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I just don't have the time to watch a 7 part series mini-docuseries to "inform" myself. I've lived all over the world (yes, Europe as well) and personally find

I just don't have the time to watch a 7 part series mini-docuseries to "inform" myself. I've lived all over the world (yes, Europe as well) and personally find American suburbia amazing for the reasons stated above. Americans on HN think that there are no cars in Europe and everyone just bikes in beautiful small towns. Europe has 250 million passenger cars.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
In short, theory is taxes from suburbia aren’t sufficient to pay for maintenance of their roads and utilities. Looks fine for a couple of decades after initial construction, but falls apart afterward. Place I grew up in looks just like this, once nice roads crumbling.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Interesting. Hasn't infrastructure become impossibly expensive in the west? We can't even build a small access road to a bridge without spending millions of dollars. Forget about subway, costs like $2B per mile. May be we should question policies as well as why governments have become so hopelessly inefficient. Yet, we want to fund it with more taxes. No one seems to care and quantify inefficiencies of contemporary governments. Journalists aren't interested. Population is convinced that more taxes leads to better QoL which hasn't been the case lately. Instead of saying that taxes aren't suffient to maintain roads and basic services, perhaps Governments have become too bloated to serve their populations and administration class malaise has settled in.
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    Cost-disease is probably a factor, however as cost also goes up very quickly with distance it is probably not the major one. n vs. n²
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - coutego 4y ago
    Not really. Those activities are externalised to the best bidder. Cost are high because private companies can't make it for less work _and_ because safety standards are quite high in the West (and even then you get some bridges collapsing and killing people here and there). If you want it "cheap" then you need to apply second world standards and accept people getting regularly killed under crumbling infrastructure. Yes, yes. I know about the money that is "lost" in bribes, etc. but that's not because the administrative state is inefficient but because politicians are greedy. In fact, one reason for externalising so much to private companies is to make it easier to get bribes or nice posts after finishing public office.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

In short, theory is taxes from suburbia aren’t sufficient to pay for maintenance of their roads and utilities. Looks fine for a couple of decades after initial construction, but falls apart afterward. Place I grew up in looks just like this, once nice roads crumbling.

systemvoltage 4y ago
Interesting. Hasn't infrastructure become impossibly expensive in the west? We can't even build a small access road to a bridge without spending millions of dollars. Forget about subway, costs like $2B per mile. May be we should question policies as well as why governments have become so hopelessly inefficient. Yet, we want to fund it with more taxes. No one seems to care and quantify inefficiencies of contemporary governments. Journalists aren't interested. Population is convinced that more taxes leads to better QoL which hasn't been the case lately. Instead of saying that taxes aren't suffient to maintain roads and basic services, perhaps Governments have become too bloated to serve their populations and administration class malaise has settled in.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Cost-disease is probably a factor, however as cost also goes up very quickly with distance it is probably not the major one. n vs. n²
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- coutego 4y ago
  Not really. Those activities are externalised to the best bidder. Cost are high because private companies can't make it for less work _and_ because safety standards are quite high in the West (and even then you get some bridges collapsing and killing people here and there). If you want it "cheap" then you need to apply second world standards and accept people getting regularly killed under crumbling infrastructure. Yes, yes. I know about the money that is "lost" in bribes, etc. but that's not because the administrative state is inefficient but because politicians are greedy. In fact, one reason for externalising so much to private companies is to make it easier to get bribes or nice posts after finishing public office.