
The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure - Typhon
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-31/the-u-s-has-forgotten-how-to-do-infrastructure
======
imgabe
I don't know the answers, but as someone who works in the industry (on the
design side). I think a big unmentioned factor is probably liability and the
prospect of litigation.

If you look at old blueprints for projects in the past, they are a LOT less
detailed. They had to be, because it was physically more difficult to produce
them since they had to be drawn by hand. A lot was left to the contractor to
figure out in the field.

Now, drawings are more detailed and contractors are incredibly reluctant to
make even the smallest decisions on their own. They don't want to assume the
liability and risk getting sued if they do something wrong, so they push that
off on the engineers and architects.

This means every time there's a question, it has to be submitted through a
formal process, tracked, answered, documented. And if the change has any cost
impacts, the contractor tacks on a hefty premium because they know they can
get away with it (and they probably underbid in the first place to win the
job). Delays pile up, every clarification becomes an expensive change order,
construction workers twiddle their thumbs while designers get around to
addressing questions and this all costs money and time.

~~~
deanCommie
Anecdotally, having moved to Western Europe, I get the sense that this is the
major factor as well.

If I walk down the street and there is a group of workers excavating a road,
there's a lot more of a relaxed attitude about fencing, walking underneath
construction equipment, etc.

After all - use your common sense - don't fall into the hole. If you do, isn't
it kind of your own fault? Nobody's going to sue anybody.

Additionally, it's not a big deal to close or severely impact a road due to
construction - just shift around the fantastic public transit infrastructure,
and everyone carries along. A bus only needs one lane in both directions.
Another thing that would never fly in North America.

Both of these problems are deeply cultural. Lawsuits have become a form of
welfare. Sure, you might not have government healthcare if you get hurt or
sick, but maybe you can sue somebody and get paid for your suffering?

And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive
relationship that America will never have the courage to leave.

~~~
lghh
> And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive
> relationship that America will never have the courage to leave.

It's pretty much impossible to leave this relationship unless you live in one
of the larger US cities. If you live in a suburb, rural area, or city that's
not in the top 10-15 in terms of size there's literally no other option that
exists or that could easily exist.

~~~
TulliusCicero
That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and
forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that
way because we thought it was better.

And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too,
with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the
poor, and making us fat.

~~~
anovikov
It was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a
nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a
nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you
chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to
keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little
combustible material around, than in multimillion cities with no way out of
them.

If U.S. launched its missiles while all these people just came home from jobs
say at 11pm ET/8pm PT, and people in the Soviet Union were on the way or at
their factory jobs during Moscow morning on Siberia mid-day, it would be a
slaughter for the Soviet Union and an easy win for the U.S.

~~~
deanCommie
Have a source for any of that?

Sounds like a completely made-up justification after the fact.

Surely someone would have raised the point that the soviet union could just
launch it's missiles in the middle of the work day.

Also, Moscow is tremendously sprawled out.

~~~
equalunique
Federal Highways in the US are designed to increase national security. The
best example is certain bridges are in certain places so that their
destruction would cut off the easy path for mobilized enemy armor. They're
designed to be easily blown up on purpose.

~~~
CydeWeys
You got any credible sources on that? It sounds like one of those urban
legends that people like to repeat. The Eisenhower interstate system was built
in a post-nuclear world, and in a post-nuclear world it's hard to imagine
there ever being a mainland invasion of the United States. The bombs would be
flying before that, and there wouldn't be anything left worth invading (on any
side in the conflict). Being able to utterly destroy the other nation and its
military forces within minutes by launching thousands of ICBMs is a much more
credible plan of war than blowing up some random bridges on your own turf, and
indeed that is the logical course of action that we did go down.

~~~
int_19h
I don't know about the bridges specifically, but that the interstate system
had an explicit national security purpose is not just well-documented, it's
literally right there in the name of the law that created it: National
Interstate and Defense Highways Act.

~~~
CydeWeys
My issue with the bridge thing is that it's easy enough to blow up bridges,
especially as you're retreating from the territory they're in, regardless of
their location or construction. It could cost billions of extra construction
dollars to unnecessarily site a bridge in anything but its obvious ideal
location (e.g. the shortest possible span).

------
michaelt

      That suggests that U.S. costs are high due to general
      inefficiency [...] Americans have simply ponied up more
      and more cash over the years while ignoring the fact that
      they were getting less and less for their money.
    

There's a general effect in political systems, that if a law takes $20 from
1,000,000 people and gives $100,000 to 200 people, the people who lose money
won't have enough incentive to put up a big fight; but the people who receive
money will have more than enough motivation.

For example, if a big irrigation project will force taxpayers to subsidise
corporate farms, the corporations have a big incentive to spend on ads and
campaign contributions. Or if you have to give $60 to a private company for
tax filing software, they have a big incentive to lobby and make campaign
contributions to keep the tax system complicated.

I'm sure construction projects are subject to the same pro-waste incentives.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is - campaign finance reform, perhaps?

~~~
Dirlewanger
>campaign finance reform, perhaps?

Abso-fucking-lutely. I think in order to run at any levels of office, you
should be using public money. For simplification, let's say if one wants to
run for president, they can only use whatever is in the FEC public coffers. In
return, we levy a federal FEC tax to boost it way higher than its current
rates. We replicate a similar tax at state and local levels. Completely remove
private donations and PACs and all that shit from the lawbooks. A fuckload of
people want to run for president? Well, you better get creative with your tiny
slice of the pie. Show us how fiscally responsible you really are.

People would scream and holler about it not being American, but it's one of
the only ways, I think, to really take a large stab at our chronic corruption.

~~~
jimmyk
>For simplification, let's say if one wants to run for president, they can
only use whatever is in the FEC public coffers.

What in particular would they not be allowed to use private money to do?

Would individuals that aren't running be allowed to use private money to do
those things?

~~~
PeterisP
Countries that have limits on pre-election advertising spending generally
include any and all public advertising expenses in that - TV, newspapers,
online media, billboards, public space, physical mail campaigns, sponsorship
of events/teams/whatever, etc. Pre-election ads by other people is limited -
small amounts per person are exempted, but you can't simply buy a $10k radio
ad praising whatever candidate you like, nor can a radio station do it on
their own.

Also, in the pre-election time mass media have to offer equal conditions for
all parties - if you own a TV station and run ads for one party for $1/minute,
then you have to offer the same ad slots for the same price to all other
parties as well.

I mean, it's not simple and it _does_ require some limitations of what the
people and media can do - which might conflict with USA 1st amendment, but in
general the problem is somewhat solvable, it's somehow done elsewhere and so
you can look at worldwide experience to pick out the bits that work best.

~~~
jimmyk
>but you can't simply buy a $10k radio ad praising whatever candidate you like

Can I buy a $10k radio ad supporting some particular issue that the candidate
also supports?

Can I buy a radio station and hire talk radio hosts that argue in favor of the
candidate or issues the candidate supports?

>but in general the problem is somewhat solvable

I think that depends on what you count as "solvable". The systems which
address the problem probably work better for some people and less well for
others. Which people do you have reason to believe are beneficiaries of these
systems, and what reason do you have to believe that?

~~~
PeterisP
On one hand, the beneficiaries are the smaller parties, since it allows
somewhat effective participation in elections without requiring that much
money - they get some free airtime (gov't funds a specific amount of airtime
in largest TV & radio stations for election coverage, allocated equally for
parties; I'm not sure whether _all_ applicants or all those who got some
minimum number of votes in previous elections), and if you have an active
volunteer force, you can get your message out without being overwhelmed by a
massive campaign of the established parties. This also makes it practical for
new parties to get started and get some seats whenever some voter group or key
issue gets ignored by the parties in power.

On the other hand, it has some advantages for the established politicians as
well, after all _they_ set the rules for this system - in essence it avoids an
arms race. Lifting the limits would give them some advantage over the smaller
parties and upstarts, but nothing over their real competition, but that would
mean that all the major players would suddenly need to raise many times more
money, making everyone more dependent on donors.

Who are the losers in this case? Probably the _very_ wealthiest individuals
(not "the 1%" but the top 10-100 richest people), since it limits their
influence. At any one point of time one or another party (not necessarily the
largest one) may have an advantage in financial support and would be happy to
lift or raise limits so that they could buy more votes, but if something like
that happens, then it motivates everyone else to not let that happen.

Regarding your questions - it depends, that's more a question for the lawyers.
IMHO ads supporting some issue would be fine but talk hosts arguing in favor
of some (any) candidate would be prohibited in pre-election campaign time
window - e.g. all mass media interviews with candidates during that time would
be only in the scheduled slots or as advertising. Sure, if you control
important media or people then the limits can and do get bent quite a bit
beyond their intent, but it still sets a limit. I mean, if the stated limit is
10 then everybody might push it to 11 by various means, but you can't really
do a meaningful _large scale_ money-influence campaign without it being
obviously illegal.

~~~
jimmyk
>Who are the losers in this case? Probably the very wealthiest individuals
(not "the 1%" but the top 10-100 richest people), since it limits their
influence.

I would guess the opposite is probably true. The top 10-100 likely have very
strong influence over the media, either due to just owning media outlets or
due to business relationships (e.g. buying advertisements not related to
politics). If people without those relationships can't buy advertisements,
then the people who influence media in other ways benefit.

>IMHO ads supporting some issue would be fine

So it would be fine for someone to spend a few million on anti-immigrant ads a
few days before an election where immigration is a key point of disagreement
between the two front-runners?

>Sure, if you control important media or people then the limits can and do get
bent quite a bit beyond their intent, but it still sets a limit.

Why exactly is the existence of a limit relevant? People will receive
information about the candidates, and many will decide how to vote based on
that information. I don't see how it matters whether the information comes
from paid advertising or from control over the media. Some individuals will
decide what information the masses will see. Those people have enormous
influence over the election. I don't see how it matters if they got that
influence by paying for it directly or indirectly.

------
truxus
Am also a design engineer, I specialize in water and wastewater works. My
clients are all municipalities, with tight budget and politics are a factor.
Engineering productivity has climbed thanks to computers, but construction
productivity continues to decline. In my experience on small jobs this has a
lot to do with safety and regulations. It takes a team of 2-3 to enter
confined spaces (manholes) for momentary inspections or maintenance, it takes
extra workers to set up traffic zones to ensure travellers are less of a
danger to the workers. Time is taken to ensure archeological, agricultural,
and culturally sensitive areas are not disturbed. Minority and women owned
businesses are given contractual preference, whether they are most qualified
or not. It takes a special (read: expensive) team several weeks to document
trivial wetland areas (most people call them roadside ditches), and another
person weeks of labor to explain how impacts will be minimized. The government
sets standard labor rates for construction labor.

But these are things we as a society have deemed important. Its not acceptable
for lives to be lost. It's not acceptable for construction workers to accept
low wages. It's not acceptable to recklessly degrade our environmental
resources, and it's important to have diversity in this industry.

I don't know if it's true in other countries, but it seems the USA vascilates
between priorities depending on the public administration. I am young so my
experience is short. Bush saw a real estate bubble, Obama saw an insurance
bubble, Trump et al aim for a construction boom. I would add that in New York
my home state, a Democrat state, there is a large infrastructure program
starting, so it's not just Republicans.

~~~
int_19h
And yet, they can do this in Europe, where all these things are also
considered important (so far as I know; but I've yet to see evidence to the
contrary).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btOE0rcKDC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btOE0rcKDC0)

~~~
jaclaz
Well, technically that tunnel launch is nothing extraordinary, surely well
done, but nothing more, have you seen/read the linked to article (Dutch)?
[http://www.gelderlander.nl/ede/deze-tunnel-onder-
de-a12-is-e...](http://www.gelderlander.nl/ede/deze-tunnel-onder-de-a12-is-
een-jaar-oud-en-dichtgespijkerd~ae9c1f4f/)

Google Translate: >This tunnel under the A12 is one year old, and closely
sealed EDE - Just a year and a day, it's already waiting under the A12 at Ede:
a large tunnel, intended for the Park Avenue, the route that must open in Ede
East from the A12 to the N224. As it turns out, it will take another year for
road construction.

------
noonespecial
I thought about this when I visited the Hoover Dam.

The audacity of the thing and sheer impossibility of doing anything remotely
like it in today's America makes it seem like a relic from an ancient
civilization.

It felt like visiting the pyramids in Egypt.

~~~
jboggan
Hypothesis: nicotine is a nootropic [0] good for say, 6 IQ points on average
(Danish study I saw referenced, not linking unless I can find the original
paper). The Hoover Dam and many other great infrastructure projects were
created in the earlier 20th century when smoking was pervasive. Perhaps we
were somewhat smarter in aggregate back then and that's why we can't engineer
infrastructure at the same level anymore.

0 - [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-a-
nicotine-p...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-a-nicotine-
patch-make-you-smarter-excerpt/)

~~~
gwern
There aren't 6 point differences between France, China, Japan, and the USA.
It's more like 2 points. And if 2, or 6 points could double construction
costs, then in the poorest countries like Africa everything would have to cost
something like 100x more, which is definitely not the case.

~~~
ShannonAlther
This is only true for certain scales relating IQ to construction costs. The
average IQ in Africa is, what, ~15 points lower than America? Suppose the
first 2 points increase construction costs by a factor of 1.5, and each
subsequent 2-point reduction by a smaller factor, until you reach some limit
(IQ average too low to be realistic, NGO aid, something like that).

------
erentz
From my perspective infrastructure is politically driven in the US. Projects
are debated for decades, over this time changes are made to placate some
groups and buy the support from other groups, and create jobs for some
politician, until it baloons into something that is many billions of dollars.
Then it is built as a one off mega project. At this point it should be killed
but this is seen as the only way to get stuff done.

Things like CAHSR instead of agreeing on a goal and deciding we should have a
CA-wide rail system, so then establish a division of Caltrans which we fund to
incrementally build/acquire/run a network through ROW acquisition, running
DMUs on the routes in the mean time, making it compatible with existing
systems, etc. instead becomes one giant $60b acquisition that is master
planned for a multi decade time frame to be built almost entirely as a stand
alone system the benefits of which can't really be enjoyed until decades in
the future.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think the one off nature of projects is the problem. There is no coherent
long term plan.

~~~
jdc
According to Peter Thiel (in CS183), this lack of long term plan is a symptom
of people believing that the future is indeterminate[1].

1\. [http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-13-notes) (Section I. The End of Big Projects)

~~~
scott_karana
Admittedly, that belief was driven by the repercussions of failed bets on the
future. Just look at pension contributions and retirement returns from the 60s
to the 80s.

------
saosebastiao
I'm pretty sure we're so far invested in being crappy at government that we
can't feasibly turn back without inflicting a lot of pain.

Admittedly anecdotal, but after having lived near two major DOE national
laboratories (where >40% of my neighbors worked at the lab), I wouldn't be
surprised if 60-80% of the workers at these labs could be eliminated under a
combination of audit-based reform, regulatory reform, and management changes.
Without any change in output or results. I've listened to descriptions of what
people do at these labs, and it blows me away how low productivity they are
compared to the private sector. I've known people who work entire workweeks
that could be consolidated into 3-5 hours of work, and _they 're willing to
admit it_. In fact, those that would try to change from within have told me
they would feel vulnerable to retaliation if they went through with it.

And that's before we get into the shitshow that is federal contract work.
We've turned federal contract work into a goldmine for whoever has enough
lawyers to win a bid. And we don't even know how many people are employed
doing that contract work [0]!

At this point, meaningful reform means taking 10's of millions of people and
forcing productivity on them to the point where most of them are unnecessary.
We could probably double the unemployment rate with the right reforms. That's
why it won't happen.

[0] [http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/03/even-cbo-
stumped-...](http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/03/even-cbo-stumped-size-
contractor-workforce/107436/)

~~~
zanny
This is a symptom of David Graeber's phrase of "bullshit jobs". Capitalism and
the government work together to create unnecessary work (often through
regulation and oversight and middle management stuffing) to maintain "safe"
employment levels to keep the economic system working. If we were only hiring
people to do productive things, and considering we saw a 75% productivity
increase between 1975 and 2005 _with_ all the bullshit jobs, while domain-
specific productivity figures hit the 300% or higher ranges, you could
maintain the same GDP at 40%+ unemployment. The only problem being the country
would collapse with that much unemployment, so the private and public sectors
respond by fabricating things to do that don't actually create goods or
services.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Isn't this simply "fiscal stimulus?"

I mean, the federal government is _supposed to_ create jobs by spending money.
Doesn't matter what they spend the money _on._

The only acceptable way to measure economic output is _in terms of the dollar
value of all the goods and services bought and sold._ It could consist of
marijuana farming, muscle car paint jobs, bass fishing lures, watery beer,
custom gun barrels, cow-brain sandwiches and East European strippers. Doesn't
matter. We can't go around imposing our value-based notions of "bullshit jobs"
on top of that measurable dollar amount.

That wouldn't be _economics._

------
beat
This reflects in health care as well. American health care costs about twice
as much as it does in every other first-world nation. Those systems run the
gamut from fully socialist to mostly privatized, but they all share a common
feature - they provide universal coverage at half the cost of the American
system. That says there's something uniquely broken in our model.

Infrastructure? Same thing. There's something distinctly American in how slow
and expensive it is. These are systemic issues, not some single-cause thing
that [liberals|conservatives] can finger-point to a partisan villain.

~~~
davidw
> mostly privatized

Where's that?

~~~
goodcanadian
Switzerland might be a good example
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland)):

 _Healthcare in Switzerland is universal and is regulated by the Swiss Federal
Law on Health Insurance. There are no free state-provided health services, but
private health insurance is compulsory for all persons residing in Switzerland
(within three months of taking up residence or being born in the country)._

~~~
jonknee
It's privatized, but not private like you would think of in the US. For
example, insurers aren't allowed to profit off of the basic insurance everyone
is required to get, they can only profit off of expanded coverage. They also
have Medicare-style price controls which is obvious, but not private in the
sense we use in the US.

~~~
int_19h
So basically the big reason why it succeeds where ACA does not is because it
regulates the prices?

~~~
jonknee
That along with a real mandate and the fact that Switzerland is a tiny place
(similar in population as Virginia, though 1/3 the physical size).

~~~
beat
I've seen the geography argument brought up for a "Why no national insurance
companies?" Apparently, network stuff is so localized that it's very hard to
set up a national-level insurance company. Although I suspect state-by-state
laws play into it as well.

At any rate, the sheer geographic size, plus the large population, plus the
legalistic bizarreness of our federal/state divide, leads to a chaotic system,
and we can't easily just legislate that away.

~~~
int_19h
But why would a national insurance company be a prerequisite for quality
healthcare in at least some states?

------
bkjelden
I have been wondering lately if we have become so dependent on certain sectors
of the US economy (housing, infrastructure, healthcare, education) that risk
aversion is suffocating innovation.

No one wants to send their kid to an unproven, experimental university. No
city wants to beta test a new style of road building. No patient wants to be
the first to try a new treatment. We are so dependent on these things that the
cost of failure is astronomical. Because no one is willing to try new methods
of doing things, costs never go down. There are marginal improvements, for
sure, but no disruptive changes.

It feels like a weird manifestation of NIMBYism. We all want innovation, but
we want to test it on someone else first.

~~~
rrauenza
Your question reminded me of the resistance of PEX adoption in California,
even though it has been widely accepted in Canada.

[http://www.remodeling.hw.net/products/house-
systems/californ...](http://www.remodeling.hw.net/products/house-
systems/californiais-pex-battle-continues)

I was surprised the article didn't address regulation much nor the fear of
litigation (when I googled for canada pex legal, I found class action
suits...)

~~~
resf
The obvious next question being, _are_ PEX pipes safe? Perhaps California is
just ahead of the curve banning it.

~~~
bluGill
As far as we can tell. Pex is just polyethylene or (C2h4)n - there is nothing
about that chemical formula to be particularly concerned about. It doesn't
leach anything - when pure water is desired it the most common pipe to specify
as it is cheap and works well (glass is better but that is mostly because
glass does not allow air to through to dissolve in your water - and obviously
more expensive)

The alternative is copper and cPVC. cPVP is just another plastic. Copper
leaches copper into your water (though not harmful for most purposes), and is
attacked by common water ph to corrode and ultimately break requiring
replacement (though this takes about a lifetime). Copper is more expensive -
10 feet of copper pipe will cost as much as 100 feet of pex, and you have to
join the copper every 10 feet: more expensive labor.

The claimed worry is impurities from manufacturing exposes workers to them
when the pipes are first turned on. Note that there is no particular reason to
believe those objections do not apply to approved pipes. My opinion is they
don't like the idea of pex because it is less labor which means less money for
them.

I personally use pex for all my plumbing in my house. It is cheap, quick and
easy.

~~~
mark-r
I've noticed that Pex has taken over new construction in my area. I built my
house 17 years ago and copper water pipes were still standard. I just assumed
cost was the big driver since copper has gone up about 200% in that time.

You say that copper will eventually corrode, but how does that compare to the
lifetime of Pex?

~~~
bluGill
Good question... Regular polyethylene is rated for 50 years in ground (I was
researching geothermo at one point), and experts say that is mostly because
nobody wants to bother with caring about things that will happen after they
are dead. Generally it is believed we should get 200 years out of it, perhaps
more.

PEX has essentially zero resistance to UV, in sun exposure salutations you get
a few weeks of lifetime. Most buildings don't expose plumbing to sunlight
though. There are a few (very few) chemicals that attack PEXs, but all the
ones I know of are nasty enough that I'd wear full protection if I ever have
to work with them - not something I expect drinking water will ever contains.
Pex is resistant to any PH I'd want to drink.

------
tannerc
Related to what we might label "modern" infrastructure, I just got back from a
trip visiting the outskirts of Illinois.

The towns there are small, but full of people hungry for opportunities and
good work.

Yet everywhere you go there is no work to be done. Businesses—even big box
stores like Walmart or Target—are closed down. Homes lay vacant despite their
reasonably cheap (at least for someone living in Silicon Valley) $20,000 price
tag. Even churches in the area have to close their doors but leave their
steeples standing, unable to draw in an audience or—and most importantly—any
money to maintain things.

This isn't Detroit I'm talking about, it's a fairly typical suburb of a larger
metropolitan area in the midwest.

The answer for many of these people has largely and loudly been: "Bring back
jobs from overseas! Stop outsourcing work to China!"

But of course that's not a valid answer, since the problem is that the jobs
these towns once knew now belong to machines which can work tens of times
harder and longer at a fraction of the cost of their former human
counterparts. Yes, some of the work has gone overseas, but much of it has just
become "modernized" by technology.

And here's the thing: the infrastructure for things as simple as Internet
access in these parts of the US just isn't there.

So nobody goes to school to learn programming or design or how to be a modern
entrepreneur because they (the individuals and schools) just don't have any
connection to those parts of the landscape. And when they do, their model is
wildly out of date.

One of the Universities I visited and, later, a high school had each _just_
opened a computer lab for students in which the goal wasn't to help students
learn programming, or design, or anything like that, but merely how to type.

This of course added on top of the decrepit roads, buildings, etc. The state
is wildly out of money because it can't put people to work, and the people
can't work because the infrastructure just isn't there. It's depressing to
see, really. I want to know how we can improve this, and what someone living
on the other side of the country might do to help.

~~~
TulliusCicero
I think what's really interesting is that the US seems to have so many of
these economically broken places, and yet GDP per capita in the US is the
highest of any large country (and higher than all but a handful of small
countries). I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think it's interesting that we
can have these obvious large problems and still be economically successful in
spite of that.

~~~
TillE
That's just a description of huge inequality, though. The "economic success"
is largely concentrated in a tiny pool of the extremely rich.

------
BurningFrog
The Slate Star Codex essays on "cost disease" are as usual a must read:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-
cost-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-
disease/)

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-
com...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-comments-on-
cost-disease/)

------
stupidcar
Vague talk of inefficiency in construction isn't really very informative. Has
anyone ever done a study where they take two very similar projects — building
a medium sized office building, for example — in the US and China, and
following them both from beginning to end, auditing exactly how much money and
time is spent on each stage? It seems like this would provide a useful basis
for comparison.

~~~
post_break
Wouldn't they vary wildly due to OSHA and other requirements like permits and
bribes?

~~~
shuntress
Probably.

That is something that would be good to understand with precision, hence the
study.

------
bogomipz
I don't know if "forgotten" as used in the title is the correct word so much
as just "out of practice." Look at this list of infrastructure projects in
China in the last decade or so:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-chinese-
infrastructure-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-chinese-
infrastructure-projects-that-are-reshaping-the-world-2016-6/)

It's hard not to be impressed by that list. And China is undertaking these
scale projects abroad as well from Latin America to Africa.

It's should be no surprise that you get really good at something the more you
do it. What was the last project that the US Federal Government undertook on a
similar scale as one of these? "The Big Dig[1]"? Notable for being the most
expensive highway project in US history and yet served only Boston?

The US seems to spend interminable months squabbling over whether or not its
un-American to use imported steel to replace parts of its crumbling
infrastructure(see Bay Bridge, Tapan Zee projects etc.) while the Chinese seem
to spend that time actually executing the project.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It's almost like a democracy slows development, if you compare China to India
it looks like that.

~~~
bogomipz
Another possibility is that development slows when you're spending Trillion
dollars[1] on endless wars abroad instead of investing in infrastructure at
home:

[1]
[http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic](http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic)

------
vmarsy
> Yet France’s trains cost much less.

Decades of expertise might be a reason here, France has the longest amount of
(high speed rail miles / country area), and the non high-speed network is also
huge. It's also possible that the monopoly of having only one, state-owned,
railroad company (SNCF) let that company negotiate/choose better prices much
more aggressively than if there was many companies. I don't think it was
stupid at the time to have such a state-owned monopoly for building this key
infrastructure.

Also I'd think that with that big of a network, some things start to become
less costly because of economies of scale. Last April SNCF bought _30_ trains
to Alstom for 250m€, with the current US infrastructure I doubt the US needs
that many trains. If one day like France they have 450 high speed trains,
maybe it'll cost them less to have more built.

Japan and France are dense countries, the area of France is roughly equal to
the area of Texas, it's hard to imagine 450 high speed trains there, where
they're struggling to even get one high speed rail line between Houston and
Dallas.

~~~
superfx
Funny thing is that the population of Texas is a little less than half that of
France's (27 mil vs 66 mil), so the density differential isn't _that_ large,
yet your point about the implausibility of 450 trains in Texas stands.

------
Apreche
It costs extra because CORRUPTION. They're skimming off the top at every
level, and that's why they can't let anyone investigate.

~~~
richardwhiuk
Why is this corruption particularly endemic in the US and not in other major
western countries?

~~~
erentz
From my experience this kind of crony corruption is becoming more endemic in
places like New Zealand and Australia. I can't speak for Europe.

------
bischofs
I recently ran into the MDOT project manager for a rebuild/expansion of a
section of I-75. With some googling I found that she was working on the
project since 2001 - construction started in 2016 and is not scheduled to be
completed until 2030.

So she will be working on the project for 30 years; her entire career...
something is pretty broken about the government structures around these
projects.

~~~
doodlebugging
I know that this can happen because my wife started her federal government
career in one agency working with someone who retired from the agency shortly
after she started. This person had spent their entire career at DOT managing
projects along the interstate between Houston and Galveston. The
expansion/maintenance over that time period guaranteed that nothing was ever
truly completed. Crews/contractors simply shifted down the highway to the next
place scheduled for repairs or lane additions.

------
cmurf
That's because income taxes on the wealthy are way too low, which incentivizes
stuffing income into real estate, stocks, and bonds.

Earn a million dollars worth of either earned or unearned income, and you pay
either (simplistically) 39.6% on earned and 23.6% on unearned income. That's
too f'n goddamn cheap. It encourages peopel to pay that tax and put it into
one of the above, rather than take the risk by starting or growing a business
and taking a tax deduction for business expenses.

When the silent generation was in charge of things, income tax was never less
than 75% for the top tax bracket, for over 40 years. And during that time
there was massive private and public infrastructure being built, and we didn't
have a $20 trillion national debt.

------
hx87
I suspect that part of the problem is that expertise doesn't reside in
monolithic corporations and governments anymore, but in specialist consultant
companies that have relatively high fixed costs and thus must charge more to
make a profit. In addition I suspect that there are a lot of lookalike
consultant companies that charge a lot of money in exchange for kickbacks but
don't provide any value.

------
chadgeidel
My brother and father (concrete construction) would probably lay the blame on
onerous regulation. They regularly complain about nit-picky engineers with
their insistence on (in their words) unreasonable slavish devotion to
engineering specifications. I'm not on the jobsite so I don't actually know.

I wonder is our construction regulations are much more stringent than other
western nations?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Count your blessings. Construction can be much harder in other countries for
reasons beyond engineering and safety.

Italy, for example, is a real estate developers nightmare. Every rock or patch
of dirt has a decent chance of sitting atop an Ancient Greek or Roman ruin,
and the process to ensure that construction won't damage any heretofore
unknown ruins is agonizingly slow.

It boils down to political power and cultural preference. Americans are fine
with tearing down almost anything (except designated landmarks) to build
something "better" than before.

~~~
arethuza
But that problem applies to a lot of places in Europe - a lot of projects in
the UK need to have teams of archaeologists in place and stuff seems to get
built here at a reasonable rate (OK mostly - around Edinburgh we've had one
dubious tram project and a successful major bridge and railways being re-
opened).

The Crossrail project in London had over 100 archaeologists working on it:

[http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology/](http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology/)

Edit: The Forth Crossing bridge uncovered sites roughly 10,000 years old!

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Crossrail appears to have been a quite successful project from the outside,
I'm not sure if that's because of good PR or if it really has been.

~~~
gsnedders
Some of it is PR: some parts have gone badly (redevelopment of Whitechapel
station comes to mind), but by and large it has gone to plan (albeit using
almost all of its risk time, AFAIK!). They've by and large kept their cards
quite close to their chests about things going wrong, though.

The worst parts, by and large, have been around the existing railway
infrastructure: dealing with long-disused parts of railway infrastructure
(partly buried and exact design and current state unknown) and with currently
used infrastructure without long-closures (as well as Whitechapel, the
electrification of the GWML out to Reading comes to my mind, with all its
problems, which is really a separate project but Crossrail cannot run beyond
Heathrow Junction without it complete).

------
tmh79
It seems to me like the biggest things that have changed are the safety
regulations on the construction process itself and the finished product. The
golden gate bridge was built in a few years, but with a few worker deaths.
Building a new bridge like the golden gate today would likely be illegal, and
take ~25 years.

~~~
alistairSH
That doesn't explain the difference in time/cost between current-day USA and
current-day France or Japan. All three have modern safety and environmental
regulations, yet two can complete jobs faster and for less money.

~~~
fivestar
Maybe you don't understand the real incentives at work? In the US, it is jobs,
jobs, jobs. Long, drawn out projects keep hardhats working for years. It's not
about outcomes, which is a big part of the problem.

~~~
alistairSH
Possibly true, but the parent to my comment suggested the problem was
safety/environmental regulation, which is unlikely to be the main contributor
to the problem.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Sort of. That other developed countries do it cheaper suggests that having
sufficient safety/environmental regulation is not the problem, but our
particular implementation of such could still be the problem (if it was
particularly redundant or cumbersome).

------
myrandomcomment
So I worked for the family construction firm for a few years. The amount of
ass covering, paperwork and complexity to what should be a simple thing was
amazing. The amount of litigation involved when anything was not as expected
was amazing vs. just trying to sort it between the those involved. My father
build a $M business on just doing change orders & claims. There is your
problem.

------
DisposableMike
We haven't "forgotten" how to do anything. We just let ourselves
(collectively) become OK with projects that extraordinarily long, slow, and
expensive, and the contractors aren't going to be the ones to force positive
change in the system.

------
hkarthik
The fastest that I've seen infrastructure put up in the US is where there are
toll roads being built.

I suspect this is because there is a high incentivize to get a toll road up
quickly and start generating revenue to pay back the initial investment.

Residents generally hate tolls, but its a good motivator for infrastructure to
go up quickly.

I never understood why similar incentives wouldn't kick in for mass transit
projects.

~~~
ascagnel_
Americans generally have an aversion to public transit for anything beyond a
air travel. Just look at the current mess NJ Transit & Amtrak find themselves
in with regards to the Hudson River crossing -- some century-old tunnels and
an almost-as-old drawbridge that are beyond capacity. Replacements had been
funded and ground had been broken, but that money was then diverted for
surface roads and highways.

------
TetOn
This article from 2011
([http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchapril-2011/more-b...](http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchapril-2011/more-
bureaucrats-please/)) makes a compelling case that, after decades of cutting
government jobs and creeping privatization, we simply don't have enough
bureaucrats to organize and run large, complex projects anymore. These other
countries having success with infra projects still do. Thus the issue.

~~~
skrap
I've been following and advocating for the Green Line Extension, a major
transit expansion in the Boston area. I've been working on this for about 7
years now, through three different project teams, and I can say for certain
that lack of effective management is a HUGE issue with the repeated failure of
this project.

(This is the third reboot of this project... or maybe fourth. I've lost
count.)

Not only does the local transit agency have _nobody_ who can manage the
project, but the government doesn't even have the capability to assess
contractors who might do that job. So they are totally at the mercy of
commercial firms, who get paid whether they deliver or not.

The latest move is to hire a project manager for about $400k/yr (on a contract
basis, naturally) to try to "save" the project, which has already spent $1
billion, yet has not put a shovel in the ground. (Ok they did fix up one
bridge, woo hoo.)

Unfortunately, this PM is only one guy, and he's being assisted mostly by (you
guessed it) more contractors. Even more comically, the contractors who are
assisting him are the exact same ones who blew the first billion dollars.

Needless to say I don't have a lot of confidence that the incentives are
aligned with me ever riding on this line.

------
rjohnk
After the collapse of the 35W bridge, the new bridge the took its place was
built ahead of schedule and on budget. As with many things in history,
disaster seems to hone our ability to overcome obstacles and get things done.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Saint_Anthony_Falls_Brid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Saint_Anthony_Falls_Bridge)

------
barretts
One important factor unmentioned so far: Federalism. The US has very strong
state and municipal governments compared to France and Japan. In many cases,
any one of the three can veto a project. A new commuter rail line under the
Hudson River connecting NYC and NJ was begun in 2009 and NJ Gov Chris Christie
killed it in 2010 (citing cost overruns), after $600m had already been spent.

------
mnm1
Is inefficiency inefficiency when it's done on purpose? That's what the
article misses. The salaries of workers might not be higher than in other
countries, but I bet what we pay contractors vs. what they produce is beyond
astronomical. It certainly is when government contracts out software. With
modern computing, I don't see why we don't keep track of costs down to the
penny. A new hammer is bought to continue construction? The receipt is scanned
and everything is tracked. You don't scan it, you don't get reimbursed. All
actual costs are known and the profit margin can be calculated from there. It
might not help that much until more data is collected and future projects can
be estimated better using that data, but it sure as hell beats the current
model of guessing the lowest estimate to get the contract, getting the
contract, and then spending 10-1000x the estimate.

------
OliverJones
I hate to be snarky, but there's another factor: laziness.

When there's a replacement bridge under construction around here, business at
the local dunkin donuts goes up ALL DAY, not just at lunch and shift change.
Everybody's there: laborers, supervisors, delivery drivers, managers,
engineers, owners' reps from the state DOT and the towns involved.

And, in Massachusetts we have a peculiar extra cost: The police force has a
monopoly on doing the traffic safety work that flag people do everywhere else.
They have the right to arrest people who work in or near roads if they start
working without a paid police detail on the site, or keep working after the
police detail leaves. Slows work down; gives people a reason to wait around
after arriving on the job.

------
hawaiianed
There is some poor analysis in the article with regards to Davis Bacon Act,
they approached it and then missed what it was telling them.

Here in Hawaii, Laborer Prevailing Wage is $50+ an hour, toss on our mandatory
insurances worker's comp and taxes and it costs almost $80 an hour to pay that
worker before profit and other overhead.

Laborer rates vary by locality, but no construction worker who gets more than
3-months of Davis Bacon pay is averaging $35,000 a year it's going to be
closer to $50,000.

Whenever we do any State, or Federal work there is a huge stack of submissions
that have to be made, I kill trees like it was my job, shoveling paperwork out
the door for these projects.

------
defined
> There is reason to suspect that high U.S. costs are part of a deeper
> problem.

Maybe this is mere cynicism, but if the workers and materials don't cost that
much more than in France, my immediate reaction is "excessive profiteering",
or, to put it another way, "because we can, and nobody is stopping us".

The same applies to our unreasonably high education costs, and healthcare
(although that's much more complex an issue, but at its root, it is too many
fingers in the pie).

------
esfandia
I wouldn't be surprised if infrastructure costs and delays were going up
everywhere though, including France. Would be nice to have actual data.

I think it comes down to new non-functional requirements: safety,
environmental concerns, accessibility, liability protection, etc. With these
requirements, Paris or London or New York would have never had a subway system
in the late 1800's or early 1900's. By now though, all these systems have been
maintained and modified to comply to the new non-functional requirements over
time.

So if you added the accumulated cost of running a subway system today, while
adding all the maintenance costs over time, it might be the case that the cost
of building the same thing from scratch would be cheaper, but unfortunately
without the benefit of having passengers enjoy it (and pay for it) for over
100 years (thus partially subsidizing the maintenance costs).

So you could even consider something as rigid as a subway system built in an
"agile" way, with a quick and literally dirty MVP out of the way early, and
additional non-functional requirements added over the course of decades. It's
just that those requirements weren't known or wanted initially.

Now would it be ok to do the same now? Have a subway system in a city that
needs it, but without bathrooms in stations, with no pollution requirements
initially, not accessible to the disabled, (name your other requirements not
necessary for a MVP), but with the benefit that at least it exists now, it can
be subsidized by passengers that are willing to use it, so that over time
those other requirements are met. Better have them later than never.

------
babesh
It's a symptom of captured large government in the US.

The smaller 25k person town I live in doesn't nearly have the same issues.
We've managed to put up new school buildings the last couple of years with not
too much fuss and on budget. On the other hand, the town is relatively well
off and there is seemingly good community participation.

------
exmicrosoldier
Too many value extracting rentier owners and valueless executives skimming off
the top of projects done for the common good.

------
macspoofing
This article was frustrating to read because it is clear the author did not do
one iota of research. He identified a problem with American construction
sector being inefficient or not-cost effective and did nothing to even attempt
to answer why - yet still managed to stretch that one thought into a 1000 word
essay.

------
chromaton
I-85 in Atlanta was repaired in just over 6 weeks. So things can get done
quickly if the incentives are right.

~~~
ams6110
Yes incentives. The I-85 repair had huge political pressure to get it done
because a major highway was closed, inconveniencing many voters and commercial
entities.

Most infrastructure projects have incentives to delay. The longer the project,
the more time for more people to make more money.

------
esmi
By U.S. I think they mean the Federal Government. It's possible to build very
large projects, presumably to code and under proper safety standards, in
America if one desires. Here are two examples which come immediately to my
mind. I'm sure they are many more examples.

[https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory](https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Park)

I think the Federal Government looks at infrastructure as jobs programs and
this is why they are drawn out. The job is the end not the thing they're
actually building.

~~~
Decade
Not just the federal government. State and local governments are also insanely
slow and expensive.

For example: Mayor Ed Lee being fast and decisive. Building teacher housing
during such a state of emergency that SFUSD has trouble filling its open
teaching positions. About $300,000 of city money budgeted per unit, and it
won’t be open until President Trump’s successor is halfway through his/her
first term, if we’re lucky. [http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Mayor-
comes-up-with-...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Mayor-comes-up-
with-40-million-for-S-F-s-11139143.php)

------
edraferi
> U.S. costs are high due to general inefficiency -- inefficient project
> management, an inefficient government contracting process, and inefficient
> regulation. It suggests that construction, like health care or asset
> management or education, is an area where Americans have simply ponied up
> more and more cash over the years while ignoring the fact that they were
> getting less and less for their money. To fix the problems choking U.S.
> construction, reformers are going to have to go through the system and rip
> out the inefficiencies root and branch.

That's a tall order. It'd be nice to see the article suggest a way to
accomplish that.

------
tomohawk
In my state, a contractor was paid to build a major highway using concrete
pavement. If done properly, such a road should last 40 years or more, and
without the thumpity, thumpity sound you get when the concrete is not put down
properly.

The contractor was not experienced and totally muffed the job.

Rather than penalizing the contractor, they paid the contracter to build the
road again, plopping asphalt on top of the concrete after grinding the
concrete and redoing the joints that they screwed up. The asphalt hasn't
lasted that long, so it will need to be redone again soon.

So, the contractor was inept, but so was the government overseer.

------
rrggrr
Durability. Its one thing to quickly and cheaply add infrastructure, and I've
traveled the world to places where this is accomplished at a dizzying pace.
Its another thing altogether to engineer and build projects that can endure
over time and in the face of natural and unnatural disaster.

Yes, the US is overdue for infrastructure investment. Yes, its costly and
unproductive Federal and State entitlement obligations compete for these
dollars. But the expense of building infrastructure in the US is justified by
the longevity of its engineering and build quality. This is not the case
globally.

~~~
jicks
It doesn't fit.

Railway systems in Japan and France (taken as example in the article) are high
quality and last long as well. Yet construction railway is way less expensive
there.

~~~
rrggrr
Rail is a special case because land issues and near zero indigenous maglev
tech in the US. Think roads, airports, train stations, bridges, dams, etc.
And, as importantly, the US doesn't export subsidize infrastructure companies
and projects as does France or Japan. The exception is energy infrastructure.

~~~
afuchs
I'm confused?

What do you mean by land use issues?

Japan isn't using maglev for commercial high-speed service yet. Japanese high-
speed trains have steel wheels that make contact with a steel track, just like
regular trains. Their maglev trains are limited to experimental research and
development [1], or low-speed urban transit [2] (which was built as a showcase
for a World's Fair).

France's and Japan's high speed trains are based on the same technology as
their lower speed counterparts, including American freight rail. How does a
differing level of experience maglev technology cause a difference between
different countries' quality of infrastructure, when that technology isn't
being used?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo)

~~~
serhei
Incidentally, Japan's maglev project (unlike their ordinary trains) is being
done at ridiculous costs and ridiculous timeframes ($80 billion USD spent over
31 years -- 2014-2045 see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen)).
Seems like the technology is very tricky and 90% of it will have to be built
in tunnel.

They can support this because their ordinary transit infrastructure is built
out already, the Tokaido high-speed line is at capacity (trains every 5
minutes at peak hours)! Effectively, they have the money and they've run out
of more reasonably scaled infrastructure projects to build.

------
anubisresources
I posted this here the other day, I'm not a civil engineer so I'm sure there
are things I'm missing but the idea seems to have some merit:
[https://www.jefftk.com/p/replace-infrastructure-
wholesale](https://www.jefftk.com/p/replace-infrastructure-wholesale)

It doesn't address any of the numerous political issues with American
infrastructure, but it could be good for repair and maintenance

------
kazinator
Why all the guesswork about why it costs so much?

That sort of thing should be readily explained by accounting: follow the
money.

Public infrastructure should be financially transparent.

~~~
hawaiianed
It is largely projects over $10,000 go out for public bidding, generally with
sealed bids. For most State or Federal level stuff you can see who the bidders
were, and what bid won the contract.

Municipal or County level projects probably have so much variability that it's
hard to make any definitive statement.

------
supernumerary
In Detroit, lawmakers recently passed legislation making it hard to sue the
city for crumbling sidewalks.

[http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/01/05/si...](http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/01/05/sidewalk-
slip-fall-accident-lawsuit/96228496/)

------
mrjaeger
Is there any way to do a bottoms up analysis of infrastructure projects like
this and see where the differences come from? I imagine the costs on projects
like these are pretty finely broken down, although I'm not sure how one would
go about actually getting the numbers to analyze.

------
Mz
They are comparing it to health care, which suffers from a serious excess of
bureaucracy. So I will suggest that too much bureaucratic red tape is likely a
factor.

------
mcrad
As the value of a law degree has ran way ahead of more hands-on professions,
this is the result. Constitutional amendment: JD's banned from public office

------
cletus
The US hasn't forgotten. Nor is this unique to the US. It seems to be a
widespread issue in the developed world.

The problem is that labour is simply too expensive now. And, to a lesser,
extent, so is real estate.

In the 2000s Australia experienced an unprecedented resources boom fuelled by
China's growth. This especially impacted Western Australia and Queensland. WA
in particular is rich in iron ore, oil and gas and other resources.

In Perth in 2000 you could buy a 70s 3 bedroom house within a few miles of the
city center for <A$100k. By 2005 it was $350k. Capital projects for the
resources industries were in the works amounting to over A$100B. All of these
have a huge construction component that soaked up the construction supply.

In the 90s you could build a house in as as little as 3 months. From the early
to mid 2000s that time frame is now closer to a year and costs 5 times as
much.

So homes became much more expensive. Of course building commercial and
industrial property also got more expensive. Property costs are a significant
input cost into any business that operates there. Increased residential costs
soak up disposable income and lead to wages growth. Increased wage costs makes
things more expensive and the cycle continues.

So Perth transformed in the 1990s from a city that was very affordable with a
good standard of living to one of the haves and have nots. The haves are those
in the construction and resources industries. They were making crazy money.
Everyone else was pretty much a loser.

Arguably this is dutch disease [1].

So now the city wants to do things like build train lines. Well labour is
stupidly expensive because the cost of living is so high and buying up real
estate to put said train line on is also super expensive.

A lot of people don't seem to feel this because they're incumbents (ie they
bought their houses 15+ years ago). Others have immigrated so have foreign
money bypassing the local economy.

So look at the Second Avenue Subway as one example. $17B for a few miles of
tunnels? Really? Well that's the cost of labour in the US and real estate in
Manhattan. Since it's underground I don't imagine a large percentage of the
total cost is real estate either.

So it seems like when a lot of this infrastructure was built, the relative
cost of labour was much lower. The standard of living was also much lower,
apart from the 1950s and 1960s, which can be viewed as a transitional anomaly
more than a normal equilibrium.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease)

~~~
blawson
The article specifically claims labour costs aren't that much more than in
other locations, Japan in particular. Certainly not enough to explain the huge
differences in project budgets.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I read that in the article too. But, I still wonder: could it be that the
annual salary of a worker is not the end of the story? In other words, if the
_process_ is so slow in the US, and an American project takes 2 years instead
of 1 year (for a comparable Japanese or French project), then costs are
effectively double.

Also, I don't think the article mentions the _benefits_ costs: healthcare and
pension costs for government and union workers in the US are higher than in
other countries.

------
rhino369
Do these construction costs inefficiencies also appear in construction
projects that are privately funded? Or is it just publicly funded projects?

~~~
debacle
At least in my city, nearly every construction project, private or no,
receives (often unnecessary and/or astroturfed) public scrutiny.

------
JustSomeNobody
Because the developers have learned how to play politics for more money?

------
primeblue
Too much compliance and suing by lawyers/everyone.

------
howard941
Is excessive profit taking eating up the productivity?

~~~
hawaiianed
Not here labor is almost always our largest cost by far and away. Labor costs
are typically 4 or more multiples of profit for most of our work.

~~~
howard941
It labor's like 80% of marginal costs 1/4 of it would be tremendous profit
margins matched by exceptions like google and pharma. You can see why I'm
probing. Can you disclose the typical industry margin?

Are your costs Hawaii costs as the username suggests?

~~~
hawaiianed
Yes, Honolulu County.

We are typically lucky to make 10 to 15% profit on Prevailing Wage Work,
(Federal or State).

We do occasionally but it's generally luck coupled with good management and
having the ideal crew on the job.

[https://labor.hawaii.gov/rs/files/2012/12/WRS489.pdf](https://labor.hawaii.gov/rs/files/2012/12/WRS489.pdf)

Prevailing Wage Schedule for Hawaii for Public Works. New York localities are
even higher.

We do laborer classification work, with some small percentage of "Operators".
The skilled trades are even higher.

The next bump for Laborer 1 (what we pay the workers when they are performing
asbestos removal) occurs in September 2017. At that point they will be making
$55.66 an hour.

We pay the entire Base wage and Fringe to the workers, as opposed to union
shops.

------
aaronarduino
It's not that we have forgotten. It's the fact that regulation, time to get
approval, and other red tape make the timeline longer. Gone are the days when
things just get done.

~~~
sharemywin
But, from what the article was pointing out we're comparing place like france
and japan which have as many if not more regulations.

~~~
aaronarduino
It's not how many regulations there are, it's more about how much time and
effort it takes to conform to the regulations.

~~~
sharemywin
So, your argument is we enforce are regulations better?

------
jk2323
An African government official visits Europe. There, a European government
official invites him to his luxury home. The African is shocked.

He asks "How can you afford such a house if you a just a government official?"

The European says: "Look out of the window. can you see the bridge?"

The African: "Yes"

The European: "See, the government paid for two train tracks but the bridge
has only one."

The African says: "I understand".

2 years later the European official visits the African in Africa. He invites
him into his house and his house is a luxury palace.

Now the European is shocked. He asks "How can you afford such a palace?
Recently you were so impressed with house and now you live in a palace?"

The African says: "Look out of the window. can you see the bridge our
taxpayers paid for?"

The European: "No."

~~~
defined
Lmao. To one who was born and raised in Africa, this is both funny and, too
often, lamentably accurate.

~~~
int_19h
I've seen this joke before, but it wasn't about Africa. In Russia, a similar
one was told in the 90s, except it went like so:

Yeltsin visits US on an official trip; Clinton is hosting. The banquet is
lavish, and after gorging himself on delicacies, Yeltsin asks Clinton where
the money for all that came from. Clinton gestures him to the window, and
points at river, with bridge in the distance.

"See that bridge?"

"Yep."

"We budgeted 100 million dollars for it, but our innovative construction
companies managed to complete it for 50 million. The rest of it went into our
reception fund".

Next year, Clinton visits Russia. The banquet is even more lavish. Clinton
asks Yeltsin the same question. They walk to the window, and Yeltsin gestures
at the river.

"See that bridge?"

"Um... no?..."

"But we budgeted 100 million dollars for it. So..."

Which, I guess, also tells you a lot both about how US was perceived in Russia
back then (I'm sure the notion that American contractors could do the work
_under_ budget is utterly unbelievable to most Americans; yet its
believability is at the heart of this joke).

------
Kenji
The solution is shrinking the state to the bare minimum and making as many
transactions as possible voluntary.

~~~
Frondo
I wish the Libertarians who post this solution ("shrink the state to the bare
minimum") would ever actually show us where it's working in practice, to
provide a decent quality of life for people.

In China, they're building mad infrastructure--big state. In Europe, they're
providing a good quality of life--big state.

The "small state" places I can think of, none of them are places people are
flocking to for an improved quality of life.

Why can't we see how well this idea works out in practice? Why does no one
ever say "look at [minimal-state place X] and see how people are happy,
thriving, and free"?

~~~
mistermann
Let's be honest, there are not that many examples to choose from.

What I like about China is, it illustrates how effective a mostly benevolent
dictatorship is. It is the optimal political system imho, provided it remains
benevolent of course, which is no small feat.

Provided they don't trip and fall, if China is not the absolute supreme leader
of the planet in 25 - 50 years I will be shocked.

~~~
ori_b
> _Let 's be honest, there are not that many examples to choose from._

Yes, I think that's the point. There are decent numbers of places where
government has neither the ability or desire to regulate heavily. None of
those places seem to have blossomed into oases of free enterprise and
infrastructure construction.

~~~
faceyspacey
This point is likely subject to the "correlation is causation" debate. All the
countries doing well with big governments are also likely resource-rich and
home to ancient empires and culture.

What countries have small states that you are referring to anyway? Zimbabwe?
Burma? Equador? Places in the jungle? There are lots of other reasons these
places might not be economic powerhouses. It takes a lot more time to trade
coconuts through a deep jungle.

Just because it seems difficult now under a heavy antiquated state-controlled
system, doesn't mean, say, something like a crypto-currency-backed
decentralized world isn't possible. We very well could one day be paying taxes
just to local governments, and many local governments compete for our
citizenship through things like low taxes. Cut the 25% u pay in taxes that
goes to military related expenses (because, say, china now becomes the world's
"supreme leader" as someone else said), and now we are well on our way to a
small-state government.

I hope we can fix these problems. Things are so inefficient. I'm excited to
see how far decentralization can take us.

