131–140 of 272 posts
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There is only one political party, you can see it in effect of their governance. Locally they might do things differently, the “land/city” way regardless of their party.
You can't see the difference between the current Democratic Party and GOP? I heard that argument for years, but now it's like saying there's no difference between day and night.
This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to fund infrastructure - it's to fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure. There is zero incentive to run on time and on-budget, and every incentive to milk more government cash, so that people in power can get election contributions, that stay in power. If you also deny money to people who didn't vote for you, then all the better as well. S…
I am of the opinion that continuing to build out all these long 'runs' of infrastructure to serve a even more spread out populace is a dead end. Where I live we spent tens of billions expanding highway infrastructure, and it has not improved the lives of anyone meaningfully, traffic is as bad as its ever been. We need to spend more money creating better metropolitan areas that people want to live in, rather than usin…
This is one of the key points. The US isn't just spread-out but oriented to solving it's problem by spreading out more. And this paradigm has effectively become unsustainable. However, that's not the only factor at play here. Part of thing that makes spreading out the population look like a reasonable strategy is the mess involved in building in existing cities. A lot here is "soft" corruption - local government trea…
One thing the article misses is that construction worker productivity has been on the downtrend for decades https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_...
Please follow up to the article/source of this graph.
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IMO #2 takes the cake (rest is all icing)
I'm leaning towards #3. There just doesn't seem to be any real incentive for governments to look for cost savings, like it's all Monopoly money.
This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to fund infrastructure - it's to fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure. There is zero incentive to run on time and on-budget, and every incentive to milk more government cash, so that people in power can get election contributions, that stay in power. If you also deny money to people who didn't vote for you, then all the better as well. S…
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Maybe unrelated but there was a report about the construction related corruption in Quebec. I read it back in the year 2015 and there was a lot of interesting information. For example, many construction projects are given to favored parties and government engineers who take care of those projects will make sure that outsiders do not get the tender offer. Occasionally someone from outside of the circle makes a compete…
There is a lot of mob involvement in Quebec's construction industry. Are you saying the reason infrastructure is expensive in the US is mobs?
Strange question, maybe? I'm an expat living in Romania and I always appreciate and marvel at the efficiency of Romania to have/enable providers to sell an unlimited 4G mobile service plan, that (for me) also works in the middle of nowhere here in RO for 5 euros per month. Thoughts? BTW, it makes buying a service plan in KS, USA that barely works in various areas feel a bit like a scam...
US mobile carriers just know they can charge more, and people will be able to pay.
I am of the opinion that continuing to build out all these long 'runs' of infrastructure to serve a even more spread out populace is a dead end. Where I live we spent tens of billions expanding highway infrastructure, and it has not improved the lives of anyone meaningfully, traffic is as bad as its ever been. We need to spend more money creating better metropolitan areas that people want to live in, rather than usin…
The latter does not imply the former. If the increased infrastructure means that more people can live and work in an area, then even if the traffic for each person in that area is exactly as bad as it was before, it still helped those people who took the option to move there.
We do not build infrastructure that it might stay idle. Compare "we upgraded our internet to gigabit but we're seeing a similar utilization ratio, therefor the upgrade didn't improve the lives of anyone in the home".
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Then fine the shit out of him, install a watch to make sure it doesn't happen again and let him keep doing things he's good at.
I don't like the idea of having to hire staff to monitor someone 24x7 to ensure he stays on task and doesn't drive away coworkers and employees with harassment just because "he's good at" part of his job. That doesn't make any sense.