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This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to fund infrastructure - it's to fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure. There is

This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to fund infrastructure - it's to fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure. There is zero incentive to run on time and on-budget, and every incentive to milk more government cash, so that people in power can get election contributions, that stay in power. If you also deny money to people who didn't vote for you, then all the better as well. See the union restrictions on EV money in this bill. Why help GM, when you can help GM and hurt Tesla, all in one! Doesn't matter if it's (R) or (D), or union versus non-union. It's profit-seeking across the board.

DennisP 5y ago
From the article, Istanbul gets things built a lot cheaper, partly because: > Whereas Boston might only build one new transit line every few decades, Istanbul builds dozens. Seems like building dozens of times as much would even more effectively "fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure." So why aren't we like Istanbul?
- munk-a 5y ago
  The more regular an activity is the more likely you're going to have people specialized in it - you'll have much more accurate estimates around costs and time to deliver since people will have more recent experience getting it done and you'll have infrastructure around building infrastructure. When these projects are rarer it becomes infeasible for a company to dedicate itself to the labour so you end up with residential construction firms digging tunnels and laying road foundations - and needing to learn a lot as they go or bring in consultants. The more you build - especially the more you commit to build in the future - the cheaper it will be. If everything is billed as a one-off then the specialized labour doesn't settle in the local market and you end up paying large costs over and over.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - DennisP 5y ago
    Yes, that's why doing so many projects helps Istanbul do them cheaper. But my point to GP is that doing so many projects would fund the politically-powerful infrastructure contractors even more effectively. Yet we aren't doing it, which seems to imply that maybe GP's explanation doesn't actually explain our situation.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      I want to point out that The Netherlands has a similar dynamic. They build a lot of infrastructure all the time. Very little corruption. I suspect there is a healthier relationship between the private sector and government. (The US is weirdly anti capitalistic when it comes to government. In the Netherlands, so many public services are delivered by private companies, by concession. Like, the equivalent of Amtrak is a private company. Also, private companies selling coffee/beer/ice cream in parks, which for whatever reason rarely happens in the states) I’m an expat, but maybe a local could explain how/why the Netherlands has the best infrastructure in Europe?
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  From the article: Contrast all of these issues with a city like Istanbul, where the M5, an 18-mile subway line, was built in seven years and for just $630 million. - That is roughly $35 million per mile. And it is one of the deepest subways in the world. Almost as deep as Moscow's. Meanwhile the 2nd Avenue Subway cost $2.5 billion per mile. That is a difference of 71x. The big bogeyman that is ignored is the incredible corruption involved with the politicians, contractors and "consultants" who rig these absurd outcomes. And let's not forget the incredible corruption in Boston and the Big Dig that became a smaller dig with massive cost overruns and delays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig One other thing is that in countries like Turkey they build a lot of infrastructure with private funds who run it like a concession for a certain period of time (say 2 decades) and then it reverts back to the government. The private contractors have an incentive to build build inexpensively and quicker as their IRR is ticking. Examples of such Public Private Partnership projects are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87anakkale_1915_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87anakkale_1915_Bridge The concept of PPT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public%E2%80%93private_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public%E2%80%93private_partner... - By the way the awesome website of the quoted and mentioned Alon Levy which I discovered years ago when we had a discussion on the disparity of subway costs per mile between the US and places like Prague: https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/
notJim 5y ago
It's not just vote-buying, it's also buying support for the project. They cite an example where some transit stations started simple and became more and more complex. I've seen this happen with local transit projects where basically some NIMBY or supposed "community group" shows up and places all kinds of demands that wildly increase the costs of the project. There is either a lack of appetite or a lack of authority to tell these groups to fuck off, which results in enormous cost overruns.
wolverine876 5y ago
I've seen these cynical rants many times, but can you back any of the claims up with anything substantive? For example, that there is no difference between parties? It's important, because it disarms us; if we don't differentiate between the more and less corrupt, we can't improve the situation. There is greed and corruption in the world, but that's not all there is. There are plenty of people who want to do a good job, who want to achieve things for society. More precisely, everyone has a little bit of all those things, and we have the free choice of what we pursue, the greed or the good. The US ranks pretty well on the scale of corruption. It's a good way to get voted out of office (recent phenomena not withstanding), or go to jail.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > can you back any of the claims up with anything substantive? For example, that there is no difference between parties? Corruption doesn't have a party. What matters is the candidates. Rand Paul and Liz Cheney are in the same party, but they're not the same. Bernie Sanders and Adam Schiff are in the same party, but they're not the same.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Corruption doesn't have a party. It's a broad statement, but with no evidence. If you mean 'no party is perfectly clean', that's not meaningful, like saying 'nobody is perfectly honest': some people are far more honest than others. If you don't hold the parties to account for their organized behavior, then they have no incentive to stop. Some parties tolerate or use corruption more than others, and by far the worst I've seen in the US is the current and recent GOP, following its de facto current leader. That doesn't make the Dems pure, and we do need to focus on individual candidates too. But if you elect members of party A, then party A gets more power, especially if they control a legislative house or executive branch, and especially elected GOP representatives vote almost strictly party line, regardless of the candidates.
    - aught 5y ago
      I think you missed Mouse’s point and reframed his statement in terms of false deductions and the statement structures are entirely different; laterally but missed the dart board. You both have entirely different points here, both valid but for very different reasons.
nonameiguess 5y ago
This seems needlessly cynical. While I don't doubt there is some actual corruption and plenty of rent-seeking from political donors, the cited factors of poor project management and little expertise also play big roles, as you can observe the exact same thing in private construction projects that are self-funded by bad builders. I'm in a neighborhood that has been sort of the last Dallas neighborhood near downtown still "up and coming" and have seen this ever since moving here, from my own builder and also from effectively everyone else. They seem to have no relationships with tradesmen or subs, no ability to schedule or budget. Everything is late. Work happens in fits and starts, sometimes with nothing at all happening for months. Projects frequently outright fail and the project sits idle waiting for some other builder to come along and purchase it. It's totally different in exurbs where they throw up new cities seemingly overnight. Working in pre-existing cities is an entirely different animal. There seem to be a lot reasons, but at minimum: - Skilled tradesmen don't exist in large enough numbers to meet demand - Subcontractors willing to do urban work are less skilled and scrupulous - Onerous compliance at many overlapping levels of government that all have jurisdiction over the same land - It takes forever to run new utility lines through a city because of how disruptive digging is - Neighboring property owners fight you every step of the way - Historical preservation and community culture councils come out of the woodworks with new requirements and restrictions on what you're allowed to build That's just to build on existing empty lots you already purchased and have a permit for. For something like this infrastructure bill, now we're talking new roads and rail and you need to worry about clearing whatever is already there plus getting those permits. And work stoppages can happen for ridiculous reasons even in the middle of nowhere. It makes me remember being in the Army, when we trained at the National Training Center out in the Mojave desert, we had to constantly be on the lookout and stop if we saw an endangered desert tortoise we weren't allowed to touch, and basically just wait for it to get out of the way.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throw0101a 5y ago
> This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to fund infrastructure - it's to fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure. You say this like wanting to repair/replace infrastructure is a bad thing. Are collapsing bridges a good thing? * https://fox23maine.com/news/i-team/ask-the-i-team-cars-still-allowed-to-drive-on-deteriorating-maine-bridge-is-it-safe https://fox23maine.com/news/i-team/ask-the-i-team-cars-still... * https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2021/07/28/i-40-bridge-memphis-reopening-timeline-tdot-announcement/5289880001/ https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2021/07/28/i-40-... * https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/sep/08/county-sets-up-vote-on-span-fix/ https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/sep/08/county-sets-... Or perhaps locks on the Mississippi so that goods can be transported: * https://wnax.com/news/180081-grassley-wants-corps-to-prioritize-lock-and-dam-projects/ https://wnax.com/news/180081-grassley-wants-corps-to-priorit...
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  They usually take longer than 2-4 years
WalterBright 5y ago
Another word for it is "pork-barrel".
gremloni 5y ago
Same old both sides argument. It’s getting old when the republicans are authoritarian snakes and are efficiently gutting this country and filling their pockets. The modern democrats are ineffectual and that’s their only crime.
bshoemaker 5y ago
This is stupid af because there are plenty of other countries with similar incentives & similar levels of corruption who don't have this problem. This sort of low-effort "lol everything bad" adds nothing to the discourse.
mc32 5y ago
Japan has what amounts to the retired civil service concrete construction complex. Lots of civil servants in their retirement get involved in the lucrative and salary cow that is pouring concrete everywhere including bridges to nowhere… yet, construction and infrastructure costs aren’t extortionist the way American infrastructure projects after the ‘70s have been.
joe_the_user 5y ago
It's sad to see a constructive HN thread derailed by a polarized rant like this. Notably, the OP only mentions the current infrastructure bill, it isn't about that, whatever your opinion on that. I, too, am against the permanent government. But this is just invitation to unconstructive engagement.

DennisP 5y ago

From the article, Istanbul gets things built a lot cheaper, partly because: > Whereas Boston might only build one new transit line every few decades, Istanbul builds dozens. Seems like building dozens of times as much would even more effectively "fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure." So why aren't we like Istanbul?

munk-a 5y ago
The more regular an activity is the more likely you're going to have people specialized in it - you'll have much more accurate estimates around costs and time to deliver since people will have more recent experience getting it done and you'll have infrastructure around building infrastructure. When these projects are rarer it becomes infeasible for a company to dedicate itself to the labour so you end up with residential construction firms digging tunnels and laying road foundations - and needing to learn a lot as they go or bring in consultants. The more you build - especially the more you commit to build in the future - the cheaper it will be. If everything is billed as a one-off then the specialized labour doesn't settle in the local market and you end up paying large costs over and over.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DennisP 5y ago
  Yes, that's why doing so many projects helps Istanbul do them cheaper. But my point to GP is that doing so many projects would fund the politically-powerful infrastructure contractors even more effectively. Yet we aren't doing it, which seems to imply that maybe GP's explanation doesn't actually explain our situation.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    I want to point out that The Netherlands has a similar dynamic. They build a lot of infrastructure all the time. Very little corruption. I suspect there is a healthier relationship between the private sector and government. (The US is weirdly anti capitalistic when it comes to government. In the Netherlands, so many public services are delivered by private companies, by concession. Like, the equivalent of Amtrak is a private company. Also, private companies selling coffee/beer/ice cream in parks, which for whatever reason rarely happens in the states) I’m an expat, but maybe a local could explain how/why the Netherlands has the best infrastructure in Europe?
1cvmask 5y ago
From the article: Contrast all of these issues with a city like Istanbul, where the M5, an 18-mile subway line, was built in seven years and for just $630 million. - That is roughly $35 million per mile. And it is one of the deepest subways in the world. Almost as deep as Moscow's. Meanwhile the 2nd Avenue Subway cost $2.5 billion per mile. That is a difference of 71x. The big bogeyman that is ignored is the incredible corruption involved with the politicians, contractors and "consultants" who rig these absurd outcomes. And let's not forget the incredible corruption in Boston and the Big Dig that became a smaller dig with massive cost overruns and delays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig One other thing is that in countries like Turkey they build a lot of infrastructure with private funds who run it like a concession for a certain period of time (say 2 decades) and then it reverts back to the government. The private contractors have an incentive to build build inexpensively and quicker as their IRR is ticking. Examples of such Public Private Partnership projects are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87anakkale_1915_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87anakkale_1915_Bridge The concept of PPT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public%E2%80%93private_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public%E2%80%93private_partner... - By the way the awesome website of the quoted and mentioned Alon Levy which I discovered years ago when we had a discussion on the disparity of subway costs per mile between the US and places like Prague: https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/

notJim 5y ago

It's not just vote-buying, it's also buying support for the project. They cite an example where some transit stations started simple and became more and more complex. I've seen this happen with local transit projects where basically some NIMBY or supposed "community group" shows up and places all kinds of demands that wildly increase the costs of the project. There is either a lack of appetite or a lack of authority to tell these groups to fuck off, which results in enormous cost overruns.

wolverine876 5y ago

I've seen these cynical rants many times, but can you back any of the claims up with anything substantive? For example, that there is no difference between parties? It's important, because it disarms us; if we don't differentiate between the more and less corrupt, we can't improve the situation. There is greed and corruption in the world, but that's not all there is. There are plenty of people who want to do a good job, who want to achieve things for society. More precisely, everyone has a little bit of all those things, and we have the free choice of what we pursue, the greed or the good. The US ranks pretty well on the scale of corruption. It's a good way to get voted out of office (recent phenomena not withstanding), or go to jail.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> can you back any of the claims up with anything substantive? For example, that there is no difference between parties? Corruption doesn't have a party. What matters is the candidates. Rand Paul and Liz Cheney are in the same party, but they're not the same. Bernie Sanders and Adam Schiff are in the same party, but they're not the same.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Corruption doesn't have a party. It's a broad statement, but with no evidence. If you mean 'no party is perfectly clean', that's not meaningful, like saying 'nobody is perfectly honest': some people are far more honest than others. If you don't hold the parties to account for their organized behavior, then they have no incentive to stop. Some parties tolerate or use corruption more than others, and by far the worst I've seen in the US is the current and recent GOP, following its de facto current leader. That doesn't make the Dems pure, and we do need to focus on individual candidates too. But if you elect members of party A, then party A gets more power, especially if they control a legislative house or executive branch, and especially elected GOP representatives vote almost strictly party line, regardless of the candidates.
  - aught 5y ago
    I think you missed Mouse’s point and reframed his statement in terms of false deductions and the statement structures are entirely different; laterally but missed the dart board. You both have entirely different points here, both valid but for very different reasons.

nonameiguess 5y ago

This seems needlessly cynical. While I don't doubt there is some actual corruption and plenty of rent-seeking from political donors, the cited factors of poor project management and little expertise also play big roles, as you can observe the exact same thing in private construction projects that are self-funded by bad builders. I'm in a neighborhood that has been sort of the last Dallas neighborhood near downtown still "up and coming" and have seen this ever since moving here, from my own builder and also from effectively everyone else. They seem to have no relationships with tradesmen or subs, no ability to schedule or budget. Everything is late. Work happens in fits and starts, sometimes with nothing at all happening for months. Projects frequently outright fail and the project sits idle waiting for some other builder to come along and purchase it. It's totally different in exurbs where they throw up new cities seemingly overnight. Working in pre-existing cities is an entirely different animal. There seem to be a lot reasons, but at minimum: - Skilled tradesmen don't exist in large enough numbers to meet demand - Subcontractors willing to do urban work are less skilled and scrupulous - Onerous compliance at many overlapping levels of government that all have jurisdiction over the same land - It takes forever to run new utility lines through a city because of how disruptive digging is - Neighboring property owners fight you every step of the way - Historical preservation and community culture councils come out of the woodworks with new requirements and restrictions on what you're allowed to build That's just to build on existing empty lots you already purchased and have a permit for. For something like this infrastructure bill, now we're talking new roads and rail and you need to worry about clearing whatever is already there plus getting those permits. And work stoppages can happen for ridiculous reasons even in the middle of nowhere. It makes me remember being in the Army, when we trained at the National Training Center out in the Mojave desert, we had to constantly be on the lookout and stop if we saw an endangered desert tortoise we weren't allowed to touch, and basically just wait for it to get out of the way.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

throw0101a 5y ago

> This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to fund infrastructure - it's to fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure. You say this like wanting to repair/replace infrastructure is a bad thing. Are collapsing bridges a good thing? * https://fox23maine.com/news/i-team/ask-the-i-team-cars-still-allowed-to-drive-on-deteriorating-maine-bridge-is-it-safe https://fox23maine.com/news/i-team/ask-the-i-team-cars-still... * https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2021/07/28/i-40-bridge-memphis-reopening-timeline-tdot-announcement/5289880001/ https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2021/07/28/i-40-... * https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/sep/08/county-sets-up-vote-on-span-fix/ https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/sep/08/county-sets-... Or perhaps locks on the Mississippi so that goods can be transported: * https://wnax.com/news/180081-grassley-wants-corps-to-prioritize-lock-and-dam-projects/ https://wnax.com/news/180081-grassley-wants-corps-to-priorit...

GhettoComputers 5y ago
They usually take longer than 2-4 years

WalterBright 5y ago

Another word for it is "pork-barrel".

gremloni 5y ago

Same old both sides argument. It’s getting old when the republicans are authoritarian snakes and are efficiently gutting this country and filling their pockets. The modern democrats are ineffectual and that’s their only crime.

bshoemaker 5y ago

This is stupid af because there are plenty of other countries with similar incentives & similar levels of corruption who don't have this problem. This sort of low-effort "lol everything bad" adds nothing to the discourse.

mc32 5y ago

Japan has what amounts to the retired civil service concrete construction complex. Lots of civil servants in their retirement get involved in the lucrative and salary cow that is pouring concrete everywhere including bridges to nowhere… yet, construction and infrastructure costs aren’t extortionist the way American infrastructure projects after the ‘70s have been.

joe_the_user 5y ago

It's sad to see a constructive HN thread derailed by a polarized rant like this. Notably, the OP only mentions the current infrastructure bill, it isn't about that, whatever your opinion on that. I, too, am against the permanent government. But this is just invitation to unconstructive engagement.