Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of places, such as western European countries and Japan, that have strong safety regulations and still manage to complete large-scale infrastructure projects quickly. Another way to look at this is to ask why the United States seems incapable of even maintaining existing projects. For example, look at the current state of the New York City subway. I suspect slowness in building new infrastructure, an…
>> American voters don't expect their governments to be good at this kind of thing. European voters would vote politicians out of office if their transit systems got as bad as the NY subway has become. It would be seen as a failure to execute one of the basic duties of government. Americans often vote those people out of office and their replacements are equally useless or worse.
We have created a system where results often don't matter as long as there is the correct capital letter next to your name on the ballot.
Compounding this further is that politicians know that they can count on your vote but they rely on the money of industry and lobbyists to campaign. Thus the very industry that is supposed to be fixing the problem under contract is able to overcharge and take longer than agreed becuase our politicians rely on them for funding.