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One alternative would be to have a public works department which does the work itself. It would hire people, plan, write specs, buy or lease equipment, buy mate
by dsr_ 5y ago
One alternative would be to have a public works department which does the work itself. It would hire people, plan, write specs, buy or lease equipment, buy materials, do the work.
That, however, would be socialism, so it can't be done, even though it's done on a smaller scale in every US city for issues starting at road repair and going on up.
- vkou 5y agoThis would be a good alternative, but it has a cold-start problem. We don't build enough because building is expensive, and building is expensive because we don't build enough. When we don't build enough, a crown corporation dedicated to building is not going to have enough consistent work to justify its existence.
- diordiderot 5y agoWhat if maintaining capability justified the existence
- vkou 5y agoThen it will be axed the moment a 'small government' type gets elected.
- cmckn 5y agoI think there's a real argument for the efficiency of outsourcing many aspects of public works projects. But I think you make a good point, that doing things in-house is sometimes the right move. Obviously this applies to more than turnpikes :)
- sjwalter 5y agoOne of the tricks Robert Moses had when he was basically building modern NYC was he had on staff a top-notch crew capable of the end-to-end implementation of whatever project proposal he came up with. Designers, engineers, project managers, accountants, even down to the guys digging the holes. Not sure what happened and why cities stopped having all these capabilities on staff (seems obvious that e.g. NYC will eternally need a huge amount of people like this).