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The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

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Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#31

Post by anubisresources »

bkjelden wrote: post #13

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 t…

Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen have a lot to say about this subject. The argument boils down to regulatory and cultural pressures have caused innovation to slow down drastically since the 1970s in all areas but ICT.

I strongly suggest you read "The Complacent Class" if this is a subject that interests you

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#32

Post by rrauenza »

bkjelden wrote: post #13

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 t…

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...

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...)

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#33

Post by debacle »

rhino369 wrote: post #24

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

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

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#34

Post by krona »

eduren wrote: post #9
masterleep wrote: post #7

Bureaucrats, allied with progressives and public sector unions, work vigorously to make government as expensive and inefficient as possible. In the United States, they are succeeding very well.

If bureaucracy is the problem, then why only here? European governments are notorious for their large number of civil servants.

Ahem. In the UK, the second high speed rail project, HS2 (which hasn't even started to be built) has so far awarded contracts totaling almost £0.5B to various management consultancy firms to produce nothing but checklists. It's an utter fiasco.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#35

Post by baron816 »

bkjelden wrote: post #13

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 t…

> No patient wants to be the first to try a new treatment.

Plenty of patients are willing to try new treatments. New treatments are incredibly expensive, but unlike in other countries and industries, old treatments/technologies continue to get more and more expensive. The problem there is that pricing is totally obfuscated, and providers are able to get monopolistic profits as a result. The government could step in and hold down prices, as they do elsewhere (or at least require transparency), but their pockets are too stuffed by the monopolists to do anything. "Free markets!" they declare, destroying capitalism.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#36

Post by jandrese »

anubisresources wrote: post #31
bkjelden wrote: post #13

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 t…

Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen have a lot to say about this subject. The argument boils down to regulatory and cultural pressures have caused innovation to slow down drastically since the 1970s in all areas but ICT. I strongly suggest you read "The Complacent Class" if this is a subject that interests you

You mean right after the Copyright Term Extension act was passed?

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#37

Post by sharemywin »

masterleep wrote: post #7

Bureaucrats, allied with progressives and public sector unions, work vigorously to make government as expensive and inefficient as possible. In the United States, they are succeeding very well.

Exactly and the best way to save the chickens from the wolves is not to find a better chicken house builder but to stop building chicken houses.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#39

Post by alistairSH »

tmh79 wrote: post #26

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.

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.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#40

Post by 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?

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