The dictatorship of the articulate

The bridges perfectly illustrate it. It is not uncommon that renovating a bridge costs more than the initial construction. However, it seems surprising, as the engineering challenges are more difficult to understand, and little additional value is created.

Urban planning complexity increases with a city's maturity. Imagine Paris or Rome. Every building is historical, owned by a combination of individuals and corporations, with water, gas, electricity, wastewater systems span centuries, and an underground with cavities for the subway, ancient mines, and WWII bunkers.

Sure, an app to hail taxis is a nice idea. As the article says, it's not running water, but it is nice. And sure, if committees had discussed it, it would probably never have existed. But a monopoly that takes a 20% cut on precarious workers is not a desirable outcome. So the articulate have stepped in.

Most citizens don't know how to spell CPU. They still have the right to choose their future.

I know you're not supposed to use that word, because it really upsets Fascists.

But really, long passionately argued essays about how democratic governance is stopping us from returning to the good old days and we should let the powerful do whatever they want.

Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Calling things dictatorships, run by the articulate? Warning that nations fail if everyone gets a seat at the table?

This is not a good thing.

“Talking” and “doing” are not zero sum: good results generally involve talking about what to do, doing it, talking about how it went and what to change, and trying the new thing in a virtuous iterative cycle.

Regulation is not a scalar: regulation preventing municipal fiber is good for cable companies, bad for municipalities. Regulation mandating bathroom breaks is good for warehouse workers, bad for bond villains, erm, titans of industry. Regulation preventing nuclear power plants is good for fossil fuel companies, bad for carbon emissions (and Ukrainians apparently, somewhat shocking). Regulation preventing new houses is good for the asset class and bad for the working class. “Regulation” is a lot of things, pretty much the only constant is that there will be winners, losers, intended consequences, and unintended consequences like any mechanism design change.

I think the author might be a little skittish about saying what he means: I want the regulatory regime to continue to favor people like me and my role models, in fact I’d like more of that please. Here’s an argument for how that could benefit others enough to get you dear reader, on board with it.

It's an age old method, the same as used in telecom to justify not spending on fiber infrastructure. Who knows what will happen in the future? Maybe wireless? Look at this idea what a future wireless service might bring!

(Completely ignoring the fact that fiber is what drives economy and innovation. Wireless is just a question of capex, if the fiber is already in place. Quite similar to how low pressure tubes have physical limitations that makes it unrealistic to replace rail.)

This is not only an obvious observation by now, as Musk has been pretty clear about what risks he saw with rail investments, particularly in California but also across the country.