5 ms·

It is an outrageously cool thing to give money for an infrastructure project. They must have some faith that the government can deliver on something with $3.5 m

by arjie 9mo ago

It is an outrageously cool thing to give money for an infrastructure project. They must have some faith that the government can deliver on something with $3.5 million. That would be two public toilets in SF, one toilet of which actually cost $300k in paperwork and so on despite two local businessmen signing up to have the work done.

shswkna 9mo ago
I do not understand the downvotes. It is a rational response to bureaucratic excesses worldwide in public procurement. It is a plea to more common sense, to more down to earth thinking and decisive action in the public sphere. This is not a call to ignore processes. But it is a call for civil servants to respect that they are exactly that. In service, and their ambition should be to do it well and efficiently. The downvotes are an expression of those that think civil servants should be protected from such sentiment.
- vasco 9mo ago
  You went from not understanding them to knowing exactly what they were an expression of pretty quickly!
  - huflungdung 9mo ago
    [dead]
- zaptheimpaler 9mo ago
  Here is some of what happened during COVID, according to Patrick McKenzie (patio11) [1] : ---- I want to both be polite about the fact and be honest about it. We, the United States of America, through our elected representatives and through civil servants who represent our interests, committed monstrous crimes in 2021, which are against the laws, traditions, and constitution of the United States of America, including aggressively redlining the provision of life-saving medical care in a way which was designed to cause racially discriminatory outcomes with the provision of medical care. Just throwing that out there as a statement. With that caveat, one of the things that we spent tens of millions of dollars on was that we want your consultancy to write a website which will enforce residency restrictions. A residency restriction is essentially, when we are under a supply constraint, there must be some method to decide which people get it, and some people don’t. We have, in our infinite wisdom as the government, decided that equity, equity, equity is one primary thing that we are focusing on. A thing that we think would be contrary to equity is allowing anyone who shows up at the clinic to receive the life-saving medication. The thing that we are specifically worried about is relatively well-resourced people from advantaged demographics will use their superior access to transportation and information to travel to clinics which have the vaccine available and take that instead of that vaccine being used by someone in the local community who we intend the vaccine to go to. Therefore, to get an appointment to go to the vaccine, you will need to go to the county’s website, which is delivered by Accenture or similar, and prove to the website that you reside within one of the zip codes that we have allocated for those vaccine doses. Only then will you get the ticket, virtual or otherwise, which allows you to go to the pharmacy and get the vaccine. We spent tens of millions of dollars on that, targeting essentially a four-month window where we were acutely supply constrained. But we did not turn off residency restrictions on the websites after that four month window because we physically had no way to do that because that was not in the bid documents in some cases. ... ---- Just one of the many ways that rigid institutions that behave more like stupid robots than things capable of dynamic decision-making cause immense harm. This is not a rant against equity btw, only against insanity. [1] https://alethios.substack.com/p/patrick-mckenzie-vaccinateca https://alethios.substack.com/p/patrick-mckenzie-vaccinateca
  - AdamN 9mo ago
    This is real and there's no way to get these problems down to zero. However I do believe that the best first step is to make sure the government has more employees and fewer contractors. It will cost more year to year but the delivery will be much closer to what the constituents want and over time I would expect it to save money as well. With that said it's not a silver bullet as that group of people needs to be properly motivated, they still will need specialist help from consultancies, and there may be institutional capture anyway.
foxyv 9mo ago
It wasn't even really that big either. 50 square feet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet
rester324 9mo ago
"would put it to good use - including tackling the deterioration of water pipes" There is your faith in action. Zero concrete promise, no accountability.
- 21asdffdsa12 9mo ago
  * In the culture that also produced this comment. This is not a universal problem, just a societies unable to produce a high trust environment problem.
  - rester324 9mo ago
    [flagged]
  - rester324 9mo ago
    [flagged]
zaptheimpaler 9mo ago
They likely wouldn’t even accept the money because it’s in gold bars, and they wouldn’t be able to prove its source.
carabiner 9mo ago
Russia level of inefficiency in infrastructure implementation.
cyode 9mo ago
The lone ranger donor route feels severely suboptimal, unless perhaps if the donor is a .001%er pledging a large share of their net worth. Imagine if this anonymous person worked with a foundation pledging to match $3.5M if said amount was raise via crowdfund. Even if say $1M goes to the campaign and NGO bloat, that’s still way more pipe money.
- krisoft 9mo ago
  > Imagine if this anonymous person worked with a foundation pledging to match $3.5M if said amount was raise via crowdfund. Idk man. Thing is where i live we are already crowdfunding to maintain our pipes. It is called local taxes and water utility bills. So if anyone were to ask me for more money for the same task i’m already paying not insubstantial sums for I would be very cross with them. It is just not a good look. Now i don’t know about Japan. Maybe they don’t pay taxes and utility bills. Somehow doubt it, but who knows.
- fhub 9mo ago
  The lone ranger may have actually done something optimal but indirect. There is a lot of press that went global pointing out real problems. Japanese are proud people, this might actually help direct public funds to solve the problems.
- fuzzfactor 9mo ago
  >a .001%er pledging a large share of their net worth. Not exactly, $3.5M would be a very small share of their net worth . . .
pjc50 9mo ago
Japan, a culture so public-spirited that even the local Yakuza decide to contribute to the plumbing.
- ArnoVW 9mo ago
  There's a pattern where criminal organizations fill governance gaps rather than starting as genuine governments. The Yakuza did this opportunistically at certain historical moments. Hamas is a similar example (not a criminal organisation, but..) , allthough they are more of a institution-building than the Yakuza ever was.
  - Pay08 9mo ago
    Probably the best example of this are American mafias.
    - lazide 9mo ago
      Yes, it’s a big reason why they have always tended to be based out of immigrant communities - those were excluded from mainstream culture, governance, etc. If you were mainstream you didn’t need the mafia - you were already the gov’t, the police, etc.
  - dudefeliciano 9mo ago
    Mafias generally fill the same functions of the government but for the underworld: providing "protection", extracting "taxes", enforcing rules via the use of violence, and so on.
    - knowitnone3 9mo ago
      [dead]
  - simianparrot 9mo ago
    [flagged]
ionwake 9mo ago
weird how contributing to your community is "outrageously cool". How times have changed
madaxe_again 9mo ago
Of course they have faith - the donor is likely the prime contractor, doing a bit of casual circular accounting while doing a charitable donation tax writedown - or just some plain old fashioned laundry. It’s hard to see another reason for the format of the donation.
- Hnrobert42 9mo ago
  So cynical. Japanese culture is peculiar. Gold is anonymous.
tessierashpool9 9mo ago
Plot twist: the donation is from the owner of the company doing the infra project with the intention to launder money.
- M95D 9mo ago
  1) I never bought/sold gold, but AFAIK, that doesn't need to be laundered. 2) Even if the company receives the money, they must still do the work. Only the profit minus taxes is recovered from the total donated value.
- rcbdev 9mo ago
  The real twist about this is that reddit.com has seemingly breached containment, and it is dragging down the writing quality in this thread.
- protocolture 9mo ago
  How would that be successful money laundering? Money Laundering is really good with cash only businesses because you can just pretend you had 1000 more customers than you actually did. But this money is going towards a high profile public works project with fixed outcomes. You might get ~5% of the money back clean, assuming the government is corrupt enough. Not to mention that its highly unlikely the government doesnt know who donated it. So theres really no "clean" money, its documented somewhere if investigators go looking. The donator would be better off laundering through a car wash or corner store. The "everything i dont understand is money laundering" crowd baffles me sometimes.

by arjie 9mo ago

shswkna 9mo ago

I do not understand the downvotes. It is a rational response to bureaucratic excesses worldwide in public procurement. It is a plea to more common sense, to more down to earth thinking and decisive action in the public sphere. This is not a call to ignore processes. But it is a call for civil servants to respect that they are exactly that. In service, and their ambition should be to do it well and efficiently. The downvotes are an expression of those that think civil servants should be protected from such sentiment.

vasco 9mo ago
You went from not understanding them to knowing exactly what they were an expression of pretty quickly!
- huflungdung 9mo ago
  [dead]
zaptheimpaler 9mo ago
Here is some of what happened during COVID, according to Patrick McKenzie (patio11) [1] : ---- I want to both be polite about the fact and be honest about it. We, the United States of America, through our elected representatives and through civil servants who represent our interests, committed monstrous crimes in 2021, which are against the laws, traditions, and constitution of the United States of America, including aggressively redlining the provision of life-saving medical care in a way which was designed to cause racially discriminatory outcomes with the provision of medical care. Just throwing that out there as a statement. With that caveat, one of the things that we spent tens of millions of dollars on was that we want your consultancy to write a website which will enforce residency restrictions. A residency restriction is essentially, when we are under a supply constraint, there must be some method to decide which people get it, and some people don’t. We have, in our infinite wisdom as the government, decided that equity, equity, equity is one primary thing that we are focusing on. A thing that we think would be contrary to equity is allowing anyone who shows up at the clinic to receive the life-saving medication. The thing that we are specifically worried about is relatively well-resourced people from advantaged demographics will use their superior access to transportation and information to travel to clinics which have the vaccine available and take that instead of that vaccine being used by someone in the local community who we intend the vaccine to go to. Therefore, to get an appointment to go to the vaccine, you will need to go to the county’s website, which is delivered by Accenture or similar, and prove to the website that you reside within one of the zip codes that we have allocated for those vaccine doses. Only then will you get the ticket, virtual or otherwise, which allows you to go to the pharmacy and get the vaccine. We spent tens of millions of dollars on that, targeting essentially a four-month window where we were acutely supply constrained. But we did not turn off residency restrictions on the websites after that four month window because we physically had no way to do that because that was not in the bid documents in some cases. ... ---- Just one of the many ways that rigid institutions that behave more like stupid robots than things capable of dynamic decision-making cause immense harm. This is not a rant against equity btw, only against insanity. [1] https://alethios.substack.com/p/patrick-mckenzie-vaccinateca https://alethios.substack.com/p/patrick-mckenzie-vaccinateca
- AdamN 9mo ago
  This is real and there's no way to get these problems down to zero. However I do believe that the best first step is to make sure the government has more employees and fewer contractors. It will cost more year to year but the delivery will be much closer to what the constituents want and over time I would expect it to save money as well. With that said it's not a silver bullet as that group of people needs to be properly motivated, they still will need specialist help from consultancies, and there may be institutional capture anyway.

foxyv 9mo ago

It wasn't even really that big either. 50 square feet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet

rester324 9mo ago

"would put it to good use - including tackling the deterioration of water pipes" There is your faith in action. Zero concrete promise, no accountability.

21asdffdsa12 9mo ago
* In the culture that also produced this comment. This is not a universal problem, just a societies unable to produce a high trust environment problem.
- rester324 9mo ago
  [flagged]
- rester324 9mo ago
  [flagged]

zaptheimpaler 9mo ago

They likely wouldn’t even accept the money because it’s in gold bars, and they wouldn’t be able to prove its source.

carabiner 9mo ago

Russia level of inefficiency in infrastructure implementation.

cyode 9mo ago

The lone ranger donor route feels severely suboptimal, unless perhaps if the donor is a .001%er pledging a large share of their net worth. Imagine if this anonymous person worked with a foundation pledging to match $3.5M if said amount was raise via crowdfund. Even if say $1M goes to the campaign and NGO bloat, that’s still way more pipe money.

krisoft 9mo ago
> Imagine if this anonymous person worked with a foundation pledging to match $3.5M if said amount was raise via crowdfund. Idk man. Thing is where i live we are already crowdfunding to maintain our pipes. It is called local taxes and water utility bills. So if anyone were to ask me for more money for the same task i’m already paying not insubstantial sums for I would be very cross with them. It is just not a good look. Now i don’t know about Japan. Maybe they don’t pay taxes and utility bills. Somehow doubt it, but who knows.
fhub 9mo ago
The lone ranger may have actually done something optimal but indirect. There is a lot of press that went global pointing out real problems. Japanese are proud people, this might actually help direct public funds to solve the problems.
fuzzfactor 9mo ago
>a .001%er pledging a large share of their net worth. Not exactly, $3.5M would be a very small share of their net worth . . .

pjc50 9mo ago

Japan, a culture so public-spirited that even the local Yakuza decide to contribute to the plumbing.

ArnoVW 9mo ago
There's a pattern where criminal organizations fill governance gaps rather than starting as genuine governments. The Yakuza did this opportunistically at certain historical moments. Hamas is a similar example (not a criminal organisation, but..) , allthough they are more of a institution-building than the Yakuza ever was.
- Pay08 9mo ago
  Probably the best example of this are American mafias.
  - lazide 9mo ago
    Yes, it’s a big reason why they have always tended to be based out of immigrant communities - those were excluded from mainstream culture, governance, etc. If you were mainstream you didn’t need the mafia - you were already the gov’t, the police, etc.
- dudefeliciano 9mo ago
  Mafias generally fill the same functions of the government but for the underworld: providing "protection", extracting "taxes", enforcing rules via the use of violence, and so on.
  - knowitnone3 9mo ago
    [dead]
- simianparrot 9mo ago
  [flagged]

ionwake 9mo ago

weird how contributing to your community is "outrageously cool". How times have changed

madaxe_again 9mo ago

Of course they have faith - the donor is likely the prime contractor, doing a bit of casual circular accounting while doing a charitable donation tax writedown - or just some plain old fashioned laundry. It’s hard to see another reason for the format of the donation.

Hnrobert42 9mo ago
So cynical. Japanese culture is peculiar. Gold is anonymous.

tessierashpool9 9mo ago

Plot twist: the donation is from the owner of the company doing the infra project with the intention to launder money.

M95D 9mo ago
1) I never bought/sold gold, but AFAIK, that doesn't need to be laundered. 2) Even if the company receives the money, they must still do the work. Only the profit minus taxes is recovered from the total donated value.
rcbdev 9mo ago
The real twist about this is that reddit.com has seemingly breached containment, and it is dragging down the writing quality in this thread.
protocolture 9mo ago
How would that be successful money laundering? Money Laundering is really good with cash only businesses because you can just pretend you had 1000 more customers than you actually did. But this money is going towards a high profile public works project with fixed outcomes. You might get ~5% of the money back clean, assuming the government is corrupt enough. Not to mention that its highly unlikely the government doesnt know who donated it. So theres really no "clean" money, its documented somewhere if investigators go looking. The donator would be better off laundering through a car wash or corner store. The "everything i dont understand is money laundering" crowd baffles me sometimes.