hm... it could also lead to something like Idiocracy.
I mean the more technology you have the less you care about old things, like "how to build a building". Just look at how much worse the whole building industry gotten.
The try to be cheaper which also comes with the cost of less trained people.
I don't think that's factually correct. You might be seeing a worse quality in building construction simply because there are more options for materials/designs etc. that cost less but don't last as long. Its kinda similar to the software industry: in the early days, one had to be a highly trained technician/mathematician to write software. And the ones that were written were rigorously tested. Today there is a lot more software written that is probably not upto those standards; yet it is still useful.
The Empire State building was completed in 1931. It had 103 floors, took 13 months from start to finish, and cost $637M (adjusted for inflation).
83 years later, in the same city, the Freedom Tower was completed. It had one more floor, but took 102 months to build and cost $4B.
Obviously that's only two data points, but it's broadly representative of the general trend. Our capacity to build infrastructure has declined dramatically over the past century. Obviously we're still able to do it, but the costs and timescales have increased by orders of magnitude.
>Obviously that's only two data points, but it's broadly representative of the general trend.
NO, IT IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF ANYTHING.
So many things changed between 1931 and 2013, and the circumstances surrounding ESB and 1WTC are so different (9/11, for one) the comparison is utterly meaningless.
Just one note... maybe you should also try to factor in (maybe it's impossible, but do keep this in mind when comparing the two buildings) that probably some things were added later to the original 13-months building, like better thermal insulation, phone cables, air conditioning while the new one have these from the start.
So you should compare 13 months/$637M + X months/ Y millions to update the original building to new standards.
> According to official records, five people died while constructing the Empire State Building. One was struck by a truck, another fell down an elevator shaft, a third was killed by explosives, a fourth struck by a hoist and the fifth fell from scaffolding.
On the other hand it doesn't seem like the Freedom Tower construction had a very good record either (but I couldn't find any info on deaths):
> In fact, The News found at least 81 incidents involving dangerous work conditions at the site since construction began in 2003. Through this year, at least 42 of those incidents involved workers falling from a height far enough to seriously injure themselves.
According to Wikipedia, 5 people died building the Empire State Building. Workers dying on the job wasn't uncommon back in those days, and considering the size of the project, that's actually probably pretty good for that day and age. According to another poster here, the Freedom Tower had a whole bunch of safety incidents too and serious injuries.
Obviously, safety has gotten better over the years, but it's not like people were falling off the ESB left and right during construction.
Also, we have the benefits of modern technologies now: safety technologies, cranes, etc. It should be both faster and safer to build something that size, just like we can build cars now that are better than Model Ts in every single way. But it isn't.
It's not about pensions, and it certainly isn't about healthcare (we don't have nationalized healthcare in the US, we have a complete fucking mess). The problem is politics and bureaucracy. We just can't get stuff done like we used to.
Most of these desasters are caused by underbidding and then the company buys in personal that isn't trained for the job. The company fails, the prise rises (mostly higher than other offers) actually this gives a bad reputation to the building industry.
Also in germany many more projects failed, and the politcs removed a lot of stuff that untrained people could raise a building company. like the "master"-title need that was completly removed (in most handcraft work) and the quality suffered.
another reason why quality suffers is also of course that there are more materials and the stuff gets more complex due to more safety restrictions, this also means that its no longer possible that a single person could understand the process as a whole. you often also see that in minor vehicle repair shop even the one's from the car vendor, most of the time the bigger problems can't be solved by them and the car needs directly go back to the vendor company. this wasn't true a while ago, so the reasons why quality suffered are mostly:
- complexity
- less trained people
- less trained supervisory
- rush for the smallest possible price
Germany and public projects are a extreme example if all 4 things of the above are true.
P.S.: These things do happen for technology projects, too in germany.
