current supply chain problems.
|
| Clearly considering the environment is important. But the costs
| of over worrying about the environment is becoming clear too.
| Negative externalities like the homeless crisis in the West
| coast are affecting everyone.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _There 's a reason those laws were passed, and it's because
| of all the massive groundwater and air and soil contamination
| problems created by unregulated free-for-all industrial
| development that have had to be cleaned up at great public
| expense._
|
| OK, sure, but what does that have to do with building a bridge
| or a train station? A similar objection occurs on a smaller
| scale when we talk about opening up zoning laws to allow more
| apartments. _" There's a reason those laws were passed. You're
| saying you want a chemical treatment plant built by your
| school?"_ No, what I said is that it should be legal to build
| apartments. Who said anything about a chemical plant?
|
| Supporting quick approvals for less hazardous projects doesn't
| suggest support for more hazardous projects, but implying that
| it does is an effective opposition tactic.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| What probably should have been done was to write a provision
| into the law for priority projects, allowing some activities to
| be waived or timeboxed.
|
| It's a bit unreasonable to expect a process that efficiently
| handles $x million / 2-year projects to scale to $xxx million /
| 10-year projects.
|
| If the risks of not having a port expansion / bridge or dam
| repair / rail transit / nuclear power are greater than the
| risks of not completing a comprehensive environmental review...
| well, there you are.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| there are two USAnian movies, of the very few that make sense to
| me..
|
| Still.Mine-2012 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073086/
|
| Magnolia-1999 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/
|
| IMO some answer is somewhere in them..
| cellis wrote:
| We need some free-for-all zones to build new cities. I know with
| the current political structure it's near impossible, but
| "Hamsterdam" from the wire ( uhh, sans drugs and killings... ),
| comes to mind. A libertarian paradise. Perhaps it could start
| with more landgrants on just a fraction of the massive bureau of
| land management reserves. Free from entrenched politics of
| existing cities, these zones, if done well ( technocrats, here's
| your chance! ) could serve as inspiration for exporting the know-
| how to the existing cities.
| swearwolf wrote:
| You might like to read the book "A Libertarian walks into a
| bear". It's about a group of hardcore libertarians who took
| over Grafton New Hampshire with the goal to do a small town
| version of what you've described.
| a9h74j wrote:
| A libertarian, an Osho-disciple, and a Randian all walk into
| a small town ...
| hericium wrote:
| US generates little production know-how since Wall Street moved
| production to China.
| maxerickson wrote:
| This is gratuitously false. US manufacturing output today is as
| high as it has ever been. Even low value add industries like
| steel production are at a significant percentage of their
| historical maximum output (they do tend to be relatively
| mechanized and automated and not job centers anymore).
| gruez wrote:
| >This is gratuitously false. US manufacturing output today is
| as high as it has ever been
|
| Right, but manufacturing's _share_ of GDP is low as it has
| ever been.
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?location.
| ..
| wodenokoto wrote:
| In this context that doesn't matter.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > Right, but manufacturing's share of GDP is low as it has
| ever been.
|
| That only means that we are creating more jobs than
| manufacturing can provide. There is no point in
| manufacturing more and more if current levels are enough.
| For an analogy, agriculture is only 2% of GDP but it is
| good enough to feed everyone. Increasing the percentage of
| GDP of agriculture is pointless.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's different from having the "know-how", though. We
| have the knowledge and ability to manufacture a lot--as
| much as or more than any past point in time. We just
| "produce" a _lot more_ stuff that isn 't manufactured now
| as a share of our economic output.
| hwers wrote:
| Unions and safety. Quality of life and less risk for the workers
| which china et al has less of. Not a difficult question but this
| topic keeps coming up as some sort of indirect nudge to corrode
| those two components under the guise of an argument about global
| competitive advantage.
| passivate wrote:
| >Unions and safety.
|
| Do you have a comparison of safety data from projects over the
| years?
|
| > some sort of indirect nudge to corrode those two components
| under the guise of an argument about global competitive
| advantage.
|
| I don't see anyone making an argument against safety?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| No way. European nations with strong unions still build much
| faster and more cheaply than we do.
| gedy wrote:
| I don't mind things going slower and costing more for good
| reasons - what concerns me though is the intentional graft,
| feet dragging, and insertion of middle men to extract as much
| money as possible from an important project. Unfortunately
| unions are a big and willing part of the problem in the US.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| The fact that Union participation in the work force has
| declined from 20% in 1983 to 10% in 2020 [1] tells me that
| something else is at play.
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
| starkd wrote:
| While private union participation has sharply declined,
| public unions are still quite powerful and present a virtual
| lock on substantial changes. Witness the teachers' unions.
| Particularly, their obstinance during the pandemic and
| reluctance to providing true school choice.
| ISL wrote:
| The position of, "we would like to have safe workplaces
| during a pandemic," seems utterly reasonable.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The argument against school choice us utterly
| unreasonable to anybody outside of the teacher's union.
| Their argument against is essentially that their pet
| school would go out of business because nobody would
| choose to go there if there were alternatives.
| irrational wrote:
| Depends on where you live. Where I live the teachers union
| supported moving to remote learning overnight and remote
| learning continued until halfway through this school year.
| In fact it is still ongoing for those students who chose to
| do remote learning instead of in person learning. They plan
| on continuing offering remote learning as an option
| perpetually into the future. One thing they learned during
| the pandemic is that there are certain students who do
| poorly with in person learning but they excelled with
| remote learning. They want to keep supporting those
| students who learn better with remote learning than in
| person learning.
| starkd wrote:
| Perhaps in high school level. But little kids, grade-
| school level, need in-person. They also should not be
| scared witless by mandatary rules that do nothing but
| leave them psychologically scarred for years to come.
| irrational wrote:
| Children are not so weak as you seem to think. It was
| children at all levels that showed remarkable
| improvements through remote learning over in person
| learning.
| TimPC wrote:
| True school choice is an illusion as long as private
| schools are free to decline unwanted students that cost
| more to teach. The advocates of such policies tend to
| ignore the fact that it would leave disabled and other
| special needs students in a public system that no longer
| had enough other students to pay for their higher costs.
| That's a problem that requires an adequate solution before
| any type of voucher is reasonable.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >The advocates of such policies tend to ignore the fact
| that it would leave disabled and other special needs
| students in a public system that no longer had enough
| other students to pay for their higher costs.
|
| People already pay for public schooling through income
| and property taxes, whether they're children use it or
| not. I don't see how your theory prevents higher cost
| students from being taught. It just sounds like you're
| advocating for a crab bucket.
| TimPC wrote:
| Every proposal I've seen for vouchers tries to tie the
| amount to average spending per student. My point is
| that's fundamentally unfair because private schools are
| only interested in students that cost below the average
| to educate. They work hard to exclude and disqualify
| those with costly special needs. The result is you leave
| the public education system with all the high cost
| students but still getting the $X k they had per student
| when they had low cost students too. The net result of
| vouchers is raising the per capita cost of public
| education without raising the per capita funding. That's
| unfair to everyone forced into using that system.
| coryrc wrote:
| Stop holding 95% of students hostage to a tiny minority.
| They deserve better education. They deserve their
| teachers' focus instead of them having to devote
| inordinate amount of time to the mainstreamed special
| needs students.
| imtringued wrote:
| I had a special needs student in class and nobody was
| bothered, it simply costs more money to have an attendant
| (not a teacher) and special seating.
| coryrc wrote:
| The attendant should be tutoring the 95% of kids to keep
| them from falling behind. Only 35% of fourth graders read
| at grade level. Why do we spend inordinate resources on
| those that are incapable of ever reading at a fourth
| grade level when so many are effectively denied being
| educated?
| TimPC wrote:
| Accept the 30% voucher that represents what a typical
| student getting into private school costs the system
| instead of demanding 50% as fair when that leaves the
| system too impoverished to deal with the students that
| remain.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| If you're issue is mainly with vouchers, then why not get
| rid of the need for vouchers in the first place by
| getting rid of limiting attendance by zip code? It's
| unfair for anyone, not just "high-cost" students, to be
| forced riders in an education system for which they have
| no agency. Fairness isn't determined on the basis of who
| in particular is negatively affected. Either the
| principle itself is fair or it isn't.
|
| The only solution compatible with choice and public
| education is to allow all students a free-for-all to
| attend any public school within driving distance. Tuition
| isn't usually the biggest or first barrier to entry in
| attending better schools, it's bureaucracy.
| starkd wrote:
| A fair point. But the unions have been anything but
| reasonable on this issue. True, some have opened up to
| charter schools, but many have rescinded that option as
| soon as it was politically feasible. True choice can only
| happen when a different management of schools is in
| place. They have been obstinately against this.
| randomdata wrote:
| In Ontario, the teachers ratified a three year contract in
| the spring of 2020 (i.e. COVID-19 was already raging), with
| the most notable feature being that remote learning would
| not be permitted, conceding to a paltry 1% raise in order
| to get the 'win'. Funny part is that they caved to the
| remote learning pressure in the end anyway.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >reluctance to providing true school choice
|
| Interesting way of saying "I want poor children to go to
| school with poor children and rich children to go to school
| with rich children".
| starkd wrote:
| Wouldn't vouchers address that very problem? It would
| ennable poor children to go to wealthier schools.
| paconbork wrote:
| Is that not what already happens in the current system
| where living in the wealthy school district is required
| to go to the wealthy school?
| randomdata wrote:
| A lot of what unions once offered has been rolled into labour
| legislation. The entire workforce is now a member of the de
| facto union, so to speak.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| amazing to watch entire generations stumble forward without
| understanding "retirement,healthcare,workhours,promotion"
| since you know, "I have never had a problem".. Everyone is
| protected now.. yeah, thats it
| randomdata wrote:
| The unionization movement was built on solving the safety
| issues of the day for workers exposed to employers who
| found employees to be expendable. The topic here is about
| how those safety expectations once established by unions
| slow down construction. Labor laws now cover those
| concerns, so the decline in unionization is largely
| irrelevant. The entire workforce has become a member of
| the de facto union.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| That's a rather limited view of the role of unions. One
| of their biggest accomplishments was the establishment of
| a standard 40 hour work week as the norm. That was mostly
| about work/life balance, not safety. And that certainly
| isn't codified in labor laws, given the remarkably loose
| overtime rules for most salaried employees today.
| randomdata wrote:
| How does that pertain to the discussion? We're not
| focused on talking about unions here, we're talking about
| why construction projects take a long time, so what does
| that mean for project duration?
| taeric wrote:
| I lean in your direction on this. However, I am worried that
| this evidence doesn't say what we think it says.
|
| Is it that there was more growth in non union fields? It is
| conceivable that union work is still responsible for much in
| the building realm. That combined with a non growing
| workforce could easily explain slowness. Combined with basic
| supply/demand thinking can then explain costs.
| crowbahr wrote:
| > Is it that there was more growth in non union fields?
|
| Most unionized labor in the US was outsourced during the
| deindustrialization of the USA.
|
| More than 6 million manufacturing jobs were lost in the US
| between 2001 and 2010 (representing approximately 1/3 of
| all manufacturing jobs).
|
| So yes: non union fields are growing, mostly because
| unionized jobs were busted by companies shipping production
| overseas. The jobs that "replaced" the good labor of
| industry are mostly poverty wage service jobs which require
| very little training. As there's little investment per-
| worker Unions have effectively 0 bargaining power: Scabbing
| a strike is simple when you only need 2 hours of training
| to do their jobs.
|
| Funnily enough the USA manufactures more goods than ever in
| its history, accounting for ~6 trillion USD of our GDP in
| 2019.
| taeric wrote:
| But this really doesn't feel to be talking to my
| question. Local building of infrastructure isn't really
| offshoreable, is it? Such that I get a ton of things were
| shipped overseas. Not entirely clear that explains why
| building locally is so expensive.
|
| Your last line indicates that robotics and other large
| scale industrialization can be pointed at. We manufacture
| more with far fewer resources?
|
| But, back to my hypothesis that i would love to see shot
| down. Is the only labor left in large unions in a
| position that they are in the critical path of building?
| (Note, that if true, the answer isn't necessarily to bust
| unions, but to expand their base significantly. I could
| easily believe that their funds have been starved such
| that they aren't growing due to so much money being
| funneled away from them.)
| V__ wrote:
| Is this really the case? I would have assumed that
| planning/zoning/permits/slow bureaucracy is more to blame than
| the actual building phase.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I remember the housing boom around 2005-ish in my area. They
| were throwing houses together at an amazing pace. Private
| building contracts with a friendly regulatory environment.
|
| My state is ranked among the highest in fraud related to
| public works projects like building roads. Basically the game
| is: Start a company, bid so low you know you won't succeed,
| take your cut, start a build, declare bankruptcy,
| rinse/repeat. Easy money, no consequences.
|
| I'm pretty sure the government/bureaucracy is in on the take
| because they do nothing about it. The mayor of my city was on
| the board of the company that manages the toll system.
| kiba wrote:
| No. It doesn't completely explain the ossification of our
| society not should that be an excuse to not build more.
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| You didn't read the article. Instead you made something up and
| presented it as fact with zero evidence.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the bridge in Philly that was blown-up right before the
| infrastructure funding visit by Biden.. how does that fit into
| your narrative?
| blululu wrote:
| The Germans, Japanese and the French would like a word.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Germany and France are a pretty bad example to use here.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Why?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Berlin Brandenburg is the poster child for why.
| imtringued wrote:
| Environmentalists tried to protect commercial forests
| (intended to be harvested for cardboard) in an industrial
| zone to stop the Tesla factory from being built.
| looperhacks wrote:
| Germany is absolutely the wrong example here (I am from
| Germany):
|
| - the last U5 extension in Berlin (2.2km) took over 10 years
| to complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U5_%28Berlin_U-
| Bahn%29?wprov=s... - the Stuttgart 21 project was presented
| in 1994(!), started construction in 2010, was protected to
| end in 2019 and by now, the main station is expected to be
| finished in 2025, with more to follow. Of course it went
| massively over budget and was probably one of the more
| protested against projects in the last few years
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21?wprov=sfla1 - the
| BER airport is probably one of the most "famous" projects.
| Planning began in 1991, construction in 2006(!). The planned
| opening was in October 2011, but the first plane landed in
| October 2020, nine years later https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport?wpr... - NIMBYs preventing wind
| turbines is a big issue too, the most recent discussion was
| about Bavaria preventing new plans with ridiculous
| requirements (sadly no English source here)
| https://www.br.de/nachrichten/amp/bayern/wie-viel-
| windkraft-...
| CPLX wrote:
| Have you heard of Europe?
|
| This argument is ridiculous.
| yosefjaved1 wrote:
| I never thought about the length in time it takes to build things
| in the US today when compared to previous time periods in the US.
|
| I had to double-check this but it did really take 4 years to
| complete initial construction of the NYC subway system; however,
| what's failed to mention in the article is that a plan was
| approved to build the NYC system 6 years prior. In total, it took
| 10 years of planning and construction to actually have an initial
| system in place.
|
| Even though the author failed to mentioned the planning period in
| that instance, it doesn't take away from his argument that things
| are slower today in getting large projects built or renovated due
| to legal and political structures that stop each of these from
| happening through procedural delays.
|
| I have a great local example of this. My interstate bridge has
| been in need of repair for the last 30 years, but nothing has
| been done of it due to so many groups getting in the way. It's
| been a nightmare and that bridge is very much needed for the
| local community to stay as strong as it is. I believe the
| political will to do anything has vanished out of frustration.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Believe it or not, New Hampshire does pretty well with building
| bridges, I saw them build a large bridge within 6 months and it
| seems roads are kept in a decent shape. In a nearby state where
| I am, I think it can outdo what you see in your state. Took 10
| years to replace a very small bridge across some railroad
| tracks. That road was closed for 10+ years.
|
| Over rivers ? Where I am, I suggest before you cross, open all
| your vehicle windows and wear a life preserver, I am serious.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| I've wondered about state level differences too. Most of the
| east coast has terrible roads. That's especially true in NYC
| where I live. But I did a trip down to Delaware and was on
| freeways like I'd never seen in the US. Just really nice. Are
| some states just run much better?
| agundy wrote:
| Winter and salt are both hard on roads with lots of freeze
| thaw cycles putting cracks in the road. So Delaware is an
| apples and oranges comparison. Delaware is going to have a
| lot less winter wear on their roads.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's less "how well states are run" and more that some
| states just get way more money. Delaware gets approximately
| 50x as much money as California or New York does from the
| federal government on a per-mile basis.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Why does Delaware get more money per mile?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Delaware is in large part a drive through state as people
| go from NYC/Philadelphia/New England to DC. So the roads
| there tend to be used more by out of staters. Look at the
| person I'm responding to. That makes it easier for other
| senators to want to contribute cash. Plus, Delaware
| doesn't have nearly as many roads, so the total number is
| still fairly reasonable.
|
| There may be some fixed costs per state. I don't know.
|
| There is a risk that if Delaware got too little money,
| they could forgo it, lower their drinking age to 18, and
| have state liquor store sell to everyone under 21 in the
| surrounding states.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Biden ?
|
| he is from there and has been a leader in Gov for
| decades.
| rayiner wrote:
| It varies county by county too. "Conscientious Republican"
| counties--like in Northern VA when I was growing up in the
| 1990s, or California from the 60s to the 80s--are the most
| well run. I live in a traditionally red county in Maryland
| (went Romney 2012, split evenly in 2016) and everything is
| super well run.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I grew up in a super-red county in California. Things
| were horribly run. The area has been under Democratic
| leadership for the past twenty years and it is a _world
| change_ in terms of how much nicer, better, and more
| efficient everything is. The roads are better, the
| schools are better, the neighborhoods and people are
| better.
|
| It turns out than when you have people believe that
| government should exist, and that government can do a
| good job, you get people who do good work. And when your
| government consists of people who think it shouldn't
| exist...you get morass.
|
| Contrast blue counties with red counties in most states
| and you'll notice a huge difference in how much nicer
| things are in the blue counties. There's a reason so many
| Republicans retire to LA and NY: after they've made their
| money railing "against the libs" they just want a nice
| place to live out their golden years.
| bluGill wrote:
| The change of guard is most important from what I can
| tell. Both parties have their own corruption. Change
| often and each will stop the other's bad practices before
| they get too bad.
|
| It isn't perfect, but it is the only thing that seems to
| have any long term success .
| rayiner wrote:
| Did your county see a change in significant improvement
| in socioeconomic status during that time period? Because
| that's not a fair comparison. Note I said I was talking
| about places Northern VA in the 1990s, or Silicon Valley
| in the 1970s. I've never seen these places get better
| under Democrats.
|
| Also, virtually no republicans "retire to LA and NY" lol.
| Maybe billionaires who can insulate themselves from the
| dysfunction of those cities. For middle class people, the
| major internal migration trend in the country is people
| leaving those places for Texas, the Carolinas, etc.
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| Democrats and Republicans each have things they do well
| and things they do bad. Roads are generally a Republican
| thing, and roads are visible.
| rayiner wrote:
| Not just roads. Northern VA's excellent educational
| system was built under republicans, with a few
| conservative democrat governors. Building and permits are
| much easier. Even just efficiency of government offices.
| Getting a copy of my kid's birth certificate in my county
| took like 10 minutes. In bored strokes, at state and
| local level, republicans tend to focus on serving the
| majority, while democrats are focused on equity and
| redistribution for minorities.
| tptacek wrote:
| Alternate take: most places where people actually live
| are governed by Democrats, because Democrats dominate
| urban areas, and most people live in urban areas. Places
| with single-party dominance tend to be poorly governed
| (for instance: the Illinois Democratic party, the Kansas
| Republican party). When Republicans survive in Democratic
| areas (for instance: Massachusetts Republican governors)
| they tend to do well; presumably, Democrats managing in
| red states do well too, but we don't hear so much about
| them, because people tend not to live in red counties
| (they tend to be rural, not urban).
|
| It's mostly party machines that are the problem, not the
| particular parties.
| MaysonL wrote:
| It's not just state level, the same thing happens at the
| municipal level. There's a trip I take a few times a year,
| and I always notice the transition from one town to another
| by the sudden deterioration of the road.
| fsflyer wrote:
| New Hampshire doesn't divert gas tax money away from road
| maintenance. [0]
|
| [0] https://reason.org/policy-brief/how-much-gas-tax-money-
| state...
| [deleted]
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I presume this is Portland OR to Vancouver WA?
| CSSer wrote:
| It could just as easily be Cincinnati, OH. That's how bad our
| infrastructure has gotten.
| runarberg wrote:
| The I-5 Columbia river replacement bridge just recently got a
| ton of funding from the WA state legislator, so maybe things
| are finally moving forward. However I guess delaying the
| project has been bickering on what to actually put on the
| bridge. E.g. they want to more then double the car lane
| count, then they also want light rail on there, and
| potentially even high speed rail. This feels like a classic
| case of overdesign.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not see how incorporating mass transit is over design
| for something expected to last 100+ years. Especially for a
| region that has been adding tens of thousands of people per
| year for 10+ years, at an increasing pace.
| runarberg wrote:
| Neither do I, however WSDOT has not released any details
| on the project but their renderings indicate they want to
| widen the freeway to some 10+ lane monstrosity[1].
| Meanwhile Cascadia High Speed Rail has ideas about
| replacing the existing BNSF/Amtrak bridge with a double
| deck four track + four care lane bridge in addition to
| the I-5 bridge[2]. This combined makes a ridiculous
| amount of car lanes and railway tracks, plus a redundant
| bridge. There must be a better--and cheaper--way to cross
| this river.
|
| 1: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/18/dont-widen-
| highways-i...
|
| 2: https://cascadiahighspeedrail.com/portland-to-seattle/
| rayiner wrote:
| Note that the 4.5 years cited for the NEPA process is just the
| average time to reach an initial decision. It doesn't include
| the years of litigation challenging that decision that
| inevitably follows for any significant project.
|
| My kid's school tried to convert a declining golf course in a
| residential area into athletic fields. We're not talking about
| a Texas high school football stadium--its some ball fields and
| tennis courts for an artsy school where sports doesn't exactly
| attract big crowds. They were tied up in litigation for the
| better part of a decade. They spent half as much on the
| litigation as in purchasing the property.
| asdff wrote:
| Coincidentally I've been supporting trying to keep around a
| local golf course over letting a local private school expand
| athletic fields on it in my area. In my eyes the golf course
| is better for the community. People from all ages from the
| local area come there to play cheap golf or tennis and get
| reasonably priced lessons. Meanwhile if this plan were to go
| through, suddenly that area is private and reserved for rich
| people who can afford tuition at this private school, and all
| those opportunities for local people to get some activity
| outdoors vanish for good. Plus that school in question
| already has athletic facilities, these would just look more
| collegiate looking I guess...
| hyperhopper wrote:
| So you're exactly who the article is talking about: what
| methods or rationale are you using to try to prevent the
| new construction?
| madengr wrote:
| ec109685 wrote:
| One thing they do now is get a half of a plan in place without
| any idea of how to fund the rest, so that ends up drawing
| things out.
|
| "Hard to argue that promises were not kept, but something has
| to be done with an already started project. In that light, one
| thinks of former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown's principle, "In
| the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a
| down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start,
| nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start
| digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to
| coming up with the money to fill it in." "
|
| https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/opinion/2019/02/13/w...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That was 6 years of planning mostly _what_ to do, presumably.
|
| Another problem with the US legal environment is that all this
| "planning" effort we do now goes into the _whether_ , not the
| _what_. That means despite 1000s of pages, final designs are
| often lousy and ad-hoc, rather than a plank in a longer term
| integrated vision.
|
| Public transit makes the problem especially clear, as the
| benefits for integration vs random flashy projects to hype up
| the Andrew Cuomo du jour is extremely stark.
| runarberg wrote:
| When I think about American infrastructure projects in the 70s
| I think about all the minority neighborhoods they ploughed
| through and all the roads they closed during the entire
| construction livetime.
|
| I don't know how accurate that historical perception is, but if
| it is that is not how things are done today (thankfully). E.g.
| I've been observing the planning of ST3 in Seattle, and they
| indeed compromise on design all the time in order to displace
| as few people and businesses as possible, and they often end up
| with a much more expensive and much longer building times in
| order to allow traffic to flow (mostly) unhindered during
| construction. Without those constraints I bet building would be
| far quicker. (that being said neither of those are excuses for
| why it has taken over 2 years to fix the West Seattle bridge).
|
| Interestingly those two constraints clash in the new
| International District/Chinatown station. One of the
| alternatives would displace and disrupt more minority owned
| businesses on the 5th Ave. while the other would disrupt
| traffic flow for 5-6 years on the 4th Ave. Curiously this is
| one of really few portions of the ST3 plan where they don't
| have a preferred alternative.
| ipsin wrote:
| Yes, it was definitely a thing.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-
| of-...
|
| In Los Angeles the two closest lessons I took were the 210
| Freeway in Pasadena (which literally cut through poorer,
| Blacker neighborhoods) and the 710 Freeway which was supposed
| to connect to it.
|
| The last part of the 710 Freeway was meant to go through a
| richer, whiter neighborhood. Some houses were purchased, but
| the connector was held up in lawsuits from at least the
| 1970s, and remains unfinished to this day.
| doublerebel wrote:
| For the ID station, I think the idea to bring Union Station
| back to life and use existing infrastructure to connect the
| multiple rail options at the same level is by far the best
| solution. It will pay dividends long-term.
|
| https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/04/16/better-transit-hub-
| pe...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Building and planning are two very different things, you can't
| lump them together.
| archhn wrote:
| Probably due to bureaucratic overhead. Everything needs to pass
| through ten layers of approval and every bureaucrat plays power
| politics the whole time.
|
| I was once involved in a small city project, and the town liaison
| treated the project like we were in charge of the nation's
| nuclear arsenal. It's mind blowing how something so trivially
| small can become such a big deal when there are too many cooks in
| the kitchen.
| soxxer wrote:
| We can't compare ourselves to China when we have a labor
| participation rate of 160 million and they have 50 million
| construction workers.
| formvoltron wrote:
| We need robots to build for us. Possible?
| bell-cot wrote:
| > The bigger problem is that urgency just isn't there
|
| Pretty much says it all. Unless it's something like replacing a
| critical bridge that collapsed (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge...
| ), there just ain't much of a constituency for quick, affordable,
| and competent construction of anything.
| fvdessen wrote:
| The downside of a system that allows to build quickly is that it
| allows to quickly build really stupid things as well. For example
| in the 70's Brussels decided that the city should really look
| like Dallas and quickly destroyed complete neighbourhoods to
| build inner city highways and skyscrapers ...
|
| I guess high speed disasters like that are part of the reason why
| nowadays some people are afraid of going too fast with important
| things
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I am convinced that this cannot be the whole story.
|
| The 'West' construction is not a mess because of bureocracy. It
| is a mess because of contractor disease and hollowing out of
| skills.
|
| First come the contractors - UK government needed to do contract
| tracing, and has contracted a private company to get medical
| proffesionals to call travelers that were diagnosed with covid.
| The private conoaby has no expertise in anything other that
| writing bids and proposals for government contra ts, they
| subcontracted someone else. Those subcontracted a call center
| that has people with no experience or understanding of medicine
| reading from a script and earning minimum wage while 4x their
| salary is pocketed.
|
| I see this all over the place, there are like 5 layers of
| subcontracting you must travel though before you find actual work
| being done.
|
| Second consider alck of long-term planning - uk has not been
| building nuclear power plants for decades, then started hincley
| point C. There was noone in the coutry with the experience
| requires to run a nuclear project of this scale. Then the project
| will be complete, with difficulty and delays and people train in
| the job, and the people will be lost again.
|
| The financing on that project was forced onto the company to keep
| construction costs off government balancesheet - they didnt want
| it to show up as debr for political reasons. So insted of
| government borrowing for 30 years at 0.3% interest the conpany
| has to borrow that money ar 3% interest, more than doubling the
| cost.
|
| I frequently see evidence of China and other asian nations being
| more technically skills and agile, for instance they were
| desinfecting their busses with UV-C before UK managed to figure
| out hand sanitising stations. We have done nothing to sort out
| ventilation in schools, we are removing masks even though they
| don't hurt anyone, and we are forcing peolle back into central
| london to prop up the commercial real estate bubble.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Whilst I agree with a lot of your post (I am British), most of
| it was just a rant about the government's inadequate response
| to covid. It has pretty much nothing to do with this article.
| makomk wrote:
| It was an inaccurate rant about the UK's response to Covid
| too. The only part of calling up people with Covid to find
| their contacts which was contracted out was recruiting and
| employing them, fairly directly by the government, and of
| course medical professionals weren't used - those were busy
| giving medical care, and contact tracing was outside their
| area of expertise anyway. And the big reason it seemed
| inadequate is that the British press, quite frankly, outright
| lied about how well contact tracing worked in places like
| South Korea and about the downsides of their approach, which
| would not have been at all politically acceptable in the UK.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > of course medical professionals weren't used - those were
| busy giving medical care
|
| I have no expertiese myself, but all the literature I have
| read on contact tracing was very clear that you should not
| use random people on minimum wage, it recommended retired
| medical proffeshionals, or people who worked in a related
| industry, so that they have a basic understading of the
| subject matter and the questions they are asking.
|
| Also private eye reports that there was a wide gap between
| the skills and wages government thought they were buying,
| and what was provided at the other end.
| skybrian wrote:
| I'm wondering if environmental reports could be made faster and
| for less money? Maybe someone should do a deep dive into that?
| TimPC wrote:
| Not when anyone can sue because a certain detail is missing.
| The fundamental interface to environment work needs to change
| not just the length of the reports.
| clairity wrote:
| the biggest reason is simply financialization, which infiltrates
| every nook and cranny of our socioeconomic perceptions.
|
| it creates the perception that everyone else is getting ahead of
| you by hook or by crook (which is true in the minority but not
| the majority), rather than building stuff for the pride of having
| done it. that distorts all of our incentive structures for the
| worse, which is just one of the many adverse effects of
| financialization (which i define as economic activity focused
| solely on money itself, which includes most of real estate these
| days).
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Are you sure? It sounds like you're applying a pet/fad theory
| to somewhere where it's not super-applicable.
|
| Some of the biggest advocates for inefficiency in construction
| (at least here in Australia) have been Union members getting
| cushy jobs for their mates.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| So what's the solution? Pay people in peanuts and words of
| advice?
| yobbo wrote:
| The solution is to pay people only in return for what they
| deliver, on time.
|
| This would mean letting projects and companies utterly fail
| when they fail to deliver, but this is considered impossible
| in the current climate.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| How do you determine the value of a "delivery" without a
| financial metric? Taking a laissez-faire approach doesn't
| change the need for financialization. At most, it changes
| some of the evaluated variables.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| In modern history - nearly ever major infrastructure effort has
| been financed with debt.
|
| This is especially true for the US.
|
| IFF we used to be able to build things in the US, and we can't
| anymore - why does financing have anything to do with it?
| clairity wrote:
| you're conflating financing with financialization, which are
| two very different points in a multidimensional spectrum.
| financing is certainly helpful to allow capital projects to
| shift forward (or backward) in time to deliver (and perhaps
| capture) greater value. and under the constraints of
| scarcity, it helps allocate resources more efficiently, price
| risk more accurately, and provides necessarily liquidity in
| markets.
|
| we're way beyond the constraints of scarcity and the ideals
| of efficient resource allocation because we've decoupled
| finance and the money supply from the natural constraints
| under which our economic theories "work" (i use that term
| loosely, since economics has done a poor job of accounting
| for actual human behavior vs. the idealized). we're at a
| point where economic activity is about the _money itself_ ,
| rather than what it represents in the real world, things like
| bridges, restaurants, and dry cleaning. that's
| financialization, when it becomes decoupled from real value.
|
| all that takes away from wanting to build real things,
| because the perception is that it's just easier to "get rich
| quick" via financialization schemes. if you can get the money
| without the hard work of delivering real value, why not? is
| the thinking. that's corrosive to social fabrics, not to
| mention economies themselves. that's why we're where we're
| at, rather than a simplistic demonization of 'financing' in
| isolation.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I was surprised when I learned the Golden Gate Bridge was built
| in 4 years started in 1933. I wonder how long it would take
| today.
| thwarted wrote:
| For a really rough comparison, you can look at the building of
| the east span of the Oakland Bay bridge. It's also worth noting
| how many people died while building them. (Disclosure: I've
| never looked this up or done this comparison myself)
| tinkertamper wrote:
| Before you wax poetic about this period, please read more on
| the complete disregard for the families and communities
| impacted by the large construction projects from that time.
| Replies comparing the US today to China would also benefit from
| the same. Public works has a lot of issues with cost and
| inefficiencies, but I think we should all be happy that eminent
| domain is not wielded with the same disregard for human life as
| it once was.
| dangus wrote:
| Interestingly, the Golden Gate Bridge pioneered worker safety
| measures while the Bay Bridge (built at the same time)
| followed the status quo of almost no consideration to safety.
|
| The difference was, basically, how much management cared
| about the issue.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Crimean bridge was also built in 4 years or something like
| that.
| Wistar wrote:
| The newest Tacoma Narrows Bridge took about five years to
| construct, beginning in 2002 and finishing in 2007. It is about
| one mile long.
|
| https://www.historylink.org/File/8214
| randomdata wrote:
| There is a new bridge being constructed here over a ~200 foot
| span across the river and it is nearing four years of work and
| not yet done.
| kalu wrote:
| Robert Moses made a career out of building fast in a time and
| place where public works were extremely inefficient due to
| corruption. He rose to power at a time when jobs were handed out
| as currency to collect votes. Robert Caro describes in great
| detail scenes where, for example, hundreds of city workers who
| were supposed to be working would instead camp out in parks
| passing around prostitutes and brown paper bags. The city was a
| wasteland of corruption and incompetence. Moses turned this
| around in a matter of years to build massive public works
| projects quickly and at a high level of quality.
|
| I guess my point is that things were very bad in New York before
| the 1920s. And one man found a way to turn that around. So we
| shouldn't act as if the status quo is our destiny. That we are
| somehow witnessing something that is new in this country. Things
| can change. We can change them. It happened before.
| pontifier wrote:
| I'm in Arkansas, and I've been fighting the city for 2 years to
| get my power turned on and be able to use a building that I
| bought. It's freaking ridiculous.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| You point brings up something, in the US there are thousands of
| planning departments. And each one is it's own little fiefdom.
| Some are fine. Some enjoy screwing over people. Some are
| incompetent. Some are corrupt.
|
| If you bought a run down 6 plex and wanted to fix it up. SF the
| permitting would be a right pain. Berkeley would actively try
| to stop you. Oakland someone would want a bag of cash. Santa
| Cruz would allow it as long as you used a GC with proper
| connections.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| RyanGoosling wrote:
| China doesn't seem to have a problem.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| A very interesting read that is somewhat bogged down by the
| author's apparent acceptance of the most alarmist of climate
| alarmist views.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I've also heard that bands were better in the 60's and 70's than
| they are today...or...oh wait, is it just survivor-ship bias? We
| do have examples of building big things fast in history, but do
| we also have examples of projects taking way longer than they
| should?
| zionic wrote:
| Because we are a civilization in steep decline, and this is just
| another symptom.
| mulmen wrote:
| I made a similar comment yesterday and was rightfully downvoted
| so I'll try again here.
|
| The US military is a jobs program. Politically it is suicidal to
| support "socialism" but that's exactly what military spending is.
|
| So, what if we expanded that idea? What if we had a domestic
| infrastructure version of the US Military? Or at least a peaceful
| national service program?
|
| The benefits seems clear to me. Opportunity, well lubricated
| gears of commerce, and a stronger sense of ownership among the
| electorate.
| quesera wrote:
| This is the WPA. It worked pretty well. You have my vote.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
| mulmen wrote:
| Agreed. Unfortunately "New Deal" language is also politically
| toxic. Not sure how to leverage the appetite for military
| spending to build infrastructure. Declare war on potholes?
| black_13 wrote:
| sytelus wrote:
| The pattern looks a lot like changing existing code vs writing
| code from scratch. We have accumulated vast number of laws where
| making any change in the world is uphill battle. The advantage of
| places like China is that they we're able to throw away existing
| code quickly.
| asfarley wrote:
| Diana Moon Glampers, applied to infrastructure.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| Having lived in Shanghai during 2005-2012 and seeing the
| construction boom there, I noticed some differences immediately
| after arriving in the US. It's common to hear about
| transportation projects taking decades to expand a few stations
| here. Mean while, since the time I left the Shanghai subway
| station has opened 21 new lines composed of 516 stations.
|
| Certainly, the air/water was worse in China but workers also had
| to work much harder (later nights, weekends, etc). But perhaps
| most importantly, the government would waste no time in getting
| land that it needed, and it certainly wouldn't ask for your
| consideration if it needs to do construction on a Saturday
| morning.
|
| While I appreciate that there is an inherent trade off between
| environmental consideration and speed, I think the author makes
| it clear that it's reached comic proportions in the US. The
| article is short, but I think the main premise is overwhelmingly
| accurate: The system exists to protect the status quo.
|
| There's also the reliance of transportation agencies on
| consultants:
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/21/mbta-o21.html
| gernb wrote:
| I'm sure Japan is not at China's levels but in the time I lived
| there are I saw several lines get completely, several stations
| get rebuilt (A good example would be Shinagawa Station) and an
| 11km underground highway built. Meanwhile it's taken SF 10 plus
| years for SF to build a tiny 4 station line (the Central Line)
| and it's not done.
| dv_dt wrote:
| While acquiring the property takes more time in America, I
| can't help but notice once construction starts it also takes a
| ridiculously long time too. It really seems like the interests
| of the power brokers in various areas are far outstripping the
| interests of the utility to society in multiple areas in
| America.
| dixie_land wrote:
| > government would waste no time in getting land that it needed
|
| by blackmailing, intimidation, and literally murder by
| bulldozing houses with people in them when they refuse to leave
| qiskit wrote:
| > by blackmailing, intimidation, and literally murder by
| bulldozing houses with people in them when they refuse to
| leave
|
| That doesn't explain nail houses though...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china.
| ..
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| That explains them though.
| winrid wrote:
| Source?
|
| I have relatives in China that got paid to leave their house
| last year.
|
| They had actually just built it, but the local government
| offered enough to build 3 more, so they took it.
| dixie_land wrote:
| Here's one from NPR:
| https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/893113807/china-speeds-up-
| dri...
|
| and simple Google searches yield many results.
|
| Undoubtedly some people greatly benefited from the land
| purchase, when such offers are made. I've also heard of
| stories (friend of a friend kinda, I do not directly know
| one) of people actually getting rich (not middle class,
| like rich rich) by having properties in areas that the
| government happens to like. (more so in suburbs of big
| cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen)
|
| However the point is even one forced eviction is one too
| many and the people who come out better for it (good for
| them) does not justify the poor treatment of people who
| simply dare to say no to the communist party.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You don't get to simply say no to eminent domain in any
| functioning country in the world, and neither should you
| be able to. I don't see the problem as long as you are
| properly compensated.
| winrid wrote:
| Well, I've had cops break into my house in the US and
| mace my sister and I when we were little. So, I won't say
| I stand on much of a high ground here in the US. But yes,
| local governments in China should do better with this
| kind of thing.
| kortilla wrote:
| That's not the same thing at all unless the cops also
| stole your house and never let you return.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The cops don't steal your house, they pay you for it, and
| it happens in literally every country in the world.
| nosianu wrote:
| Like asset seizure?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/co
| ps-...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/09/01/police-
| seiz...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/0
| 6/s...
| vkou wrote:
| > However the point is even one forced eviction is one
| too many
|
| People get evicted all the time, for all sorts of reasons
| that may not be their fault. Why do you draw the line at
| eminent domain?
| White_Wolf wrote:
| Saying no to just block a public infrastructure project
| is just malicious. As long as people are paid for a new
| property and inconvenience it's fine. Nobody should be
| able to block a project that benefits the society as a
| whole. Communist party or not, a person should not be
| capable of blocking a project that benefits the whole
| country just because <insert random reason here>.
|
| Romania does have a lot of issues with motorway
| developments because of speciments like this. After the
| first major one that blocked the Bucharest-Constanta
| motorway for years, the gov't passed a law that allows
| them to just take the property and pay market prices. As
| it should be.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| I think this is a question worth asking. Should we let a
| small number of people hold hostage over public projects?
| dixie_land wrote:
| > Should we let a small number of people hold hostage over
| public projects?
|
| I think by phrasing the holdouts as "hold hostage over
| public projects" is misguided if not disingenuous. This is
| a common propaganda used by authoritarian regimes to paint
| anyone they don't like in a bad light: surely they're not
| victims of government brutality if they're "enemies of the
| common good."
|
| But if we accept we can discard one individual's (or a
| small group of individuals') rights, then it's not long
| before everyone's rights become disposable. That's how
| people like Putin and Xi justifies their aggression (surely
| I can kill millions of people in Taiwan if it stands in the
| way of "progress" of 1.3 billion mainlanders!)
|
| P.S. As someone as pointed out, this is not a China/US or
| eastern/western issue. The U.S. has its own fair share of
| blatant violation of private rights too.
|
| But my point is that it's wrong when U.S. does it, it's
| wrong when China does it, it's wrong when anyone does it
| and it shouldn't be something we aspire to.
| jdasdf wrote:
| Offer to pay them what they want.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's an awful solution. Some small fraction of people
| in the way shouldn't get an enormous multiplier over
| market value, in some kind of giant prisoner's dilemma
| auction.
|
| If you offer the _group_ a certain percentage of market
| value, that could work out well. But unanimous consensus
| is not a reasonable way to get land for big public
| projects.
| kortilla wrote:
| > an enormous multiplier over market value
|
| "Market value" requires willing participants. If a seller
| doesn't want to sell at a particular price and the good
| isn't fungible (which housing is not), they aren't
| getting market value by being forced to sell at a price
| determined solely by the buyer.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Do you want me to say "taxable value*" instead?
|
| If you think it's impossible to assess the value of a
| property, the whole legal world disagrees with you.
|
| And yeah, the point of eminent domain is to force the
| sale on unwilling participants. If used sparingly and
| without discrimination, it's a good power, and part of
| living in a community that will undertake community
| projects.
|
| * the underlying assessed value, excluding artificial
| caps like prop 13
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It seems difficult to asses land value when it seems to
| have inflated 100% in 10 years.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Well market value plus some premium for inconvenience of
| not being able to choose sounds fair, perhaps FMV + 20%
| or perhaps up to 30%. These are large amounts of money so
| perhaps the premium should be an absolute not percentage
| value.
|
| FMV +10% for tolerance of estimate of FMV + 6 months
| average salary in the area would be generous enough to
| recompense the hassles of relocating.
|
| Remember surrounding society, that is hundreds of
| thousands of other people, benefit from the
| infrastructure being developed.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Do you say that applies to pipeline projects too?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That depends on how you're defining "small number of
| people". If a big fraction of the people in the way of a
| segment object, then that's probably not small. If a
| couple family farms object, then that's not very
| important.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| Oil gas pipelines? Sure. The reason I say this is because
| it seems to me that democracy is a system designed to
| favor the majority over the minority. So why not for
| public projects?
| nouveaux wrote:
| This is a good question. Where do we draw the line at human
| rights? Should land ownership be a protected right? It
| would cost a lot less if the government just took the land
| instead of paying fair market value.
|
| It would also cost a lot less if we forced all criminals to
| work for free (though right now, they practically work for
| free). The problem is that we would quickly run out of
| criminals since there are so many projects that needs work.
| We could just randomly enslave people to do work for free.
|
| Enslaving citizens wouldn't be fair or popular with the
| citizens of our country. Another option is to use our
| military might to subjugate other countries and bring them
| over to work, say to work on our farms. That would allow
| for very high gdp growth.
|
| So where do we draw the line and who gets to draw that
| line?
| imtringued wrote:
| Maybe you should be a sane human being and tax the
| privileges that land ownership provides.
| [deleted]
| rcpt wrote:
| Bringing up Henry George is easy mode in these threads
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| We draw the line where there's an obvious problem. For
| every reductio ad absurdum looking at slavery and trying
| to put down another country's citizens at the benefit of
| our own, there is a counterexample looking at how
| ridiculous it is we have ultra-rich deciding their little
| game of looking at numbers going up and people living in
| McMansions just to show off being more important than a
| giant middle class unable to afford housing where their
| grandfathers and grandmothers could living a lower class
| lifestyle.
|
| Surely somewhere we can accept that a bunch of wealthy
| playing the investment game on very limited resources
| instead of the realm of producing solutions or
| improvements isn't the way to further society as a whole.
| We don't have to put down those already in the ditches
| further, we got a swat of people above to look at.
| nouveaux wrote:
| I think we both agree that we shouldn't be protecting the
| wealthy. I just think we should do it another way. IMO,
| high housing prices exist because of the lack of supply.
| I think it's possible for the government to increase
| housing stock and have reasonable property rights.
| xvector wrote:
| There is a balance between letting a single individual
| stall progress for all of society, and respecting human
| rights. A single individual certainly should not be able
| to block the construction of a public transit system that
| will bring jobs and improve the livelihood of millions.
| At the same time, the government can provide reasonable
| alternative accommodations or pay market value (not
| decided by the individual in question.)
|
| Eliminating NIMBYism and individuals' selfish obstinacy
| does not need to lead to a global hegemony enslaving
| billions.
| amrocha wrote:
| "Property rights" are not human rights, stop conflating
| the 2.
|
| And the absurd examples you tried to come up with are
| literally things the US is doing today, you're just being
| sinophobic.
| [deleted]
| patentatt wrote:
| Your comment about the Shanghai subway sparked my curiosity.
| Wikipedia says the Shanghai metro consists of 396 stations
| across 19 lines, and has been operating since 1993. How does
| that square with "since [2012] the Shanghai subway station has
| opened 21 new lines composed of 516 stations"? Especially when
| Wikipedia also says "During Expo 2010 the metro system
| consisted of 11 lines, 407 km, and 277 stations." Seems like
| they opened 119 stations and added 8 new lines since 2012.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| Parent misspoke. It's been 21 lines consisting of 516
| stations in total since inception (really since 2000 since
| there was a long lull of little activity in the 90s). The
| discrepancy in lines comes from whether you count certain
| rail-based transportation lines as part of the subway system
| or not. The discrepancy in subway stations is mainly due to
| whether you count interchange stations as single stations or
| multiple stations. I think the former is the one that is
| usually quoted for other subway systems in the world so makes
| more sense (so ~400 is probably the more appropriate number
| of stations to state).
|
| I also wonder if the Wikipedia article may be out of date?
| IIRC there were some new stations added in the last few
| months. But even if that were the case it's just a couple of
| stations, so the numbers should still be close.
|
| More impressive to me is the pace of construction in smaller
| cities which have also been rapidly building out subway
| systems (e.g. Hangzhou comes to mind, getting around Hangzhou
| on public transportation has _drastically_ improved in the
| last five years, likewise I 've personally seen the same
| immense improvements for Harbin).
| watersb wrote:
| > _The discrepancy in lines comes from whether you count
| certain rail-based transportation lines as part of the
| subway system or not._
|
| Ah, that makes some sense.
|
| Like in San Francisco, there is the regional BART light
| rail, but also there is the hybrid bus/rail Muni metro
| transit for local service.
|
| https://www.sfmta.com/muni-transit
|
| https://www.bart.gov
| coolso wrote:
| rubicon33 wrote:
| The problem is the massive bureaucracy / government we have
| today. Massive swaths of government workers literally being
| payed to sit all day in zoom calls on "meetings" talking about
| approving projects and budgets, from local infrastructure to
| schools, to medical, etc.
|
| Source: Live with someone with said job. See them in meetings
| all day long, accomplishing nothing other than getting their
| paycheck.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's not the massive bureaucracy. It's that civil service-
| style systems (as in China) and pay-for-performance are both
| basically illegal in the federal government.
|
| Big government is not necessarily flawed, but big govt as we
| have structured it is just incompetent.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| My department has four managers that do this and I work in a
| private hospital. We've been asking for a break room for two
| years.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm curious if it's not time to solve the chronic
| manageritis in large workplaces. It pains me to know end
| that resources are wasted on babbling while people doing
| the work are on their knees.
| tchock23 wrote:
| It's funny. My partner has a government job and works much
| harder than anyone I know in private industry (as do her co-
| workers). Also, it is a better organized place to work than
| most enterprises I've consulted for.
|
| Goes to show YMMV and it's not worth making sweeping
| generalizations about a sector of workers.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is possible to work very hard without doing anything
| worth doing.
| vkou wrote:
| And it's possible to work very hard, doing something
| that's very worthwhile for your employer, but very
| detrimental to society.
| tchock23 wrote:
| True, but is that unique to government jobs? I know
| plenty of people shuffling papers around in private
| industry and academia.
| chii wrote:
| In private industry, the owner(s) takes on the losses of
| such people who get paid doing nothing. With enough
| losses, the owners will run out of capital and go bust.
|
| In public service (and academia i guess, which is often
| funded publicly), the "owners" don't get a choice and
| have to eat a loss - it's not as if i can stop paying my
| taxes. A gov't does not go bust.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Yes, environmental bureaucracy like the article is
| focusing on is only one of many which have continuously
| strengthened as they circled the wagons around the status
| quo more and more in so many other areas besides just
| public works projects.
|
| But public works projects in particular are handled by
| government bureaucracies, one of the least accountable
| kind.
|
| Environmental is just one of the obvious bureaucracies
| that was not there for the older ones of us who remember
| what life was like before the EPA was formed.
|
| Lots of other little bureaucracies had already been
| established decades before anyone living at the time had
| been born. People were just expected to accept those
| because no remaining person could say whether things were
| better or worse beforehand. It could often be seen that
| they were still in the relatively flat portion of a
| multigenerational exponential growth curve, and so it
| goes.
|
| Remember people have to build things and after the
| mid-1970's there was no more money to do that with
| inflation.
|
| Before then people who worked manufacturing or
| construction jobs in the US had never been getting ahead
| at all very often unless they were unionized, but this
| was the straw that broke that by driving manufacturing to
| other countries and construction to unskilled workers
| from other countries.
|
| It was strong enough to break the unions so you can
| imagine the devastating effect it had on everyone else.
|
| At this time it was still accepted that an American
| manufacturing worker, maybe with overtime, would be
| earning more than an average office worker since it was
| just plain harder work. University education was not yet
| common enough to be structured into the systems as very
| much of a ticket to higher pay.
|
| And government office workers had always had to accept
| lower pay than their counterparts in the private sector,
| since less skill & work was actually required and these
| were the candidates who couldn't quite get hired by
| bureaucracies like Sears or big insurance companies.
|
| Either way the need for people sitting in offices
| accomplishing nothing can spiral out of control, even
| without the occasional effort to consume increasing
| yearly budgets or risk losing the yearly increases. And
| government workers got the upper hand with earlier
| formalization of university requirements for so many
| positions, at the same time the private sector had so
| many challenges to survival of its revenue streams that
| the governments did not face.
|
| By now this trend has government workers making more
| money than their counterparts in the private sector, plus
| having more institutional power dedicated to preservation
| of the institution itself rather than what the
| institution should actually stand for. Much less what the
| institution should accomplish if that means physically
| building something.
|
| Stagnation became the acceptable foundation on which to
| instead build virtual structures ever more resilient to
| change.
|
| At one time the people who built stuff had generations of
| bulding legacy and knew how to do it already, they were
| the backbone of society, and got paid more than the
| people in the offices who shuffled the papers which
| expedited the process.
|
| Now the people in the offices who don't know how to build
| stuff get paid more than the unskilled workers who try to
| do it anyway, after the bureaucrats finally finish
| shuffling the papers needed to delay or derail the
| project according to somebody's agenda in a chain of
| command that didn't previously exist when things could
| actually get done only a few decades ago. Bureaucrats can
| be most skilled at building more bureaucracy, and they
| are good at it after making multigenerational efforts, so
| that's what they more often build.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Of course "sweeping generalizations" aren't always right.
| That's obvious.
|
| It doesn't mean that generalizations themselves aren't
| worthwhile, and sometimes accurate enough to frame a
| problem. Exceptions to the rule shouldn't completely
| invalidate the rule.
|
| In this case I also never said anything about them working
| hard per se. No doubt they work very hard, but seem to
| accomplish nothing. Working hard, not smart.
| ip26 wrote:
| Yeah, this framing was taken in a piece a few years ago about
| the failure to revitalize a rail project [1] in New York, which
| ultimately pinned the blame on tipping the balance too far in
| favor of private property rights. A single person/holdout can
| grind a project valuable to millions to a halt. It's the most
| compelling explanation I've read.
|
| In short, if private property has absolute veto power, you can
| never get big public projects done. (This is why eminent domain
| exists) There's a balance between private property rights &
| public good; in the times of great public works, the public
| good was given more sway, while recently private property
| rights have been given more (and stifled public works).
|
| [1]: I think it was
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
| slothtrop wrote:
| New York has an interesting History of projects being
| ramrodded through dubious means (at the expense of the
| public) under Robert Moses in the early 20th Century, I
| imagine stops were put in place to prevent that from
| occurring again.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Is there any other way to actually get things done in such
| a dense area?
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It's common wisdom to say these projects were dubious.
| There's no question they came with costs---but would we
| rather not have the BQE, Cross Bronx Expressway, or
| Brooklyn Battery Tunnel? I don't think we would. It's easy
| to fantasize about public transit alternatives but even
| with Robert Moses NYC is a significant outlier in the US
| for public transit both in the city and in the region.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's a tail wagging the dog factor to the highway
| stuff. The FHA sealed the fate of those neighborhoods by
| cutting off the oxygen.
|
| I live in a small city that was carved up by redlining.
| My block was in the "yellow" zone, and the houses built
| after 1935 or so are very different than the houses on
| the next block, which is in the "green zone".
|
| Yellow = Italians and Greeks, 1 and 2 family small
| houses. Green = old money types, bigger houses on fancy
| lots.
| lupire wrote:
| Easy to say when your neighborhood wasn't the one
| destroyed.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| NYC is about change. If you want stability there's the
| whole rest of the country. I have no patience for people
| that want it both ways.
| DogOfTheGaps wrote:
| BQE and Cross-Bronx Expressway definitely not. Building
| highways through cities is extremely damaging and exist
| only to ferry suburbanites into and out of the city.
| Moses wanted to build a highway through Greenwich
| village. That would have been devastating for lower
| Manhattan. Intra-city Highways destroy the very vibrancy
| required for them to adapt and change.
|
| Brooklyn Battery Tunnel? That is a good project.
| Connecting different areas across bodies of water is
| good.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| That's ideology over common sense. Which suburbanites are
| being ferried in and out of the city over the BQE?
|
| Hint: what it connects is right there in the name.
| DogOfTheGaps wrote:
| Fort Lee, NJ to Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The Moses story is more nuanced than that. Read the Caro
| book.
|
| Ultimately the triumph of Moses was understanding the
| nature of power and making key friends and allies who
| helped him wield it. He got shit done. In the beginning,
| this was enormously beneficial - the state and city park
| systems, key bridges, and the framework of competent
| engineering that blunted the impact of the depression...
| New York was uniquely able to benefit from New Deal
| programs, because of Moses. We remember the exclusionary
| bridges of the Northern State Parkway, but forget that
| these highways broke the Dutch legacy of quasi-feudal great
| estates and baymen who kept the public from the seashore.
|
| The problem is that his acquisition of power transitioned
| from triumph to tragedy. His friend Gov. Smith gave him
| ironclad control of key public authorities - he held 100
| different jobs at one point. As in all cases, unchecked,
| unlimited power corrupts. Only Gov. Rockefeller was able to
| break the guy, and only because his family was his bankers.
| Moses' empire ultimately saved NYC, as the subways would
| have been bankrupt without the toll bridges supporting the
| rail system.
|
| Today, New York has a murky soup of laws that give certain
| unions a lot of power, and require that projects are bid
| out with multiple prime contractors, etc. Between that and
| the political dynamic from the transportation system being
| controlled by the State (the governor controls the MTA) and
| the complex home rule of NYC, it's a complicated mess.
|
| That said, NY is more functional than most other places
| when it comes to transit.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I read the same book you did and your impression of him
| is too generous. Moses lied, cheated, and strong-armed
| his way to "getting things done".
| throwaway290 wrote:
| IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and why
| can't the government work with them (are those holdouts being
| paid or otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized?
| do they have pathological distrust to the government, how can
| that be worked out? etc.) rather than the governments not
| having the crazy power to just do anything they want if they
| think it is "public good". The latter is horrifying, I fail
| to see how it is ever desirable (even if it occasionally
| leads to positive outcomes, it cannot be trusted to do so
| reliably).
| ip26 wrote:
| There's a host of problems. A simple example is a holdout
| who sees they are the only remaining obstacle to a project,
| and demand ten million dollars for a fifty thousand dollar
| plot of land the government needs for the project. A very
| capitalist mindset! But poison to public works. There's no
| "working with" someone who thinks they are sitting on a
| winning lottery ticket.
|
| Another simple problem is that of guarantees. If the
| government is certain to be able to secure the land in a
| reasonable timeframe, they can structure the whole project
| on top of that certainty, planning from start to finish,
| establishing financing, signing contracts... If acquisition
| is an open-ended negotiation in which the holdout can
| linger for decades, either nothing can be done until every
| last square foot of land is secured, or else you risk
| suspending everything halfway (very expensive).
| imtringued wrote:
| This problem wouldn't exist with a land value tax because
| he would get a $200k tax bill every year (2% LVT).
| notahacker wrote:
| It's not that simple when the plot of land is developed,
| because you can't build an expressway without also buying
| whatever structures sit on that land, which aren't
| rateable for an LVT and may genuinely be worth much more.
| Holdouts argue the lot is the same low value land it
| always has been for LVT purposes but they want $10m to
| sell their beautiful ancestral family home that sits on
| it...
|
| A traditional property tax rating encompassing the value
| of the lot and everything that sits on it works much
| better for compulsory purchases.
| retrac wrote:
| > why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the
| government work with them (are those holdouts being paid or
| otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized? do they
| have pathological distrust to the government, how can that
| be worked out? etc.)
|
| A highway extension here in Ontario was blocked for years
| by homeowners who, as far as I can tell, just didn't want
| their community bulldozed to put in a highway. An entirely
| reasonable position to hold, regardless of whether the
| highway is to the public good. There is no reasonable
| incentive you could give to get some people to give up land
| they have been on for their whole lives. When one is
| talking hundreds of properties as in the case of that
| extension, you will absolutely find a stubborn person who
| will say no.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| In this particular example can't the holdout see how it
| would benefit the economy (as roads do) that they're part
| of, possibly reduce emissions into the environment they
| live in, etc.?
|
| If the government provides them with replacement
| property, why would they object so strongly?
|
| And doesn't the fact that everyone else agreed make them
| consider that perhaps it would be public good for some
| reason?
| 7steps2much wrote:
| > In this particular example can't the holdout see how it
| would benefit the economy (as roads do) that they're part
| of, possibly reduce emissions into the environment they
| live in, etc.?
|
| Zou are trying to use logic here, but the simple truth is
| that a lot of times people don't care about that. They
| are emotional beings. They simply do not care about any
| of the points you made, they want to keep their
| house/property/whatever. They don't care.
|
| Smoking is bad for people and the people around them, yet
| many don't quit. Wearing masks is great for the public
| good, yet many do not. One could go on about vaccines and
| other topics but the simple truth is: They do not care.
|
| That is why laws exist to take these properties from
| them. If they are absolutely opposed to the offers made,
| unwilling to sell and can't be moved then you take the
| property, hand them what others agree is a fair price (or
| at least the fairest they can come up with), and go
| through with it anyways.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I disagree that this is acceptable status quo. Emotion
| has roots, and people can be reasoned with. Lack of care
| is a threat to democracy.
|
| It looks like if underlying issues are resolved, then
| there would not be a need for such overreach.
| 7steps2much wrote:
| Please don't miss understand, i do agree with you. In an
| ideal world one should be able to reason with others,
| people should care about their surroundings and the
| society that they are a part of.
|
| However, in the world that we live in you also need to
| keep in mind that we want to get things done. In my
| experience things such as eminent domain are only used
| after quite a while of failed negotiations.
|
| The simple truth is that we expect our institutions and
| governments to get things done. We want them to
| eventually build a road, not argue with people for years
| on end whether or not they should sell their property. In
| many jurisdictions around the world eminent domain or
| similar is also tied to court proceedings, making it
| truly the last option.
|
| The current status quo is a compromise nobody is happy
| with:
|
| * People expect governments to actually get thing done *
| Some people cannot be reasoned with in a timeframe that
| is acceptable to society
|
| So they came up with the easiest solution: Negotiate with
| them until it's clear they won't budge or it takes too
| long, then force it your way.
|
| If there was a way to get everyone to see reason in a
| reasonable timespan we might not need the status quo.
| However, as of right now nobody around the world has
| achieved that. If anyone manages to do so then we might
| be able to get rid of things like eminent domain, but
| until that's the case we are stuck with it, for better or
| worse.
| retrac wrote:
| If you don't feel strong emotional attachment to some
| particular property, I'm not sure I can explain it to
| you. There is no monetary value that can replace the
| living room where you watched your kid take their first
| walk, or the field where your grandparents are buried, if
| you happen to be that kind of person.
|
| An analogy: why not make taxes voluntary? (Eminent domain
| is conceptually most similar to taxation, after all.)
| Surely after you explain that it's to the public good,
| you won't have any holdouts, right?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I understand emotional attachment to property. I also
| understand that nothing is permanent and it may be
| necessary to let go.
|
| Since I was a child, family moved and sold previously
| used estate/flats more than once. Yes, there are memories
| and my grandparents built and lived there. Now other
| people build and live there. Life goes on.
|
| We are not talking about somebody persuading you to sell
| your property to satisfy their fancy. It is a cause that
| will have positive effects on the region and the country.
|
| And you personally, meanwhile, get a free chance to move
| and find an even better spot that doesn't have the
| shortcomings of the previous one. I recall that's sort of
| how USA started.
|
| Framing emotional attachment as an overriding motive and
| purpose strikes me as an excuse for complacency, aversion
| to change, laziness.
| throwaway283929 wrote:
| The cool part of that story is where they seized property
| with eminent domain, built the toll highway with tax
| money, then sold the whole thing at a discount to an
| international conglomerate, to be a toll highway for the
| next 100 years.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| What's wrong with toll highways. The tax money is still
| needed to build it, the company operating it isn't making
| so much money as to negate that, and eventually the money
| is replenished through usage fees. By making it a toll
| way, the people who use it will pay for it eventually,
| and it discourages low value usage of the road.
| fpig wrote:
| Usually they're trying to profit by being the last
| holdouts, hoping they will be able to get more money this
| way. It may not be worth paying everyone 3X, but if
| everyone except one person agreed to X, then paying the
| last holdout 3X is not a huge expense and gets the project
| going. At least that's what they're hoping for.
|
| There was a case in my city where they wanted to build a
| shopping mall and offered the people who owned homes on the
| plot a deal. Only 1 person refused and asked for much more
| money (in his words "Who accepts the first offer??"), and
| since this plot wasn't critical for the project, they never
| even contacted him after that and just built it without his
| plot: https://www.vecernji.hr/media/img/38/97/a9f29b9fca446
| 02d5b41... (the lone house in the "corner"). He got mad,
| sued them, etc.
|
| This was a private company; I'm not sure why the government
| would have this problem, since they can exercise eminent
| domain for stuff like infrastructure, it's literally why it
| exists.
| lupire wrote:
| Because government abuses its power, and the US still as
| a bit of anti-totalitarian DNA.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_Londo
| n
| jolux wrote:
| > why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the
| government work with them
|
| Because if the government can't exercise eminent domain
| then those people are incentivized to extract maximum value
| from the government over the land. They may not want to
| sell it, or they may charge an exorbitant price.
| imtringued wrote:
| It's kind of strange how the law recognizes that land
| ownership is a source of power yet does absolutely
| nothing against it. If the government has to override the
| law, just imagine how much they distort the private
| economy, where there is no easy way out. So many
| apartments couldn't be built and so many people could not
| be housed.
| jolux wrote:
| Land value tax would solve this.
| narag wrote:
| _IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and
| why can 't the government work with them..._
|
| I suspect the legal system is one of the reasons. Judges
| and precedents carry more weight than in other countries,
| where parliaments can just pass a law that's unassailable.
|
| On the other hands I read here news about authorities
| summarily seizing (not just freezing) assets from people
| that are only accused. That's unconceivable in other
| jurisdictions.
| parineum wrote:
| > In short, if private property has absolute veto power, you
| can never get big public projects done. (This is why eminent
| domain exists)
|
| I wish they'd modify the language of eminent domain to reward
| double, triple or even quadruple market rate. I want people
| being _happy_ to have their property seized.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| This would be a great way for corrupt politicians to funnel
| large sums of real estate money to their friends and donors
| (or to trigger wild speculation bubbles anywhere people
| think eminent domain is likely to be applied).
|
| I do think these payouts need to be well in excess of
| market rates (in order to properly compensate people for
| inconvenience / related expenses / opportunity costs, but
| tripling or quadrupling property values is a bit far
| fetched.
| tinco wrote:
| You could make it conditional on some things. The goal is
| to compensate for discomfort, not to compensate lost
| income. So you could say you only compensate primary
| residences and self operated businesses, both occupied
| for 3+ years.
|
| Or you could approach it from a different angle and
| compensate each resident and business operators with
| $10,000 relocation cost (in addition to buying their
| property with a 5% extra). That has the added benefit of
| eliminating more of the market price risk from
| projections.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I think the optimal course is to have a very painful
| eminant domain process that pays a crappy above market
| rate so that government is incentivized to offer actual
| market rate (big project wants your land so market rate
| is vastly increased as a result). I have seen corn fields
| sold for millions because a state college wanted it for a
| new campus. The market rate was well under $1MM. For that
| land eminant domain would have been a nightmare because
| of the particular politics and unimproved nature of the
| site....so they had to offer actual market rate...which
| is the rate demanded of someone when they know it's a
| monied developer that wants it.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Whatever, pork-barrel corruption is already an everyday
| part and parcel of our system. Paying 2x-4x for some
| piece of land is still waaaaaaaay cheaper for society
| than drowning in decades-long quagmire while
| infrastructure falls apart everywhere.
|
| Any time you have a massive building project you're going
| to get corruption. If you can't even eminent domain it
| through useful areas, you're just going to get developers
| buying land in the middle of nowhere and selling it back
| to the government as the only remaining viable route.
| randbox wrote:
| >Paying 2x-4x for some piece of land is still waaaaaaaay
| cheaper for society than drowning in decades-long
| quagmire while infrastructure falls apart everywhere.
|
| Eminent domain is not only used to acquire owner occupied
| homes for infrastructure. In some cities it is used to
| purchase poorly maintained properties from slumlords.
|
| Landlords get what rent they can and don't invest
| anything in upgrades because they know they can cash out
| with the city government or public land bank. Promising
| to pay 2-4x may make the problem worse.
|
| If a building is nearly fully depreciated, and has $0
| building value, and the landlord invested closed to $0 in
| maintaining it, but the land is worth $200K, why should
| they get 4x whatever they claim the gamed comparables are
| and $800K from the public for doing nothing?
|
| Maybe 150% of the building replacement cost for owner
| occupied homes makes sense, but ideally absentee
| investors holding depreciated properties and vacant lots
| wouldn't get paid a dime for the land value.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Because otherwise it'd be a case of the perfect being the
| enemy of the good? That scenario would happen anyhow even
| at market rate.
|
| As a taxpayer I'd rather see some money wasted, and some
| progress being made, rather than nothing getting done
| ever.
|
| Corruption and waste are tolerable to some degree, IMO.
| "Government wastefulness" is too often code for not
| letting the government do anything at all.
|
| I just don't think our current societal bottlenecks are
| due to a budget or GDP crisis. There is so much wealth
| locked away, I'd rather it be spent on public works even
| if it means losing a few cents on the dollar to
| corruption along the way.
|
| It's not like the private sector is risk free, or that
| the government doesn't waste money on wars and
| questionable foreign aid already.
|
| There is such a backlog of infrastructure to build,
| whether roads and bridges or prisons and schools and
| climate change mitigation or renewables or nuclear... we
| gotta do something about that. If that means a slumlord
| getting rich, I guess it's a cost of doing business?
|
| Or what's a better alternative?
| DennisP wrote:
| I used to know a former state senator, who would say "the
| road to riches in this state is cheap land and cheap
| politicians."
|
| She had a background in forensic accounting, was
| instrumental in getting a particular state senator
| convicted of corruption, and lost the support of the
| state party in the process.
| technobabbler wrote:
| > She had a background in forensic accounting, was
| instrumental in getting a particular state senator
| convicted of corruption, and lost the support of the
| state party in the process.
|
| You point out a different, and arguably way more
| important, problem in our politics: we have no real
| pathway for domain experts to become powerful
| representatives and provide meaningful oversight. Instead
| you just have corrupt lawyers vouching for other corrupt
| lawyers, writing corrupt laws and appointing corrupt
| judges, all with the active approval and participation of
| the two major parties. It's just evil all up and down the
| chain.
| zdragnar wrote:
| That is an incredibly easy way to waste money.
|
| Political donor: Hey Mr. Politician, I am going to buy some
| massive apartment complexes. Do me a favor and put a road
| through them, would you?
|
| Politician: Sure thing, there's an election coming up and I
| do so love helping out our citizens! _holds out hand to
| receive wads of donations_
| p20z wrote:
| The current model enables the same behavior and makes it
| harder to track. Stalled projects have ongoing costs that
| make the project developers real money in exchange for no
| real effort. The same donor simply says "hey mr
| politician, give my company the exclusive contract and
| never mind that my aunt owns a building in our way. I'll
| only charge you 30% for each year we are stalled."
|
| We burn money on these projects either way. A good
| windfall to property owners gives regular families a
| chance at enjoying some profits... and makes donors who
| block progress just a little easier to track!
| technobabbler wrote:
| This is in fact how many projects get built today, even
| without eminent domain.
| zdragnar wrote:
| If graft is a problem, the answer should not be "make
| graft easier and more common"
| technobabbler wrote:
| Graft is just one problem out of many though. Lack of
| public investment in public institutions, I'd argue, is
| another, bigger problem.
|
| I'd like to see graft tackled by more competitive
| elections (multi-party, ranked-choice, easier voting
| processes, etc.) rather than simply gutting the
| government so it can't do anything at all... I think the
| conservatives call that starving the beast?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
|
| That just puts government in a death spiral and drags
| huge swaths of society down with it.
|
| By comparison, a small degree of graft is an inefficiency
| inherent in any large organization. As a taxpayer or
| customer, it doesn't necessarily matter to me whether $20
| of my $100 goes to a politician's vacation home or the
| CEO's yacht, as long as the shit gets built effectively.
| If it gets to $50 or $80 of that $100 though... yeah,
| shit's broken.
| scarface74 wrote:
| What happens historically that if a government has a choice
| between destroying wealth in a minority neighborhood or
| destroying wealth in a non minority neighborhood, it's
| usually the minority neighborhood.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Given how the sheer amount of money wasted when even one
| property owner holds out, it shouldn't be terribly
| difficult to justify a serious premium on the amount paid
| to those whose property is seized. In most cases I imagine
| it's just a small part of the overall cost of the project.
| icelancer wrote:
| Exactly. "Market rate" is ridiculous, and justifiably
| private property owners should be able to hold out sine
| market rate doesn't factor in switching costs, both
| financial and emotional.
|
| I think 3x market rate is a decent starting place.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I think the amount paid should be based on the average
| market rate of properties where the person must move to
| have the same commute and amenities. If the government
| wants to destroy the poorest area, at least folks there
| can move somewhere nicer without much inconvenience.
| z1nc wrote:
| Then the important thing is that a process of weighing those
| rights/costs/benefits and so on exists. e.g., if they needed
| to tear down a couple of apartment buildings and disrupt
| hundreds of folks, I could see an argument against that. But
| for just one guy? Eh...
|
| ---
|
| That article has a lot of disturbing things in it- 200 extra
| workers (that even the union guys said weren't needed),
| inflated costs, low competition driving up bids, gifts given
| to government officials from contractors, and so on.
|
| This bit is the most concerning:
|
| _"Is it rigged? Yes," said Charles G. Moerdler, who has
| served on the M.T.A. board since 2010. "I don't think it's
| corrupt. But I think people like doing business with people
| they know, and so a few companies get all the work, and they
| can charge whatever they want."_
|
| If you gotta play semantics on whether you're in a rigged
| system or a corrupt one...
| nouveaux wrote:
| "an inherent trade off between environmental consideration and
| speed"
|
| It's not just environmental consideration. Speed also
| incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt
| behavior. Evergrande is a great example of speed. Banks in
| China made the same mistakes that banks in US made in 2008. If
| banks in China had tight regulations for the last 20 years,
| real estate growth would be significantly hampered.
|
| China should be given credit in that their leaders learned from
| other countries and leveraged their population size to grow
| with incredible speed. However, I would argue that China's rise
| to power has less to do with their efficiency and more to do
| with laws of growth. If we exclude Covid, I am willing to bet
| that China will not be able to sustain double digit growth ever
| again. In fact, I am willing to bet my house that when China
| achieves US's per capita GDP levels, China will never achieve
| double digit growth ever again.
| analyst74 wrote:
| > Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all
| sorts of corrupt behavior.
|
| Compare that with SF bay area politics, I don't think speed
| has any effect on corruption.
| oblio wrote:
| China will most likely never reach US GDP per capita levels.
| Japan or Germany or Sweden aren't.
|
| Maybe GDP per capita PPP levels, even though that's also
| debatable.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| Many have reached US levels of economic output per hour.
| The key difference is that while Europeans have opted for
| better work-life balance, Americans are increasingly worked
| to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about
| people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not
| even weekends.
|
| The other challenge is that many other countries are more
| aggressive about keeping resource usage to a minimal.
| Compare e.g. usage or resources, water, land and energy per
| dollar of GDP and the US is really high.
|
| European countries, Korea and Japan may not have as high
| GDP but is often on a far more sustainable path.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Is GDP per capita appropriate metric? Japan has higher
| median salaries than US does.
|
| How much of thay GDP is down to US being a global center
| of finance and location of corporate HQ of most gl9bal
| firms, pulling in wealth from across the world?
|
| Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top
| 0.1% of richest people?
|
| You may argue those things shouls not be remoced from
| GDP, but if we are discussing working life on an average
| person, this GDP number might not be reflective of it
| chii wrote:
| > Also how much of that GDP remains if you remove the top
| 0.1% of richest people?
|
| those richest people don't personally contribute that
| much to GDP (their companies they own do). Removing them
| would make not much difference - their spending might be
| 10x or may be even 100x the average person, but there's
| so few of them that barely worth mentioning. It's not
| like they eat more food than normal people, nor wear out
| cars more than normal people. A few yachts and fancy cars
| notwithstanding, GDP is a measure of output, not wealth
| accumulation.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Fair enough, but how is this discrepancy between wages
| and GDP explainable?
| chii wrote:
| Wages are the minimum people accept for their labour. GDP
| is a measure of productivity, which can increase with
| investment in plant and equipment (and tech via R&D).
|
| If a worker is more efficient, but every worker is also
| made more efficient (because of the equipment or tech),
| then their bargaining power doesn't grow with their
| productivity increase!
|
| The exceptions are where their individual output is
| higher - aka, skill. Tech workers getting higher wages is
| evidence of this. At some point, the number of tech
| workers would saturate as it is such a lucrative
| profession compared to many others - it's just the 2000
| dot-com pop caused a huge drop in enrollments in
| universities and the lack of graduates is still felt
| today imho.
|
| Meanwhile, a services industry worker still outputs the
| same amount of "work" as they've done before in yester-
| century (not much tech can improve their output). The pay
| for them have not really grown, because there's no room
| to grow. Only mandates like minimum wage increases cause
| it to grow, and those hardly come by.
| mrep wrote:
| > Japan has higher median salaries than US does.
|
| Where do you see that? Wikipedia says the US has 2x the
| median income PPP than Japan [0].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I'd honestly prefer the hard working ethic of Americans
| over lassie-faire hierarchical orthodoxy in EU. No one
| works to the bone, hard work is also rewarded. They
| _choose_ to do it. The ease of business is amazing.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I lived in the USA for 32 years, after growing up in the
| UK for 24. I don't see a "hard working ethic" in the USA.
| What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic
| optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent
| political change seriously and also empowers them to
| believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than
| today.
|
| Lots of people in the USA work to the bone. Maybe you
| don't work with them, or see them when and where they
| work, but many books and articles have been written by
| people who've been deep inside this phenomenon. "Nickel &
| Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich is a great example.
|
| Yes, entrepeneurialism is easy here, and that's a good
| thing. However, I refuse to believe that this requires
| the rest of the system to remain as it is, or that by
| itself it justifies the suffering of the majority of
| people who do not "make it".
|
| I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the
| USA. I have tried hard to to allow that to blind me to
| the fact that it was mostly luck, nor to the immense,
| unnecessary suffering that our economic and political
| system imposes on millions of people (even just within
| the country).
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > What I do see is a relentless, frequently unrealistic
| optimism that both diverts people from taking coherent
| political change seriously and also empowers them to
| believe that their lives will be better tomorrow than
| today.
|
| I disagree with your premises. I love the way things are.
| I do not agree with current progressive agenda, I stand
| by the old liberal values.
|
| > I should perhaps note that I did "make it" here in the
| USA.
|
| Sorry about your situation. I am an immigrant that came
| from a place I never want to go back, this land has given
| everything I asked for in return of honest, good day's
| work.
|
| Most importantly, I enjoy the freedoms that other nations
| do not grant.
| grog454 wrote:
| What is the difference between a "hard working ethic" and
| "work[ing] to the bone"?
| I-M-S wrote:
| One is a choice the other is not
| smegma2 wrote:
| Japan has better WLB than the US? Are you sure? This
| sounds very anecdotal.
|
| > Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There
| seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job,
| never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends.
|
| My counter: I don't know a single person working like
| this
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's two americas.
|
| You have the people upset that their big tech employer
| won't do their laundry anymore. Then you have the
| underclass of people who can lose everything if they get
| hurt or show up late for work a few times.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've heard a few like that. They are in the early years
| of founding a business, their day job is unpaid, the 2nd
| job is so they can eat, and theweekend job is more money
| to invest in the main one. The plan is in a few years the
| first job makes money and they quit the others.
|
| Or sometimes someone who is laid off in a downturn and
| works like that for a year while waiting for things to
| improve so they can return to their previous high
| spending lifestyle with lots of vacation to enjoy the
| toys they are now just able to make payments on.
| lupire wrote:
| "Early years of founding a business" is not a
| substitantial part of the population.
| bluGill wrote:
| Exactly. Most people only work one job. You hear stories,
| they are true, but they are the exception. Or they are
| about a problem unrelated to poverty. (Child support is a
| big one, courts are sexist in many cases)
| arvinsim wrote:
| Do you think it is because they need it?
|
| Or is it because hustle culture has become so normalized
| that people could not conceive of the alternatives?
| bluGill wrote:
| I am not passing judgement on people's life choices. I'm
| just observing what I see them do.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Jesus christ, it's like large parts of HN don't even
| realize people exist outside of their affluent west coast
| bubble.
| bluGill wrote:
| I know some poor people. They live in poor neighborhoods,
| and have little. However the vast majority are not
| working two jobs.
|
| Or maybe it doesn't occur to you that in the middle of
| the country it is possible to afford a (small!) apartment
| on minimum wage jobs. We hear stories about how high the
| cost of living is in CA, but it isn't that bad here.
| seibelj wrote:
| I've met quite a few executives at US companies who
| emigrated from Europe. At the high end, America kicks the
| shit out of Europe in every regard. The high end people
| create the new companies, and thus America has far more
| equity value than Europe, and new innovative companies,
| and cutting edge research, etc. etc. Europe might be
| better for the average person but the hyper successful
| generally opt to leave.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| We don't need the hyper-successful, certainly not the way
| you're defining them.
|
| In a society of 350 millions people that is vaguely
| capitalistic, there will always be people who "win big".
| The "high end" people are just the living manifestation
| of serendipidity. If it wasn't Bezos, it would have been
| someone else.
|
| Also, "the high-end people create the new companies" is
| almost complete BS. The mythology of the exceptional
| individual that dominates the USA promotes this story,
| but the reality is that successful companies are the
| result of the collaborative, cooperative efforts of many
| different people (many of them not "high-end"). A company
| like Amazon was created by a constellation of people with
| very different backgrounds, socio-economic status and
| intent.
| seibelj wrote:
| Disagree entirely. Yes, a company is an assemblage of
| people. No, the guy working the warehouse couldn't have
| built Amazon. Bezos is special talent.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Bezos is special talent.
|
| Having family wealthy enough to invest in his early
| business is a kind of talent I guess. As is being in the
| right place at the right time. If Bezos lost all of his
| money tomorrow he could never make it a second time.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Having followed what Bezos did and pushed as company
| culture, I disagree completely.
|
| I wouldn't want to work at Amazon (there are certainly
| better pay / stress jobs out there), but I believe the
| way their individual teams work is the key to success and
| what most large organisations get wrong. I just think the
| teams should get more bonuses / equity tied in their team
| success in order for it to be fair for team members. It's
| basically build-your-startup level of stress but you're
| working for Bezos.
|
| Similarly the general strategy of reinvesting in Amazon
| and spinning off AWS was just pure genius.
|
| There's a lot to learn from Bezos.
| seibelj wrote:
| Plenty of people can get investment. There is only one
| Amazon. If things are so easy, go do it yourself.
|
| Starting a company and growing it to the size of Amazon
| is extremely difficult. It doesn't happen by luck or
| happenstance. It takes highly skilled management in
| addition to market timing.
|
| Luck isn't what makes people successful. Hard working
| people put themselves out there and increase the
| opportunities for lucky events, but without the hard work
| and effort the luck wouldn't be able to happen.
|
| Looking at successful people and pointing out some
| advantage they have is just a coping mechanism. Assuming
| you don't have some disability, no one is stopping you
| from succeeding except yourself.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > It doesn't happen by luck or happenstance. It takes
| highly skilled management in addition to market timing.
|
| Market timing is just a euphemism for luck.
|
| > Luck isn't what makes people successful. Hard working
| people put themselves out there and increase the
| opportunities for lucky events, but without the hard work
| and effort the luck wouldn't be able to happen.
|
| Bullshit. Hard work _without_ luck is often just hard
| work.
|
| > Looking at successful people and pointing out some
| advantage they have is just a coping mechanism. Assuming
| you don't have some disability, no one is stopping you
| from succeeding except yourself.
|
| This just sounds like self-help seminar platitudes. I'm
| _recognizing_ Bezos had advantages lots of other people
| did _not_ have. He 's was a well off white male with
| connections in the US. He would be notable if he _didn
| 't_ have some manner of success.
|
| Discounting the luck of circumstances is foolish. Idolize
| Bezos for his business acumen but there's no need to
| white knight for him if someone points out he started off
| on second base when you're claiming he hit a home run.
| seibelj wrote:
| And a famous musician had parents with the means and
| ability to purchase lessons and encourage them to
| practice. I still say the musician should be respected
| and praised. We can play this game all day. Some will say
| no one does anything on their own, but I say creating
| Amazon is an incredible accomplishment worth of praise
| and study.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Starting a company and growing it to the size of Amazon
| is extremely difficult.
|
| That is almost certainly true. But what you don't get is
| that there are dozens (maybe many more) constantly
| striving to do just that. When some of them of succeed,
| why would you be surprised? Why would it be surprising or
| special when a system designed to cause people to strive
| for this kind of success actually results in it happening
| to some of them, and not to most of them? There's nothing
| remarkable about the fact of a particular corporation's
| success: there was always going to be a corporate
| success, just as there were always going to be way more
| corporate failures. That's how the system is designed.
| That's what it is there to do. It's not a reason to
| idolize or even respect those who happened to be on the
| winning team.
|
| Before you say much more, you should probably be aware
| that I was the #2 employee at Amazon.
| seibelj wrote:
| And I'm the CTO of a unicorn I helped build from nothing!
| We have different opinions yet lived similar experiences.
|
| I do respect and idolize the winners. Saying "someone
| would have done it if we didn't" is defeatist. No one
| does anything unless someone does it. So we respect the
| people who actually do it rather than critique from the
| sidelines. It's depressing to me that you were part of
| something amazing yet you view yourself as a replaceable
| cog and the success a meaningless byproduct of a system
| outside of your control.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Nobody within a particular human organization is a
| replaceable cog (well, at least that's an ideal that I
| think it is reasonable to aspire to, even if it's not
| technically true in a great many instances).
|
| But just as you shouldn't be surprised when you visit a
| forest that there are some really big trees, some not so
| big, and some dead trees _because that 's how forests
| work_, you shouldn't be surprised that when you survey
| the American corporate landscape, there are some huge
| successes, some moderate ones and lots of failures.
|
| Sure, there was something about that much larger tree
| that made it nearly twice the size of its neighbors. But
| it was just as likely to be luck of where it germinated,
| luck of when it germinated, and yes, perhaps some good
| genes. Still, the idea that it was all the genes and that
| we've just discovered the uber-tree is mostly absurd.
|
| And so it is with companies. The successful ones are most
| the product of an intersection of different kinds of luck
| with some necessary-but-insufficient features of their
| people. We've built a mythology in the USA that mostly
| all that matters is the nature of a few early founders
| (or perhaps the occasional turn-it-around later hire). I
| think this is demonstrably false. That doesn't make
| success a "meaningless byproduct of a system outside
| [your] control". It means that idolizing particular
| instances of success as being based on people distorts
| our understanding of how success actually happens (and
| how it doesn't).
|
| I believe in intrinsic motivation - especially having
| worked with Bezos for a little while - and I do not think
| that we should, as a society, be providing motivation to
| people through the promise of fame and fortune. This is
| typically something that distorts and misdirects human
| effort and imagination. I also don't believe that we
| _need_ to offer that motivation, at least certainly not
| to the extent that we currently do.
|
| To whatever extent Amazon is amazing, it is also a
| mixture of good and bad, and I strongly regret that as
| individuals our society tends to focus so much more on
| the good and ignores the bad (the media over the last few
| years have begun to rebalance this, but it needs to go
| much further).
| seibelj wrote:
| It is interesting to me to read your thought process. I
| still cannot disagree more.
|
| No one discovers a scientific breakthrough until they do.
| That breakthrough may have been an inevitable result of
| multiple independent teams working on it, the prior
| research hitting a certain point, technology advancing to
| provide the tools, and so on. Yet we praise the team that
| actually discovered it.
|
| Similarly I don't care if "an" Amazon was inevitable. It
| was Bezos that founded it and Amazon that did it. I am an
| individualist and I appreciate that we have superstars in
| all manner of art, academia, and business as well. These
| are what move society forwards. The moment I'm forced to
| start giving my stuff away to the collective is the
| moment I leave. I'm happy Bezos is rich as I'm happy
| sports stars and musicians are rich - it's great they
| made our lives better.
| oblio wrote:
| > I do respect and idolize the winners.
|
| Don't do that, it's toxic. Everything becomes about
| winning and losing and that's how you end up with an
| opioid epidemic.
| seibelj wrote:
| Is there no one on earth you respect, historical or
| current? Those are the "winners" in the context of my
| comment.
|
| Either you respect people who accomplished great things,
| or you don't. I choose to respect and appreciate the fine
| things created by hyper talented people.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Before you say much more, you should probably be aware
| that I was the #2 employee at Amazon.
|
| You popping up to disagree about how remarkable Amazon's
| success was is the most HN exchange I've seen since "did
| you win the Putnam"![1]
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| You could have been #2 at Amazon but I've seen plenty of
| companies to fail because their founders screw up the
| company.
|
| Saying Bezos just won is simply dishonest. His ideas and
| approach had an impact.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Saying Bezos just won is simply dishonest. His ideas
| and approach had an impact.
|
| If Bezos never existed, or chose to become a theoretical
| physicist,there would have been another company filling
| the niche(s) with some other founder who didn't screw up
| the company.
| lupire wrote:
| USAmerica's great successes are largely in wealth
| transfer from lower class to upper class, and selling
| vices. That's why GDP is so much higher than quality of
| life -- the economy is largely people paying each other
| to hurt each other.
| seibelj wrote:
| America's greatest success is the rule of law, stable
| republican government, and the protection of private
| property. America continues to outdo the rest of the
| world because it is better.
| oblio wrote:
| It's greatest success was in killing or driving off
| native populations or smaller groups of other settlers
| (French, Spanish, Mexican) to get 7 million sqkm of prime
| real estate only found to the same scale in Europe (where
| it's divided among 40+ countries) and China (surprise-
| surprise, the main rival).
|
| A place like Germany, for example, I find in no way
| inferior to the US, population wise, but it's
| geographically much more constrained and in much less
| defensible position.
| seibelj wrote:
| Plenty of native empires, such as the Aztecs and Mayans,
| enslaved, murdered, and worked to death numerous other
| groups of people, which are well documented in primary
| sources.
|
| The US did evil, as did the Germans in Africa during
| their colonial period, and so did African empires that
| sold their enemies into slavery.
|
| Nothing is black and white. Although many on HN like to
| pretend so.
| xvector wrote:
| I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as
| terribly in the US. The corners are simply cut slower,
| because everything here is done slower.
|
| For example, electronics built in the US are typically
| shittier than electronics built in China, despite taking
| significantly longer to build and employees being paid orders
| of magnitude more (as noted by companies like Apple, Purism,
| etc.)
|
| Within our culture in the US there is a clear and comically
| obvious problem of bureaucracy and red-tape. This doesn't
| really exist in software yet, but the day our government gets
| its claws into the software industry is the day that
| innovation in the US can be put to rest. (Well, it's already
| happening - if you try to create a software startup that
| processes user data, you are probably breaking tens of laws
| you don't even know exist.)
|
| There is also a cultural difference. One thing I have noticed
| when working with my Chinese coworkers is that they do not
| bullshit nearly as much as my other coworkers. They get
| straight to the point, deal in metrics and facts, and don't
| try to inflate their accomplishments. Maybe that's just my
| current work environment, maybe it's a cultural thing - I
| suspect the latter.
| nouveaux wrote:
| > "I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as
| terribly in the US."
|
| I would agree with you. The bay bridge had issues with the
| steel[0]. The millenium tower[1] also has corner cutting
| problems. The question is the frequency. I believe corner
| cutting happens far less in the US than say China.
|
| As a Chinese person in the US, I would bet dollars to
| doughnuts that people in China would prefer foreign
| products over Chinese ones across the board. The last time
| I was in China, my friends tell me that they prefer
| products from Korea over ones in China. The problem is the
| cost.
|
| > "Within our culture in the US there is a clear and
| comically obvious problem of bureaucracy and broken red-
| tape."
|
| People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-tape
| in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm
| beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the
| more efficient governments in the world:
|
| 1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow my
| government is so efficient that it's more efficient than
| the corporations in my country."
|
| 2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks,
| military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department,
| FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community
| college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they actually
| accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the world or
| near the top.
|
| 3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a
| democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/mystery-brand-new-bay-
| bridges-...
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/10/san-
| francisc...
| robinjhuang wrote:
| When's the last time you were back in China? That used to
| be the case, but increasingly less so. Especially after
| Trump's trade war. Chinese people I know proudly buy
| Huawei and Nio cars. Even American products that Chinese
| people love like iPhones and Tesla are produced in China
| now...
|
| Also 1. I don't think people generally say that.
|
| 2. CDC made a huge mess of the pandemic (eg not stocking
| enough PPE). USPS is in big financial trouble.
|
| 3. This is huge topic but I'm inclined to say US messes
| up as often as it succeeds. Afghanistan will have 22
| million people starving this year because of US
| sanctions. They promote democracy, but not human rights.
|
| But overall I think you're right to say the US government
| is one of the "more" efficient ones.
| vkou wrote:
| USPS is in big financial trouble because half the
| government is actively trying to kill it, by not allowing
| it to raise prices.
| nouveaux wrote:
| "USPS being in big financial trouble" should be
| considered a crazy idea. To me, it's like saying the
| "Senate" is in big financial trouble or the Federal
| Reserve is in big financial trouble. USPS should be a
| federal entity. They should be managed just like the
| State department.
|
| What the USPS accomplishes is amazing. For a few dollars,
| you can send anyone a letter or a package to anywhere in
| the United States. The amount of productivity and the
| improved standard of living they provide incredible.
| jamie_ca wrote:
| Not to mention a level pension funding obligations that
| no other government agency has to suffer through.
| seibelj wrote:
| I always find that argument hilarious because the USPS
| was required to actually have conservative, healthy
| funding for their pensions - something no other state or
| federal agency does! And this is supposedly a bad thing!
| Just look at Chicago for an example of unfunded pension
| liabilities - a ticking time bomb.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > They promote democracy, but not human rights.
|
| A point of contention: Democracy is the surest way to
| safeguard human right long term in a nation. Historically
| speaking, there isn't even a second place when it comes
| to other forms of rule operating effectively on the
| necessary timescales.
|
| Promoting democracy is promoting human rights the same
| way promoting exercise is promoting health and well-
| being.
| incompatible wrote:
| You'd have to define "democracy" in some meaningful way.
| Is Russia a democracy? Was Iraq under Saddam Hussein a
| democracy? Elections were held, he won about 100% of the
| vote. Is the US a democracy? The winner of the
| presidential elections doesn't always get the most votes,
| and is in practice obliged to be a member of one of only
| two parties.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| I think this might be true. But the USA is not simply a
| democracy. It's a liberal hegemony, and that brings a
| whole set of other problems.
|
| I believe that an objective look at US foreign policy
| shows that US always looks out for #1 (itself).
|
| It helped overthrow an elected socialist leader in Chile
| in 1973. It made up reasons to invade Iraq. It defended
| Kuwait, a monarchy. It interferes in other countries all
| the time. When the dictator supports US interests, it
| leaves them be. When a democratically elected government
| resists them, they try to tear it down.
|
| So I think what you mean is democracy is good for
| advancing human rights for CITIZENS of that country. The
| empirical evidence is not super strong for advancing
| human rights in general.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Democracy is far from the surest way to safeguard human
| rights. It's just a game of definitions that whenever a
| democracy commits atrocities, it retroactively stops
| being a democracy, even when the people are on board with
| it.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Or maybe they do actually stop being democracies before
| the bad stuff happens? Care to share an example?
|
| Literally all of the countries that have had continuous
| constitutions + liberal human rights (that is a long
| running government that hasn't violated its citizens
| rights) are democracies right now.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Right, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You're
| defining it as "a long-running government that hasn't
| violated its citizens rights". By this definition, you
| could exclude the United States as one of its minorities
| wasn't able to vote until recently. You're begging the
| question.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| That was a bad definition because I was painting with
| broad strokes an hard lines.
|
| Maybe this is a better way to phrase my statement: The
| countries that treat their constituents best are all
| democracies. Additionally, they tend to promote or retain
| rights better over time.
|
| The US, and most of Europe are great examples. It's not
| perfect correlation, likewise people drop dead running
| marathons sometimes, but the correlation between
| democracy and human well-being is very strong.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| > 1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow
| my government is so efficient that it's more efficient
| than the corporations in my country."
|
| Quite a few. This isn't unique to the US, and quite a few
| corporations do not drive themselves to bankruptcy being
| extremely inefficient or even malicious for multiple
| years. We've seen plenty of examples in the last few
| decades.
|
| > 2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks,
| military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department,
| FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community
| college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they
| actually accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the
| world or near the top.
|
| You could replace "the US" with any Western/Northern
| European country, Japan, Korea, Oceania, Canada and quite
| a few other countries and they would fit the bill pretty
| well, give or take a few aspects.
|
| > 3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a
| democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.
|
| Same as the above. The US isn't the only country
| maintaining a democracy. The US has also been leagues
| behind on several countries in some aspects for decades.
|
| Meanwhile, most of these European countries face the
| exact same problem the US will in the future if things
| continue the way they are. Doing things "better" or
| "best" is not a cop-out for letting problems continue to
| the point of a crisis. Housing in Europe is a prime
| example of this, where regulations are arguably hurting
| us more than they are helping, but the majority of the
| population still believes we'll be living in rundown
| apartments if we don't keep these regulations (often
| citing the US as 'evidence', ironically).
| boulos wrote:
| The Bay Bridge faults have non-trivially been blamed
| (rightly or wrongly is unclear) on Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy
| Industries Company who provided a lot of the materials
| [1]. The Wikipedia article doesn't talk about the steel
| itself (surprisingly!) but does mention they did the deck
| work, the automatic welds, and so on. There was plenty of
| blame to go around though.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacem
| ent_of_...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-
| tape in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm
| beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the
| more efficient governments in the world:
|
| In a lot of cases, I think US complaints about
| "bureaucracy and broken red-tape" are more a function of
| anti-government ideology. It's not like businesses don't
| have annoying bureaucracy, but the complaints tend to be
| selectively directed at the government, because for many
| people government is a boogeyman.
|
| For an example, take Google. Wouldn't it be light-years
| better if they had customer support that was as good as
| the the _worst_ DMV 's?
| bluGill wrote:
| Which DMV? I've been to several different offices in my
| life. Some were worse than Google, (you have a chance of
| your story getting noticed and Google helping), some were
| very nice and friendly.
| bregma wrote:
| Government processes tend to be open and accessible so
| people can see how they work (or don't). Large
| corporations are closed and secretive so out of sight,
| out of mind.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| No government is as efficient as corporations (hard to
| get anything done when you're eating doughnuts on tax-
| payers' money and you can't fail or be fired!) but I
| agree the us government is not the worst.
|
| If you want to see real bad go to some southern European
| country.
| csomar wrote:
| > USPS
|
| You certain? I used them a couple times and they are the
| most ridiculous postal carrier I've ever interacted with.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I can honestly say that many agencies of my goverent are
| more efficient than the private alternative.
|
| As far as pioneering human rights around the world, a few
| million dead innocents disagree. People who say the US is
| good at human rights always limit it to within their own
| borders. Internationally, the US has caused more death
| and destruction than almost any country.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all
| sorts of corrupt behavior.
|
| Slowness is surely even better for nepotism and corrupt
| behaviour.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| It creates more room for other problems too.
|
| More time for obstructionists to find footing, increased
| chance of loss of political will, and more opportunities
| for public opinion to sour among other things.
|
| While rushing isn't good, protracting the process is also a
| likely death sentence for the project in question.
| nouveaux wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this so if you can help me
| understand, I would appreciate it.
|
| From my understanding, one of the causes of slowness in US
| is waiting for bids. Government related work is required to
| open projects up for bids for a period of time, review all
| the bids and document the process. In many other countries,
| the project goes to the company with better relations to
| the project manager or the companies with the best bribes.
| _dain_ wrote:
| The longer something takes, the longer it is expected to
| take. Delays compound on themselves, it becomes harder to
| plan further into the future. Costs skyrocket. More
| opportunities for bad actors to enrich themselves.
| nouveaux wrote:
| Maybe. The way I see it, transparency and fairness takes
| far more time than nepotism and corrupt behavior. How
| would you suggest that the government be more fair,
| transparent and fast?
| bluGill wrote:
| Trying to do too much in one large bid instead of
| splitting out to smaller companies doesn't help either.
| taurath wrote:
| In the US bribery is just legal, and harder to access
| secondaryacct wrote:
| I live in China, I think the best way to summarise everything
| we do at all level is: the end justifies the means.
|
| Need to seize power ? Murder all members of the former power.
| Need to make poor peasants rich middle class ? Build entire
| cities, put them there, and done. Need to build a metro station
| ? Take the land, build it. Need to make Hong Kong a more
| physically integrated part of the country ? Build a gigantic
| bridge to Zuhai even if nobody actually need to use it.
|
| The problem ofc is that sometimes the means is more costly than
| the benefit of the end result, and also that the goal of the
| end result is never debated, but I suppose that will change
| eventually, once we've incurred too high a cost for too little
| a benefit overall.
| taylorhou wrote:
| Most people in general have a short term cost/benefit
| analysis period. What China seemingly does different is they
| have 10, 20, 50+ year plans which in the time horizon of
| their multi-thousand year history even seems short term.
|
| Your example of the bridge may seem like no one uses it today
| but most likely in the future, it will be used and the scale
| will tip towards it being vastly beneficial compared to its
| cost.
|
| When countries like the USA have an entire history (not
| including native americans) of ~300 years, planning anything
| for 30 years out seems relatively crazy in comparison.
|
| All about perspective.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I don't understand your point. The US may not be old, but
| European and other histories are taught. Meanwhile, how
| much impact do the war of the three kingdoms have on modern
| China?
| Archelaos wrote:
| Germany, with its 200,000 year history,[1] has for its
| transport infrastructure at least 15 year plans, which are
| only moderately legally binding. They are readjusted
| approximately every five years. New 15 year plans are being
| developed before the new ones expire, and there are is also
| some overlap between the plans. With this in mind, the
| current government has a transport infrastructure plan for
| 2040 on its agenda.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis
| Retric wrote:
| Trying to use a 50 year plan is also a weakness.
| Technologies developed between now and then will make many
| goals obsolete before their finished.
|
| China the county younger than the US. Linking the history
| as a monolithic entity is really propaganda more than
| anything else. They are sure trying to create a culturural
| identity across a country with multiple cultures and
| languages.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > China the county younger than the US. Linking the
| history as a monolithic entity is really propaganda
|
| If you know anything about Chinese mentality and how it
| deeply affect all level of its society, you'll know that
| it didn't start from 1949. While the government initially
| tried to suppress China's historic roots in 1960s and
| 1970s to install a communist utopia, it failed miserably,
| and they have stopped trying since and embraced it.
|
| As it stands, the first statement quoted is hilarious.
| Retric wrote:
| People defiantly get taught to make such connections and
| people therefore do feel a connection. But all that
| proves is propaganda works.
|
| It's no more accurate to trace China's history through
| prior empires covering it's approximate borders as it is
| to it through the British empire which ruled some of it's
| current territory, subjugated them, and still has a huge
| influence on current culture. The obvious reason to do so
| is to suggest a shared cultural identity.
|
| Even just trying to pick which empires to include as
| Chinese is completely arbitrary.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri_66ztYa5o.
| technobabbler wrote:
| > Trying to use a 50 year plan is also a weakness.
| Technologies developed between now and then will make
| many goals obsolete before their finished.
|
| It's not that simple. If something changes within the 50
| years (and it certainly will), they can pivot away and
| work on something else.
|
| It's more that they have a relatively unified,
| authoritarian government with absolute power and no
| external checks and balances.
|
| At our other extreme, we have a two-party deadlock
| stretching back decades, and every major policy gets
| turned back after 4-8 years when the other party regains
| power. It's impossible to plan or build for the future
| that way.
|
| We used to be able to send people to the moon, develop
| nuclear power, build interstates and dams, win not just
| wars but hearts and minds, rebuild Germany and Japan...
| and now... we can't even evacuate Afghanistan, can't stop
| our citizens from being so pissed off they storm the
| capitol, can't do anything about climate change, can't
| have a sane discussion about educational curricula, can't
| maintain infrastructure, can't keep our people off the
| streets, can't deal with a pandemic...
|
| We've become good at one thing and one thing only:
| allowing private actors to optimize for massive short-
| term profits at the expense of society and the future.
| That's no way to run a country. We've turned citizens
| into gladiators fighting over scraps.
|
| Not saying we should emulate Chinese authoritarianism,
| but having a national vision lasting more than one
| election cycle isn't a bad thing. Being able to unite a
| country behind a major social project isn't a bad thing.
| Being able to even THINK of a country as a country,
| instead of warring factions, isn't a bad thing.
| Retric wrote:
| Pivoting away still costs the initial investment.
| Creating canals seemed like an obvious win being a useful
| technology for hundreds of years which justified extreme
| investments. Until suddenly rail took over in a relative
| blink of the eye.
|
| Authoritarianism tends to efficiently solve the wrong
| problems which results in an overall inefficient system.
| Private actors aren't limited to only optimizing for
| today. Going to collage is a great example of long term
| optimization as is getting a 30 year mortgage etc. The
| difference is simply one of scale where private actors
| may not optimize the global problem, but global
| optimization is really difficult.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Private actors optimizing for their local maximum is in
| and of itself a sort of inefficiency.
|
| In any case, it doesn't have to be an either-or situation
| (and arguably shouldn't be). For most of the last century
| we were able to juggle private needs with public works,
| using private talent to cooperatively tackle problems of
| national scale.
|
| It was only in the last 2-3 decades that we really
| stopped believing in the country, and the government
| became increasingly dysfunctional. Then the last 5-10
| years we really started circling the drain. I don't know
| what happened. Some of it looks to me like deliberate
| sabotage, a concerted effort to decrease public faith in
| government so that deregulation can benefit the elite.
| Some of it just looks like sheer incompetence.
|
| Maybe it's just the natural end of our golden age. We've
| hit the limits of the sort of problems our system can
| reliably tackle, while the nationalists are still on the
| upward trajectory -- for now. China is especially scary
| because they've managed to invent a whole new sort of
| capitalism hybridized with nationalism-authoritarianism.
| It has the hallmarks of a free market at the lower
| levels, but the government has the final word on any
| business and can nationalize/co-opt corporations whenever
| they want. In that way they get the benefits of private
| innovation and enterprise along with the ability to
| essentially eminent domain entire businesses and sectors
| at will. It's worked scarily well for them, and they are
| on the verge of eclipsing our model in the next few
| decades. The severe cost of it, of course, is measured in
| lives and liberties, something that West would not (and
| should not) accept.
|
| But the thing is, we have no answer to that at all. We
| don't really even discuss it anymore as a nation. There
| is no national debate about public works or long-term
| planning from anyone except a tiny portion of the left,
| while the rest of the political class argue about gender
| and race and toilets and guns and abortions. It's almost
| like all the culture wars are an intentional distraction
| from our failing system of government and economics,
| where the rich keep getting richer every year --
| especially during covid -- and everyone else falls
| further and further down the ladder. We're so fucked
| without some sort of forward thinking. Wish we could see
| some actual leadership for once...
| Retric wrote:
| > Maybe it's just the natural end of our golden age.
|
| Alternatively, America simply lacks obvious large scale
| investments to make.
|
| High speed rail seems like a winner, but is it? We have a
| very efficient national train network for goods and both
| an interstate highway system and airlines. As a practical
| matter HSR is unlikely to change much and is really
| expensive to build and maintain.
|
| Similarly rural high speed internet is pushed as a must
| have, but 5G and Starlink are much cheaper solutions to
| the same problems. Getting wired high speed internet to
| central Alaska for example is extremely expensive and
| probably not worth it. Where to draw this line in pure
| economic terms probably isn't exactly where telecom
| companies picked, but there wasn't a clearly better
| option.
|
| Bridges and Dams have similarly been added to all the
| obvious locations. Should we build X is again a really
| difficult choice.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Healthcare? Renewables? Carbon sequestration? Cybersec?
| Underground power lines? Housing? Repairing existing
| roads & bridges? Education?
|
| There is so much we could & should build, but we don't...
| 0ldskool wrote:
| I would rather have a government that tries and builds
| solutions that are not the most optimal rather than
| giving up and not doing anything. Solutions do not have
| to be the best all the time, just better than what
| exists. Constant iterative improvements over time
| dopidopHN wrote:
| In term of infrastructure: I would be happy with roads
| without potholes that are large enough to damage my car,
| schools, and a semi resilient power grid.
| smallmind wrote:
| In this bridge example, not only did it cost $19 billion to
| build, but the tolls collected actually do not cover
| operating costs. Doubt their 20 year plan included having
| to dump more money into the bridge to just keep it working.
| There are a lot of Youtube videos about China's similar
| problems with their large high speed rail network.
| Aperocky wrote:
| you can say the same about most of China's vast highway
| network. When they were newly built, most of these didn't
| have the traffic needed.
|
| Now a few of them are constantly congested.
| Closi wrote:
| To OPs point though, the goal wasn't to pull a profit it
| was to build links between the two countries.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Hong Kong isn't a separate country
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Somewhere between US stagnation and China/UAE building for
| the sake of building lies a happy medium.
| chii wrote:
| i bet that happy medium is not a stable equilibrium because
| any force on one side (or the other) pushes the balance.
| There's no restoring force.
| maxcan wrote:
| Yes, and its called Singapore and Japan.
| roenxi wrote:
| It isn't so much that I disagree as I think the frame is a
| bit skewed. When America is operating at its peak everyone
| has similar complaints (switching "end justifies the means"
| with "you can do whatever you like if you have money" because
| historically the US operates using money as a medium).
|
| Whenever anything happens people complain that some interests
| aren't represented or that resources aren't being used in the
| way they'd like. The point of the article is more that the US
| has systemically made it illegal to deploy resources quickly
| and effectively.
| caycep wrote:
| I also somewhat worry the attention to safety standards make
| Aperture Science seem like a paragon of OSHA compliance....
| Yaina wrote:
| Remember: Alert your supervisor!
|
| https://www.deviantart.com/orbital-
| vector/art/Portal-2-Remem...
| throwusawayus wrote:
| at all levels ? there must be limits to this approach right
| ???
|
| otherwise this way of thinking gets terrifying fast and
| rapidly descends into conspiracy theory land
|
| example: "need to find a socially-acceptable solution to a
| demographic time bomb caused by decades of one child policy,
| while still maintaining ethnic homogeneity ? perform gain-of-
| function research to develop a vector that disproportionately
| harms the elderly"
|
| to be absolutely clear, I don't believe this was actually the
| case in 2019 at all - but as an no-limits "end justifies the
| means" thought exercise - it is easy to arrive at inhuman
| dystopian nightmares
| misslibby wrote:
| Suppose you are an elite that wants to control the global
| economy, and you hit upon the idea that a "Great Reset"
| would be necessary.
|
| How do you build a reset button? A "mild" pandemic seems
| like an interesting approach.
|
| Also not saying this was the case at all. However, it is a
| fact that gain of function research was being conducted,
| sponsored by the USA.
|
| Oh, and if the modern biotech solution fails, WW3 might do
| the trick the traditional way.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Man, this shadowy cabal was so good, they started a
| global pandemic that brought the world economy under its
| control, made everyone fall in line behind pandemic
| mandates, shut up all dissent and turned everyone into
| zombies who now work three times as hard.
|
| That's exactly what happened, right?
| misslibby wrote:
| It kind of happened? Many countries established new
| levels of censorship and control. People installed
| tracking apps and got used to constant surveillance. All
| sorts of things. But not good enough, hence the need for
| WW3.
|
| Anyway, not saying it was or is a master plan. Just
| saying that if you were hypothetically thinking about a
| reset button, a pandemic would be a clever approach, and
| within technological reach.
|
| "The Great Reset" was the official motive of the World
| Economic Forum. They absolutely do want a reset.
| peakaboo wrote:
| phs318u wrote:
| I'm sorry but what are you referring to? This seems like
| a pretty extreme claim. Care to expand?
| saghm wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not really sure what they're talking about. If
| anything, the development of the vaccine for COVID
| impressed with how quickly we were able to iterate from
| proof of concepts to actually getting the vaccine
| distributed and given out. That's not to say that the
| process was perfect, but overall, I think the end result
| was much better than I would have predicted if asked
| hypothetically how long it would take to from the
| appearance to a new virus until when vaccines were
| actually administered nationwide to whoever wanted them.
| Unless that's what GP is saying, that the availability of
| vaccines for a wider variety of diseases were being
| artificially suppressed? I'm not sure I'd consider that
| to be much of a conspiracy theory though. I think it's
| clear from efforts to squash stuff like polio and
| smallpox have made it clear that it's practically
| possible to mass distribute vaccines without gatekeeping
| based on who can afford it, but in general it would
| require either an extremely benevolent entity who came up
| with the vaccine and is willing to forgo profits or some
| sort of government intervention; I don't think it's
| really surprising that this doesn't happen more often.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Yes at all levels, do you want me to tell you what we do to
| kill a virus ? :D
|
| For natality dont just think today, think 50 years ago when
| the goal was to reduce it: forced abortion, abandonning
| your newborn at the nearest wet market (high volume of
| people) was very common. It's harder to force people to
| copulate, but I trust our overlords to find a way ahah
|
| The virus however, I m more of the opinion that to fix SARS
| we decided to import thousands of vietnamese bats to study
| or such thing and fucked up one way or another. I dont
| think it was made to kill old people, it was a crazy large
| scale risky project to prevent the next SARS - the end
| justifies the means, but this time the means were very
| costly to foreigners. We dont care yet, or at least we
| managed to pretend our costs were still low enough not to
| execute every single person involved, as one should have
| done if millions of Chinese had died.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| China's ZeroCovid policy worked pretty well, but it's
| failing with Omicron. And unfortunately, the nonMRNA
| domestic vaccines aren't terribly effective. So it's
| possible millions of Chinese people will still die. (I
| hope not.)
| secondaryacct wrote:
| You're right, I think we dont prepare for the worst case.
| Im in HK and just today our dear leader said nobody could
| have predicted 2 millions HKers would be contaminated
| (5000 deaths).
|
| Well, let s give her that but then the central gov,
| surely NOW they can predict 25% of China being
| contaminated ? How are they preparing ?
| Retric wrote:
| > demographic time bomb
|
| China actually solved the excess men problem problem via
| ethnic cleansing.
|
| Send men to reeducation camps while you import surplus men
| from another location to eliminate a minority.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
|
| It's even more disturbing when you read up on the details,
| and consider the elderly aren't yet a problem.
| ashwagary wrote:
| >China actually solved the excess men problem problem via
| ethnic cleansing.
|
| How would the US behave if it had Wahhabist extremists
| near one of its borders? We've only seen how the US
| responded to some 6000 miles away in Afghanistan, most of
| them were brutally executed, not deradicalized or
| reeducated.
| [deleted]
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Are the Ugyurs comparable to Wahhabists?
|
| Also, does the US uniformly target Wahhabists ?
| ashwagary wrote:
| The Uyghurs being targeted for deradicalization are
| Wahhabist (an offshoot of Salafism) that have a lot in
| common with, and in many cases directly trained by, Al
| Qaeda.
|
| Granted, the net may be slightly larger than it needs to
| be due to China's high population density and the
| resulting fact that terroristic acts have a high human
| cost... but it's nowhere near the scale of our (US) net
| across Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan.
|
| The vast majority of muslim communities in China have
| nothing to do with this kind of extremist ideology, don't
| commit acts of mass terror, and are not part of these
| deradicalization programs.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The net worth a cast really broadly, and a Uighur doesn't
| have to be a Wahhabist to be labeled as needing re-
| education through labor, just expressing dissent is good
| enough. China has already done this with the rest of its
| population, even many Han were subject to these camps.
| The party has a lot of practice here and is only doing
| what it knows.
| ashwagary wrote:
| >many Han were subject to these camps.
|
| Any source you can provide for this claim?
|
| I've only seen evidence of these programs in certain
| Western parts of the country, mainly Xinjiang.
| kortilla wrote:
| "Here's an unrelated thing an unrelated country did,
| therefore it's okay."
| makomk wrote:
| The US did not, in fact, brutally execute most of the
| population of Afghanistan. Remember, it's the Ugyur
| population as a whole that China has "deradicalized or
| reeducated" - not just active terrorists, not even
| religious extremists, but everyone.
| throwusawayus wrote:
| i agree that is disturbing but it is not what i was
| referring to, sorry I meant excess old people - age
| demographics - not excess men.
|
| based on projections china's population peaked ~last
| year. it is a shrinking population from here, and while
| this will be a huge problem in most of the world (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735230 discussed
| recently) but it is happening MUCH sooner in china, and
| at an unprecedented scale.
|
| it is an existential threat and i am sure their
| government sees this, and it is scary to think what an
| "ends justify the means" way of thinking leads to with
| this problem
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, my point was that's a looming problem but not
| currently an issue so we can only guess how their going
| to solve it. But, the options considered are anything up
| to including say romanticizing elderly suicide.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| If we're lucky they'll pioneer growing babies entirely in
| vitro, no humans needed besides their DNA (which is
| branch of research I'd really like to see but morals in
| the West prevent that)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That is a good joke.
| droptablemain wrote:
| China is dealing with terrorism in a far more graceful
| way than the U.S. ever has. They're doing it with
| education and jobs.
| Retric wrote:
| Forced abortions are a little more than just education
| and jobs.
| FredPret wrote:
| Jobs in a concentration camp though
| tsol wrote:
| Forcibly re-education and forced jobs(read: labor) is
| more accurate. Graceful isn't the right word. They're
| certainly more efficient, but their efforts are not
| without vast international condemnation. As much as I
| deplore the US response to terrorism, China's response
| isn't exactly a breath of fresh air
| bllguo wrote:
| what do you propose? because this all just sounds so
| naive. obviously the methods are horrible but there is no
| feel-good response to terrorism. can you really blame a
| nation for taking a zero-tolerance approach?
|
| "international condemnation" is hardly a meaningful
| metric. It comes from 1. countries that have done and are
| doing far worse (slaughter, invasion, fomenting regime
| change), 2. countries that are sitting there wringing
| their hands as internal strife mounts over the increasing
| culture clash, and 3. countries that are lucky enough not
| to have these problems.
| ericmay wrote:
| > what do you propose?
|
| I propose they just leave them alone.
| stathibus wrote:
| It should surprise nobody that an authoritarian, centrally
| planned, and massively resource-rich country can perform
| infrastructure miracles. You don't have to stoop to
| conspiracy theories to understand this.
| chii wrote:
| > can perform infrastructure miracles.
|
| Some of the infrastructure has lead to extra economic
| benefit beyond just the infrastructure stimulus. But
| other infrastructure might not - and i would call them
| economic waste (but not political waste).
|
| Have a look at the train projects described here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvXlax4ZXk
|
| The building of those rail networks is meant to achieve a
| political purpose, rather than an actual productivity
| increase. Perhaps their leadership thought it was worth
| the spend, but this sort of spending would unlikely work
| in the US imho.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > The building of those rail networks is meant to achieve
| a political > purpose, rather than an actual
| productivity increase. Perhaps their leadership thought
| > it was worth the spend, but this sort of spending would
| unlikely work in the US imho.
|
| You might want to read a bit about the Space Launch
| System, a well-known political jobs program that many
| consider a hindrance in advancing the art of space
| flight.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html
| lazide wrote:
| We literally did that with the US highway system, it was
| just right after WW2.
|
| Same goals, same trade offs, same sometimes major wins,
| sometimes pointless spending.
| ggm wrote:
| Rail > Road for freight, and efficiency. America
| underfunded rail and the Eisenhower highway initiative
| demanded it, to justify the investment.
|
| Chinese new year, more people travel in China than the
| whole of the USA, homecoming notwithstanding. It's mass
| transposition, there and back again.
|
| They need trains. I've used them shanghai to Beijing,
| great service. I wish I'd been able to use the maglev in
| shanghai
| unmole wrote:
| China expanded high speed rail that can't be used for
| freight. It makes perfect sense to connect megalopolises
| with such a network. But when you start building out to
| Podunk provincial towns when the passengers can't afford
| the high prices, they'll continue to take the bus.
| Meanwhile your shining example for modernity and progress
| turns into a debt bomb.
| eushebdbsh wrote:
| >China expanded high speed rail that can't be used for
| freight.
|
| building out passenger rail frees up capacity for freight
| on old rail :)
|
| this is actually a big reason HS2 in bongland is (was)
| getting built
| unmole wrote:
| > building out passenger rail frees up capacity for
| freight on old rail :)
|
| Only if the high-speed rail gets used by passengers. If
| it's unaffordable, people won't use it.
| Symbiote wrote:
| No, since the previous fast trains aren't run on the old
| tracks any more. Due to stopping distances etc, you can
| fit several freight trains in the space needed for one
| express train.
| FredPret wrote:
| With freight, if you consider all factors, road is much
| more efficient for all but bulk loads or edge cases.
|
| You can make more economical runs per month with trucks
| than with trains, meaning you get to have less stock on
| hand as a buffer on both ends.
|
| This has many knock-on efficiencies - fewer resources
| tied up in goods, lower insurance expense, lower
| warehousing cost, and above all: a more flexible and
| responsive supply chain.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The maglev in Shanghai isn't very usable: it doesn't go
| to the city center, just somewhere remote in pudong. It
| is fast, but if you need to get to the airport from
| somewhere except one or two places in Shanghai a taxi
| would do better. But definitely ride it once.
| mmaunder wrote:
| In China, authority overcomes any friction and drives a
| project forward. In the US there is no authority and there is
| no common purpose or enemy. So thousands of self interested
| parties abuse the system in a very time consuming way.
|
| If a major war was to break out, that would provide powerful
| common purpose and mountains would be moved in weeks, as
| history has shown. Same would apply in the case of a major
| environmental catastrophe.
|
| Encapsulating innovation inside a corporation is the one way
| in the US to create a common purpose and shield a group from
| bureaucratic capture.
| nicbou wrote:
| The risk with the first method is that if the authority is
| wrong, no one can correct its course. One unlucky dice roll
| and you have 30 years of a dangerously incompetent maniac.
| Some will only judge such countries by their lucky rolls.
|
| While a war unites a nation, it's offset by the waste and
| destruction it creates. The cold war didn't build more
| school and hospitals. All those resources went elsewhere,
| with the occasional dividend for civilians.
|
| Mountains do get moved quickly when you sign blank cheques,
| but at a greater cost, with more waste and corruption. We
| put way too much faith in crash programs.
| karpierz wrote:
| I think this is why authoritarian governments can be more
| effective at economic growth when they're behind; they
| just follow the path that a more economically advanced
| power did, but with more focus and less concern for
| individual welfare. Hence China's rapid
| industrialization.
|
| If that's true, then it'd fall apart when the central
| authority either becomes too inept or corrupt and the
| path to follow becomes less clear. Essentially, when the
| low hanging fruit is gone, the corruption/inepts of the
| authority would become clear.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sure, like how when the US let a million people die from
| a pandemic and China followed along by... averting what
| would have been 3-4 million deaths.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If China only had higher standards for its wet markets
| and disallowed the wild trade all together, this whole
| pandemic would probably never have happened. At some
| point, Chinese medicine (which the wild animal trade
| supports) is doing much more harm than good (if pseudo
| medicine does any good at all).
| nicoburns wrote:
| My understanding is that the lab studying coronaviruses
| situated in close proximity to the wet market is the much
| more likely source than the wet market itself. And as
| labs in western countries have had similar leaks (see for
| example Foot & Mouth disease in the UK), I'm not sure we
| can really blame the Chinese.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The best info we have is that it was a bio lab release,
| just an unusual transmission from wild bats to humans in
| a wild animal market. And really, for all the
| authoritarian power they seem to have, sanitation
| standards are shockingly low, and with their density,
| these kinds of things will keep happening until they
| basically go with Japanese level cleanliness standards.
|
| Given its situation, china really had no choice but to go
| with a zero COVID policy. If they tried to handle it like
| the Americans did, 10s of millions of people would have
| died, if not more (because their density is higher with
| lower hygiene standards, not a good combination).
| Nekhrimah wrote:
| > The best info we have is that it was a bio lab release
|
| Did you perchance mean _wasn 't_ a bio lab release?
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Yes what s ironic is that they now try to push
| traditional medecine as a remedy caused by a virus maybe
| originating from abusive use of traditional medicine
| material.
|
| However now I think they just fucked up at the lab,
| importing bats from all over Asia as a mad rush towards
| cataloguing everything. The end, then, justified the
| means and safety was secondary.
|
| Whatever hypothesis anyway, this tendency we have in
| China only to care about the goal, will end up in tears.
| Taiwan is prob our next fuckup.
| kingkawn wrote:
| The idea that working people weren't ruthlessly exploited
| in the West's industrial development is a historical
| fiction.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > more waste and corruption.
|
| Does the waste and corruption cost more than the checks
| and balances though?
|
| Looking at government IT projects, it feels like the
| overhead and paperwork make everything 10x more
| expensive, and taking a risk that some of the projects
| will end up "stolen" would still be cheaper. Especially
| if particularly egregious cases of corruption would be
| prosecuted after the fact.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The USA has an adversarial political system: half the
| people associate with Democrats, half associate with
| Republicans. But in China, you are either for or against
| the CPC, and being against it almost means being a traitor.
| The other political parties exist just for appearances.
| Unity then is just the default.
| myth2018 wrote:
| > Same would apply in the case of a major environmental
| catastrophe
|
| I used to believe in that. After COVID-19, not anymore.
| a0-prw wrote:
| If a major war was to break out, the only mountains there
| would be, would be mountains of dead.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Same would apply in the case of a major environmental
| catastrophe.
|
| I disagree. The current major environmental catastrophe is
| unfolding right before our eyes. But because there is a lag
| of years between cause (positive and negative) and effect,
| the United States has been an example of how to do
| absolutely nothing substantial.
|
| Sure, when earthquakes level bridges the US pulls out the
| shovels and starts collectively digging. But mention
| climate change and suggest that V8 daily drivers might need
| to change their habits, and they double down on hurting
| their progressive neighbors:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgT1Sjo6u34
|
| (I'd never actually encoutered this video before, I just
| googled "rolling coal" and saw that the title mentioned
| Tesla so clicked it.)
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| _> I disagree. The current major environmental
| catastrophe is unfolding right before our eyes. But
| because there is a lag of years between cause (positive
| and negative) and effect, the United States has been an
| example of how to do absolutely nothing substantial._
|
| Right. This is a major failure of US and British culture
| in particular: the failure to understand how to grasp
| future exponential disastrous consequences and the
| exponential impact of our small individual actions in
| combatting them.
|
| At the beginning of the Covid pandemic I spent a lot of
| time trying to explain to people that "but it's been
| weeks and there's only been a few hundred cases" is not a
| sufficient guide to what is going to come or how to
| respond to it.
|
| Trying to urge people that they should be more concerned
| when they have not been taught about things like
| survivorship bias, the small-world experiment, have never
| heard of grains of rice or wheat on a chessboard, and
| were so rushed through school biology that they've missed
| key demonstrations of exponential growth, etc., is very
| difficult.
|
| It was not long before we had people and even politicians
| saying that people like us were over-blowing things when
| we worried about Y2K, not out of any wise retrospective
| assessment of real risk but because "after all that,
| nothing really bad happened". And that is before we in
| the UK get to the B word.
|
| Basically people need to see real world consequences for
| themselves or for those they love before they are
| galvanised into action, and then they galvanise
| themselves into action in part by blaming those people
| who tried to warn them and were not listened to, for
| failing to act pre-emptively to save them.
|
| _Edit to add: I don 't mean to say that other cultures
| don't fail at imagining consequences. And indeed in the
| Covid situation it might be that some of the cultures
| that did significantly better had more exposure to SARS
| or bird flu and learned from that. But there is a general
| lack of cultural understanding of the risks of severe
| outcomes in the UK and USA_
| raldi wrote:
| The common purpose is that we're about to ruin the planet's
| climate if we don't allow more people to voluntarily live
| in cities and live less car-dependent lifestyles but still
| we prohibit apartment buildings in many urban neighborhoods
| and can't build transit projects anymore.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Need fresh organs? Just pop them out of dissidents!
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Need to stop a student uprising ? Roll the tanks. Once I
| understood that about the country, I stopped discussing
| morals and instead focus on debating cost.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| SgtBastard wrote:
| Citation extremely needed
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| How about the Chief Prosecutor for two UN Criminal
| Tribunals?
|
| There are many more sources on the wikipedia page for
| "War Crimes in Kosovo"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Del_Ponte
| deedree wrote:
| That says there's no evidence. While it may still be true
| you can't just state like it's a well known and accepted
| fact. That is certainly not true.
|
| If you want to make controversial claims you'd better
| make sure you can back it up. Right now it does not add
| in a valuable way to the conversation.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| The following wikipedia article contains hundreds of
| sources for war crimes committed on both sides (Yugoslav
| and KLA). KLA were officially NATO allies, and a lot of
| video evidence and official UN evidence exists regarding
| alleged locations, witness intimidation, and failure to
| prosecute KLA's top commanders.
|
| There is a 3 hour documentary produced about the whole
| war in which Carla Del Ponte was featured.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Kosovo_
| War
| SgtBastard wrote:
| Your first citation references a woman forcibly removed
| from her post and then goes on to make unorthodox claims
| about both the Yugoslav and Syrian wars, neither of which
| are supported by evidence.
|
| That was from _your_ citation.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| This article, from ABC News, reports in 2021 that senior
| KLA officials have pled guilty to witness intimidation.
|
| It also states that after 10,000 Albanians were killed,
| thousands of Serbs were victims of "revenge" attacks.
|
| Do you personally hold the belief that not a single Serb
| was harmed between 1992-2008?
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/wireStory/kosovo
| -wa...
| SgtBastard wrote:
| Now you're moving the goalposts - I said a citation was
| needed that NATO was harvesting Serbian organs. You've
| yet to supply one and are apparently unable to do so.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| From the Wikipedia article I linked, here is just one of
| the sources which states that the EU issued a report
| stating that "organ trafficking did take place on a
| limited scale by a few individuals".
|
| I am not moving the goal posts. Hashim Thaci intimidated
| witnesses who were supposed to testify in the organ
| trafficking trial.
|
| How do you live with yourself knowing you are not
| debating in good faith?
|
| https://balkaninsight.com/2015/09/04/kosovo-organ-
| traffickin...
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Why did we shift from discussing the US to "the West"?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I would hardly bring the Balkans as an example of "the
| West". That's a mix of Soviet / middle Eastern cultured
| countries.
|
| That said, I wouldn't be surprised to hear about racism,
| rape or organ trafficking in any war zone. No-one
| fighting a war is innocent, not even if you control the
| media like the West does.
|
| There was no evidence, only allegations brought up by the
| prosecutor you mentioned.
| unmole wrote:
| > That's a mix of Soviet / middle Eastern cultured
| countries.
|
| I don't know. Everyone seems on board with Ukraine being
| considered a Western democracy.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| NATO and KLA were officially allies.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The thing is, Europe, where the environment is a significant
| consideration, also builds subways (and other things) at
| significantly faster speeds and lower cost than the US.
|
| If you look in any detail, it's not a matter of some magic the
| Chinese or whoever have, it's matter of the corrupt nexus of
| interests that have come to soak up any transit spending in the
| US, _in particular_.
| thiscatis wrote:
| No they don't. Typical bureaucratic examples:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterweel_Link
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/berlin-brandenburg-
| ai...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Those are just anecdotes. You can google up ten articles
| verifying US transit construction costs are higher per mile
| - and the US is much more spread out too.
|
| Random article.
|
| https://www.constructiondive.com/news/us-rail-projects-
| take-...
| thiscatis wrote:
| maybe because a mile is longer than a kilometer...
| venkat223 wrote:
| Climate change is natural.To much thoughtless advancement of
| western countries try to sell that idea to imitate the East which
| is evolving with what is termed as"climate Change" ..All are
| bunkum...Live with it and enjoy life.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This is a very common strategy for those who get easily
| overwhelmed with big things in life: declare that it's meant to
| be that way so that you're absolved of any sense of
| responsibility.
|
| The problem is that declaring "I am but a passenger" is self
| defeating: it inevitably robs you of agency to do anything
| meaningful in life.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| >Sometime in living memory, the built environment of the U.S.
| began to freeze in place. I'd mark the time roughly at *1970*,
| but it's a process, not a single seminal event.
|
| > It is obviously fair for authorities to take some time to plan
| things out and weigh the costs and benefits. But they spend,
| well, an inordinate amount of time weighing the costs and
| benefits. In a 2018 study of environmental impact statements
| under NEPA, *the mean statement took 4.5 years to complete*
|
| "The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), *enacted
| in 1970*, established a policy of environmental impact assessment
| for federal agency actions, federally funded activities or
| federally permitted/licensed activities that in the U. S. is
| termed "environmental review" or simply "the NEPA process."
|
| ---
|
| Things like unions and safety regulations had more of an effect
| on costs of projects. In terms of time to complete projects, what
| you see above is the biggest culprit.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| What's weird is how common it was to have completely polluted
| rivers inside US cities.
|
| And how Nixon needed to make it an Agency first because he
| didn't want Congress to have a Department of the Environment
| which would be out of control from the executive.
|
| And how that has shaped the US environmental plans by making it
| a bargaining chip of the executive rather than a foundational
| aspect of our representative government.
|
| Disband the EPA and create a Department of The Environment
| under Congress. Executive Orders do not have the gravitas
| required for a solid policy.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Regulations took previously externalized costs passed to labor
| and made them internalized costs to businesses.
|
| A lot of that which is cheap is only cheap because a
| combination of exploitation that involves externalizing costs
| and pushing constant pressure on labor efficiency. Every now
| and then we get gains in reduced cost from a technological
| innovation where a simpler or improved process is able to shave
| things off vs passing them on. In these cases, gains tend not
| to be externalized but instead internalized unless competition
| can drive the gains to be externalized.
| rangersanger wrote:
| I know the author can't possibly include every cause of
| slowness but it seems disingenuous to not include the
| preservation movement, especially given the decision to talk
| about downtown San Francisco.
|
| The 70s saw a change in how historic preservation was handled,
| I'd argue because of the success of Jane Jacobs. It became less
| about saving patriotic sites and more about saving the look and
| feel of the idealized early 1900s city. From the 70s to the 90s
| we stopped protecting battlefields and started protecting whole
| neighborhoods.
|
| The big catalyst here was in 1972: State Legislation The
| Advisory Council of Historic Preservation provides guidelines
| for State Historic Preservation Legislation. State Preservation
| Officers were established in 1966 as well, but each state had
| different legislation. While every state has its own
| priorities, the guidelines were meant to streamline the
| legislation.
|
| Now, standards that were explicitly written to help
| preservationists maintain places like Mount Vernon apply to
| important chunks of our major cities. Sure Chicago and sfo have
| maybe 2-3% of parcels protected, but they are highly clustered
| in desirable areas. And blanket block or neighborhood
| designations cover parcels of dubious distinction. Additionally
| it seems like every time there's a major project announced in
| major cities these days, someone is going to come out and try
| and protect the "landmark."
|
| In Milwaukee there's a project proposed to tear down an early
| 1900s hospital on the college campus. The school doesn't have
| funds to maintain it. It's a minor project by a minor architect
| and is not particularly unique. The preservationists are trying
| to block the demolition and honest to god, the reason given is
| that some of them were born there. They'll probably win.
|
| I think the authors point on heavy handed but well meaning
| legislation from the 70s needs to be revisited is applicable
| here as well. I'm for preservation but the mechanisms seem to
| have gone completely out of whack with the realities of our
| cities and current needs.
| yoyopa wrote:
| there's no safety net in america, and no recognition for doing
| good things, so people do not want to take risks and people do
| not want to work for the benefit of others... it's a much easier
| and better idea for most people to do nothing, or if they're
| going to do something, do it for themselves.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| One factor is workplace safety. We (rightfully) don't allow the
| kind of unsafe conditions that allowed us to build things so
| quickly in the past. We were very fast loose with human lives in
| the past. Look at Dubai, they're building quickly, but at great
| cost to the workers doing the building.
| DogOfTheGaps wrote:
| France, Spain, the UK, and other places are much more effective
| at building than the US. And they of course take safety version
| seriously.
| prithvi24 wrote:
| Underrated show: https://www.reddit.
| com/r/DownUnderTV/comments/dpytin/utopia_au_s01s04/
|
| Australian comedy show about government infrastructure- scary how
| similar some of the episodes are to the Massachusetts windmill
| example
| huffmsa wrote:
| We can't disturb the habitat of the western red land grouse in
| the name of progress.
|
| How dare you.
| raldi wrote:
| The motto of America's utility-monster-coddling public policy is,
| "The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many."
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| We seem to be able to throw up buildings pretty fast. At least
| here in Austin, but Texas as a hole works for years on anythign
| to do with roads. OMG it just takes so dang long. I suspect
| regulations and bureaucracy.
| bkraz wrote:
| -People spend more time thinking about what they might lose
| instead of what they might gain by doing something. Partially,
| this is because wealth and prosperity are generally higher.
|
| -People were more likely to ignore things they didn't like, and
| so building consensus was faster when dissenting people simply
| weren't talking. It's more common now to encounter people who
| feel it's their civic duty to search for things they feel are
| undesirable.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| "A dozen lawsuits have targeted environmental aspects of the
| projects, including another suit by the town of Atherton that
| argued, among other things, that the rail authority had conducted
| an inadequate analysis of where the train should be elevated
| along the San Francisco peninsula. A court ruled that the
| analysis had been properly done."
|
| This is straight comedy.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/us/california-high-speed-...
| drewrbaker wrote:
| I'm trying to build a house on empty land in Los Angeles. It's
| about 15mins from downtown in Mt Washington. We bought the land
| in April of 2019 and started on the design and permitting process
| immediately. Despite it being in populated Los Angeles, we need a
| septic system, to widen the road and add curbs, move a power
| pole, relocate 3 trees, and extend a water line. We won't have
| gas as we want to go all solar. All of this the city is making us
| pay for.
|
| Our permit for a small septic system took 14 months to approve.
|
| The power department has told us it will likely take 12 months
| for them to approve the pole movement (the city is making us move
| it as part of the road widening).
|
| The water main needs to be extended 12 feet, and it's mandated
| that the utility company must do that work and it will cost us
| $75k.
|
| The tree permit took us 12 months to get and requires us to get a
| bond too.
|
| We still haven't got approval for the road widening, it's been
| almost 18 months. Keep in mind this is just the road in front of
| our house in a residential area of Los Angeles. There are lots of
| homes on our street already.
|
| I'm originally from Australia. The American bureaucracy is
| insane. The agencies don't talk to each other. Often times we
| have been acting as the go between for different departments that
| worked in the same building!
|
| Los Angeles has a huge housing shortage. If my experience is
| anything to go by, it's because the bureaucracy is so dense it
| takes years to just get the permits in place. It would be cheaper
| and better if I could just pay a bribe and get it done quickly.
|
| Americans seem to know what the problem is, but just accept that
| nothing can be done about it. Like you all know the DMV sucks and
| the USPS sucks, but everyone has just accepted that's it's just
| the way it is and decided to live with it. Why?! Hold your
| officials accountable to actually run government effectively.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I had a similar experience. After 20 years off the power grid,
| we wanted to connect to the grid and the nearest line was about
| 1/4 mile away. The state and PG&E wanted ~500k and several
| years to extend the power to the home.
|
| Ended up finding a private company to put in the poles, line
| and transformer for <50K, and they could start within a month.
| It was still hell to connect it to the grid, but vastly faster
| and cheaper than the alternative.
| xvector wrote:
| The problem is that there is no incentive for a government
| service to perform as its existence is not at risk.
|
| There is no competition to the DMV, so there is no incentive to
| run it well.
|
| The USPS will always exist due to being a federally funded
| service, so there isn't a massive incentive to compete with
| FedEx, UPS, etc.
|
| Since these organizations do not live in competitive
| environments there is no drive for them to ever improve.
|
| They cannot be improved with elections because the political
| state of America is so polarized that it is broken. Elections
| are decided on one thing alone - whether you run as red or
| blue. Platform objectives (eg "fix the DMV") are irrelevant
| because they no longer sway voters. All that matters in an
| election at this point is whether you are Republican or
| Democrat.
| AvesMerit wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment with the DMV, but I would remove
| USPS from your example.
|
| That specifically is not federally funded, does have
| alternatives (FedEx, UPS), is under both economic & political
| pressure to compete, AND outcompetes the private alternatives
| by serving all addresses in the continental US. In fact,
| FedEx and UPS often add USPS to their routes for last-mile
| deliveries when it is economically advantageous - so it is
| those private carriers who are being subsidized by USPS
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The USPS will always exist due to being a federally funded
| service, so there isn't a massive incentive to compete with
| FedEx, UPS, etc.
|
| USPS is not federally funded. The federal government mandates
| the USPS to serve every single address in the US, even if it
| causes them to lose money, but does not give USPS any money.
| So they have to subsidize that with their other pricing, but
| FedEx/UPS do not.
| missedthecue wrote:
| The USPS may not technically get congressionally allocated
| tax dollars each year, but they do have
|
| 1. A federally protected monopoly on the delivery of all
| mail smaller than a manila envelope or parcel. This is why
| FedEx can't mail a letter for you.
|
| 2. A federally protected monopoly on the use of mailboxes.
| This is why Amazon must park their truck, get out, and walk
| up to your front door to leave a tiny box.
|
| 3. An exemption from property taxes on all post office
| locations. Competitors must pay tax on their offices,
| distribution centers, and retail locations.
|
| 4. Interest free zero covenant loans from the federal
| government that only must be repaid in theory.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Good points I had not thought of!
| pishpash wrote:
| It's "not" funded but gets politically motivated emergency
| loans and sometimes one-off funds from the Treasury, or it
| couldn't run a deficit. It's probably quite corrupt in how
| it spends money.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Interesting, I had not heard of these. Seems like it
| passed in the house in Feb 2022?
| oblio wrote:
| It's deeper than that, since you also have the "competitive"
| telcos.
| ec109685 wrote:
| The CA DMV is way better now than it was a few years ago (it
| was horrible). Nearby, there's a massive driver license /
| renewal center and you can do more online than before. And
| some positive stories here:
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/03/16/grieving-parents-
| get-...
|
| It also doesn't make sense that you need competitive
| elections to fix something like the DMV. There are humans in
| the seats of government and why wouldn't they want to do a
| good job?
| koolba wrote:
| > There are humans in the seats of government and why
| wouldn't they want to do a good job?
|
| I can't tell if this is a joke.
| pishpash wrote:
| Because they're not graded? No KPI tracking.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Why wouldn't they have KPI's? It doesn't make sense that
| government has to equal incompetent:
| https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/about-the-california-
| departmen...
|
| The military is a government agency and while not perfect
| in a lot of ways, they aren't incompetent.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The military is very incompetent. It has bases that it
| neither needs or wants and are just make work projects.
| But this is the fault of the civilian government.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| A lot of government workers want to do a good job. I think
| in a lot of cases it's intentional underfunding that's
| causing problems.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm not convinced it is under funding. It could also be
| too many managers and not enough front line staff. Or it
| could be too many regulations making the process need far
| more time (time=money).
|
| I don't know, but I lean to too much process.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I watched pretty closely while I was changing from a KY
| vehicle registration to a CA registration. The staffer
| was plenty quick, there was just an absolute heap of
| _stuff_ to do that all seemed pointless. I 'm sure each
| of those little legally-mandated whatsits was well-
| intentioned, but in aggregate they bedraggle getting
| anything done. Similar story in zoning / planning. And in
| both arenas the result is that doing things is slow and
| expensive. Please, government, spend some tiny modicum of
| effort on deregulating and streamlining for the sake of
| not wasting my limited lifespan.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| California DMV is so efficient, I've never seen a
| government agency be so fast during Covid.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "There is no competition to the DMV, so there is no incentive
| to run it well."
|
| I have been to the DMV in Ca, NV and NM in the last few
| years. All of them had appointment systems. In all three
| states I got there at the appointment time and had my car
| registered and a new license in between 30 and 60 minutes. I
| would rate the service better than at most private companies,
| competition or not.
| jjav wrote:
| Post-pandemic CA DMV has moved a lot more online, including
| things like title transfer which used to be in-person only.
| So you mostly don't need to go to the DMV anymore.
|
| And if you do, since most people aren't going, it is now
| quick. A handful of years ago I remember appointments were
| a couple months out. Last month I needed an appointment and
| got one for the next day (and it wasn't a one-off, there
| were times available every day of that week) and I barely
| waited 5 minutes when I got there.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure, once you get an appointment. Last time I tried they
| were booked a month out. Then when I got there I forgot one
| piece of paper and another month before I could get the
| next appointment.
|
| Before appointments I just walked in, and worst case was
| only an hour wait.
| [deleted]
| EricDeb wrote:
| I generally agree but also the local residents (who do vote
| in local elections) don't want permitting to be speedy. In
| fact they want it to be slow because there is a lot of
| NIMBYism and protectionism around property values. So in this
| case I think it actually is what voters want.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The other side of that coin is that they are not driven by
| profit motive, so the cost of improvement is not passed on to
| the users as "what the market will bear", but instead "at
| cost" so improvements are much more likely to be worth it for
| users of the service instead of just a new and exciting way
| to justify price increases.
|
| As for "no reason to improve" well, there's no reason for
| people to do more than the very bare minimum, and yet they do
| it all the time. Sometimes organizations improve because they
| want to. I might even argue that it's _harder_ to improve
| under existential crisis, not easier.
|
| I think it's become a bit of truism that private businesses
| are more efficient than government run organizations. I
| wonder if that holds up under scrutiny?
| chii wrote:
| > Sometimes organizations improve because they want to
|
| or that there's an alternative reason for their action
| other than maximal profit.
|
| There's darwinian natural selection at work in the private
| sector (where reproduction can be taken to mean profit).
| Such a force doesn't exist in gov't funded entities
| providing a service. That doesn't mean there's no force to
| make those services improve - it's just not the darwinian
| natural selection force (may be a politician decides to
| make it his/her objective to improve XYZ as a promise for
| votes).
| jeffbee wrote:
| Sounds bad but objectively Los Angeles has the fastest
| permitting process and the lowest fees of major California
| cities according to data compiled by the UCLA Lewis Center. Not
| to say you are lucky, only that this problem is actually much
| worse than you've described.
|
| The median time to get planning approval for residential
| construction in San Francisco is 47 months!
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Yeah LA isn't "bad" compared to most places. Try to build a
| house in Boulder Colorado hahah
| 999900000999 wrote:
| You're in one of the worst ran cities in all of America.
|
| I rant here often about how horrible LA is, wonder why they're
| so few new homes getting built in LA. Well now you know.
|
| The cost to build anything is so astronomical. The only thing
| that gets builts are luxury apartments/condos are multi-million
| dollar McMansions.
|
| To see an extreme example of this, just look at how much money
| was spent per each homeless shelter unit. Each of these units
| can only house one family or so, the city somehow spent
| $600,000 to $700,000 on each one. This source article uses a
| high estimate, some of these units are costing 800k.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/la-spending-837000...
|
| I wish you the best of luck with finally getting your house
| built, but just factor in you're going to have to deal with
| these problems in every single aspect of living in Los Angeles.
|
| I decided to leave, and in every aspect of my life I'm doing
| much better. I make more, my housing is cheaper, I don't need a
| car, and frankly everyone's nicer.
|
| PS: If you want know WHY things are this bad, look at Prop 13.
| This allowed home owners to lock their taxes to when they
| purchased their homes. So say you currently own a house worth
| $800,000, you bought it 15 years ago when it was worth 200,000.
| You have no motivation to ever move, even if it would be better
| for you aside from the taxes.
|
| So You end up with a very large contingent of homeowners who
| are going to be in their properties for their entire lives, and
| are extremely resistant to any change. NMBY level Max. Many
| people in LA don't want you to be able to build your house in
| any efficient manner, the easier it is to build a house. The
| cheaper houses are. If I'm a home owner, I don't want
| competition.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Really all across California, there seems to be this huge
| battle between the status-quo and the demand for change.
|
| On the one hand you have the obvious demand for change.
| Housing if far too expensive, far too difficult to build and
| thus costs and astronomical amount which skews the economics
| of home building to the higher end of the market.
|
| The top wants this change. The citizens want this change (for
| the most part). The solutions penetrate down levels of
| government until they are stopped dead at the lowest level.
| The bureaucracy at a certain level realizes they are on the
| chopping block and halts progress on change. They push back,
| their unions push back, the works.
|
| So what you end up with is a bloated government agency,
| bloated for the sake of being bloated, making life miserable
| for the majority of residents, all of the sake of keeping
| itself in it's current bloated state.
|
| The only thing that i see fixing the mess in California is if
| the guys at the top eliminate these many of these agencies.
| But they won't, because these agencies workers have unions,
| lobbies, the works. So the system will likely stay.
| Politicians will stay in the good graces of bloated
| government agencies which will only become more bloated and
| oh...the citizens? Who cares them.
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| My girlfriend's parents have been trying to build a house on
| undeveloped land in LA county for over five years now. It
| wasn't until one of their kids got a job that made them
| connection in county government that they started getting
| things approved. It is absolutely ridiculous here.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >It would be cheaper and better if I could just pay a bribe and
| get it done quickly.
|
| Corruption isn't the answer to these problems.
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| I like to think corruption isn't the answer to ANY problem.
| Is there a problem in which this isn't the case?
| eximius wrote:
| I wonder what the cost of the fines would be if you built
| anyway. If they didn't make you tear it down and the fine was
| less than the difference in costs, it might be optimal to skip.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| nostromo wrote:
| > The American bureaucracy is insane.
|
| This is an California issue, not an American one.
|
| > Americans seem to know what the problem is, but just accept
| that nothing can be done about it.
|
| Again, this is a California issue. We know the bureaucracy is
| broken, but we vote for the same incompetent people over and
| over again.
| lesam wrote:
| NYC taking 17 years to build 3 subway stops doesn't sound
| broken?
| lbriner wrote:
| I think bureaucracy is broken generally. It is a fallacy that
| all problems can be avoided or solved by "due process" since
| life is infinitely more complex. How many people have been
| told by a Local Authority that something is 5mm too wide or
| 30cm too close to the road?
|
| I think the only solution, like we have in UK Courts, is that
| you need people who are trusted with an amount of knowledge
| and wisdom (i.e. the Judges) who are permitted to, for
| example, visit a property and take a holistic view. "Is the
| drain slightly too close to the road? Yeah but realistically
| 90% of the other properties have a contravention that is not
| enforced so just get on with it".
|
| We used to have something similar in Local Authorities in the
| UK where the "Borough Engineer", pretty much had the last
| call on roads, street lighting etc. If you wanted to make
| representations, you wrote to them and they decided whether
| they cared about what you were complaining about. No appeals.
|
| As the article says, where this gets unfair, people think
| that by adding process or sign-off, you get the best of all
| worlds but the truth is, that only works if everybody wants
| the same thing, otherwise as OP says, people game the process
| even if they can't win as some malicious act to cost the
| builders money.
| always2slow wrote:
| >the USPS sucks
|
| No it does not. The USPS freaking rocks and comparatively
| trounces the competition. It delivers better and more reliably
| on time than any other carrier in the nation. The drivers are
| friendlier and more accommodating. They also deliver at sane
| hours and no matter the weather.
|
| Amazon? Absolutely hands down the worst delivery retail
| experience. I've almost been run over by more than one amazon
| driver.
|
| FedEx? Don't honor delivery instructions, regularly mark things
| delivered without delivery, leave ridiculous 'missed you' notes
| for signed packages, inconsistent service across the nation.
|
| UPS Probably the better privately run one, but way more
| expensive than USPS and the drivers aren't nearly as friendly
| as postal delivery people.
| Cerium wrote:
| USPS is great. I run a small ecommerce business and each year
| a package or two is lost (out of hundreds, maybe this year
| thousands). So far USPS has been responsible for one and UPS
| the rest (I don't ship on any other carrier). As you
| mentioned, the USPS carriers are almost always friendly and
| helpful.
| parkingrift wrote:
| It is stunning to me that people within the same country hold
| such opposite views on things.
|
| I live in NYC and USPS is worse than useless. They'll leave
| shit on the porch (in NYC), lie and say they put it in your
| mailbox, or lie about attempted deliveries. It's usually
| easier to just order it again than it is to get USPS to make
| a second attempt at delivery.
|
| If I need a local letter or package delivered I would prefer
| to hand deliver it than entrust it to USPS. If I have
| something important to deliver I would never even consider
| USPS.
|
| For me USPS is just spam delivery service. The only thing I
| reliably get from them is junk, and it's a weekly chore to
| move junk mail from my mailbox to the recycling bin.
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| I agree USPS is by far the best carrier.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| It depends on where you live.
|
| USPS regularly leaves mail in the wrong mailboxes in my
| location. FedEx and UPS never do. And the people delivering
| the mail here are incredibly rude. My neighbors and I have to
| regularly swap mail. No amount of complaining fixes anything.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Mail delivery to my home has gotten worse over the past ten
| to fifteen years. I complained to the local post office
| about this, and they said part of the reason is that this
| route no longer has dedicated carrier.
| hfjfnnf wrote:
| It depends on where you live, I am in one of the cities
| around lake tahoe. USPS here doesn't deliver mail to your
| residence, however UPS/Fedex deliver just fine. Instead
| everyone in town rents a USPS PO box, to which USPS delivers
| and everyone goes to the Post office to collect their mail
| from their PO boxes.
|
| Whats worse, USPS has some PO boxes in some condo complexes,
| residents of which rent PO boxes that are at their physical
| residence and USPS delivers mail to these PO boxes. Its also
| sprung a private business who collects mail from PO boxes amd
| deliver to physical addresses for a small fee.
|
| I simply dont understand why its the case here.
| vageli wrote:
| > It depends on where you live, I am in one of the cities
| around lake tahoe. USPS here doesn't deliver mail to your
| residence, however UPS/Fedex deliver just fine. Instead
| everyone in town rents a USPS PO box, to which USPS
| delivers and everyone goes to the Post office to collect
| their mail from their PO boxes.
|
| Do you have to pay for the box? I was under the impression
| that the USPS was legally obligated to deliver mail to your
| residence. I wouldn't expect to pay for their shortcoming.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Sounds like a City problem, not an "American" problem.
| abecedarius wrote:
| It's an American problem to the extent most of the economic
| opportunity is in that kind of city. (The recent growth of
| remote working does help.)
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| Much of what you describe is specific to California and to a
| lesser degree democrat run states in general.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Mostly correct, but many republican counties are far more
| reasonable.
|
| Meanwhile, in the bay area a building permit is required to
| replace a water heater, toilet, or dishwasher.
|
| moreover, When you do a renovation yourself, the fees are
| based on the typical cost materials and labor, even if you do
| the work yourself.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| They make you get a permit to replace household appliances?
| My goodness...
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| My god, is this just designed to skim FAANG salaries, I
| can't see much other reason for it?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Toilets must be permitted to ensure they meet local
| standard for water conservation.
|
| Obviously this isnt a problem that cant be solved by
| controlling sales, because people will just drive to
| neighboring counties to get toilets that actually work.
| Mine takes 3 flushes.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The bureaucratic inefficiency existed before FAANG.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| They do for the water heater, not the rest (at least in
| San Francisco). Obviously that's how you end up with 90%
| unpermitted work when you buy.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| gnopgnip wrote:
| A building permit is not required for a toilet or
| dishwasher replacement in the Bay Area, in Oakland, San
| Jose, Berkeley at least
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In San Mateo County they do.
|
| https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http
| s:/...
| [deleted]
| criley2 wrote:
| Splitting it by Democratic/Republican is a bit of a trick
| because nearly all urban areas are Democratic and nearly all
| rural areas are Republican. So talking about "Republican run
| urban areas" is a bit of an inside joke, Republicans
| can't/don't/won't run an area with any concentration of
| people.
|
| As someone in a very Democratic run city in a very Republican
| state, believe me when I say, the Republicans who run this
| place are absolutely pathologically insane. They have lost
| their minds and our legislative sessions are mostly full of
| rank conspiracy theory and foreign agit-prop. What little
| work the Republicans do here revolves around attacking the
| successful city to placate the poor rural 52% majority,
| usually through as much wealth transfers and cancellations of
| urban development as they can.
| [deleted]
| theNJR wrote:
| I'm curious why you are putting yourself through this? Given
| this is a multi million dollar project, why not purchase an
| existing home? I know inventory is tight, but you'd close on a
| place within 6 months.
| rootsudo wrote:
| "Americans seem to know what the problem is, but just accept
| that nothing can be done about it. Like you all know the DMV
| sucks and the USPS sucks, but everyone has just accepted that's
| it's just the way it is and decided to live with it. Why?!"
|
| They do not want new construction in LA. You're lucky so far
| you only have red tape to deal with, when the neighbors know
| you're building on that plot you will have much more to deal
| with.
|
| By building a new house in that area, you're taking away
| everyone's "forced" savings account or asset that has
| accumulated so much wealth that can makes everyone a
| millionaire due to forced scarcity. The red tape you're
| experiencing is why there is that scarcity.
|
| You're also in California. It is not the same in the majority
| of other states, or major urban cities from personal
| experience, it is much less than two weeks or a week for all
| the pain points you stated.
| umvi wrote:
| Don't project California's/LA's inefficiencies on the rest of
| the USA!
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Sounds the same as what we've got going here in Wisconsin.
| Permitting is murder here. It's horrible and takes forever.
| umvi wrote:
| I built a house in Idaho, and it was pretty painless
| zbrozek wrote:
| You have to live in a red state to build anything at all.
| I want to move to one to quit wasting lifespan trying to
| work my parcel. Sure I disagree with many of the social
| values, but those are abstract problems. I'm male, so I
| will never need an abortion. But I do need permits, so I
| want out of CA.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Why do you even want to live there?
| oblio wrote:
| Job, family, a million reasons.
|
| I really hope you're not gatekeeping.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| No, it just seems like such an arduous process that I would
| pick somewhere else if it were me. I'm personally likely
| aiming for Montana.
| dboreham wrote:
| You'll still need a septic permit in Montana and only
| certain excavation contractors are certified to install
| septic systems.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure, but the cost of a permit is cheap, and the
| certified contractors are charging a fair price. I think
| you are allowed to install yourself if you have certified
| plans that you work to.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >Los Angeles has a huge housing shortage. If my experience is
| anything to go by, it's because the bureaucracy is so dense it
| takes years to just get the permits in place. It would be
| cheaper and better if I could just pay a bribe and get it done
| quickly.
|
| No. Los Angeles has a huge housing shortage because most local
| voters and active participants in local politics are
| homeowners. They want a housing shortage, so they _get_ a
| housing shortage.
| zbrozek wrote:
| This sounds fast for California. It's taken me about two years
| to get a site development permit to edit my roofline a bit to
| make it better at shedding water. I don't have a building
| permit yet. I desperately want to move out of this state, but
| my wife (who isn't handling any part of the project or our
| costs of living) likes the weather and so we're stuck here.
|
| I think we could fix the housing shortage turbo-quick if we
| passed a constitutional amendment that offered property rights
| to landowners. But owning land right now is almost meaningless.
| It's the right to ask for permission to do something on that
| land, and local governments exist seemingly for the sole
| purpose of preventing any change whatsoever.
|
| It's probably one of only a handful of root causes of American
| ossification and cost disease.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Completely agree. I bought land in 2019 with the hope of
| building. Not only is the government painfully slow, no
| builder will take on the project unless the budget is north
| of $5m. That's what I was told. $5m and they'll sign a
| contract to start in 2025. Anything less than $5m and they
| aren't interested. This is the case for around 6 builders
| I've talked to. I'm probably going to just end up selling the
| land.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| At those prices it might make sense to fly out workers from
| the Midwest and house them.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| There isn't anywhere for them to live. Luxury ski towns
| are feeling this pretty hard throughout Colorado.
|
| Get this. If the average rent is north of $3k/month for a
| 1bd. And the average house costs $3.7m. Where is a ski
| lift worker making minimum wage supposed to live? Or the
| person running the only local gas station? Or the food
| service workers? They can't live outside of these towns
| because the prices are still within 50% of the prices
| above. It's just entirely unsustainable.
|
| Now take this and apply it to larger cities, where even
| teachers making $50-$80k/yr can't afford to live within
| an hour commute.
|
| I'm all for a free market, but at some point you need to
| protect critical workers, and the only way I can think to
| do that is through rent control and special housing
| programs. Most places have neither unless you're
| borderline homeless poor. Middle class continues to be
| gutted.
| zbrozek wrote:
| House them where though? CA is short housing, that's one
| of our worst problems. And local homeless people have
| already put up tents and parked RVs everywhere.
|
| Could we have avoided this problem by building housing
| while labor could still afford it? Sure. But we didn't,
| and now we reap what we sow.
| gjs278 wrote:
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Americans need a better voting system.
|
| Real change is not meant to happen in the US system, unless it
| is pushed forward by the handful of very powerful special
| interests that hold the reigns, and that is by design.
|
| Switch from FPTP to RCV or any other and the system will fix
| itself.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "Residential Construction Permits require an average of 5 to 7
| working days for approval or response. Commercial Construction
| Permits require an average of 14 to 21 working days for
| approval."
|
| First I am sorry to hear this. In Florida you could be plowing
| over a wetland in 5-7 days. Take your cash and walk to a better
| run state.
| DogOfTheGaps wrote:
| A particularly absurd case of environmental review delaying a
| much needed project is congestion pricing in NYC. They are
| actually going to review the environmental impacts of a system
| that will decrease the number of cars on the road. What are they
| even reviewing?
|
| https://gothamist.com/news/mta-expects-congestion-pricing-to...
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| One of the big issues with the California High Speed Rail is
| lawsuits dragging out the environmental review process. Ditto
| utility solar installations.
| kkfx wrote:
| IMVHO the ancient Italian proverb "presto & bene, raro avviene"
| (quick & well done, rarely happen) it's still valid:
|
| - acting quickly, with emergency powers/needs etc is a recipe to
| a disaster, things MUST be done as much as possible with accurate
| reasoning, that means more cost at initial phases but far less
| for the rest of the life;
|
| - when acting quickly is needed, things must be as much pre-
| digested as possible.
|
| USA and IMVHO the entire western world can't build quickly
| anymore because it have build too quickly in the past and now we
| are in a messy state. Quick growth of the recent past have led to
| too dense cities, to little room to evolve anything and now both
| available resources, lessons learned and analyze-paralyze make
| anything complicated. The so called Great Reset is actually
| needed, while definitively not as neoliberals have drawn it so
| far.
|
| Unfortunately such "reset", even if well driven at the slowest
| peace possible, will be (already is) far harmful anyway. IMVHO
| those who build quickly now because they can and they need (like
| China) know that well, but are locked-in in a state of things
| that leave very limited choices. For instance China can't nourish
| it's Citizens with internal resources, so it need to import many
| things, starting from food, and that's true for too many
| countries, and that's not only food. Not only oil. Not only other
| natural resources (metals, woods etc): people are constantly kept
| in semi-ignorant states to being able to drive them like a flock,
| that's true for all dictatorships and for formal (but not
| substantial) democracies, that's both the neoliberal idea of
| governing, the Chinese, Russians, Indian, ... idea of governing.
| Doing so *might* work under certain conditions but when you need
| to change it's a mess, most do not understand why they need to
| change. They fear (with good reasons) the change, they do accept
| being pastured under stable even if bad conditions but they react
| against any changes. To push a *quick* change the classic way is
| crisis/wars/disasters and the outcome is generally another big
| set of issues...
|
| To build quickly AND being able to correct issues that *always*
| happen we need something able to evolve, for instance we need to
| abolish cities, they are too dense and complex to evolve. And
| that's an issue because, yes, with actual tech (transportation,
| communications etc) we can abandon cities while remaining modern
| but we are probably too numerous for the usable land we have and
| for the amount of resources needed for the transaction. Such
| change it's also not just in housing and transportation means but
| also in social structures and organization. It can be done in
| terms of experiments, but on scale... Probably on scale a big war
| is needed. Unfortunately doing so with today tech and state of
| things means a big disaster, probably big enough to destroy
| humanity...
|
| That's is: a big mess.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| I wrote software for an environmental consulting firm. It is the
| dark side of construction and permitting in the US. Basically,
| people that worked in government permitting would leave their job
| after 10 years in the public service then work for us in the
| private sector. Let's say you wanted to build a mall. You would
| need us to come in analyze the land check for vernal pools,
| cultural artifacts, rare species of salamanders... the list is 20
| pages long. We would then run software (me!) to find places which
| you could pay to protect (the pay off)- in order to get a permit
| for plowing over that area. Our firm would spend months analyzing
| a rock to ensure it wasn't an arrow head or watch if bats would
| bread in your area. "Why can't America build quickly anymore?" I
| would say permitting is a large portion of the answer. If you
| wanted to build without knowing this system or you fought it -
| your application would sit in some bureaucratic office for years.
|
| Somewhat off topic:
| https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1376644161172987905?lan...
| bill maher wanting to build a shed in CA. Hilarious.
| jmeister wrote:
| This is insane. Thanks for sharing your anecdote.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| permitting is indeed at the center of it; I suggest that if it
| wasn't bats and salamanders, it would simply be something else
| to stall about.. even with extreme stories, and their opposite
| where a real estate developer finds and kills the last flower
| or butterfly on the land (which is true also), I _support_
| saving bats and salamanders. You know how easy it is to mix and
| pour a portion of an acre of concrete? or run a chain saw?
| literally forty years of growth can be killed in a half a day..
| easy..
| [deleted]
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| > Today's high gas prices are the perfect example. Americans are
| universally unhappy about the high short-run costs of energy and
| transportation.
|
| "High" meaning $4/gallon. Meanwhile in much of Europe, it's over
| 2 EUR per liter, or near $10/gallon.
|
| The US would look very different if gas was taxed at European
| levels.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| It's always made me chuckle when I see Americans complaining
| about their 'high' gas prices, even more so before this current
| price rise started.
|
| I'm in the UK and my nearest fuel station (which is pretty
| averagely priced in my area) is currently charging
| $10.50/gallon, and that's been steadily rising for some time
| now. I'm not sure it's plateaued yet either.
| qiskit wrote:
| It's because we have no national purpose because we are no longer
| a nation. Instead we are an empire controlled by a conglomeration
| of vested interests ( foreign and domestic ). We used to be able
| to build massive projects like cross country railroads in the
| 1800s. Of course it came with genocide of native americans, theft
| of their land and the wiping out of bison/animals across the
| continential US, but at least we had a direction. We are now
| captainless ship and instead of trying to take control of the
| ship and give it direction, the elites (foreign and domestic )
| are simplying offloading as much cargo as they can before the
| ship sinks. How else do you explain legalized gambling, drugs,
| culture wars, fixation on lgbt, etc? Yahoo sports has the
| "Sportsbook" tab in between NCAAB and NCAAF. Gotta get the young
| college students addicted to gambling while they are young. That
| tells you everything you need about the US.
| jldugger wrote:
| Plenty of examples of massive speedups in repairs:
|
| 1: https://www.enr.com/articles/51917-caltrans-shaves-months-
| of...
|
| 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TKjwblp1XI
|
| It's not that we can't "build quickly," but that we can't build
| anything _new_ quickly.
| paulwilsondev wrote:
| This is an easy question. The answer is people started watching
| television.
| zackmorris wrote:
| You know, your answer is the funniest one but also the closest
| to the truth.
|
| This is a great article, but comes to a roundabout conclusion
| that endorses deregulation so that more community-affecting
| projects can get built. Which of course is the wrong solution
| since it merely doubles down on what we're already doing, so
| will only exacerbate our race towards environmental collapse.
|
| I feel that the answer is in stuff like solarpunk.
| Specifically, helping someone else by solving our own problems.
| Every house off the grid reduces the demand for electricity,
| lowering its price so that others can afford it too. Backyard
| hydroponic/robotic gardens lower the price of food, and so on.
| After we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, we have the
| resources to help others do the same.
| [deleted]
| Razengan wrote:
| Do they need to? They already have control over their populace
| (excessive policing etc.), so of course now they'll spend more on
| controlling other populations (the insane military budget).
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| A problem with analysis like this is that these problems are in
| no way limited to the US or the public sector. All Western
| countries have these problems to different degrees and it also
| exists within private enterprise which do not face the same
| problems outlined here.
|
| Boeing e.g. had been terrible at making pretty much anything from
| planes to space rockets. Everything is delayed.
|
| I suspect there are deeper more fundamental problems. E.g. how
| companies are managed and organized. Companies used to be far
| more engineering oriented. Today they are very sales and MBA
| oriented. There is also way more outsourcing and fragmentation of
| business. Business used to be far more integrated.
| stadium wrote:
| Value extraction may be part of the problem. Competition would
| take care of a lot of inefficient private sector businesses.
| Duo/Mono-polistic profit margins leave a lot of room for waste.
| Resource constraints breed innovation.
|
| Boeing for example competes with Airbus on commercial planes,
| that's about it. And SpaceX is eating into their profit margins
| on rockets. They need to innovate to keep up with SpaceX
| rockets, while the 737-max fiasco is a great illustration of
| waste and inefficiency on commercial airplanes. If they _had_
| to be more competitive to survive, they may not have cut so
| many corners.
| steve76 wrote:
| lvl102 wrote:
| TimPC wrote:
| I think the author is fundamentally correct on the main point:
| the interface for environmental review needs to change. The
| current interface is that you generate a report and anyone can
| sue to require that report to have additional details provided a
| court agrees those details are unaddressed environmental impacts.
| This leads to 4.5 years for just the environmental assessment and
| 575 page environmental impact reports. It allows for excessive
| detail and thoroughness at the expense of time and cost. I'm not
| sure what the better interface is but it's quite clear we as a
| society need to figure it out and halt the current trend of
| building less and less for more and more cost. Other issues
| people raise are parts of the problem but it's clear that 4.5
| years on one aspect of planning for a single project is not
| reasonable.
| honksillet wrote:
| I'm in my 40s. I've heard that we have X years multiple times and
| frankly I'm very skeptical.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| Don't forget the perverse incentives of the folks working on
| these things. They don't get paid for projects getting completed,
| they bill by the hour.
|
| And if that wasn't bad enough, taking a call on the way from one
| job to another? Bill them both for the time.
| [deleted]
| xyst wrote:
| It all begins with the urban sprawl experiment in the 1950s. As
| people left the city for the white picket fence in the suburbs,
| cities around the country began to subsidize the wealthy SFH
| owners. Sewers, water, electricity, roads, and gas
| infrastructure; and fire, EMS, police services are not cheap.
|
| The tax collected from a SFH suburb does not cover the expenses
| to build and maintain the infrastructure. So to help meet the
| increasing costs, municipalities need to raise property taxes for
| everyone. This increases the cost of living for everyone. So
| combined with inflation and the increased COL, the wages of your
| construction people on the ground (you know the people that
| actually build fucking thing you need) need to keep up with this
| trend so companies need to pay more.
|
| This doesn't come free so this is then passed on to the American
| tax paying populace. It's a never ending cycle. Low housing
| supply, homelessness and substance abuse are all symptoms of an
| underlying cause.
|
| Solution: it's a multifaceted approach - involving changes at the
| local, state, and federal levels. First, American cities need to
| get rid of SFH zoning entirely and re-zone for high density mixed
| use residential and commercial and get rid of any car-centric
| building policies (eg, car parking minimums). We need to get
| people out of their private vehicle. Second, need to introduce a
| luxury or inefficiency tax on existing SFH owners to minimize
| lost tax revenue and discourage people from buying a SFH (people
| that are poor can apply for waivers). Then earmark the luxury tax
| towards incentivizing developers and paying for infrastructure
| and enhancing public transit. Third, need to introduce extensive
| toll road fees for people commuting from the exurbs into the
| city. Why should cities continue to subsidize infrastructure for
| people that do not pay taxes within that county? Interstate
| travel will not be tolled.
|
| Then at a state level, DoTs need to re-examine where IH traffic
| can be redirected. In America, the highways often cut through the
| cores of each city. This not only reduced the amount of land that
| is available to cities to build on but contributed to the
| displacement of poor and marginalized people; and decreasing air
| quality. We need to follow in the footsteps of Dutch cities like
| Amsterdam and move towards a more scalable way of transportation
| and city planning. Additionally, at the state level re-examine
| where it's possible to reduce dependency on O&G sources of power.
|
| At the federal level, need to support states and cities through
| funding and providing research. Need to move the grid off of
| fossil fuel sources ASAP. Continue to provide green incentives
| and encourage people to make their homes more efficient (better
| HVAC units, solar power panel installations, ...).
|
| It will definitely not solve the problem in 5 years or 10 years.
| But maybe our grandchildren might have a chance.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The eastside freeway in Atlanta doesn't exist because NIMBYs
| opposed it for years and the final stake through the heart of the
| project was when Jimmy Carter selected a site for his
| presidential library right in the middle of path the freeway was
| to take. Instead Atlanta got Freedom Parkway (most famous as the
| cover image for 'The Walking Dead'), a much lower capacity, much
| less useful road but also one that didn't destroy the surrounding
| neighborhoods like the Downtown Connector did with African-
| American neighborhoods such as Buttermilk Bottom.
|
| NIMBYism stops many useful projects but it also protects a lot
| worth saving.
| mcdermott wrote:
| Perhaps it's that disease of a profession named "project
| management". In the past we had engineers and architects running
| large projects. They knew the industry, the people, and how
| everything works. Now we have professional projects managers that
| don't really understand the details of what is actually required,
| or how things work, so they crank the process overhead up to
| almost fetish levels. Even in the IT world, a one year project
| just 10 years ago is now a 3 year project.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And on IT side people might not even stick with the 3 year
| project... But move over part-way and then developers might
| actively avoid 3 year old project... So no wonder any lessons
| are not learned and mistakes are repeated...
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| The problem is that any publicly funded initiative is immediately
| treated as a cash cow that has to be milked to death. Industry,
| lobbies, special interest groups, insider deals, etc. etc.
| Everyone has to get a piece of sweet sweet cake. The longer this
| takes the more money is needed and the more cake there is. This
| is true regardless of whether its for infrastructure, schools, or
| defense acquisitions. Its functional systemic corruption, even if
| no laws are broken (because those who make the laws are part of
| the system).
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