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I believe Ray Dallio's most recent book talks about this a bit. Essentially the idea that more developed countries have slow downs in productivity related to wa

I believe Ray Dallio's most recent book talks about this a bit. Essentially the idea that more developed countries have slow downs in productivity related to waste. A year or two ago I read the book The Power Broker about a guy who was responsible for a lot of the construction in new york city in fairly corrupt ways. You get the idea in the book that they were just figuring out the earliest versions of ballooning costs and slowing projects down in those days. In the same way private contractors benefit from the military industrial complex and are incentivized to keep it alive and even promote conflict, We have a sort of bullshit industrial complex too of consultants and other nonsense jobs that come in and make projects take longer. It seems like there must be a way to go back to building stuff as fast as we could 100 years ago in the US. In China they can still build that way today[0][1] in a way I find embarrassing and annoying. Patrick Collison explores this idea some on this page[2]. I consider it to be one of the most important problems of the modern age. How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in? Some of these problems are exacerbated by the fact that even if you could do it now, capital isn't as cheap as it used to be. Which makes it even more frustrating that we went through that period without massive infrastructure updates and improvements. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWp6vSHFG4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWp6vSHFG4M [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6f_sayw0mM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6f_sayw0mM [2] https://patrickcollison.com/fast https://patrickcollison.com/fast

kspacewalk2 4y ago
>We have a sort of bullshit industrial complex too of consultants and other nonsense jobs that come in and make projects take longer. Forego those "bullshit industrial complex" studies, and there'll be some environmental, safety or cost fuck-up. Outside observers will then get to comment derisively on lack of foresight or planning, so it's really a win-win for us. >It seems like there must be a way to go back to building stuff as fast as we could 100 years ago in the US. There is. Forego a lot of the building/safety code, cut corners, and optimize speed over all else. >In China they can still build that way today[0][1] in a way I find embarrassing and annoying. Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result. >How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in? I can almost guarantee it would not happen. They can build it, but it's not likely to be an apartment I would want to live in, at least long term. Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a middle-ground somewhere between the extremes you're talking about. However, when it comes to, say, transit, I'd much rather aim for a first-world country that builds "less slowly" and cheaper without compromising safety or quality, like Spain or the Netherlands, over a place like China, which may set the record for speed but won't be setting any records for quality or longevity of its infrastructure. (And I'd even say that's okay for China, they need it deployed quickly because they, until recently, were growing fast from a very low baseline.)
- chii 4y ago
  > Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result there's no evidence that infrastructure projects in china, built for 1/3 of the price of what it would cost in the US, is any less quality. In fact, things like highspeed rail is much higher quality, due to leap-frogging of technology!
  - Tade0 4y ago
    Ever heard of tofu dreg buildings?
  - patch_collector 4y ago
    This is anecdotal, but back when I was working in architecture (10ish years ago), I visited the principal of our Chinese sister firm in Beijing, and we walked around and talked about his experience as a native Chinese architect with experience working in the US. His greatest frustration was the lack of quality in the finished buildings he'd design. As he put it, the designs that Chinese firms were putting out were just as high quality as anything in the rest of the world, but the end result was always worse. It was largely procedural -- in the US, the architect is involved not only during the initial design phases, but throughout the project, and is responsible approving any changes and for certifying that the result matches the intent. In China, that's not the case -- they make a design, bundle it up, and then hand everything over the contractor. The contractor then makes whatever changes they want during the construction process, without any input from the architects. This means materials may get changed, the wrong construction methods may be used, etc, and no-one knows. From a distance, the building will look amazing, but the details will have been skimped on.
    - clairity 4y ago
      not keeping architects in the loop doesn't sound like that big of a problem, if it just affects the quality of the finish as noted. it'd be much more concerning if engineers weren't signing off on construction changes (which can happen here in the US, even with our bloated procedures).
madengr 4y ago
CalRobert 4y ago
It'll take more than 3 months but with Builder's Remedy SF may indeed get a lot more apartments soon!
panick21_ 4y ago
Well 'The Power Broker' is of course a really famous book and person. He is basically responsible behind the US having the brilliantly self destructive idea to build gigantic high ways threw every city in the US and destroying the city centers, lowering property values and facilitating suberiba and urban sprawl. What has to be understood about the situation back then is that he was responsible for a totally undemocratic infrastructure companies. If he built a bridge, he could collect tolls, and then build more infrastructure with those tolls. So in effect, he was operating basically an infrastructure business. And not just any old infrastructure business, he basically controlled access to one of the world major cities. He was more powerful then the major or any elected official. Today the process just incredibly different. Today there are about 500 steps of 'public engagement' that have to be cleared. Funding has to be pulled together from lots of source, federal, state, local, private and so on. This basically leads to a situation where no city can really do anything for itself, it always requires far more. And on all levels a project needs to be agree on. When the federal government was pushing highways based on the Moses template, there was a top town push, the states bought in and the cities happy plowed over their cities to build highways. Today for most of these policies there is no clear aliened solution. For a while the Obama administration was pushing 'light rail' and a few such systems got built by cities tried to hook into that subsidy. But then not really much expand unfriendly beyond that. And instead of looking at 'what is the right public transit solution' cities instead will just check what subsidies does the federal or state government provide that we can use to invest in public transit. State DoT meanwhile have been historically created to build highways, and that is really what they are good at and focus on, so if you build a highway, state will likely give you money, if you build a bikelane the state wont. Even worse the state DoT will just plan a highway threw your city and you can't stop it. And then of course there is the environment piece. Almost any tram line will be better for the environment then using the car. But the horrible bad for the environment existing infrastructure, the 20-lane highway doesn't have to clear 'environment' review. It might have to clear some if you want to extend an existing highway, but that's much easier. So the burden put on new infrastructure projects, is far larger then the burden put on existing systems. But the problem is really even deeper then those first other problems. The whole land use polices the US has done for 60 years is hurting the country when it comes to public transport (trains, trams and so on). Because of the sprawl style of development cities are broke and can't even fix or maintain existing road and water infrastructure. The city center and the poor parts of the city are systematically subsidizing the sub-burbs. The politically influential suburb of course do not want to finance city center public transit because are not well connected. But they do support another lane of highway that they use to get into the city. A transit line into the suburbs never makes money because you simply can not connect suburbs because there is just to much sprawl, not enough density for it to make sense. When you do, your train station just ends up being a gigantic parking lot, see for example Torronto Go network. Granted this is better then not having rail at all, but far from ideal. So, to even start to fix this, and start to make sensible public project choices and investments a lot has to change. First of all the tax system has to change to reflect reality (example being a land tax rather then a property tax). Shitty parking lots and cheap warehouse building shouldn't get better taxes then nice mixed-use apartments. Your infrastructure cost and income have to be realigned, suburbs need to be systematically pay more in fees for utilities to reflect the much higher infrastructure costs. Then you have to reform the zoning code so that you allow mixed use and higher density almost everywhere. Your environmental review process has to acknowledge some fundamental truths about the current system and what it replaces. Then you have to start building your transit together with redevelopment of areas to get higher ridership and higher (property/land) tax from those lines. At that point these infrastructure projects will still be expensive and over budget, but at least you will get results were people 5 years later say 'well at least we got this amazing infrastructure' and don't remember how much it cost. Because at least you overpaid for right project, an not another lane on the highway that you would have also overpaid for, just with worse result. Here is the thing, in countries like Switzerland, infrastructure often goes over budget as well. And so did high speed trains in most countries. But if you do it correctly, it still ends up being a good deal. If California does this right, and starts also connecting local rail and builds a true integrated rail system across of all of California, with a high speed back bone, these high cost will be more then worth it. I strongly recommend 'urban3' check on youtube or their website. They do real data analysis of cities and show in data visualization where your city is losing money and where its making money. You can also see where public transit increases property taxes. Cities need to take that into account and focus their limited funds on places where they are making money (very often the poor districts actually should be more of the budget). Here are some case studies: https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/
lezojeda 4y ago
I also highly recommend "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter which also talks about the economic diminishing returns of any activity in societies as they become more complex. Uses the roman empire as its main example for his hypothesis but some other societies as well, it's worth a read.
Balgair 4y ago
> How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in? I mean, considering how the Millennium Tower is tilting so badly, I'd give such blitzed construction a hard pass. And anything in the collapse zones too.

kspacewalk2 4y ago

>We have a sort of bullshit industrial complex too of consultants and other nonsense jobs that come in and make projects take longer. Forego those "bullshit industrial complex" studies, and there'll be some environmental, safety or cost fuck-up. Outside observers will then get to comment derisively on lack of foresight or planning, so it's really a win-win for us. >It seems like there must be a way to go back to building stuff as fast as we could 100 years ago in the US. There is. Forego a lot of the building/safety code, cut corners, and optimize speed over all else. >In China they can still build that way today[0][1] in a way I find embarrassing and annoying. Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result. >How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in? I can almost guarantee it would not happen. They can build it, but it's not likely to be an apartment I would want to live in, at least long term. Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a middle-ground somewhere between the extremes you're talking about. However, when it comes to, say, transit, I'd much rather aim for a first-world country that builds "less slowly" and cheaper without compromising safety or quality, like Spain or the Netherlands, over a place like China, which may set the record for speed but won't be setting any records for quality or longevity of its infrastructure. (And I'd even say that's okay for China, they need it deployed quickly because they, until recently, were growing fast from a very low baseline.)

chii 4y ago
> Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result there's no evidence that infrastructure projects in china, built for 1/3 of the price of what it would cost in the US, is any less quality. In fact, things like highspeed rail is much higher quality, due to leap-frogging of technology!
- Tade0 4y ago
  Ever heard of tofu dreg buildings?
- patch_collector 4y ago
  This is anecdotal, but back when I was working in architecture (10ish years ago), I visited the principal of our Chinese sister firm in Beijing, and we walked around and talked about his experience as a native Chinese architect with experience working in the US. His greatest frustration was the lack of quality in the finished buildings he'd design. As he put it, the designs that Chinese firms were putting out were just as high quality as anything in the rest of the world, but the end result was always worse. It was largely procedural -- in the US, the architect is involved not only during the initial design phases, but throughout the project, and is responsible approving any changes and for certifying that the result matches the intent. In China, that's not the case -- they make a design, bundle it up, and then hand everything over the contractor. The contractor then makes whatever changes they want during the construction process, without any input from the architects. This means materials may get changed, the wrong construction methods may be used, etc, and no-one knows. From a distance, the building will look amazing, but the details will have been skimped on.
  - clairity 4y ago
    not keeping architects in the loop doesn't sound like that big of a problem, if it just affects the quality of the finish as noted. it'd be much more concerning if engineers weren't signing off on construction changes (which can happen here in the US, even with our bloated procedures).

madengr 4y ago

CalRobert 4y ago

It'll take more than 3 months but with Builder's Remedy SF may indeed get a lot more apartments soon!

panick21_ 4y ago

Well 'The Power Broker' is of course a really famous book and person. He is basically responsible behind the US having the brilliantly self destructive idea to build gigantic high ways threw every city in the US and destroying the city centers, lowering property values and facilitating suberiba and urban sprawl. What has to be understood about the situation back then is that he was responsible for a totally undemocratic infrastructure companies. If he built a bridge, he could collect tolls, and then build more infrastructure with those tolls. So in effect, he was operating basically an infrastructure business. And not just any old infrastructure business, he basically controlled access to one of the world major cities. He was more powerful then the major or any elected official. Today the process just incredibly different. Today there are about 500 steps of 'public engagement' that have to be cleared. Funding has to be pulled together from lots of source, federal, state, local, private and so on. This basically leads to a situation where no city can really do anything for itself, it always requires far more. And on all levels a project needs to be agree on. When the federal government was pushing highways based on the Moses template, there was a top town push, the states bought in and the cities happy plowed over their cities to build highways. Today for most of these policies there is no clear aliened solution. For a while the Obama administration was pushing 'light rail' and a few such systems got built by cities tried to hook into that subsidy. But then not really much expand unfriendly beyond that. And instead of looking at 'what is the right public transit solution' cities instead will just check what subsidies does the federal or state government provide that we can use to invest in public transit. State DoT meanwhile have been historically created to build highways, and that is really what they are good at and focus on, so if you build a highway, state will likely give you money, if you build a bikelane the state wont. Even worse the state DoT will just plan a highway threw your city and you can't stop it. And then of course there is the environment piece. Almost any tram line will be better for the environment then using the car. But the horrible bad for the environment existing infrastructure, the 20-lane highway doesn't have to clear 'environment' review. It might have to clear some if you want to extend an existing highway, but that's much easier. So the burden put on new infrastructure projects, is far larger then the burden put on existing systems. But the problem is really even deeper then those first other problems. The whole land use polices the US has done for 60 years is hurting the country when it comes to public transport (trains, trams and so on). Because of the sprawl style of development cities are broke and can't even fix or maintain existing road and water infrastructure. The city center and the poor parts of the city are systematically subsidizing the sub-burbs. The politically influential suburb of course do not want to finance city center public transit because are not well connected. But they do support another lane of highway that they use to get into the city. A transit line into the suburbs never makes money because you simply can not connect suburbs because there is just to much sprawl, not enough density for it to make sense. When you do, your train station just ends up being a gigantic parking lot, see for example Torronto Go network. Granted this is better then not having rail at all, but far from ideal. So, to even start to fix this, and start to make sensible public project choices and investments a lot has to change. First of all the tax system has to change to reflect reality (example being a land tax rather then a property tax). Shitty parking lots and cheap warehouse building shouldn't get better taxes then nice mixed-use apartments. Your infrastructure cost and income have to be realigned, suburbs need to be systematically pay more in fees for utilities to reflect the much higher infrastructure costs. Then you have to reform the zoning code so that you allow mixed use and higher density almost everywhere. Your environmental review process has to acknowledge some fundamental truths about the current system and what it replaces. Then you have to start building your transit together with redevelopment of areas to get higher ridership and higher (property/land) tax from those lines. At that point these infrastructure projects will still be expensive and over budget, but at least you will get results were people 5 years later say 'well at least we got this amazing infrastructure' and don't remember how much it cost. Because at least you overpaid for right project, an not another lane on the highway that you would have also overpaid for, just with worse result. Here is the thing, in countries like Switzerland, infrastructure often goes over budget as well. And so did high speed trains in most countries. But if you do it correctly, it still ends up being a good deal. If California does this right, and starts also connecting local rail and builds a true integrated rail system across of all of California, with a high speed back bone, these high cost will be more then worth it. I strongly recommend 'urban3' check on youtube or their website. They do real data analysis of cities and show in data visualization where your city is losing money and where its making money. You can also see where public transit increases property taxes. Cities need to take that into account and focus their limited funds on places where they are making money (very often the poor districts actually should be more of the budget). Here are some case studies: https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/

lezojeda 4y ago

I also highly recommend "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter which also talks about the economic diminishing returns of any activity in societies as they become more complex. Uses the roman empire as its main example for his hypothesis but some other societies as well, it's worth a read.

Balgair 4y ago

> How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in? I mean, considering how the Millennium Tower is tilting so badly, I'd give such blitzed construction a hard pass. And anything in the collapse zones too.