4 ms·

It's amusing to me watching devs talk about the breakneck pace of AI and LLMS, AGI all that sorts of stuff, what that wild future will give us - when there are

by aizk 10mo ago

It's amusing to me watching devs talk about the breakneck pace of AI and LLMS, AGI all that sorts of stuff, what that wild future will give us - when there are far, far more difficult problems that lie directly in front of us, mainly getting public infrastructure projects done in normal spans of time, or hell, getting them done at all.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
pclmulqdq 10mo ago
AGI is easier than getting New York City to complete an infrastructure project in less than a decade or less than a billion dollars. The corruption and graft run so deep you would have to literally murder a lot of people to get that to happen.
- aizk 10mo ago
  Yes. That's exactly my point.
- rayiner 10mo ago
  Why is NYC so corrupt when large cities like London, Munich, and even Paris are much less so?
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    They are just as corrupt and/or incompetent. Have you tried Deutsche Bahn recently?
  - mmooss 10mo ago
    Why do people say NYC is more corrupt? I don't know of evidence or reports. To me, it doesn't seem more or less corrupt than other major cities in the US. It's hard to compare to other countries, where city government may have different roles. Certainly NY's government and budget are larger than other US cities, for obvious reasons.
    - rangestransform 10mo ago
      NY pays sandhogs to stand in the tunnels with their thumbs up their asses https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
      - mmooss 10mo ago
        Thanks for the link! I'm not sure the incident you name is meaningful, but here is some evidence at last (from 2017): > "the highest construction costs in the world" > "The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively." > For years, The Times found, public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits. > Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show. > Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say. > Public officials, mired in bureaucracy, have not acted to curb the costs. The M.T.A. has not adopted best practices nor worked to increase competition in contracting, and it almost never punishes vendors for spending too much or taking too long, according to inspector general reports. etc. Also, this is based on extensive research:' > The Times brought the list to more than 50 contractors, many of whom had worked in New York as well as in other cities. The Times also interviewed nearly 100 current and former M.T.A. employees, reviewed internal project records, consulted industry price indexes and built a database to compare spending on specific items. And The Times observed construction on site in Paris, which is building a project similar to the Second Avenue subway at one-sixth the cost.
  - woodruffw 10mo ago
    It isn't. No evidence has been presented to that effect. Here are some actual numbers[1]. (The classic form of griping over NYC corruption is the MTA which is notable for not being administrated by the city.) [1]: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/how-corrupt-is-new-york-anyway https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/how-corrupt-is-new-yor...
    - rayiner 10mo ago
      Your link shows that NYC is very corrupt! It ranks #3 in corruption prosecutions since 1976. On a population-adjusted basis, it’s probably #1. Your article tries to account for population, but does so incorrectly. It overlooks that NDIL includes the entire Chicago metro area (over 10 million people), not just the city of Chicago (2.7 million). CDCA includes the entire LA metro area, plus surrounding cities like Santa Barbara (total almost 19 million people). In contrast, SDNY includes just Manhattan and a few counties north of the city (Westchester, etc), totaling about 3 million people. And EDNY includes just Brooklyn and Long Island. The NYC metro area also is covered by DNJ (which is also very corrupt) and probably a bit of D. Conn as well. Focusing on SDNY, it's about 462 federal corruption convictions per million people (current population) since 1976. D. Mass is at about 107.
      - woodruffw 10mo ago
        The relevant part is the last three decades, as the article explains. The US as a whole has seen a decline in federal corruption prosecutions, but NYC leads that decline. Quote: > However, beginning in the 1990s, the number of corruption convictions there began to rapidly decline, so much so that by the beginning of the 2020s, Manhattan’s position relative to other areas had flipped. It now boasts the fewest corruption convictions of any major city area.
        rayiner 10mo ago
        As noted above, the article uses the wrong numbers for each district’s population. Even just looking at the most recent two periods (2010-present) SDNY has got about double the per-capita rate of D. Mass. EDNY + SDNY together have about the same population as NDIL (about 10 million), but have a higher number of corruption convictions than NDIL during each period in the chart except 2020-21.
  - EdwardDiego 10mo ago
    If you think Munich isn't corrupt, you should ask a Münchner - hell, their airport is named after a corrupt politician. [0] But as a few Germans have put it to me - sure, there's corruption here, but at least it still gets things built unlike _Italian_ corruption. Which is an... ...interesting point of view. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Strauss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Strauss As for London, they built an entire industry around hiding money for oligarchs who stole it from their own countries. Maybe it's technically legal, but it's morally corrupt AF.
    - Semaphor 10mo ago
      As a German I'll say that even acknowledging there is a corruption problem (while still being unwilling to change it and not voting for the parties that let corruption fester) puts them a good step ahead of all those thinking there's no real corruption. No studies, personal impressions, so I might well be wrong and maybe they all know but don't care. No majority that cares either way.
      - EdwardDiego 10mo ago
        Yeah, I agree with that sentiment.
      - mschild 10mo ago
        As another German, I think there is different kinds of corruption. There is low-level and high-level. Low-level is when you bribe individual cops, city clerks, etc so they let you go instead of writing a speeding ticket or approving your house building plan. High-level is when people like Merz receive a political donation from McDonalds, do some self-promotion in one, and then keep/lower the Mwst (VAT) for restaurants. Germany unfortunately has high-level corruption but as far as I know, very little low-level. I think thats partially why people don't care to vote to differently. Yes, it happens, but there is a large disconnect between what Merz does and how it impacts an individuals bottom line. If people would have to constantly hand out bribes to anyone then maybe its a different story.
        10mo ago
- mmooss 10mo ago
  What indication do you have that the construction time for tunnel 3 is due to corruption or even that it's taking longer than necessary? It seems like a very large engineering project; sometimes those take time.
  - bee_rider 10mo ago
    Yeah, I have no idea how long a tunnel of this size is supposed to take, and I’m surprised if many people here do. It’s a big project, and it is tricky to patch it after release. The thing is supposed to last 300 years, and usually we use infrastructure well past it’s intended lifespan…
    - mmooss 10mo ago
      I wonder how long, unmaintained, it would take to collapse. Would some future civilization find a tunnel?
      - MangoToupe 10mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Eupalinos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Eupalinos That one is ~2600 years old
    - euroderf 10mo ago
      > I have no idea how long a tunnel of this size is supposed to take, and I’m surprised if many people here do. Ask Europeans ? They're bangin'em out.
      - earthnail 10mo ago
        Few things in Europe compare to the size of NYC. A potentially comparable project would be the Elizabeth line in London. Took from 1948 to 2008 to agree on a plan and then 15 years to execute it.
        roadbuster 10mo ago
- woodruffw 10mo ago
  Call me crazy, but I don't think $6B for a 60-mile, deep-bore tunnel through the densest urban core in the US is that much money.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
BurningFrog 10mo ago
The problems with getting public infrastructure projects done in time or at all are political, not technical. There typically are no technical solutions to rhose.
- awesome_dude 10mo ago
  Kind of - the art of fortune telling plays a big part in things It's not needed now, but we think that it will be needed in the future It's needed now, but we don't know if we will use it in the future How MUCH will it be needed in the future Will there be a future technology that makes this investment unnecessary, or even obselete before the project ever completes For the latter, a big argument of "No need to invest in commuter trains" argument was "self driving cars are 'just around the corner' and they will make mass transit a quaint thing of the past" was used to deny investment in trains.
  - rayiner 10mo ago
    > For the latter, a big argument of "No need to invest in commuter trains" argument was "self driving cars are 'just around the corner' and they will make mass transit a quaint thing of the past" was used to deny investment in trains. People don’t want to invest in trains because Americans don’t like trains. We have only one real city, and that city’s population consistently has net domestic outmigration. The city’s population is kept stable by a steady supply of international migrants: https://www.cityandstateny.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2025/03/13/Screenshot%202025-03-13%20at%205.44.32%E2%80%AFPM.png https://www.cityandstateny.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2025/0.... Most Americans don’t want to commute sitting next to strangers. It’s not complicated.
    - awesome_dude 10mo ago
      I'm one of the few dozen people on the internet not in America...
    - mmooss 10mo ago
      > Americans don’t like trains They use them heavily when they're available. The NYC subway is very popular and successful, and many see it as a selling point of the city. > Most Americans don’t want to commute sitting next to strangers. I never hear city residents talk about 'strangers'. Interacting with others is a pleasure of cities, in fact - it's energizing, it builds social trust. We're social animals. I've never gotten on public transit, or walked down a busy sidewalk, and thought about 'strangers'. Most of those people are pretty sociable.
tsunamifury 10mo ago
Haha the technical difficulty is not the hold up here sweet summer child
- llbbdd 10mo ago
  Reddit
bongodongobob 10mo ago
You have to deal with directly affecting real estate owners, potentially 100s of thousands of different ones in NYC. Not to mention 100s of years of underground infra and all the different companies that own that stuff without cutting service to anyone. It's insanely difficult and I'm not sure I understand why you think it wouldn't be.
- aizk 10mo ago
  You're missing what I'm saying. I'm poking fun at devs that think AGI will magically solve all our problems - they have no idea just how insanely complicated physical infrastructure is.
  - bongodongobob 10mo ago
    I could definitely see it helping in this space though. I was a project manager for a telco for a bit and there's lots of data in different formats and systems that even today's AI would be great at splicing it all together for one coherent picture.
    - notyourwork 10mo ago
      Coherent and correct or merely seemingly coherent and factually incorrect. This is where we’re at.
potato3732842 10mo ago
The "problem" here isn't the construction of a tunnel. It's the political reality of the people on top of it.
arjie 10mo ago
That is true. In fact it relates to one of current America's greatest truths: coordination problems here are much more difficult than many technological problems. This is what makes many of those "oh so you take those autonomous vehicles, put them on a track for efficiency reasons, then link them together so they can transport more people, and voila! you have a train!" comments ring hollow. Building a train requires coordination. Building an autonomous vehicle requires technological innovation and convincing a few people at the top levels of government. The specifics matter (and the Abundance guys have done a great job summarizing them) but it's due to an entrenchment of certain styles of laws. So the answer to "why do Americans build self-driving cars to ease transport when Europeans just built subway systems?" is "we do these things not because they are hard, but because they're actually much easier than the other thing you find easy".
- llbbdd 10mo ago
  The other answer is that Europe is tiny and subways are almost useless in America unless you are exceptionally poor

by aizk 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

pclmulqdq 10mo ago

AGI is easier than getting New York City to complete an infrastructure project in less than a decade or less than a billion dollars. The corruption and graft run so deep you would have to literally murder a lot of people to get that to happen.

aizk 10mo ago
Yes. That's exactly my point.
rayiner 10mo ago
Why is NYC so corrupt when large cities like London, Munich, and even Paris are much less so?
- cyberax 10mo ago
  They are just as corrupt and/or incompetent. Have you tried Deutsche Bahn recently?
- mmooss 10mo ago
  Why do people say NYC is more corrupt? I don't know of evidence or reports. To me, it doesn't seem more or less corrupt than other major cities in the US. It's hard to compare to other countries, where city government may have different roles. Certainly NY's government and budget are larger than other US cities, for obvious reasons.
  - rangestransform 10mo ago
    NY pays sandhogs to stand in the tunnels with their thumbs up their asses https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
    - mmooss 10mo ago
      Thanks for the link! I'm not sure the incident you name is meaningful, but here is some evidence at last (from 2017): > "the highest construction costs in the world" > "The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively." > For years, The Times found, public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits. > Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show. > Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say. > Public officials, mired in bureaucracy, have not acted to curb the costs. The M.T.A. has not adopted best practices nor worked to increase competition in contracting, and it almost never punishes vendors for spending too much or taking too long, according to inspector general reports. etc. Also, this is based on extensive research:' > The Times brought the list to more than 50 contractors, many of whom had worked in New York as well as in other cities. The Times also interviewed nearly 100 current and former M.T.A. employees, reviewed internal project records, consulted industry price indexes and built a database to compare spending on specific items. And The Times observed construction on site in Paris, which is building a project similar to the Second Avenue subway at one-sixth the cost.
- woodruffw 10mo ago
  It isn't. No evidence has been presented to that effect. Here are some actual numbers[1]. (The classic form of griping over NYC corruption is the MTA which is notable for not being administrated by the city.) [1]: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/how-corrupt-is-new-york-anyway https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/how-corrupt-is-new-yor...
  - rayiner 10mo ago
    Your link shows that NYC is very corrupt! It ranks #3 in corruption prosecutions since 1976. On a population-adjusted basis, it’s probably #1. Your article tries to account for population, but does so incorrectly. It overlooks that NDIL includes the entire Chicago metro area (over 10 million people), not just the city of Chicago (2.7 million). CDCA includes the entire LA metro area, plus surrounding cities like Santa Barbara (total almost 19 million people). In contrast, SDNY includes just Manhattan and a few counties north of the city (Westchester, etc), totaling about 3 million people. And EDNY includes just Brooklyn and Long Island. The NYC metro area also is covered by DNJ (which is also very corrupt) and probably a bit of D. Conn as well. Focusing on SDNY, it's about 462 federal corruption convictions per million people (current population) since 1976. D. Mass is at about 107.
    - woodruffw 10mo ago
      The relevant part is the last three decades, as the article explains. The US as a whole has seen a decline in federal corruption prosecutions, but NYC leads that decline. Quote: > However, beginning in the 1990s, the number of corruption convictions there began to rapidly decline, so much so that by the beginning of the 2020s, Manhattan’s position relative to other areas had flipped. It now boasts the fewest corruption convictions of any major city area.
      - rayiner 10mo ago
        As noted above, the article uses the wrong numbers for each district’s population. Even just looking at the most recent two periods (2010-present) SDNY has got about double the per-capita rate of D. Mass. EDNY + SDNY together have about the same population as NDIL (about 10 million), but have a higher number of corruption convictions than NDIL during each period in the chart except 2020-21.
- EdwardDiego 10mo ago
  If you think Munich isn't corrupt, you should ask a Münchner - hell, their airport is named after a corrupt politician. [0] But as a few Germans have put it to me - sure, there's corruption here, but at least it still gets things built unlike _Italian_ corruption. Which is an... ...interesting point of view. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Strauss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Strauss As for London, they built an entire industry around hiding money for oligarchs who stole it from their own countries. Maybe it's technically legal, but it's morally corrupt AF.
  - Semaphor 10mo ago
    As a German I'll say that even acknowledging there is a corruption problem (while still being unwilling to change it and not voting for the parties that let corruption fester) puts them a good step ahead of all those thinking there's no real corruption. No studies, personal impressions, so I might well be wrong and maybe they all know but don't care. No majority that cares either way.
    - EdwardDiego 10mo ago
      Yeah, I agree with that sentiment.
    - mschild 10mo ago
      As another German, I think there is different kinds of corruption. There is low-level and high-level. Low-level is when you bribe individual cops, city clerks, etc so they let you go instead of writing a speeding ticket or approving your house building plan. High-level is when people like Merz receive a political donation from McDonalds, do some self-promotion in one, and then keep/lower the Mwst (VAT) for restaurants. Germany unfortunately has high-level corruption but as far as I know, very little low-level. I think thats partially why people don't care to vote to differently. Yes, it happens, but there is a large disconnect between what Merz does and how it impacts an individuals bottom line. If people would have to constantly hand out bribes to anyone then maybe its a different story.
      - 10mo ago
mmooss 10mo ago
What indication do you have that the construction time for tunnel 3 is due to corruption or even that it's taking longer than necessary? It seems like a very large engineering project; sometimes those take time.
- bee_rider 10mo ago
  Yeah, I have no idea how long a tunnel of this size is supposed to take, and I’m surprised if many people here do. It’s a big project, and it is tricky to patch it after release. The thing is supposed to last 300 years, and usually we use infrastructure well past it’s intended lifespan…
  - mmooss 10mo ago
    I wonder how long, unmaintained, it would take to collapse. Would some future civilization find a tunnel?
    - MangoToupe 10mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Eupalinos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Eupalinos That one is ~2600 years old
  - euroderf 10mo ago
    > I have no idea how long a tunnel of this size is supposed to take, and I’m surprised if many people here do. Ask Europeans ? They're bangin'em out.
    - earthnail 10mo ago
      Few things in Europe compare to the size of NYC. A potentially comparable project would be the Elizabeth line in London. Took from 1948 to 2008 to agree on a plan and then 15 years to execute it.
      - roadbuster 10mo ago
woodruffw 10mo ago
Call me crazy, but I don't think $6B for a 60-mile, deep-bore tunnel through the densest urban core in the US is that much money.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]

BurningFrog 10mo ago

The problems with getting public infrastructure projects done in time or at all are political, not technical. There typically are no technical solutions to rhose.

awesome_dude 10mo ago
Kind of - the art of fortune telling plays a big part in things It's not needed now, but we think that it will be needed in the future It's needed now, but we don't know if we will use it in the future How MUCH will it be needed in the future Will there be a future technology that makes this investment unnecessary, or even obselete before the project ever completes For the latter, a big argument of "No need to invest in commuter trains" argument was "self driving cars are 'just around the corner' and they will make mass transit a quaint thing of the past" was used to deny investment in trains.
- rayiner 10mo ago
  > For the latter, a big argument of "No need to invest in commuter trains" argument was "self driving cars are 'just around the corner' and they will make mass transit a quaint thing of the past" was used to deny investment in trains. People don’t want to invest in trains because Americans don’t like trains. We have only one real city, and that city’s population consistently has net domestic outmigration. The city’s population is kept stable by a steady supply of international migrants: https://www.cityandstateny.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2025/03/13/Screenshot%202025-03-13%20at%205.44.32%E2%80%AFPM.png https://www.cityandstateny.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2025/0.... Most Americans don’t want to commute sitting next to strangers. It’s not complicated.
  - awesome_dude 10mo ago
    I'm one of the few dozen people on the internet not in America...
  - mmooss 10mo ago
    > Americans don’t like trains They use them heavily when they're available. The NYC subway is very popular and successful, and many see it as a selling point of the city. > Most Americans don’t want to commute sitting next to strangers. I never hear city residents talk about 'strangers'. Interacting with others is a pleasure of cities, in fact - it's energizing, it builds social trust. We're social animals. I've never gotten on public transit, or walked down a busy sidewalk, and thought about 'strangers'. Most of those people are pretty sociable.

tsunamifury 10mo ago

Haha the technical difficulty is not the hold up here sweet summer child

llbbdd 10mo ago
Reddit

bongodongobob 10mo ago

You have to deal with directly affecting real estate owners, potentially 100s of thousands of different ones in NYC. Not to mention 100s of years of underground infra and all the different companies that own that stuff without cutting service to anyone. It's insanely difficult and I'm not sure I understand why you think it wouldn't be.

aizk 10mo ago
You're missing what I'm saying. I'm poking fun at devs that think AGI will magically solve all our problems - they have no idea just how insanely complicated physical infrastructure is.
- bongodongobob 10mo ago
  I could definitely see it helping in this space though. I was a project manager for a telco for a bit and there's lots of data in different formats and systems that even today's AI would be great at splicing it all together for one coherent picture.
  - notyourwork 10mo ago
    Coherent and correct or merely seemingly coherent and factually incorrect. This is where we’re at.

potato3732842 10mo ago

The "problem" here isn't the construction of a tunnel. It's the political reality of the people on top of it.

arjie 10mo ago

That is true. In fact it relates to one of current America's greatest truths: coordination problems here are much more difficult than many technological problems. This is what makes many of those "oh so you take those autonomous vehicles, put them on a track for efficiency reasons, then link them together so they can transport more people, and voila! you have a train!" comments ring hollow. Building a train requires coordination. Building an autonomous vehicle requires technological innovation and convincing a few people at the top levels of government. The specifics matter (and the Abundance guys have done a great job summarizing them) but it's due to an entrenchment of certain styles of laws. So the answer to "why do Americans build self-driving cars to ease transport when Europeans just built subway systems?" is "we do these things not because they are hard, but because they're actually much easier than the other thing you find easy".

llbbdd 10mo ago
The other answer is that Europe is tiny and subways are almost useless in America unless you are exceptionally poor