The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

I live in the Netherlands (16 million people, 23 million bikes). I went to San Fransisco a few months ago, one of the most bike-friendly US cities from what I've heard. Riding a bike there made me want to make sure my will was updated.

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.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend some years ago. My friend comes from a family of home builders. None of them do it professionally anymore, but they all spent every summer growing up helping dad do everything from digging the hole to putting in the carpet.

From time to time, each of the siblings has built a new home, and they just do it themselves in their spare time. My friend was telling me about helping his sister with her home. His sister has moved into a very rural community in the western U.S. When the family showed up to pour the footings, they asked for a copy of the footing plans. Their sister handed them an 8.5x11 sheet of paper with a hand-drawn floor plan.

"Where's your official plans? The plans you submitted for your permit? The ones with the footing details?"

"That is the paper we submitted for our permit. See the stamp that says 'Approved'?"

All the other siblings live in Clark County, Nevada. The permitting process there is excruciating. They looked at the paper, looked at each other, shrugged, then built the house. They know how to build a footing. They know how to frame. They know how to build a house. The sister's house was built with the same quality as the other siblings' in a fraction of the time.

But if one of the big builders tries to put in a subdivision in that little town, I hope the municipality watches them like a hawk. Big builders don't build homes. They cheat and connive and do everything to push product at the lowest possible cost.

In a world without trust, you cannot afford to let people self-manage.

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.

I wish. Then I wouldn't get woken up by little brats every Saturday morning. I live in one of the densest, most expensive neighborhood in the US outside of SF, and there's still a bazillion little kids and screaming babies all over the place living in lofts with no green area in sight, and even though the nearby schools are terrible.