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People really underestimate how poorly suited our modern political structure is to accomplishing large scale public works projects. We have loads of critical i

People really underestimate how poorly suited our modern political structure is to accomplishing large scale public works projects. We have loads of critical infrastructure, namely bridges, dams, etc that are long past their serviceable lifespan and are accidents waiting to happen. It's a nationwide problem and we aren't doing anything about it. Unfortunately all signs point to a scenario where people are going to die before it gets any better.

CydeWeys 8y ago
People already have died, and the primary response seems to have been to rebuild that one bridge. Hell, people are dying every day in traffic accidents that could be mitigated with better design (or reduced by making better mass transit as an alternative, which as a byproduct is also much safer than driving).
- busterarm 8y ago
  I don't disagree with you in the slightest but I really meant on a scale that people will care about. It's a really terrible state of affairs.
YetAnotherNick 8y ago
Stop making up things and seeing past with rose colored glasses. Accidents due to things like bridge collapse are much lower than in past, and much lower in US/developed countries than in thailand. Google "thailand bridge collapse" to see the cases.
- busterarm 8y ago
  > Stop making up things https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-50-000-american-bridges-are-falling-apart-n842356 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-50-000-american-br... https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/08/13/infrastructure-spending-states-that-are-falling-apart/37270513/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/08/13/infr... https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/30/report-over-54000-american-bridges-are-structurally-deficient-infographic/#1b5148b419b5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/30/report... https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure-a-d-2017-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure... https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/ https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/
  - YetAnotherNick 8y ago
    The point is, is it better in the past and how much of this can be corrected by politicians being serious about it, not that it is not perfect now.
glitchc 8y ago
I think it’s political will more than structure. The desire to play obstructionist politics has consumed parties on all sides, to the detriment of the population at large.
- squozzer 8y ago
  Not to mention that even those who support improving infrastructure have to receive a pet project (aka a bridge to nowhere) as part of the transaction. It's also obviously clear that at least one person in the US government doesn't like the current state of our infrastructure and would love to do something about it.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Structure is a huge part. Local projects (infrastructure being a common one) used to get a lot of funding via earmarks. Say you have a senator who's constituents don't care one way or the other about your bill but their party affiliation requires them to vote against your bill. You toss them an earmark that they can use to say "look at how I've helped you" to his constituents next election with the understanding that he'll break from his party's default position on your bill.
- busterarm 8y ago
  That's a result of the death of the party boss system, the last vestiges of which we lost in the late 70s. It was extremely corrupt, but largely centrist politics. The appeal to extremes and gerrymandering came afterwards. The obstructionist politics are not about willpower -- the issue is systemic.
  - jpfed 8y ago
    I don't know if it's centrism that enabled infrastructure, so much as the two major parties seeing each other as legitimate rivals that could be negotiated with. Without a common enemy since the Soviet Union disintegrated, the parties have lost their sense of mutual legitimacy. There's nothing visibly* urgent enough to push us into e.g. building a continent-spanning system of highways. *Climate change doesn't count because one side doesn't see it as a threat.
Afforess 8y ago
>People really underestimate how poorly suited our modern political structure is to accomplishing large scale public works projects. Did you read the article? There's something deeply wrong with large scale construction costs in America, but it isn't politics. Or it isn't _just_ politics. Politics and corruption can't explain 5-10x more expensive costs. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/09/why-so-costly/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/09/why-so-costly/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost... https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-comments-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-co...
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >Politics and corruption can't explain 5-10x more expensive costs. Corruption can explain any increase in cost, if your hands are in the money purse you can steal as much as you want.
- solatic 8y ago
  On the contrary, political structure is the only way to explain 5-10x costs. Consider the following simple hypothetical - imagine that a project requires a single person to implement, and that person costs $100k in yearly salary (and assume for argument's sake that benefits that benefits, cost of materials, etc. are all free), and after a year of steady work, the project will be completed. Such a project would have a projected cost of $100k. Now let's assume that this person is distracted - they need to get their every decision approved, they have to pitch their work to stakeholders, etc., and as a result, the project now takes two years. Just by virtue of the project taking more time - all other factors constant - the project now costs double because the project now costs two years' salary instead of one. When you have a political structure whereby Federal funding mixes with environmental review mixes with state funding mixes with private funding mixes with local permitting mixes with multiple state and local bodies each with their own permitting setups etc. - you have a guarantee that the process will be slower than molasses. Then you have foreign countries with transit authorities having sole oversight and dedicated funding getting projects done in a fraction of the time. You can argue that having three people paid $60,000 each to do the work of one foreigner making $10,000 a year in Asia is a 18x increase in costs. And you would be correct if labor costs were actually the majority of the overall cost. But they're not - administration is.
phillipcarter 8y ago
Back in 2017, we had the deadliest mass shooting in American history - over 50 deaths and over 400 gunshot wounds (!!!!) [0] - and precisely nothing has happened. The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and other mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every year. No signs point towards a scenario where things get better after people die. Our political system is a sick one. Expect no change. [0]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting
- kharms 8y ago
  >The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and other mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every year. Citation needed. A cursory look at Wikipedia for suicide rates suggests that they took a dip in the late 90s but otherwise are flat from the 80. Violent crime has been trending down for decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
  - phillipcarter 8y ago
    Sounds fair, my bad :) Though I'll continue to argue that this is still kind of unacceptable, since a constant rate over an increased population means more people dying.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    I don't think so about suicide, last year produced a lot of articles about the rise in suicides (partly it appears that women are catching up to men)[1] 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/06/07/u-s-suicide-rates-rise-sharply-across-the-country-new-report-shows/?utm_term=.d91cf7f17edf https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
- DuskStar 8y ago
  > Back in 2017, we had the deadliest mass shooting in American history - over 50 deaths and over 400 gunshot wounds (!!!!) [0] - and precisely nothing has happened. The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and other mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every year. You're right, we should have immediately banned all firearms nationally to prevent something like this from happening again, trampling all over the 2nd amendment. (nevermind how the hell you'd implement it without a thousand Ruby Ridges and Wacos, or why you expect to find more than a third of the guns in the first place [0]) It's not like he could have crashed a plane loaded with AMFO into the crowd instead, right? Or maybe we should just expand California's gun laws nationally, since that's worked out so well to stop the mass shootings there. You say "OMG how haven't we fixed this, it must mean we don't care" while proposing no solutions, for a problem that might not have a solution. Britain still has terrorist attacks (vans, acid, knives) and that's after banning carrying a fucking butter knife. Humans will always find ways to kill each other, (checkout improvised prison weapons sometime) let's not go too crazy hunting down one of the smallest sources. So, maybe our response to shootings shouldn't be compared to our response to crumbling infrastructure. At least with the infrastructure, there's a path forward that almost everyone would agree would work. That's not the case with guns. 0: http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-...

CydeWeys 8y ago

People already have died, and the primary response seems to have been to rebuild that one bridge. Hell, people are dying every day in traffic accidents that could be mitigated with better design (or reduced by making better mass transit as an alternative, which as a byproduct is also much safer than driving).

busterarm 8y ago
I don't disagree with you in the slightest but I really meant on a scale that people will care about. It's a really terrible state of affairs.

YetAnotherNick 8y ago

Stop making up things and seeing past with rose colored glasses. Accidents due to things like bridge collapse are much lower than in past, and much lower in US/developed countries than in thailand. Google "thailand bridge collapse" to see the cases.

busterarm 8y ago
> Stop making up things https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-50-000-american-bridges-are-falling-apart-n842356 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-50-000-american-br... https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/08/13/infrastructure-spending-states-that-are-falling-apart/37270513/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/08/13/infr... https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/30/report-over-54000-american-bridges-are-structurally-deficient-infographic/#1b5148b419b5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/30/report... https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure-a-d-2017-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure... https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/ https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/
- YetAnotherNick 8y ago
  The point is, is it better in the past and how much of this can be corrected by politicians being serious about it, not that it is not perfect now.

glitchc 8y ago

I think it’s political will more than structure. The desire to play obstructionist politics has consumed parties on all sides, to the detriment of the population at large.

squozzer 8y ago
Not to mention that even those who support improving infrastructure have to receive a pet project (aka a bridge to nowhere) as part of the transaction. It's also obviously clear that at least one person in the US government doesn't like the current state of our infrastructure and would love to do something about it.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Structure is a huge part. Local projects (infrastructure being a common one) used to get a lot of funding via earmarks. Say you have a senator who's constituents don't care one way or the other about your bill but their party affiliation requires them to vote against your bill. You toss them an earmark that they can use to say "look at how I've helped you" to his constituents next election with the understanding that he'll break from his party's default position on your bill.
busterarm 8y ago
That's a result of the death of the party boss system, the last vestiges of which we lost in the late 70s. It was extremely corrupt, but largely centrist politics. The appeal to extremes and gerrymandering came afterwards. The obstructionist politics are not about willpower -- the issue is systemic.
- jpfed 8y ago
  I don't know if it's centrism that enabled infrastructure, so much as the two major parties seeing each other as legitimate rivals that could be negotiated with. Without a common enemy since the Soviet Union disintegrated, the parties have lost their sense of mutual legitimacy. There's nothing visibly* urgent enough to push us into e.g. building a continent-spanning system of highways. *Climate change doesn't count because one side doesn't see it as a threat.

Afforess 8y ago

>People really underestimate how poorly suited our modern political structure is to accomplishing large scale public works projects. Did you read the article? There's something deeply wrong with large scale construction costs in America, but it isn't politics. Or it isn't _just_ politics. Politics and corruption can't explain 5-10x more expensive costs. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/09/why-so-costly/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/09/why-so-costly/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost... https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-comments-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-co...

whatshisface 8y ago
>Politics and corruption can't explain 5-10x more expensive costs. Corruption can explain any increase in cost, if your hands are in the money purse you can steal as much as you want.
solatic 8y ago
On the contrary, political structure is the only way to explain 5-10x costs. Consider the following simple hypothetical - imagine that a project requires a single person to implement, and that person costs $100k in yearly salary (and assume for argument's sake that benefits that benefits, cost of materials, etc. are all free), and after a year of steady work, the project will be completed. Such a project would have a projected cost of $100k. Now let's assume that this person is distracted - they need to get their every decision approved, they have to pitch their work to stakeholders, etc., and as a result, the project now takes two years. Just by virtue of the project taking more time - all other factors constant - the project now costs double because the project now costs two years' salary instead of one. When you have a political structure whereby Federal funding mixes with environmental review mixes with state funding mixes with private funding mixes with local permitting mixes with multiple state and local bodies each with their own permitting setups etc. - you have a guarantee that the process will be slower than molasses. Then you have foreign countries with transit authorities having sole oversight and dedicated funding getting projects done in a fraction of the time. You can argue that having three people paid $60,000 each to do the work of one foreigner making $10,000 a year in Asia is a 18x increase in costs. And you would be correct if labor costs were actually the majority of the overall cost. But they're not - administration is.

phillipcarter 8y ago

Back in 2017, we had the deadliest mass shooting in American history - over 50 deaths and over 400 gunshot wounds (!!!!) [0] - and precisely nothing has happened. The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and other mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every year. No signs point towards a scenario where things get better after people die. Our political system is a sick one. Expect no change. [0]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting

kharms 8y ago
>The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and other mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every year. Citation needed. A cursory look at Wikipedia for suicide rates suggests that they took a dip in the late 90s but otherwise are flat from the 80. Violent crime has been trending down for decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
- phillipcarter 8y ago
  Sounds fair, my bad :) Though I'll continue to argue that this is still kind of unacceptable, since a constant rate over an increased population means more people dying.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  I don't think so about suicide, last year produced a lot of articles about the rise in suicides (partly it appears that women are catching up to men)[1] 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/06/07/u-s-suicide-rates-rise-sharply-across-the-country-new-report-shows/?utm_term=.d91cf7f17edf https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
DuskStar 8y ago
> Back in 2017, we had the deadliest mass shooting in American history - over 50 deaths and over 400 gunshot wounds (!!!!) [0] - and precisely nothing has happened. The suicide and assault rates, including school shootings and other mass shootings, has only increased over time, with more deaths every year. You're right, we should have immediately banned all firearms nationally to prevent something like this from happening again, trampling all over the 2nd amendment. (nevermind how the hell you'd implement it without a thousand Ruby Ridges and Wacos, or why you expect to find more than a third of the guns in the first place [0]) It's not like he could have crashed a plane loaded with AMFO into the crowd instead, right? Or maybe we should just expand California's gun laws nationally, since that's worked out so well to stop the mass shootings there. You say "OMG how haven't we fixed this, it must mean we don't care" while proposing no solutions, for a problem that might not have a solution. Britain still has terrorist attacks (vans, acid, knives) and that's after banning carrying a fucking butter knife. Humans will always find ways to kill each other, (checkout improvised prison weapons sometime) let's not go too crazy hunting down one of the smallest sources. So, maybe our response to shootings shouldn't be compared to our response to crumbling infrastructure. At least with the infrastructure, there's a path forward that almost everyone would agree would work. That's not the case with guns. 0: http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-...