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There are plenty of places, such as western European countries and Japan, that have strong safety regulations and still manage to complete large-scale infrastru
by twblalock 8y ago
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, and poor maintenance of existing infrastructure, have the same root cause: lack of political will.
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.
- icelancer 8y ago>> 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.
- wonderwonder 8y agoUnfortunately that's often not accurate. The vast majority of the time the incumbent wins. We vote by party here and if the incumbent is our party rep. we will vote for them regardless of track record as we assume the other party is 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. https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php
- meko 8y agoMost american voters have a phobia of government.
- yread 8y agolookup Berlin BER airport for a European project that's a complete disaster
- hexhex 8y agoWhich is mostly due to safety concerns, the fire regulations are not met by BER due to a complete chaos in planning the construction. Nowadays, big projects in the West are far more complex since have to meet more demands and more stakeholders are involved. In authoritarian countries, this is not so much a problem, the new airport in Istanbul is built very fast, but concerns from citizens are not respected etc.