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The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

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Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#151

Post by cbayram »

ucaetano wrote: post #39

The US probably has the best, most efficient private sector of any developed country. And the worst, most inefficient public sector of any developed country. It chooses to prioritize the private sector over the public sector. Other countries choose otherwise. Each model has its advantages and disadvantages. This (efficiency of building public transit) is the outcome of the US model.

Few weeks back, while commuting to work the E and M lines weren't running. There were 3-5 MTAs finest per platform exit, hallways instructing riders "The E and the M lines are not running!" I took another route only to find same amount of MTA agents at the other station. You count the number of stations. The overtime paid that day would have gone a long way paying for a decent electronic information boards that rest of the world seems to have. As a taxpayer, this abuse of tax funds infuriates me.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#152

Post by cbayram »

dzonga wrote: post #117

America rich 3rd world country. I'm Zimbabwean, but the levels of corruption are comparable. Why would a 'top' tier city have shitty public transportation and centuries old signaling systems ?

Because you aren't dealing with the competent willing who can pull off such projects. Instead, you are dealing with crooks who take their cut and pass the irresponsibility to the next. Taxpayer money is the true lottery.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#153

Post by lostlogin »

keithnz wrote: post #118
jorblumesea wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US voters don't punish any elected officials for anything because half don't vote and the other half that do are more concerned about their side "winning" and less concerned about practical day to day considerations like corruption. People would gladly accept a corrupt Democrat over a Republican and vice versa purely based on political lines.

It's difficult to get people out of that mentality even after making changes. Here in NZ we changed to MMP many years ago but many people still vote along party lines. It is slowly changing, but there's still a long way to go.

Not helped by the leader of the opposition claiming to have ‘won’ the election, despite being unable to form a government. First among the losers hurts, but claiming some sort of moral right to victory is petty.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#154

Post by [deleted] »

twblalock wrote: post #75

This ultimately has to come back to voter standards. Other first-world countries in Europe and Asia manage to create comprehensive public transit systems cheaper and faster than the US does -- yet they also have environmental reviews, safety standards, unions, contractors, etc. They are able to do it simply because the people running the city fear that they won't be reelected if they fail to provide comprehensive, pr…

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#156

Post by DrScump »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #8
heurist wrote: post #4

The US seems to get less of everything for its money than its peers. Geographic spread is a major macro factor, but you'd still think that a supposedly efficient capitalistic market would at least handle local services better.

> a supposedly efficient capitalistic market The 'new commanding heights'[1] of the modern U.S. economy are all the least capitalistic markets: education, healthcare, and housing. Nor would I expect "local services" to be much more 'capitalistic' if you're referring to services provided by municipal governments. [1]: [The New Commanding Heights | National Affairs]( http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/t…

  'new commanding heights'[1]
That source is from 2011, in the depths of the recession.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#157

Post by ClayShentrup »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
lend000 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It comes down to the size of the country, combined with a political voting system that favors incumbents and naturally organizes into a duopoly: First Past the Post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting Approval voting is the future of democracy, if we can manage to get our elected officials to change the law out of their favor. Semi-direct democracy would be a nice addition, too.

> Approval voting is the future of democracy Approval voting is good for lots of things, but public elections by secret ballot aren't among them, because outside if open ballots and some kind of defined consequence of a particular vote, “approve” vs. “disspprove” doesn't mean the same thing on different ballots. For single-winner elections Condorcet-satisfying methods are pretty much the gold standard; but minimizing…

Condorcet was assumed to be the gold standard for a long time, but then in the year 2000, Warren Smith's Bayesian Regret figures showed that actually Score Voting (aka Range Voting) was better with any mixture of strategic or honest voters.

http://scorevoting.net/BayRegsFig.html

Approval Voting is extremely competitive in terms of performance, and _dead simple_.

There is actually a theorem that Approval Voting will always elect the Condorcet winner anyway, given plausible models of voter strategy. http://scorevoting.net/AppCW

There are lots of other problems with Condorcet, enumerated here. http://scorevoting.net/CondorcetExec.html

This particular argument is pretty devastating. http://scorevoting.net/FishburnAntiC

> minimizing single-winner elections for ones that can use proportional systems is also an important technique.

This is really not well supported. Even compared to the horrendously bad Plurality Voting system, PR has had mixed results. http://scorevoting.net/PropRep.html

No comparison exists between the best PR methods and the best non-PR methods, so it's still very much an open question.

And you may have to get Score Voting or Approval Voting to get PR in the USA anyway. http://asitoughttobe.com/2010/07/18/score-voting/

> Approval voting is good for lots of things, but public elections by secret ballot aren't among them

A significant fraction of the world's major electoral procedures experts support Approval Voting. E.g. www.electology.org/approval-voting

Circa 2011, a group of 22 voting experts researched 18 different systems, and selected Approval Voting as best. http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/newsArchiv...

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the book "Gaming the Vote" by William Poundstone.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#158

Post by acchow »

twblalock wrote: post #75

This ultimately has to come back to voter standards. Other first-world countries in Europe and Asia manage to create comprehensive public transit systems cheaper and faster than the US does -- yet they also have environmental reviews, safety standards, unions, contractors, etc. They are able to do it simply because the people running the city fear that they won't be reelected if they fail to provide comprehensive, pr…

It's too bad the US is still dealing with the simplest of issues - gay marriage, abortion, mandatory vaccination, immigration, prohibition of marijuana - and just doesn't have any room left to discuss things like public transit.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#159

Post by crocal »

I have spent more than a decade working with US colleagues in this sector. Overall, three things come at a disadvantage for US that explains overall this puzzling productivity problem.

First, management. I don’t exactly know where it comes from, in the land of Westinghouse, Edison, Tesla, and the likes, but being an engineering project leader is not seen as the career path of a winner. It’s all about business, storytelling, laws and politics, where the power and the money is. Compare that to Germany where the chancellor is a PhD in physics and there you go.

Second. Individualism. No. Team. Spirit. Everybody wants to be with the best at what he/she does and recognized at such. There is no willingness to fill cross functional gaps, people are absurdly specialized, resulting in very inefficient performance at the collective level and surprisingly high level of bureaucracy.

Third. Protectionism. US established market is protected against foreign competition. The net result is that the US consumer is never benchmarking what he gets against real alternatives. His appliances are crap. His social protection is bad. His car is a good laugh compared to most Japanese or European models. As a consequence he as no notion of how good a deal he is getting on such things (and in most cases, he is being ripped off).

The combination of the three explains quasi all of the shortcomings noted here. I believe these problems were not as acute some decades ago. I think these behaviors have been pushed to the extreme through the various US tax reforms that have allowed very few to capture most of the wealth, thereby promoting the above behavior.

It’s not the first time in US history though. I believe it will be fixed eventually because it’s becoming too absurd. :)

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#160

Post by mcny »

jessaustin wrote: post #140
shard972 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people could start with that premise in healthcare, that there isn't 1-2 big things causing the US healthcare system to be so expensive. So many people seem to always have a point about "Oh if we just moved everything to medicare" or "if we just repealed obamacare" as if there is a silver bullet. The only thing i think we can know for sure about why the US healthcare system is expensive, it's because of what y…

I almost wish we could forget for a moment that health care in USA is expensive, and pay attention instead to how quickly it is getting so much more expensive. Let's just stop the worst of the bleeding, and worry about solving all the problems later.

Well it can't happen without price transparency. Transparency is good on it's own.

Why does Google not want to make all salary and compensation information public? Why do insurance companies want to keep their contracts and payouts with hospitals secret? There is zero reason for these things to be secret. These things should be required to be public.

We can't fix problems if we can't see them.

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