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> subsidies from higher levels of governments (e.g., federal) to lower levels (e.g., cities) for infrastructure The same thing is happening right now with EU g
by paganel 6y ago
> subsidies from higher levels of governments (e.g., federal) to lower levels (e.g., cities) for infrastructure
The same thing is happening right now with EU grant money given for "development" to some of its Eastern European members. Lots of mayors and local officials use that money for grand local infrastructure projects for which they won't have any reasonable money to maintain even in the near future (let alone 30 to 50 years from now), because we have a numerically declining tax-base that is getting older and older (I live in one of those Eastern European countries).
But mentioning that issue gets you labeled as a person "against progress" or an anti-European (or worse, a Russian shill who doesn't trust the European project). We have a saying in Romanian that roughly translates as: "you should stretch out only as much as your blanket allows you to", i.e. one should only consume the resources he/she thinks are reasonably available to him/her, but right at this moment we are "stretching out" further than the bed itself and getting out of the bedroom altogether.
- pram 6y agoDoesn't seem dissimilar from all the rotting Soviet prestige projects/infrastructure sitting around eastern Europe lol.
- jbay808 6y agoIf the Soviets could afford to build it, shouldn't the presumably wealthier post-Soviet governments be able to afford maintaining it?
- novok 6y agoOften economies run on star cities, and if your country's economy is disconnected from those star cities because of a breakup, your country's economy will also suffer. There was also the entire communist central planning thing that made resources misallocated.
- jbay808 6y agoThank you for an explanation that makes sense!
- kyrieeschaton 6y agoA lot of them are not maintainable - eg, there's no economical way to "fix" reinforced concrete with an incorrect blend or incorrect reinforcement.
- jbay808 6y agoIs the cost of demolishing and rebuilding it so much higher than building it from scratch?
- Kinrany 6y agoThe time spent rebuilding and not getting value out of the thing should be included
- jbay808 6y agoIt seems counterintuitive to conclude "we can't afford to build this bridge in the first place, because it would be too expensive to temporarily close it". But based on your sibling's post, maybe you're right?
- murkt 6y agoYes, for example, it is much harder to rebuild a bridge in the middle of a city than it was to build anew. Maybe that bridge was constructed in the open field and now the area around is built up. There are a lot of traffic and it should go somewhere while the bridge is closed. A lot of communication lines could go through this bridge and you have to account for it, plan for it and somehow move it while you’re rebuilding the bridge. Can you just leave it as it is? I’m not sure, it’s a Soviet-build bridge, lots of cement was stolen during construction and now some pieces of concrete are raining down.
- amelius 6y agoBut wait, doesn't that depend on whether you view the money not made during the shutdown of the bridge as "lost" or as "not made"?
- konjin 6y agoWhat happened to the Soviets in the end?
- jbay808 6y agoWhat kind of logic is that? I'm not trying to defend the USSR here, just understand how infrastructure spending works. But if that's how you conduct your reasoning, wouldn't you also believe that Abraham Lincoln must have been wrong about everything, seeing as how things ended for him? The Roman Empire isn't around either, but I don't blame their infrastructure projects for that. More likely that those helped them last as long as they did.
- konjin 6y agoThe USSR collapsed because it overspend on pointless projects. Bridges to nowhere or military bases in Afghanistan add nothing for the economy. Just because it's infrastructure doesn't mean it's good.
- jbay808 6y agoSo this seems like a roundabout way of answering the GGP's (my) question by saying that the post-Soviet countries are only declining to pay for maintaining those bridges that happen to go nowhere, which is presumably fine, because nobody needs them. The Soviet-era bridges that do see frequent use, they can afford to maintain/rebuild just fine? Are you answering this from an epistemic position of particular knowledge and experience about Eastern European economics and infrastructure, or are you just speculating that this is the way it probably is, based on your opinions of how the world works?
- inglor_cz 6y agoCzech here. All post-Communist nations tend to struggle with the idea of diligent upkeep / maintenance of publicly owned things. In fact, I would say that visibly older, but well maintained infrastructure is a great indicator of good governance. The attitude is slowly getting better, but aging of our countries will probably exacerbate the problem again. It is not just disappearing tax-base, but disappearing skill-base that comes with the common job market. Like, finding a competent tradesman is visibly becoming harder. Why should they even stay in the country when they can earn more in Germany or the UK.
- mycall 6y agoSometimes all it takes is for people like you to make this issue heard by all before it is understand and appreciated. There are many competing issues taking attention.
- howlgarnish 6y ago+1 to upkeep/maintenance, this really is what separates developed countries from developing, not just in Europe but anywhere in the world. Any third-world country can build a shiny new showpiece airport, the real test is what it looks like 10 or 20 years down the line. That said, if finding a competent tradesman is becoming harder (demand exceeds supply), their income will eventually increase to an equilibrium point where it starts making sense for them not to move to Germany/UK.
- Gibbon1 6y agoOne of my thoughts is building infrastructure is a speculative bet. You hope that it generates enough economic benefit to pay for it's construction, maintenance, and eventual replacement. A thought is sometimes that bet fails. You end up with infrastructure that doesn't generate enough revenue to pay for it's maintenance or eventual replacement. I feel like post war the US made a lot of extravagant speculative bets on infrastructure, particularly related to suburban housing development.
- jdkee 6y ago“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
- Gibbon1 6y agoWhen I did industrial stuff I dealt a lot with engineers and techs that were happy doing maintenance. That's probably not something Vonnegut as a writer had any experience with.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoEngineers and technicians are a minority group. Your positive experience of that group doesn't necessarily invalidate Vonnegut's observation about people in general.
- jhfdbkofdcho 6y agoyou don't know much about Kurt Vonnegut's background.
- eropple 6y agoIndividuals can be. Systems with bad rewards for doing so rarely are. For a tech example, see how reliably Google rewards teams for making new stuff and not for keeping it running.
- biztos 6y agoTo be fair, in many cases the point of building the infrastructure is not to have the infrastructure in the end, but rather to give that EU money to the ruling elite. Routing it through a company that pours a bunch of concrete is just the cost of keeping Brussels off your back and thus keeping the tap open.
- emteycz 6y agoIt's not really that many cases. The ruling elite is small and there is a lot of money.
- dijit 6y agoMy wife is Estonian and she would disagree with you strongly. How your government allocated the funds was your governments doing, but the money that was sent to Estonia has been invested and that’s what it has been... an investment. Any investment that does not yield returns that cover its costs is failed. Infrastructure facilitates so much of what makes up society that -not- having it can be much more costly than having it. But in those cases it doesn’t it’s because government corruption or ineptitude has eaten you from the inside.
- scient 6y agoAm Estonian and agree with that. The investments via EU have yielded awesome results over the years.
- howlgarnish 6y agoEstonia has one of the best governments in Europe if not the world. Romania does not.
- thu2111 6y agoMeasured how? In normal terms, as in, a clear profit that would pass regular accountancy rules? https://euobserver.com/justice/126948 https://euobserver.com/justice/126948 "Twenty EU-financed airports in Estonia, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain have misspent large sums of EU taxpayers' money for well over a decade. A report out Tuesday (16 December) by the European Court of Auditors found that €255 million - more than half of the EU funds audited - went into unnecessary expansion projects." People who actually measure EU ROI usually report extremely high levels of failed investment. In fact EU spending is notoriously corrupt and famous for yielding negative ROI. Here's some stories about Cornwall, one of the poorest parts of the UK and one of the poorer regions in the EU. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-33360841 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-33360841 EU "invested" 465 million pounds to create jobs. It was meant to create 10,000 new jobs for a cost of £46,500 per job, but actually only created 3,557 jobs. "You've got some absolutely damning statistics, for example in the research and development fund, the cost per job was £160,000 per person." It would literally have been a better use of money to pay people an average wage to do nothing whatsoever - UBI for real. Instead it was spent on things they called "investments" that would never have worked if you'd pitched them to a bank and tried to get a normal loan. The reason is explained by this guy: https://cornishstuff.com/2020/05/21/eu-funding-failed-to-achieve-significant-economic-development/ https://cornishstuff.com/2020/05/21/eu-funding-failed-to-ach... And he suggested that there had been a lack of analysis of whether individual programmes had achieved what they set out to do. He said that the impact of schemes was “rarely considered” and said that there was little attempt to explain how EU funding would provide a financial benefit and no consideration of “how are we going to turn 10million into 60m”. Mr Parkins said that while most organisations would have to demonstrate that there would be “more money coming out than they are putting in” that had been lacking with the EU funding. He also claims a lot of the funds go to public sector agencies or NGOs that are optimised for receiving grant funding. More on ghost infrastructure: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11985763/Fraud-allegations-and-waste-as-EU-hands-out-money-faster-than-states-can-spend-it.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/1198576... The auditors reported 22 cases of suspected fraud to OLAF, the EU’s fraud investigators. They included suspected conflicts of interest and “the artificial creation of conditions to receive subsidy” .... In Greece, an EU-funded sewerage network project has remained unused nearly a decade after it was launched after the local government failed to connect it to private homes.
- dzhiurgis 6y agoDo you have examples of such projects?
- murrayhenson 6y agoWithout these funds the infrastructure would either be poor or non-existent, making it expensive or unrealistic to move goods and people around within a country like Poland. When I emigrated to Poland in 2005 (from the US) driving between Krakow and Gdynia at never more than 15% over the speed limit of 90 km/h (the average speed everyone else is travelling at) (but often under 90 km/h due to many lorries on the road, tractors, accidents, people in elderly Fiats, elderly people in Peugeots/Fiats/Polonez/etc) with three 15 minute stops the driving time was about 10.5 to 11 hours. Now it's about 7 to 7.5 hours (two stops, not three, and usually driving right at the speed limit). The change is because of the introduction of the proper A1 motorway. Two lanes each direction and, most places, rated for 140 km/h. I should note that the "proper" A1 isn't yet complete. There's no A-class motorway between Krakow and Czestochowa though it's being built and should be complete in a few years. Maintenance on the thousands of kilometers of motorways (and highways and smaller roads) will undoubtedly be a significant expense in the future. But those roads allow for a staggering quantity of goods (and people) to be moved about quickly, safely, and inexpensively (even accounting for tolls). I doubt that our current government is setting aside money for maintenance for all of that but the potential incompetence of today's government shouldn't be a reason not to do something that will have ripple effects for decades.