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The broader point is that incompetence and corruption plagues institutions (public and private) of all sizes. Regardless of one's politics, it's critical that

The broader point is that incompetence and corruption plagues institutions (public and private) of all sizes. Regardless of one's politics, it's critical that we hold our institutions accountable and help them get better over time. This includes our country, our state, our county, our city, our company, our social and professional groups, open source communities, etc. There is a strong human tendency to want to defend organizations we are part of (or rely on) rather than trying to constructively improve them. Flint is an example of institutional failures at multiple levels, but over all the loss of life and suffering pales in comparison to what our failed institutions did in Iraq and around the world, and what they do to our schools all across the country, etc. The more official an organization (government, etc.), the more fancy its facilities (buildings with columns, spires, domes, etc.) the more we must realize its credibility is based on self-perpetuation rather than on tangible, auditable results. There are so many failures happening across the board, and the biggest enemy to progress is the idea that loyalty means keeping quiet.

craigyk 11y ago
I think a major factor is that the US hasn't been around for very long and we're coming to a point where a lot of infrastructure is coming under need of repair or replacement simultaneously. In particular instances, this infrastructure degradation has been greatly exacerbated by decisions to save money in the short-term. My personal opinion is that this is all part of a decades long rightward shift away from "big government" and willingness to pay for proper maintenance of public works. 2008 was a wasted opportunity to combine much needed infrastructure investment with fiscal stimulus. There is no question a lot of work will need to be done over the next decade. The question is, who will do the work, and how will it get paid for?
- eatonphil 11y ago
  I think I agree with you on most of this, but I completely disagree with your first sentence. The US is one of the oldest current stable governments. All of the other major countries today got to completely rebuild their infrastructure after WW2: Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore , perhaps even the UK. Some of these advanced countries weren't even politically stable until the 70s-80s. The US on the other hand has been politically stable for at least ~150 years and the northeast has been for longer. (Most of my life I've lived in houses that were over a century old. Go to Korea and you will find /no/ living areas built more than 30 years ago.) We're building on one or two century old infrastructure at this point. The two hardest things we have to deal with that no one else does (except China perhaps, but they're not at this stage yet to care, I think) is the size of the country and the age of the current infrastructure. As a fun fact, some cities in Korea don't even use telephone poles, it's all underground[0]. And I'm sure you've heard of similar infrastructural marvels in Japan. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundang-gu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundang-gu
  - craigyk 11y ago
    That's a really good point. I guess we'll see if Europe has its own infrastructure problems in 50 years or so when some of that "new" WWII infrastructure starts to get old. I would say, though, that not all parts of Europe had to rebuild from scratch. You still find WAY more 100+ year old structures in Europe than the US.
    - mike_hearn 11y ago
      Well, the UK wasn't by any means completely destroyed in WW2 and there's a lot of work being done there to upgrade centuries old infrastructure. Some examples: 1) The Thames Tideway sewer is being constructed to handle the fact that the old London sewers have run out of capacity and routinely flood sewage into the Thames when there are heavy rains. The problem is that unlike modern sewer systems, London's is used for both rainwater and household sewage. And the original system was designed to overflow into the Thames, on the assumption that would ~never happen. But population growth and lots more concreting means it now happens regularly. The Thames Tideway is a massive, very deep underground tunnel that roughly follows the path of the river. 2) The London Underground is the world's oldest underground railway. It is upgraded continuously. The Crossrail upgrade is the largest construction project in Europe (technically Crossrail is not LU, but it's all a part of an integrated somewhat underground network). 3) The UK road network costs less to maintain than is raised via fuel taxes. The roads are effectively a profit centre for the government, in a sense. They are maintained continuously. 4) The UK water pipe network has had leaks at an economically sustainable level for 15 years now (i.e. the cost to find and fix the remaining leaks is higher than the value of the water lost). It does not use lead piping: http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/lead.pdf http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/lead.pdf I don't think there's actually any difference in infrastructure age between Europe and America. WW2 is a red herring. A lot of modern infrastructure runs underground and was undamaged or only lightly damaged by bombing, which was in any case, focused on the cities. The biggest impact of WW2 on the London Underground, for example, is that these days they have to do systematic searches for unexploded underground bombs before doing any work.
      - 11y ago
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >2008 was a wasted opportunity to combine much needed infrastructure investment with fiscal stimulus. Yeah, but that would raise employment and, by extension, wages, which American business elites don't want. They'd rather keep half heartedly talking about basic income and some techno utopian magic robotic future for the next 50 years rather than support restarting the Public Works Administration and providing a decent job guarantees again to do actual needed work like this.
- osi 11y ago
  This is a huge issue. Strong Towns has been running some pieces on this, due to postings from some people in Rockford, IL http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/4/no-new-pipes http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/4/no-new-pipes Very interesting.
MCRed 11y ago
Snowden exposed a vast amount of criminal activity within our government, and the governments response is "lets prosecute snowden!" ... no reforms, no groundswell for reform. The spying isn't even a topic in the upcoming election. Since 2001, we have only seen the government go the opposite way- gathering more power, from the creation of the TSA to NDAA they are clearly not beholden to the people. (I don't believe most people support this, if accurately educated about the scientific and legal basis of these- thousands of TSA agents have been arrested for crimes that victimize travelers, they fail tests to see if they will catch bombs, and no terrorists have been found...and this isn't just Bush's doing - NDAA and the porno scanners happened under Obama, and during the whole period we haven't been seeing congressmen of either party attempt to stop it (though Rand Paul did a filibuster at one point.)) The fundamental problem is that the US government- at all levels, and across parties- is not answerable to the people or for their crimes. This is why I'm an anarchist- I believe no government can be kept accountable.
- chasing 11y ago
  If you're not the person with either the most money or the most guns, anarchy ain't going to work out very well for you. Because once those with the largest amount of power don't have to play by any rules, well, it's game on. And I suspect almost all of us will be in the 99.99999% of the population that loses that game pretty badly...
- maxxxxx 11y ago
  The anarchist position is totally self defeating. We live in a complex society so some systems are needed. You can't do without a functioning justice system, functioning infrastructure, a financial system you can trust not to steal your money and other things. The market can't provide these things without some rules. I really wish people would start asking for government accountability instead of wanting to abolish things that don't work and thinking that there is some magic fairy that will jump in and make it work. Getting systems to work well is hard, never-ending work and there are no simple solutions. Most of us here build technology systems so we should know this first hand.
  - 11y ago
rayiner 11y ago
Having worked in this area, I can say that "incompetence and corruption" is an intellectually lazy explanation for the problems facing municipal water supplies. The real problem is that water is a municipal utility and municipal rate setting boards set water rates far too low. There is simply not enough money to rip out all the old lead pipe and replace it: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/clean-water-at-any-rate_b_504263.html http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/clean-water-at-any-rate_b_504.... It's politically untenable for water boards to raise rates, especially since water bills are not progressive (seniors and the poor pay the same rate as rich people).
- benatkin 11y ago
  So they won't measure it because they can't afford to fix it? It still sounds like corruption to me.
- mikeash 11y ago
  So fund the system with taxes. Issue bonds for necessary infrastructure upgrades. If raising money is politically impossible in any form, shut the system down. If the responsible people are just throwing their hands up and letting the systems collapse and poison people along the way, that's at best incompetence.
  - ovis 11y ago
    The politician who raises taxes or shuts down water delivery may be replaced at the next election by the one that doesn't and keeps the lead pipes.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Sure, that's why you end up with incompetent and corrupt people in power.
      - jonathankoren 11y ago
        I don't think you can call this fictional public servant incompetent and corrupt. He's just doing what the people wanted. That shortsightedness and aversion to investment is problem of the electorate.
martythemaniak 11y ago
> Regardless of one's politics, it's critical that we hold our institutions accountable and help them get better over time. I think this is naive. A huge portion of the electorate's views are all about actively seeking institutional collapse - get in power, undermine the institution (through budget cuts, restrictions, demoralizing the workforce, etc), wait for the inevitable problems to discredit the institution and finally get rid of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast Holding institutions accountable takes a back seat when the real argument is whether they should exist at all. If you think the government shouldn't be in the business of providing clean water from the tap (and there many places in the world where that's the norm), then what's happening in Flint is not an issue.
- barney54 11y ago
  This view is naive. There is an exceedingly small number of people that do not think the government should get out of the water business and even then, these are the people most critical of these kinds of institutional failures.
  - api 11y ago
    They seem to want us to be like Mexico, where the rich live in private enclaves with good services and everyone else lives in a slum. Mexico, last I checked, is not a world power. World powers have healthy populations and solid infrastructure. Don't get me wrong. I do think government can be a "beast." But the other problem with starve the beast is that in practice it starves the wrong part. The healthy tissue (such as water services) atrophies and dies, but the waste and corruption finds a way to hang on. If anything the conditions of near-collapse created by these tactics are actually friendlier to corruption and waste. Look under the hood at Flint's water drama and you can see this in action. The free market provides a great laboratory for analyzing organizational structures and pressures and their results. Perhaps we should look there to see what management tactics result in positive, good kinds of efficiency. I guarantee you that cutting the legs off your infrastructure, logistics, and core competencies is not a successful strategy. What would happen if FedEx cut back on repairs to its truck fleets in an effort to save money?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
macspoofing 11y ago
>The broader point is that incompetence and corruption plagues institutions (public and private) of all sizes. Is it? Because it seems like it's just a funding problem. American infrastructure is in a pretty sad state. Fly into JFK and you don't get a sense you're flying into the richest nation in the world. The trains are decrepit. There's a looming bridge crisis, with ~20k bridges needing repair. If there is incompetence it's that municipal, state and federal government don't want to pay for any of it because it would necessitate higher taxes and taxes are the devil.
- cmyr 11y ago
  For more on this see the American Society of Civil Engineer's Infrastructure Report Card (http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org)
- prawn 11y ago
  Coming into the US and driving many LA highways, it feels/sounds as though the car's tyres have suddenly got a nail/bolt stuck in them. So many seemed to be in a poor state with problematic expansion joints or cracking?

craigyk 11y ago

I think a major factor is that the US hasn't been around for very long and we're coming to a point where a lot of infrastructure is coming under need of repair or replacement simultaneously. In particular instances, this infrastructure degradation has been greatly exacerbated by decisions to save money in the short-term. My personal opinion is that this is all part of a decades long rightward shift away from "big government" and willingness to pay for proper maintenance of public works. 2008 was a wasted opportunity to combine much needed infrastructure investment with fiscal stimulus. There is no question a lot of work will need to be done over the next decade. The question is, who will do the work, and how will it get paid for?

eatonphil 11y ago
I think I agree with you on most of this, but I completely disagree with your first sentence. The US is one of the oldest current stable governments. All of the other major countries today got to completely rebuild their infrastructure after WW2: Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore , perhaps even the UK. Some of these advanced countries weren't even politically stable until the 70s-80s. The US on the other hand has been politically stable for at least ~150 years and the northeast has been for longer. (Most of my life I've lived in houses that were over a century old. Go to Korea and you will find /no/ living areas built more than 30 years ago.) We're building on one or two century old infrastructure at this point. The two hardest things we have to deal with that no one else does (except China perhaps, but they're not at this stage yet to care, I think) is the size of the country and the age of the current infrastructure. As a fun fact, some cities in Korea don't even use telephone poles, it's all underground[0]. And I'm sure you've heard of similar infrastructural marvels in Japan. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundang-gu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundang-gu
- craigyk 11y ago
  That's a really good point. I guess we'll see if Europe has its own infrastructure problems in 50 years or so when some of that "new" WWII infrastructure starts to get old. I would say, though, that not all parts of Europe had to rebuild from scratch. You still find WAY more 100+ year old structures in Europe than the US.
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    Well, the UK wasn't by any means completely destroyed in WW2 and there's a lot of work being done there to upgrade centuries old infrastructure. Some examples: 1) The Thames Tideway sewer is being constructed to handle the fact that the old London sewers have run out of capacity and routinely flood sewage into the Thames when there are heavy rains. The problem is that unlike modern sewer systems, London's is used for both rainwater and household sewage. And the original system was designed to overflow into the Thames, on the assumption that would ~never happen. But population growth and lots more concreting means it now happens regularly. The Thames Tideway is a massive, very deep underground tunnel that roughly follows the path of the river. 2) The London Underground is the world's oldest underground railway. It is upgraded continuously. The Crossrail upgrade is the largest construction project in Europe (technically Crossrail is not LU, but it's all a part of an integrated somewhat underground network). 3) The UK road network costs less to maintain than is raised via fuel taxes. The roads are effectively a profit centre for the government, in a sense. They are maintained continuously. 4) The UK water pipe network has had leaks at an economically sustainable level for 15 years now (i.e. the cost to find and fix the remaining leaks is higher than the value of the water lost). It does not use lead piping: http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/lead.pdf http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/lead.pdf I don't think there's actually any difference in infrastructure age between Europe and America. WW2 is a red herring. A lot of modern infrastructure runs underground and was undamaged or only lightly damaged by bombing, which was in any case, focused on the cities. The biggest impact of WW2 on the London Underground, for example, is that these days they have to do systematic searches for unexploded underground bombs before doing any work.
    - 11y ago
crdoconnor 11y ago
>2008 was a wasted opportunity to combine much needed infrastructure investment with fiscal stimulus. Yeah, but that would raise employment and, by extension, wages, which American business elites don't want. They'd rather keep half heartedly talking about basic income and some techno utopian magic robotic future for the next 50 years rather than support restarting the Public Works Administration and providing a decent job guarantees again to do actual needed work like this.
osi 11y ago
This is a huge issue. Strong Towns has been running some pieces on this, due to postings from some people in Rockford, IL http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/4/no-new-pipes http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/4/no-new-pipes Very interesting.

MCRed 11y ago

Snowden exposed a vast amount of criminal activity within our government, and the governments response is "lets prosecute snowden!" ... no reforms, no groundswell for reform. The spying isn't even a topic in the upcoming election. Since 2001, we have only seen the government go the opposite way- gathering more power, from the creation of the TSA to NDAA they are clearly not beholden to the people. (I don't believe most people support this, if accurately educated about the scientific and legal basis of these- thousands of TSA agents have been arrested for crimes that victimize travelers, they fail tests to see if they will catch bombs, and no terrorists have been found...and this isn't just Bush's doing - NDAA and the porno scanners happened under Obama, and during the whole period we haven't been seeing congressmen of either party attempt to stop it (though Rand Paul did a filibuster at one point.)) The fundamental problem is that the US government- at all levels, and across parties- is not answerable to the people or for their crimes. This is why I'm an anarchist- I believe no government can be kept accountable.

chasing 11y ago
If you're not the person with either the most money or the most guns, anarchy ain't going to work out very well for you. Because once those with the largest amount of power don't have to play by any rules, well, it's game on. And I suspect almost all of us will be in the 99.99999% of the population that loses that game pretty badly...
maxxxxx 11y ago
The anarchist position is totally self defeating. We live in a complex society so some systems are needed. You can't do without a functioning justice system, functioning infrastructure, a financial system you can trust not to steal your money and other things. The market can't provide these things without some rules. I really wish people would start asking for government accountability instead of wanting to abolish things that don't work and thinking that there is some magic fairy that will jump in and make it work. Getting systems to work well is hard, never-ending work and there are no simple solutions. Most of us here build technology systems so we should know this first hand.
- 11y ago

rayiner 11y ago

Having worked in this area, I can say that "incompetence and corruption" is an intellectually lazy explanation for the problems facing municipal water supplies. The real problem is that water is a municipal utility and municipal rate setting boards set water rates far too low. There is simply not enough money to rip out all the old lead pipe and replace it: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/clean-water-at-any-rate_b_504263.html http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/clean-water-at-any-rate_b_504.... It's politically untenable for water boards to raise rates, especially since water bills are not progressive (seniors and the poor pay the same rate as rich people).

benatkin 11y ago
So they won't measure it because they can't afford to fix it? It still sounds like corruption to me.
mikeash 11y ago
So fund the system with taxes. Issue bonds for necessary infrastructure upgrades. If raising money is politically impossible in any form, shut the system down. If the responsible people are just throwing their hands up and letting the systems collapse and poison people along the way, that's at best incompetence.
- ovis 11y ago
  The politician who raises taxes or shuts down water delivery may be replaced at the next election by the one that doesn't and keeps the lead pipes.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Sure, that's why you end up with incompetent and corrupt people in power.
    - jonathankoren 11y ago
      I don't think you can call this fictional public servant incompetent and corrupt. He's just doing what the people wanted. That shortsightedness and aversion to investment is problem of the electorate.

martythemaniak 11y ago

> Regardless of one's politics, it's critical that we hold our institutions accountable and help them get better over time. I think this is naive. A huge portion of the electorate's views are all about actively seeking institutional collapse - get in power, undermine the institution (through budget cuts, restrictions, demoralizing the workforce, etc), wait for the inevitable problems to discredit the institution and finally get rid of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast Holding institutions accountable takes a back seat when the real argument is whether they should exist at all. If you think the government shouldn't be in the business of providing clean water from the tap (and there many places in the world where that's the norm), then what's happening in Flint is not an issue.

barney54 11y ago
This view is naive. There is an exceedingly small number of people that do not think the government should get out of the water business and even then, these are the people most critical of these kinds of institutional failures.
- api 11y ago
  They seem to want us to be like Mexico, where the rich live in private enclaves with good services and everyone else lives in a slum. Mexico, last I checked, is not a world power. World powers have healthy populations and solid infrastructure. Don't get me wrong. I do think government can be a "beast." But the other problem with starve the beast is that in practice it starves the wrong part. The healthy tissue (such as water services) atrophies and dies, but the waste and corruption finds a way to hang on. If anything the conditions of near-collapse created by these tactics are actually friendlier to corruption and waste. Look under the hood at Flint's water drama and you can see this in action. The free market provides a great laboratory for analyzing organizational structures and pressures and their results. Perhaps we should look there to see what management tactics result in positive, good kinds of efficiency. I guarantee you that cutting the legs off your infrastructure, logistics, and core competencies is not a successful strategy. What would happen if FedEx cut back on repairs to its truck fleets in an effort to save money?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

macspoofing 11y ago

>The broader point is that incompetence and corruption plagues institutions (public and private) of all sizes. Is it? Because it seems like it's just a funding problem. American infrastructure is in a pretty sad state. Fly into JFK and you don't get a sense you're flying into the richest nation in the world. The trains are decrepit. There's a looming bridge crisis, with ~20k bridges needing repair. If there is incompetence it's that municipal, state and federal government don't want to pay for any of it because it would necessitate higher taxes and taxes are the devil.

cmyr 11y ago
For more on this see the American Society of Civil Engineer's Infrastructure Report Card (http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org)
prawn 11y ago
Coming into the US and driving many LA highways, it feels/sounds as though the car's tyres have suddenly got a nail/bolt stuck in them. So many seemed to be in a poor state with problematic expansion joints or cracking?