> It seems like some theory that doing anything beyond the functional minimum is a waste of the taxpayer's money No, I don’t think that’s the cause. The cause

> It seems like some theory that doing anything beyond the functional minimum is a waste of the taxpayer's money No, I don’t think that’s the cause. The cause is that we are in a period of financial intermediation. Every sip of coffee, every home construction, every dentists office needs to be a financial instrument, easily tracked so that the markets can be made. Essentially: as long as every endeavor is a private money-making endeavor, we can only do one thing at a time. How would you even do the accounting on some sort of pedestrian walkway that both covered your liability and provided a public right of way? That’s some sort of public/private partnership... how would you short something like that? Integrated systems are not amenable to finance so we have to wait. In a few years we might have software that could efficiently underwrite multi-purpose projects like that, but it’s just not possible on today’s markets.