[HN Gopher] State capacity and eight parking spaces
___________________________________________________________________
State capacity and eight parking spaces
Author : aaronbrethorst
Score : 53 points
Date : 2025-07-30 06:37 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.brethorsting.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.brethorsting.com)
| voidUpdate wrote:
| There's a lot in my city that had construction going on for about
| a month, they barely got anywhere, and now it's been deserted for
| a while. It's meant to be a new block of flats, and I know that
| takes a while, but every time I pass it, I think about the
| stories of Chinese workers erecting a 57 storey building in 19
| days (Though I don't know if that includes wiring, plumbing, etc,
| or if it's just the concrete shell)
| bjackman wrote:
| An idle observation about bureaucracy:
|
| In my big tech job we have a pretty small (by public sector
| standards) red-tape burden but it does exist. It does slow work
| down and it does increase the activation energy such that some
| small projects that might otherwise happen simply don't.
|
| Sometimes, I choose to semi-transparrently ignore it. I see this
| happen at the institutional level too. So there's a spectrum of
| tactical non-compliance, extending roughly between:
|
| - I do not submit my conference material to PR/legal, I just go
| to the conference and present without approval. I admit this to
| my management chain, they are mildly uncomfortable about it but
| ultimately don't care enough to make my life difficult.
|
| To:
|
| - We have a policy stating that all open source code in our stack
| must be fully reviewed internally. I think this does genuinely
| happen for lots of libraries but for the Linux kernel we are in
| flagrant violation and nobody cares.
|
| I assume there are very good reasons this is not something you
| can just do in the public sector. I assume there's also a factor
| in there about how there is no serious constituency in my company
| that genuinely cares about the PR/legal approvals, whereas the
| regulations blocking parking spaces are probably ultimately due
| to someone who really does care about whatever they are supposed
| to represent.
|
| And yeah I guess I do like the rule of law, I prefer that our
| governments don't break it. But maybe there's something there.
| roenxi wrote:
| It is a weird subject - on the one hand, I don't think anyone
| would argue that the story in the article makes sense from a
| process perspective. But simultaneously the people who are of the
| opinion that the regulations burdens should be lightened seem to
| be in a political minority that can't be much bigger than around
| 30% of the population. Raising the question - what do the
| majority of voters actual think about this sort of regulation?
| Maybe they are just of the opinion that case studies like this
| aren't representative of reality.
|
| I'd incline to believe that if the US body politic set out to
| solve this one they'd end up in a position of introducing a
| loophole for charging projects (ie, increasing bureaucracy) and
| reducing the regulatory burden wouldn't be an option.
| pikminguy wrote:
| I think most people have an opinion similar to NIMBYism.
| Everyone agrees there are too many regulations but no one
| agrees which ones are the extra. Every rule is someone's
| highest concern.
|
| That's why part of the argument in Abundance is that current
| processes give too many people too much veto power. When every
| issue is someone's pet issue nothing can ever get done.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > And yet here we are, three years later, staring at an empty
| lot.
|
| By way of comparison, Project Gemini was conceived in 1961 and
| Gemini 3 successfully flew in April of 1964.
|
| But I'm sure that 8 EV parking spots is a more complex endeavor
| somehow...
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality has been noted
| for a long time. Unfortunately much bigger projects are now
| affected in ways that perhaps they would not have been in the
| past.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "It's about rebuilding government's capacity to accomplish its
| basic functions efficiently and effectively."
|
| That is a fairly hopeless aspiration as systems inevitably evolve
| to perpetuate themselves, not the services they were created to
| provide.
| praestigiare wrote:
| I think that framing this as hopeless, and perpetuating the
| idea the government cannot operate efficiently, is a part of
| the problem. If a system is created to provide a service, it
| makes sense that said system would consider its existence
| instrumental to meeting that goal. This could be a positive
| motivator to provide the service efficiently and effectively.
| There are many reasons that it often does not work out that
| way, but one is public perception that government is supposed
| to be slow and inefficient.
| Peteragain wrote:
| As a leftie - admittedly one who thinks - I thought the article
| was actually quite positive and didn't bring politics into it:
| "What would that look like for something as simple as EV charging
| stations? Standardized approval processes. Pre-approved vendor
| lists. Streamlined permitting for routine infrastructure. Clear
| timelines with accountability mechanisms." A clear and sensible
| suggestion. Cool.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| I think state capacity shouldn't be a left-right issue. Whether
| you want oil rigs or public parks to be built, everyone can
| agree that once the decision is made, it should be built
| swiftly and well.
|
| And the public should be able to have an expectation that when
| the government says they'll do something, they're capable of
| doing so within a reasonable budget and timeframe.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| In my neck of the woods, you'd be called a capitalist
| bootlicker for this point of view by many lefties. I get called
| that for basically any suggestion besides complete communist
| revolution.
|
| I can always tell who on the left is ideologically poisoned by
| how vehemently they hate anything related to the idea that
| current government processes and regulations could improve or
| that government regulations can go (sometimes very) wrong. As
| if somehow that admission is the same as wanting anarcho-
| libertarianism.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| As a "liberal" (American definition), you're in a far
| different bubble than I am.
| shazbotter wrote:
| I'm an American, in my circles "liberal" is almost a curse
| word. It's what we tend to call people who support
| corporate power, profit motivation, and social progress as
| long as it doesn't inconvenience them personally.
|
| We broadly use "leftist" to refer to ourselves, whether
| that's democratic socialists, anarchists, communists,
| syndicalists, unionists, etc. Philosophically, these folks
| are fundamentally pushing for wellbeing of all, social
| motivation, and social progress even if it inconveniences
| me personally.
|
| I don't think it's helpful to refer to these differences in
| ideology as bubbles, though. I think there's a very real
| philosophical difference between liberals and leftists, and
| has been for generations. 60 years ago Phil Ochs sang "Love
| me I'm a liberal", and it wasn't a new idea back then.
| Liberals and leftists hold incompatible worldviews. Just
| like liberals and conservatives do. I think deploying the
| term "bubble" for such broad groups is probably more
| reductive than helpful.
| shazbotter wrote:
| I'm a lefty, but off the anarchist stripe, if you start
| calling for communist revolution I'll be there to oppose you.
| ;)
|
| But more seriously, I think we could do a lot more with local
| governments and our capacity to build things. Part of that is
| regulatory, but a I think a majority of the problem is we
| focus too much on getting a thing built and not enough on
| continuing to run it. Whether it's housing, transportation,
| bridges, whatever, everyone is excited for opening day then
| we immediately start paring back funding and support for it.
| Which results in loss of quality, which makes people go "why
| are we even paying for this", which leads to loss of funding.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Where is your neck of the woods? (Vaguely, of course, nobody
| wants to reveal where they live on the internet). I spent a
| lot of time in New England college towns (the region is
| stereotyped as very blue, and so are college students), but
| didn't much like that. The activists I knew were... not so
| interested in infighting that they'd turn away anyone who was
| willing to canvass.
|
| Maybe it is a West Coast thing though, stuff seems more
| acrimonious out there.
| bee_rider wrote:
| There's a typo in my post but the edit window has closed:
|
| > I spent a lot of time in New England college towns [...],
| but didn't much like that.
|
| I meant
|
| > I spent a lot of time in New England college towns [...],
| but didn't _see_ much like that.
|
| With that being liberal vs leftist infighting. I loved
| living in New England college towns, they are great. You
| can walk to a cafe or a bar, it's like being in another
| country.
| ajd555 wrote:
| Great read, and a great example of America's failure to complete
| infrastructure projects. I agree with the proposed solutions, and
| I do hope that some local governments start enacting some of
| them. I'm reminded of the staggering cost for a new railroad in
| the US, that can go up to $4M/mile near urban environments[0]. We
| need more articles like these and some political courage to get
| building again!
|
| [0] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/commentary-do-you-want-
| to-...
| pu_pe wrote:
| The legitimate criticism I read against "Abundance" is that for
| the most part regulations and due process emerged to protect
| public interests from private capture. In the article the author
| says we should use "pre-approved vendor lists" or "streamlined
| approvals" and that sounds great in principle, but could also
| easily be exploited.
|
| One of the reasons American and German cities are made for cars
| is because of the influence of their car industry. However, this
| also pushed out investment in competing alternatives like public
| transport infrastructure.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| > In the article the author says we should use "pre-approved
| vendor lists" or "streamlined approvals" and that sounds great
| in principle, but could also easily be exploited.
|
| Every kind of regulation can be exploited and is currently
| being exploited. GDPR led to law firms squeezing money out of
| neighborhood bars with cease and desists. Government grants
| spawn companies doing the exact minimum to keep getting grants
| without building real businesses.
|
| I totally agree that lobbyism is a massive problem (and often
| the reason we get such complex regulation--they shut out the
| little players). But any proposed solution will have to be some
| type of risk.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Has our system done a good job at preventing private capture?
| Are we better at preventing private capture than countries
| which build things more easily?
| ryathal wrote:
| Our system is great at preventing private capture at the
| small scale and great at ensuring it on the large scale
| aqme28 wrote:
| > for the most part regulations and due process emerged to
| protect public interests from private capture.
|
| In truth I think it's a mix of this, and the opposite--where
| private interests have already captured the public good.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| " that for the most part regulations and due process emerged to
| protect public interests from private capture"
|
| I just flat out don't buy this. The majority of regulations I
| see "abundance" type people arguing against were never aimed at
| curtailing private capture. They are aimed at keeping
| neihborhoods unchanged for generations, making sure everyone
| up-and-down society gets veto power over any project regardless
| of type or upside of it, and making sure arbitrary unrelated
| "goods" are enforced with as much bureaucracy as possible
| during development (the best example of this is trying to get
| solar panels built and having to fight many years of
| "environmental" review for something so desperately needed for
| our environment).
| derbOac wrote:
| I have to admit this essay struck me as sort of strange. On the
| one hand, the EV charging station seems like something fairly
| straightforward, that should be approved and built fairly
| quickly. On the other hand, it's just an EV charging station,
| and without knowing anything more about it, I am just as
| inclined to believe that this is some small pet project of
| interest to the author, who no one else _really_ cares about,
| and he 's invoking some grand criticism of government writ
| large as a way of bringing urgency and grandeur his
| idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really matter in the grand
| scheme of things.
|
| EV sales are in the middle of a nationwide decline, especially
| for one of the major manufacturers. I doubt it has anything to
| do with the 8-space parking lot in Seattle in particular. Add
| to this stories about charging station compatibility, and I'm
| not surprised there isn't a greater sense of urgency from the
| city.
|
| I have my pet projects I'd like to see finished as well, but I
| don't blame my municipality for not prioritizing them. They
| have a lot on their plate. It has nothing to do with capture or
| overregulation, but priorities with constrained staff, budget,
| and time. People change their minds and city priorities change
| with popular sentiment.
|
| In some ways, this is a good example of why some prudence is
| warranted, and maybe you should get the other side of the
| story. The essay neglects to mention that four of the eight
| charging stations would be owned by Tesla for example --
| something that if you're not opposed to, you might at least
| admit is reasonable for the city to reevaluate -- and there is
| apparently contaminated soil at least nearby the site.
|
| I'm generally in favor of reregulation or deregulation, but I
| generally feel like land use, environmental, and public space
| or resources are something where there _should_ be a lot of
| scrutiny and layers of approval. Once it 's gone, it's hard to
| reclaim and expensive to clean up. I also feel like many
| examples of complaints in this area and mention of things like
| Abundance are just like this -- someone complains their
| personal project of interest isn't done fast enough,
| criticizing the government for being cumbersome and
| overwrought, while neglecting to mention all the reasons why
| people might not prioritize their pet project, or why their pet
| project might reasonably be seen as requiring safeguards or
| approval processes. The reason why the government is slow with
| your pet project is because not everyone agrees with you, and
| there is a commons issue involved.
|
| Meanwhile, discussion about deregulation of things that
| actually involve personal choice, with little or no public
| commons issues involved, like medical care, go by the wayside
| and are never mentioned, or are even hyperregulated.
| scythe wrote:
| >In some ways, this is a good example of why some prudence is
| warranted, and maybe you should get the other side of the
| story. The essay neglects to mention that four of the eight
| charging stations would be owned by Tesla for example --
| something that if you're not opposed to, you might at least
| admit is reasonable for the city to reevaluate -- and there
| is apparently contaminated soil at least nearby the site.
|
| No, I think the "other side of the story" here is laughably
| weak. Four measly charging stations in the whole city of
| Seattle owned by Tesla? That barely warrants a comment on
| Hacker News, much less a town hall.
|
| And "contaminated land"? How contaminated are we talking
| about here? It's crippling to any hope of widespread
| brownfield redevelopment that something so minimally invasive
| could be shut down by nebulous, ill-defined contamination.
| Perhaps we need a standard grading system for land
| contamination instead of just lumping gasoline and arsenic in
| the same category.
|
| >I am just as inclined to believe that this is some small pet
| project of interest to the author, who no one else really
| cares about, and he's invoking some grand criticism of
| government writ large as a way of bringing urgency and
| grandeur his idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really
| matter in the grand scheme of things.
|
| I am inclined to think that this argument could be used to
| shut down any case study used to critique the bureaucracy.
| The idea that eight city-owned parking spaces are somehow
| personally important to anyone is weird enough to demand at
| least a little evidence.
| derbOac wrote:
| > That barely warrants a comment on Hacker News, much less
| a town hall.
|
| I think that's maybe what I'm saying? Or the other side of
| the coin? I personally don't think there's some compelling
| harm being done by the government in this case.
|
| Maybe some general discussion of neglect in the use of the
| land might be more compelling to me, but I'm not sure that
| delays in allocating it to charging stations in particular
| seems like a grand failure of governance. The soil is
| contaminated and the government wants to clean it up while
| they're tearing it up? Next to a planned park apparently?
| And this is causing harm by... holding up EV charging
| stations? Not a light rail hub, or walking trails
| connecting neighborhoods, or cycling infrastructure, or a
| clinic, but EV charging stations?
|
| > I am inclined to think that this argument could be used
| to shut down any case study used to critique the
| bureaucracy.
|
| I guess another way of phrasing my reaction is that I don't
| find this particular example very compelling in critiquing
| bureaucracy. Maybe more to my point, the fact that the
| author presents it as urgent to me sort of ironically
| underscores the problems with the argument they advance.
| It's an urgent need to them, but maybe not to the public at
| large?
|
| It's also maybe worth pointing out the converse is true:
| the argument in Abundance could be used to shut down any
| case study used to support the government in being prudent
| or thorough?
| toast0 wrote:
| > And "contaminated land"? How contaminated are we talking
| about here? It's crippling to any hope of widespread
| brownfield redevelopment that something so minimally
| invasive could be shut down by nebulous, ill-defined
| contamination. Perhaps we need a standard grading system
| for land contamination instead of just lumping gasoline and
| arsenic in the same category.
|
| If the article is accurate, the cleanup was completed by
| January 2024, and first phase of work started September
| 2022. So who knows how long cleanup took, long enough to
| mention, but less than 1.5 years. The city website about
| the project [1] says the contamination was removed in 2022,
| so maybe not very long at all. The site's former use was as
| an electrical substation, so I'd expect soil contamination
| from spilled transformer oil, and similar things; some
| nasty stuff, but usually not a lot of it.
|
| Sounds like the root cause of delays is availability of
| appropriate chargers, and probably a lack of priority.
| Also, 8 EV chargers doesn't sound like much, but if they're
| level 3 chargers, that's a lot of power if 8 cars plug in
| at the same time, which necessitates a bit of engineering
| and oversight. If it were 8 level 2 ev chargers, that would
| probably be a quick and easy install.
|
| [1] https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/in-the-
| community/current-...
| gruez wrote:
| >In the article the author says we should use "pre-approved
| vendor lists" or "streamlined approvals" and that sounds great
| in principle, but could also easily be exploited.
|
| As patio11 would say, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-
| zero". Fraud is bad, but if fighting fraud involves so much red
| tape that it costs more than whatever petty corruption could
| ever cost, it's bad.
|
| [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-
| fra...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Regulations and process are just scar tissue from mistakes of
| the past. Excessive process indicates abundant past mistakes.
|
| If we want to go back to taking risks and making mistakes, by
| all means, let's cut red tape and get rid of process. But, we
| should do it knowing the tradeoff we're making. I think some
| people here just think "regulation/process = bad" and "getting
| rid of regulation/process = good" but it's more complex than
| that.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Every regulation is a Chesterton's Fence.
|
| Maybe there's a different regulation that fences in the past
| mistake. Maybe it's historically contingent and irrelevant.
| Most laws exist without a direct reference to their relevancy
| and it takes legal archeology to uncover the telos of each
| clause.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > "pre-approved vendor lists" or "streamlined approvals" and
| that sounds great in principle, but could also easily be
| exploited.
|
| Nearly any kind of public spending can be exploited, including
| auctions. There are countless cases where the cheapest vendor
| that satisfies the written criteria is chosen, only to end up
| with delays, cost overruns that far outweigh the initial
| savings, or equipment that malfunctions and breaks.
|
| I know somebody who was in charge of writing these auctions for
| their government department. They picked a vendor, and then
| worked backwards to write the requirements so that only that
| vendor would satisfy them. Not because of corruption, but
| because they knew that vendor's equipment was quality.
|
| There was another case, in a different department, where this
| was not done - the auction was written naively (and honestly),
| and the cheapest vendor chosen. The equipment failed within
| months, putting people at risk, and a different vendor had to
| be quickly chosen.
|
| It's better to just put some conflict-of-interest guards in
| place, and then trust the judgment of whoever needs those
| goods, than to try to eliminate corruption through bureaucratic
| procedures. Because it can't be eliminated with bureaucracy -
| but efficiency can, and will be.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| Good article. There are 3 observations I'd add:
|
| -I think we underestimate the impact of the cultural assumption
| that anything the government does will be 10x as expensive, take
| 10x as long and then not work properly, with nobody ever being
| held accountable, but lots of people having been paid along the
| way.
|
| Of all the ambitious, smart people I know, a single one has said
| he even believes it's a good thing to work for the government.
| And he doesn't do it because he thinks the experience would be so
| miserable compared to working in tech.
|
| -Most people don't seem to understand that regulations don't just
| add up, but compound.
|
| It's not that each individual, well-intentioned regulation is bad
| (though some are), it's that many regulations intersect and
| create edge cases.
|
| And when there's regulation/paperwork at every point, it starts
| to look like an insurmountable barrier. This is true with
| entrepreneurship in Europe. People aren't against a specific
| regulation, the perception is that whatever you want to do,
| you'll have to ask permission from someone, somewhere, fill out 5
| pages of paperwork and wait 3 months before you get to talk to a
| notary and finally change your business' mailing address (real
| example from Germany)
|
| -It's hard to make a rational case for this because humans are
| wired to weigh danger more heavily than upside.
|
| We don't have counterfactuals (the cafe that didn't open because
| of zoning laws, the parks that were never built, etc.)
|
| Even when politicians admit this problem, they then proclaim they
| want more housing, innovation or whatever, but getting rid of a
| regulation has some amount of risk.
|
| So then they try to find the "free lunch": a solution that has
| none of the downside, but all of the upside.
|
| That free lunch doesn't exist and the resulting solution only
| gets even more complex.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _And he doesn 't do it because he thinks the experience would
| be so miserable compared to working in tech_
|
| I've worked for the US federal government, big tech and another
| big corp. I would say my experience with the government (and
| the non tech big corp) was more positive than big tech, as my
| team was more focused on working/growing together rather than
| trying to individually outshine everyone else. I feel like we
| were working towards practical goals that has clear benefits
| for our customers rather than trying to hit seemingly arbitrary
| kpi's.
|
| Working for the government I also feel like my work/life
| balance was most respected as well. YMMV though. Admittedly,
| N=1 here.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| Interesting! I guess government doesn't equal government and
| highly depends on where you work and what you work on. The
| same way being a product manager at Google vs. a founding
| engineer at a startup vs. a research scientist at OpenAI are
| different, though they all "work in tech".
|
| Plus, I'm in Europe and my friend runs his own startup, so
| very different environment.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Having worked for both FedGov and Contractors directly, plus
| several F500s, the Gubmnt was wayyyyy more focused on loss,
| waste, and long-term planning.
|
| the levels of waste and BS and general suck at some large
| mining + O&G companies was astounding, on top of being
| absolutely brutal, miserable places to work.
| ryathal wrote:
| That's close enough to my experience in state government. The
| biggest problem was generally a lack of widespread
| competence. There was plenty of red tape, but there were also
| lots of people whose job was to deal with that tape.
| WBrentWilliams wrote:
| Writ-large, isn't what the article is referring to the plot of
| Sheng kiru(Ikiru, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru)? My
| suspicion is that the solution to lack of ability for government
| to enable building in the US will be the same, writ-large, as in
| the movie. That is, it will happen, but (I'll stop here, least I
| spoil the movie for you).
| djoldman wrote:
| I find it quite interesting that US private industry can be
| incredibly effective relative to non-US private industry, but the
| opposite seems to be more the case when it comes to government
| projects.
| dweinus wrote:
| The idea of US private efficiency is overblown. It doesn't take
| long working in a large US company to see massive delays, red
| tape, duplicate work, self-sabotage, or favoritism. Even when
| it is fast, that doesn't equate to efficient. It's not uncommon
| to see 8 figures put into throw-away work.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I've seen massive waste in private business. Incredible amounts
| of it. Somehow these companies don't collapse.
|
| Sometimes I think the only real difference is it's easier to
| sell stuff to upper management than it is to a congresscritter.
| Easier for one person to waste a lot of money than it is for a
| committee to do it.
| gruez wrote:
| >Sometimes I think the only real difference is it's easier to
| sell stuff to upper management than it is to a
| congresscritter. Easier for one person to waste a lot of
| money than it is for a committee to do it.
|
| How does this square with congressional pork like the SLS[1],
| or buying tanks that the army doesn't want[2]?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Criticism
|
| [2] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/18/congress-
| agai...
| xnx wrote:
| Not a great example since building and maintaining an EV station
| is not something Seattle should be doing.
|
| Cities have no experience building or maintaining charging
| stations.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Regardless of whether the City of Seattle should be in the EV
| charging station business, once they decide to, they damn well
| ought to be in the Getting Things Done(tm) business
| shazbotter wrote:
| The city runs a municipal electrical utility (Seattle City
| Light), so building and maintaining electrical infrastructure
| is absolutely something they both have experience with and
| should be doing.
| xnx wrote:
| Why EV parking spaces and not a laundromat (which uses
| electricity)?
| shazbotter wrote:
| Because an EV lot is delivering power to a point (the
| charger) and parking is a business the city regularly
| operates. There's nothing novel to the city there.
|
| A laundromat does take power routing, and there would be
| sufficient expertise to do that part, but operating a
| laundromat is a business the city has never done before. It
| requires knowledge of machines, customer traffic, laundry
| care, and a bunch of other stuff the city hasn't done.
| shazbotter wrote:
| The article highlights a failure, which is good, but gives a very
| surface level review of what failed here. Some gestures are made
| at environmental review but it's not clear that the root cause
| here was regulation. If the project needed three redesigns, why?
| Maybe electrical capacity for 8 high capacity outlets on _that_
| site was tricky. Maybe the transformers and their cooling was
| louder than that site could accommodate. Maybe this was a low
| priority project and other things kept stealing time from it.
|
| I can think of many reasons why a project like this stalls. And
| too be clear, regulation could absolutely be one of them. The
| article just doesn't support that as a root cause beyond
| conjecture.
| mindslight wrote:
| Spot on. I read the article wondering when they were going to
| describe what specifically failed or got stuck. Instead it's
| just a vague implication that such redesigns must have been
| unnecessary, but never saying exactly why such redesigns were
| being done. What/who is the project currently waiting on? It's
| never specified.
|
| In light of that, maybe a better description of the problem is
| more the absence of responsibility/accountability (for both the
| proponent and the reviewers, although it's not indicated which
| is dropping the ball here) rather than the
| processes/regulations themselves.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I think the article was clear that this was a series of
| delays at all steps -- no one issue (eg redesigns) that
| prevented progress. I would like to have seen more details,
| however it's possible they just don't exist in any one place.
| mindslight wrote:
| That is the opposite of being clear - there is no analysis
| of what was responsible for each delay, leaving the reader
| to fill in their own imagined idea. And we can imagine many
| different scenarios. Maybe permits were stonewalled and
| denied for petty reasons. Maybe the muni electric company
| assigned the project as a low priority to an intern who
| kept missing key requirements. Maybe the better charging
| station vendor had too long of a lead time, and the muni
| electric was trying to ram it through with a different
| vendor that is more aggressively trying to privatize the
| commons. Each of these things are going to have wildly
| different fixes.
| M95D wrote:
| In my country, obtaining a permit to build something is so very
| complicated and long that most people prefer to just build and
| then pay the fine for building without permits.
| advisedwang wrote:
| The article pretends that the EV charging project failed because
| of bureaucratic hurdles, but then says 'But they had to switch
| charging station vendors due to supply chain issues, and the new
| equipment had "a very long lead time."' That has nothing to do
| with bureaucracy, and none of the abundance stuff comes anywhere
| near addressing it.
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