31–40 of 94 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"would put it to good use - including tackling the deterioration of water pipes" There is your faith in action. Zero concrete promise, no accountability.
* In the culture that also produced this comment. This is not a universal problem, just a societies unable to produce a high trust environment problem.
It is an outrageously cool thing to give money for an infrastructure project. They must have some faith that the government can deliver on something with $3.5 million. That would be two public toilets in SF, one toilet of which actually cost $300k in paperwork and so on despite two local businessmen signing up to have the work done.
I do not understand the downvotes. It is a rational response to bureaucratic excesses worldwide in public procurement. It is a plea to more common sense, to more down to earth thinking and decisive action in the public sphere. This is not a call to ignore processes. But it is a call for civil servants to respect that they are exactly that. In service, and their ambition should be to do it well and efficiently. The do…
----
I want to both be polite about the fact and be honest about it. We, the United States of America, through our elected representatives and through civil servants who represent our interests, committed monstrous crimes in 2021, which are against the laws, traditions, and constitution of the United States of America, including aggressively redlining the provision of life-saving medical care in a way which was designed to cause racially discriminatory outcomes with the provision of medical care.
Just throwing that out there as a statement. With that caveat, one of the things that we spent tens of millions of dollars on was that we want your consultancy to write a website which will enforce residency restrictions. A residency restriction is essentially, when we are under a supply constraint, there must be some method to decide which people get it, and some people don’t. We have, in our infinite wisdom as the government, decided that equity, equity, equity is one primary thing that we are focusing on. A thing that we think would be contrary to equity is allowing anyone who shows up at the clinic to receive the life-saving medication.
The thing that we are specifically worried about is relatively well-resourced people from advantaged demographics will use their superior access to transportation and information to travel to clinics which have the vaccine available and take that instead of that vaccine being used by someone in the local community who we intend the vaccine to go to. Therefore, to get an appointment to go to the vaccine, you will need to go to the county’s website, which is delivered by Accenture or similar, and prove to the website that you reside within one of the zip codes that we have allocated for those vaccine doses. Only then will you get the ticket, virtual or otherwise, which allows you to go to the pharmacy and get the vaccine. We spent tens of millions of dollars on that, targeting essentially a four-month window where we were acutely supply constrained. But we did not turn off residency restrictions on the websites after that four month window because we physically had no way to do that because that was not in the bid documents in some cases. ...
----
Just one of the many ways that rigid institutions that behave more like stupid robots than things capable of dynamic decision-making cause immense harm. This is not a rant against equity btw, only against insanity.
[1] https://alethios.substack.com/p/patrick-mckenzie-vaccinateca
I mean, the mitsubishi logo, makes it pretty obvious who the donor is. Edit: i mean, we can't possibly figure out who donated, thank you kind donor.
I mean, the mitsubishi logo, makes it pretty obvious who the donor is. Edit: i mean, we can't possibly figure out who donated, thank you kind donor.
Doesn’t that just mean that they’ve been manufactured by Mitsubishi Materials Corporation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Materials
It is an outrageously cool thing to give money for an infrastructure project. They must have some faith that the government can deliver on something with $3.5 million. That would be two public toilets in SF, one toilet of which actually cost $300k in paperwork and so on despite two local businessmen signing up to have the work done.
I realize there's near zero probability, but the mention of mysterious Japanese gold made my mind immediately go to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamashita%27s_gold
It is an outrageously cool thing to give money for an infrastructure project. They must have some faith that the government can deliver on something with $3.5 million. That would be two public toilets in SF, one toilet of which actually cost $300k in paperwork and so on despite two local businessmen signing up to have the work done.
Imagine if this anonymous person worked with a foundation pledging to match $3.5M if said amount was raise via crowdfund. Even if say $1M goes to the campaign and NGO bloat, that’s still way more pipe money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not understand the downvotes. It is a rational response to bureaucratic excesses worldwide in public procurement. It is a plea to more common sense, to more down to earth thinking and decisive action in the public sphere. This is not a call to ignore processes. But it is a call for civil servants to respect that they are exactly that. In service, and their ambition should be to do it well and efficiently. The do…
Here is some of what happened during COVID, according to Patrick McKenzie (patio11) [1] : ---- I want to both be polite about the fact and be honest about it. We, the United States of America, through our elected representatives and through civil servants who represent our interests, committed monstrous crimes in 2021, which are against the laws, traditions, and constitution of the United States of America, including…
More than 20% of Japan's water pipes have passed their legal service life of 40 years, according to local media That is rather low. The US still has some wooden(!) water pipes in use, as well as other plumbing installed in the late 19th/early 20th century.
This is the reason that installing a 2-mile bus lane on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco took several years. They took advantage of the opportunity to replace the hollowed out logs that had served as one of the city’s most critical water mains since the 1906 quake.
More than 20% of Japan's water pipes have passed their legal service life of 40 years, according to local media That is rather low. The US still has some wooden(!) water pipes in use, as well as other plumbing installed in the late 19th/early 20th century.
Meanwhile, in Europe: https://romanempiretimes.com/aqua-virgo-a-2000-year-roman-aq...