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There’s another very important factor about Moses that people overlook. They did things in-house. There’s an anecdote in the book about how they had a building

by CPLX 4y ago

There’s another very important factor about Moses that people overlook. They did things in-house. There’s an anecdote in the book about how they had a building on Randall’s Island with 100 draftsmen on call at any time. The minute the federal government announced more money was released they’d whip up designs for highways or bridges before anyone else and have the proposal in. There’s a lot of stories like that. Moses and his organization actually built shit, they designed and project managed their own stuff. We don’t do that any more. It’s not just that we hire construction companies, we hire companies to manage the construction companies and then another company to manage the managers. None of those people have an incentive structure that rewards building fast and on budget. This problem is endemic to every government function at this point. I am convinced we could solve half the problem with public works by just like building a government department to actually deliver the government services themselves instead of what we do now. Which, of course, is how governments mostly used to function before neoliberalism and general corporate dominance took over.

skybrian 4y ago
More about this and how it’s different in Europe: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/12/the-issue-of-curiosity/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/12/the-issue-of-c...
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> It’s not just that we hire construction companies, we hire companies to manage the construction companies and then another company to manage the managers. None of those people have an incentive structure that rewards building fast and on budget. this is a giant issue in the angloshere And noone own the outcome for quality of the result. When an issue arises, before anything is foxed there are 15 years of lawsuits between these companies to figure out who's fault it is In Britain, we had 100's of highroses built non-cpmpliant with fire safety, apparently the builder, the owner, the fire inspector and the local government are not responsible for compliance. The leaseholder of the individual apar5ment has tonpay for fixing it. Some people bought partial ownership, i.e. 25% of the apartment, the rest is owned by investors. Well, theybare responsible for 100% of the maintenance (this is a government scheme) So some people have bought an asset for £40k and now much pay 100k to fix it. And they cant say no
- nmfisher 4y ago
  Exactly the same thing happened in Australia. We lived in an apartment with flammable cladding in Melbourne that would have cost $50-100k to replace. Luckily we were just renting, so it wasn't our responsibility (we moved out shortly thereafter anyway). Having family members who worked inside government and having (briefly) done so myself, I completely agree with the grandparent. Government departments are basically just sprawling hierarchies of middle-management. Very few people who actually do things or take responsibility for anything. Those who want to are likely to get fed up and leave very quickly. It's all about contracting things out to the usual suspects of consulting firms, who inevitably are only interested in dragging things out for as long as possible and leeching as much money as they can. There was a recent report comparing metro construction in Italy with the USA that came to the same conclusion. They concluded that in-house expertise is by far the biggest factor in delivering large-scale projects on time and on budget.
  - zo1 4y ago
    My pet theory, not fully fleshed out yet, is that it's a consequence of "job creation" being a fundamental task of government. Or at least one we assign to it by virtue of constantly holding it accountable for "the unemployment rate" and other such statistics.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      I agree. I think there's also an analogy with the way software gets slower as hardware gets faster. That is, pointless bureaucracy and wasteful work grows as technology allows a smaller number of people to get the "real work" done. As long as the final result is acceptable (company doesn't go bankrupt / software slowness is tolerable), nothing is done about the waste. Edit: that includes overly complicated arrangements of sub-sub-sub-contractors with 5 layers of management, all passing messages around before the one guy with a hammer can actually do anything. Kind of like the modern web stack.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 4y ago
Arainach 4y ago
> building a government department to actually deliver the government services themselves instead of what we do now. Which, of course, is how governments mostly used to function before neoliberalism and general corporate dominance took over. This is how things were done for a long time, but anywhere the government delivers value is quickly "privatized" the next time a conservative government is elected.
- d4rti 4y ago
  There’s a difficult asymmetry in that it takes much longer to build in house expertise that it does to privatise it. Privatisation also often allows a short term financial boost at long term net expense.
katbyte 4y ago
When each level of company extracts it’s profit, and is doing what it can to maximize profit, it’s not surprising what the end result is. Cities used to/should have public works departments. Not hire a contractor who hires a paver who rents the machinery to fix a pothole. The city should just own it all and hire someone as it will forever need to fix potholes.
- eru 4y ago
  They could also privatise the streets instead.
  - Uvix 4y ago
    That’s pretty common in suburbs - cities own the main roads, HOAs own the side streets and are responsible for repairs, plowing, trash pickup, etc.
bwilli123 4y ago
“The consulting industry has infantilised government” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVBoWsGLJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVBoWsGLJs

by CPLX 4y ago

skybrian 4y ago

More about this and how it’s different in Europe: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/12/the-issue-of-curiosity/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/12/the-issue-of-c...

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> It’s not just that we hire construction companies, we hire companies to manage the construction companies and then another company to manage the managers. None of those people have an incentive structure that rewards building fast and on budget. this is a giant issue in the angloshere And noone own the outcome for quality of the result. When an issue arises, before anything is foxed there are 15 years of lawsuits between these companies to figure out who's fault it is In Britain, we had 100's of highroses built non-cpmpliant with fire safety, apparently the builder, the owner, the fire inspector and the local government are not responsible for compliance. The leaseholder of the individual apar5ment has tonpay for fixing it. Some people bought partial ownership, i.e. 25% of the apartment, the rest is owned by investors. Well, theybare responsible for 100% of the maintenance (this is a government scheme) So some people have bought an asset for £40k and now much pay 100k to fix it. And they cant say no

nmfisher 4y ago
Exactly the same thing happened in Australia. We lived in an apartment with flammable cladding in Melbourne that would have cost $50-100k to replace. Luckily we were just renting, so it wasn't our responsibility (we moved out shortly thereafter anyway). Having family members who worked inside government and having (briefly) done so myself, I completely agree with the grandparent. Government departments are basically just sprawling hierarchies of middle-management. Very few people who actually do things or take responsibility for anything. Those who want to are likely to get fed up and leave very quickly. It's all about contracting things out to the usual suspects of consulting firms, who inevitably are only interested in dragging things out for as long as possible and leeching as much money as they can. There was a recent report comparing metro construction in Italy with the USA that came to the same conclusion. They concluded that in-house expertise is by far the biggest factor in delivering large-scale projects on time and on budget.
- zo1 4y ago
  My pet theory, not fully fleshed out yet, is that it's a consequence of "job creation" being a fundamental task of government. Or at least one we assign to it by virtue of constantly holding it accountable for "the unemployment rate" and other such statistics.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    I agree. I think there's also an analogy with the way software gets slower as hardware gets faster. That is, pointless bureaucracy and wasteful work grows as technology allows a smaller number of people to get the "real work" done. As long as the final result is acceptable (company doesn't go bankrupt / software slowness is tolerable), nothing is done about the waste. Edit: that includes overly complicated arrangements of sub-sub-sub-contractors with 5 layers of management, all passing messages around before the one guy with a hammer can actually do anything. Kind of like the modern web stack.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
4y ago

Arainach 4y ago

> building a government department to actually deliver the government services themselves instead of what we do now. Which, of course, is how governments mostly used to function before neoliberalism and general corporate dominance took over. This is how things were done for a long time, but anywhere the government delivers value is quickly "privatized" the next time a conservative government is elected.

d4rti 4y ago
There’s a difficult asymmetry in that it takes much longer to build in house expertise that it does to privatise it. Privatisation also often allows a short term financial boost at long term net expense.

katbyte 4y ago

When each level of company extracts it’s profit, and is doing what it can to maximize profit, it’s not surprising what the end result is. Cities used to/should have public works departments. Not hire a contractor who hires a paver who rents the machinery to fix a pothole. The city should just own it all and hire someone as it will forever need to fix potholes.

eru 4y ago
They could also privatise the streets instead.
- Uvix 4y ago
  That’s pretty common in suburbs - cities own the main roads, HOAs own the side streets and are responsible for repairs, plowing, trash pickup, etc.

bwilli123 4y ago

“The consulting industry has infantilised government” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVBoWsGLJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVBoWsGLJs