Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 564 posts

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#141

Post by bluGill »

solotronics wrote: post #112
mistermann wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just got back from China and the rate of infrastructure expansion is amazing. I have a theory that since they are highly centrally planned they don't really have to worry about if infrastructure is "profitable" in the Western sense of the term. They want to build roads and high speed trains? Well the government entirely controls the banks and construction companies so they just make some money and give it to the co…

It is amazing I'll grant, but it is useful? Are they building cities for nobody to live in, roads that nobody will travel, and bridges to nowhere? If so (which they have been accused of though I don't know the facts) it is wasted effort. All those workers could have stayed home to play go in the park and been just as productive without the environmental downsides of building infrastructure.

Note that building infrastructure "too far" in advance is wasted effort. You end up with infrastructure designed for yesterdays needs that needs updating when you need it. (ie houses with coax that cannot handle digital TV, not wired to internet.) You also lose any useful advances that might happen (brand new never used air conditioners that use so much energy you can buy a new one just on the energy savings over a couple years)

Use you need to plan and build for tomorrow. However do not do too much as you don't know what tomorrow will bring.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#142

Post by BearGoesChirp »

ori_b wrote: post #89
mistermann wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

The ones I think of often have a government that either doesn't have the ability to regulate the things a libertarian thinks they should (libertarians aren't generally anarchist, and so their desired government would function to some extent) or the government does have the ability to regulate but uses it arbitrarily for corrupt interests (and so a startup company that does well enough will eventually be forced to comply with the government wishes).

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#143

Post by Broken_Hippo »

abalashov wrote: post #114
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cultu…

> Americans are fine with tearing down almost anything (except designated landmarks) to build something "better" than before. Unless that "anything" are super-expensive detached single-family homes on relatively large lots, and the proposed replacement is something that increases density. :-) Oh, I'm obviously taking a pot shot at the Bay Area, but the influential underlying psychology exists to some extent everywher…

Or if it qualifies as something qualifying as, "not in my backyard".

And this isn't unique to that area: Transform a cornfield into low-cost housing next to a "nice" area. Put a halfway house in place of a fire-gutted house. Even worse, put in a prison (which keeps crime rates lower than average).

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#144

Post by bluGill »

ghaff wrote: post #70
noonespecial wrote: post #51

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.

Dams specifically are... complicated. There are a lot of reasons why dams are more likely to be torn down these days than built. Some are necessary for flood control but dams often have very significant negative environmental effects. It's also hard to imagine building the interstate highway system today but, in general, a greater concern about the environmental impact of infrastructure projects isn't really a bad th…

They are not building many interstates, but existing ones are being expanded around cities. They are also upgrading a lot of little two lane country roads to freeways - except for the name they are interstates.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#145

Post by beat »

davidw wrote: post #64
beat wrote: post #18

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 dis…

> mostly privatized Where's that?

Japan's system is over 60% privately funded, using employer-based private insurance not radically different from the US system. Providers are also more private than public, and the system does not distinguish between private and public providers.

Where Japan differs is strict price controls - all medical procedures and products cost a fixed price, set by a government panel. This helps guarantee that the various private health care providers can make a profit and stay in business, but are not profiteering or abusing customers.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#147

Post by 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...

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#148

Post by cjlars »

Frondo wrote: post #73
Kenji wrote: post #41

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

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 improve…

The US would count as a small state by most OECD averages, so assuming by quality of life you mean, 'high GDP and standards of living', Texas would be a fairly good counter-example of a successful small state. I don't think there are many people in the libertarian mainstream who would suggest shrinking government revenue to below ~15-20% of GDP (US average is currently ~27%, Gary Johnson only recommended a 3% reduction in his presidential run [0]), so if you're only interested in refuting the lunatic fringe, then you can probably stop reading now.

To answer your question more scientifically, a preponderance of the evidence does suggest that countries with smaller governments as a percent of GDP do experience higher growth in standard of living [1]. So if your goal is to maximize long term standards of living, you would tend to support a relatively smaller government than is common among rich countries today.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/no-not-... [1] https://taxfoundation.org/what-evidence-taxes-and-growth

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#149

Post by 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).

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#150

Post by 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.

Post reply on HN