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IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. Not even that, it's a corrupt racket. It

IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. Not even that, it's a corrupt racket. It's purpose is to make money for powerful people. Sometimes employing people helps but notice "Andrew Cuomo launched a “transformation plan” created by a consulting firm to “simplify a complex and inefficient organization,” the MTA (still) says on its website. The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down." The researcher here identifies the symptoms of this but seems to see this more as an accident. Yeah, that's kind of standard for reports like this. A sophisticated reader can easily discern a steam mass of corrupt interests involved with situations like this but the report writer doesn't like to burn their bridges so they don't connect the dots and X many other apologists merrily misapply Hanlon's razor to the situations as well.

robertlagrant 4y ago
> The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down." This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises. Hey, the money one pays for various good things, like Internet service or movies, also funds a lot of bureaucratic cruft too. The particular American private-enterprise-ideology justification of corruption and public-private collusion has this weird tendency to provoke a certain type of person to repeat this same ideology when confronted with example of the corruption. Politician: "Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, let's do it like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated" (uses this to shovel money to well-connected friend). Semi-libertarian American, notices this: "Wow! Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, why can't we do things like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated..." (the scams continue as normal).
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Vague pattern matching of behaviour is not useful, interesting, or difficult. In the unlikely event it'll provoke a full thought: thinking the government shouldn't waste money is not a libertarian specialty.
bluGill 4y ago
The unions and little people working for them are also part of the corrupt racket. It is at all levels, don't focus on one, the others will find ways to protect that, or at least buy them off so they don't point at something else
- britch 4y ago
  I agree there's corruption throughout, but there's some especially wrong about the top elected official being corrupt in this way that's especially bad. Very visible role. Nominally in charge of keeping the city prosperous and functional. Someone who citizens pretty directly select for the role. I don't doubt there's corruption at every level, but when the leader of the organization is enriching themselves and their buddies it's hard to expect anyone else to do anything else. I don't think corruption can be addressed bottom up
  - bluGill 4y ago
    It has to be addressed at all levels. The unions are the supporting the corrupt politicians who support too many workers on the job. So long as everyone goes "my corruption is small/worth it - what about" we will never get anywhere. People need to be willing to bite the hand that feeds them.
treis 4y ago
It's the elephant in the room. City level government in pretty much every large U.S. city is a one party state. And like any monopoly it ends up as some combination of inefficient and corrupt. A lot of it comes down to how we do elections. Ultimately, Adams became mayor of a 8.5 million city by getting 290k votes in the Democratic primary. Which is just crazy when you think about it.

robertlagrant 4y ago

> The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down." This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises.

joe_the_user 4y ago
This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises. Hey, the money one pays for various good things, like Internet service or movies, also funds a lot of bureaucratic cruft too. The particular American private-enterprise-ideology justification of corruption and public-private collusion has this weird tendency to provoke a certain type of person to repeat this same ideology when confronted with example of the corruption. Politician: "Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, let's do it like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated" (uses this to shovel money to well-connected friend). Semi-libertarian American, notices this: "Wow! Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, why can't we do things like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated..." (the scams continue as normal).
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Vague pattern matching of behaviour is not useful, interesting, or difficult. In the unlikely event it'll provoke a full thought: thinking the government shouldn't waste money is not a libertarian specialty.

bluGill 4y ago

The unions and little people working for them are also part of the corrupt racket. It is at all levels, don't focus on one, the others will find ways to protect that, or at least buy them off so they don't point at something else

britch 4y ago
I agree there's corruption throughout, but there's some especially wrong about the top elected official being corrupt in this way that's especially bad. Very visible role. Nominally in charge of keeping the city prosperous and functional. Someone who citizens pretty directly select for the role. I don't doubt there's corruption at every level, but when the leader of the organization is enriching themselves and their buddies it's hard to expect anyone else to do anything else. I don't think corruption can be addressed bottom up
- bluGill 4y ago
  It has to be addressed at all levels. The unions are the supporting the corrupt politicians who support too many workers on the job. So long as everyone goes "my corruption is small/worth it - what about" we will never get anywhere. People need to be willing to bite the hand that feeds them.

treis 4y ago

It's the elephant in the room. City level government in pretty much every large U.S. city is a one party state. And like any monopoly it ends up as some combination of inefficient and corrupt. A lot of it comes down to how we do elections. Ultimately, Adams became mayor of a 8.5 million city by getting 290k votes in the Democratic primary. Which is just crazy when you think about it.