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This is something I've been harping on for ages. The educated public is generally aware that the US spends way more for comparable healthcare services and has a

This is something I've been harping on for ages. The educated public is generally aware that the US spends way more for comparable healthcare services and has a general understanding of both the public policy causes and implications for this as it relates to health outcomes but there's far less that's been written about infrastructure (seriously, pretty much every article references the pedestrianobservations blog because that's the only real writing that's easily googleable that's been done). American infrastructure routinely costs between 5 - 10x that of comparable developed countries and, when you dig into why, it's like a litany of every failed project management idea from software, all rolled into one. The reasons are myriad but, at it's core, the main driving factor is that America would rather spend an extra $10 non-corruptly than $1 corruptly. The obsessive focus on stamping out corruption puts rigid rules in place that stymie cost efficiency. Until there's serious political pressure demanding serious government procurement reform, nothing will change. There's enough motivated special interests on the other side to keep America in a perpetual infrastructure deficit. But for that to happen, more smart writing and analysis needs to be focused on the problem of infrastructure procurement and how changing the way we do things could unlock huge savings and bring about the infrastructure revolution that America needs.

rtpg 10y ago
Is there a stat for your 5-10x number? I'm having a hard time reading between the lines here, but it feels like you're saying that allowing corruption would lower costs, but that really goes against my intuition. Several Japan infrastructure projects also cost huge amounts of money, and construction companies and gov't are very close. Japan has better infrastructure. But the way they do it is by spending huge amounts of money. The only way the bullet trains exist is because of massive government spending (during Japan Railway's privatization, about $150 billion of Shinkansen debt was taken on by the tax payer).
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  He's not saying corruption costs less, he's saying that US procurement rules compliance eliminates the competitiveness of contract bidding. There's basically two different construction industries in the US: contractors that do private construction, and contractors that do public works construction. On the private side, you have thousands of companies ranging in size from some random guy who does drywall all the way up to pipeline and oil rig construction contractors. On the private side, all the small guys have been weeded out because of absurdly high regulatory compliance costs(which have been designed to eliminate corruption), and so it's just a handful of extremely large companies. And knowing they have no competition, their bids are obscenely overpriced.

rtpg 10y ago

Is there a stat for your 5-10x number? I'm having a hard time reading between the lines here, but it feels like you're saying that allowing corruption would lower costs, but that really goes against my intuition. Several Japan infrastructure projects also cost huge amounts of money, and construction companies and gov't are very close. Japan has better infrastructure. But the way they do it is by spending huge amounts of money. The only way the bullet trains exist is because of massive government spending (during Japan Railway's privatization, about $150 billion of Shinkansen debt was taken on by the tax payer).

saosebastiao 10y ago
He's not saying corruption costs less, he's saying that US procurement rules compliance eliminates the competitiveness of contract bidding. There's basically two different construction industries in the US: contractors that do private construction, and contractors that do public works construction. On the private side, you have thousands of companies ranging in size from some random guy who does drywall all the way up to pipeline and oil rig construction contractors. On the private side, all the small guys have been weeded out because of absurdly high regulatory compliance costs(which have been designed to eliminate corruption), and so it's just a handful of extremely large companies. And knowing they have no competition, their bids are obscenely overpriced.