“ The physical infrastructure projects enumerated above occurred before 1970 to a disproportionate degree. Why? ” If you Google image search “growth of environ

“ The physical infrastructure projects enumerated above occurred before 1970 to a disproportionate degree. Why? ” If you Google image search “growth of environmental regulation”, there is a huge increase in the slope of those graphs right around 1960-1970. A simple explanation might be that environmental regulation strangled the speed of physical infrastructure building. A more complex explanation might be that environmental regulation, along with other regulation, experienced this massive growth as a symptom of massive growth in management, consulting, and bureaucracy employment - and it is this proliferation of managers and consultants and bureaucrats that have slowed things down. I do like the second explanation more. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-did-all-the-workers-go-60-years-of-economic-change-in-1-graph/252018/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-d...) tells me that “professional and business services”, their catchall for managers and consultants, grew from 2.3% of GDP in 1947 to 12.1% of GDP in 2009. This sextupling of management work could very well correspond to a sextupling of the length (in time) of projects. A mile of road takes just as much asphalt whether you build it in one month or six months, but it takes ~six times as much management when it takes six months.