6 ms·

> Sees like the government is terrible at building anything, especially when contractors are used to do the job. Strange to contrast that with a tremendously a

> Sees like the government is terrible at building anything, especially when contractors are used to do the job. Strange to contrast that with a tremendously active and efficient era of public works from the 1890s through the 1950s. Just thinking of New York City, I suspect that the total cost of all the bridges, tunnels and highways (adjusted for inflation) might add up to a lot less than the 800 billion USD that disappeared into our recent stimulus bill. What changed? edit: Apparently the Brooklyn Bridge cost ~15 million USD to originally construct, which now would be somewhere between 300 million to 400 million USD (http://historical.whatitcosts.com/facts-brooklyn-bridge.htm http://historical.whatitcosts.com/facts-brooklyn-bridge.htm). Even though these are rough figures and inflation over large time horizons isn't a perfect measure, I'm still astounded. The government's totally broken healthcare website cost more to build than the Brooklyn Bridge.

Jtsummers 13y ago
The relationship between government and business, the much more short term approach to making money for businesses and individuals, a loss of the concept of "public good" or "common good".
- jerf 13y ago
  I'm sorry, I don't really see how any of those explain the government being granted money (in staggering quantities), then spending it, then having nothing. Are you implying that because businesses have a short-term approach to making money that therefore, the government is forced to give money to unproductive contractors? Are you saying that because "the people" don't have a concept of "public good" that when the government bids something out they can't help but use a bidding approach that virtually guarantees failure? Vague platitudes about society at large aren't crashing government projects. Society at large aren't really involved in them, after all. Something specific between the interaction of the government and the government-chosen contractors is probably the problem. In a way, you're probably proving far more than you mean, accidentally; if the problem really is "society at large", then there is no solution and these large projects can't work, and therefore the most effective thing the government could possibly do is stop trying and wasting money. (A project with a prerequisite of "change the larger culture's attitudes" is simply a guaranteed failure, after all.) I suspect that's not the point you're going for. You probably really want to be arguing for a much more local reason.
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    Sorry, it wasn't really a thorough answer or intended as one. Bad oversight: whoever's managing the project, doesn't understand the project. Not just, "I don't know how to read <some language>" lack of understanding, but "I don't know the difference between a spec and code". They don't specify terms that keep contractors in line which allow projects to run years and millions or billions over budget. Most of these contract managers aren't engineers, they may have engineers on staff, but it's not uncommon for those engineers to be employees of the same contractor that receives the benefits of the contract. The system is both incompetent and corrupted. The companies receiving contracts that habitually run late and over budget are also some of the largest. Small contractors don't make it when this happens, but NG, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, they can survive the political fallout thanks to their clout. If the companies have no oversight, and no accountability internally because they have no real concern for the other stakeholders (ie, the people paying them, the citizens/taxpayers), and the desire to make high quarterly profits, they'll rig the game by rent seeking, rather than completing a project effeciently and effectively and moving on to the next one. See NG and the maintenance of the JointSTARS aircraft as one such example. A rushed, but militarily valuable, project that had no maintenance plan in place, ends up contracted out to a company that destroyed one of the (few) planes and received no real punishment for it. Thanks to the tenure-like nature of civil service, a large chunk of government employees are retired in place, new employees have no place to start (few positions opening), and those that get in have a terrible example in place and become retired in place after a handful of years themselves. They may start off dedicated to the job, and many do remain dedicated, but they are also frustrated by the processes involved and either quit or ride it out to retirement. And regarding the platitudes, if companies and citizens (and consequently many of the elected and appointed officials) see profit as motive, rather than the future of the country or the society, then they make decisions based on that altered morality. Decisions based on short-term profit may not be harmful to long-term objectives, but they often are or are neutral to such objectives. A modern works project on the scale of the construction of the interstate system would likely never see the light of day, and if it did it would be mismanaged so as to never achieve its objectives. Normally I type these up in emacs and copy them over, this is not a well formatted message, sorry about that.
    - 13y ago
- rprospero 13y ago
  Ironically, a large amount of the waste comes from the effort to avoid waste. Weeks of development time have been spent dealing with how to keep our memory load under 1Gb, since that's how much RAM we have. Granted, 4GB of RAM would have been more than enough, but all that developer time saved the tax payer $20. On the reverse side, I've seen half a million spent on hardware for a project where the sys-admin was making $35k.
  - jpollock 13y ago
    If the hardware meant they could get rid of the sysadmin, it was probably a good deal. The loaded labour cost (salary plus facilities, insurance, redundancy payments, etc) is probably upwards of 200k per year. That means the hardware is cheaper.
- mstromb 13y ago
  I'd also add changes (improvements, in my opinion) in labor and safety laws. I suppose that falls under "[changes in] the relationship between government and business" but I think it's worth calling out specifically.
Spooky23 13y ago
Lots of things changed, especially unions and labor costs. The guy who digs a subway or water tunnel in NYC today probably makes $250k, retires at 55, and makes $150k for the rest of his life. The guys who built the Brooklyn bridge were day laborers who made nothing and died young.
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  I highly doubt construction works make 250k a year at least if you account for down time. RegardlessLabor costs don't explain massive cost over runs. If the amount of labor were accurately predicted, it would just inflate the cost, not over run those estimates.
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    Here's an article from 2006 that quotes $100k without overtime. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/02/news/adna-sand2 http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/02/news/adna-sand2 The young guys probably make 125-160k, the old guys get overtime preference. IMO they deserve it -- it's a really dangerous job. In any large scale project, any issue cascades and costs a shit-ton of money. For government contracts in many states, you have stuff like "prevailing wage" (where the gov pays too much for labor), "project labor agreements" (where the gov agrees to employ X number of people), minority and women owned business quotas (a big pit of corruption). Also remember that governments are run by politicians, and politicians embrace magical thinking. Painting a rosy picture to get something approved and blowing huge money with no tangible result is a good way to raise capital in govt. (whoops, $X didn't do the trick, but to avoid wasting it, give me $X+Y)
- Symmetry 13y ago
  And yet somehow France, which also has high wages and unions, is able to construct rail for 1/5 the price per mile as the US.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    France's rights of way were in no small part established by Napoleon simply building roads where he wanted them to go. The USA, like many countries, has rules about simply seizing land that are of the form "well, OK, if it's for a good cause, but you better pay for it".
nostromo 13y ago
Many people don't know that the New York Subway was built and run by private companies until 1940. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Comp... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Transit_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Tran... Busses and ferries were private too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Avenue_Coach_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Avenue_Coach_Company
- iskander 13y ago
  Any idea why the street cars were scrapped?
digikata 13y ago
Personally, I suspect that modern management practices for large scale projects are more inefficient than ad-hoc practices of the day.

Jtsummers 13y ago

The relationship between government and business, the much more short term approach to making money for businesses and individuals, a loss of the concept of "public good" or "common good".

jerf 13y ago
I'm sorry, I don't really see how any of those explain the government being granted money (in staggering quantities), then spending it, then having nothing. Are you implying that because businesses have a short-term approach to making money that therefore, the government is forced to give money to unproductive contractors? Are you saying that because "the people" don't have a concept of "public good" that when the government bids something out they can't help but use a bidding approach that virtually guarantees failure? Vague platitudes about society at large aren't crashing government projects. Society at large aren't really involved in them, after all. Something specific between the interaction of the government and the government-chosen contractors is probably the problem. In a way, you're probably proving far more than you mean, accidentally; if the problem really is "society at large", then there is no solution and these large projects can't work, and therefore the most effective thing the government could possibly do is stop trying and wasting money. (A project with a prerequisite of "change the larger culture's attitudes" is simply a guaranteed failure, after all.) I suspect that's not the point you're going for. You probably really want to be arguing for a much more local reason.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  Sorry, it wasn't really a thorough answer or intended as one. Bad oversight: whoever's managing the project, doesn't understand the project. Not just, "I don't know how to read <some language>" lack of understanding, but "I don't know the difference between a spec and code". They don't specify terms that keep contractors in line which allow projects to run years and millions or billions over budget. Most of these contract managers aren't engineers, they may have engineers on staff, but it's not uncommon for those engineers to be employees of the same contractor that receives the benefits of the contract. The system is both incompetent and corrupted. The companies receiving contracts that habitually run late and over budget are also some of the largest. Small contractors don't make it when this happens, but NG, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, they can survive the political fallout thanks to their clout. If the companies have no oversight, and no accountability internally because they have no real concern for the other stakeholders (ie, the people paying them, the citizens/taxpayers), and the desire to make high quarterly profits, they'll rig the game by rent seeking, rather than completing a project effeciently and effectively and moving on to the next one. See NG and the maintenance of the JointSTARS aircraft as one such example. A rushed, but militarily valuable, project that had no maintenance plan in place, ends up contracted out to a company that destroyed one of the (few) planes and received no real punishment for it. Thanks to the tenure-like nature of civil service, a large chunk of government employees are retired in place, new employees have no place to start (few positions opening), and those that get in have a terrible example in place and become retired in place after a handful of years themselves. They may start off dedicated to the job, and many do remain dedicated, but they are also frustrated by the processes involved and either quit or ride it out to retirement. And regarding the platitudes, if companies and citizens (and consequently many of the elected and appointed officials) see profit as motive, rather than the future of the country or the society, then they make decisions based on that altered morality. Decisions based on short-term profit may not be harmful to long-term objectives, but they often are or are neutral to such objectives. A modern works project on the scale of the construction of the interstate system would likely never see the light of day, and if it did it would be mismanaged so as to never achieve its objectives. Normally I type these up in emacs and copy them over, this is not a well formatted message, sorry about that.
  - 13y ago
rprospero 13y ago
Ironically, a large amount of the waste comes from the effort to avoid waste. Weeks of development time have been spent dealing with how to keep our memory load under 1Gb, since that's how much RAM we have. Granted, 4GB of RAM would have been more than enough, but all that developer time saved the tax payer $20. On the reverse side, I've seen half a million spent on hardware for a project where the sys-admin was making $35k.
- jpollock 13y ago
  If the hardware meant they could get rid of the sysadmin, it was probably a good deal. The loaded labour cost (salary plus facilities, insurance, redundancy payments, etc) is probably upwards of 200k per year. That means the hardware is cheaper.
mstromb 13y ago
I'd also add changes (improvements, in my opinion) in labor and safety laws. I suppose that falls under "[changes in] the relationship between government and business" but I think it's worth calling out specifically.

Spooky23 13y ago

Lots of things changed, especially unions and labor costs. The guy who digs a subway or water tunnel in NYC today probably makes $250k, retires at 55, and makes $150k for the rest of his life. The guys who built the Brooklyn bridge were day laborers who made nothing and died young.

anologwintermut 13y ago
I highly doubt construction works make 250k a year at least if you account for down time. RegardlessLabor costs don't explain massive cost over runs. If the amount of labor were accurately predicted, it would just inflate the cost, not over run those estimates.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Here's an article from 2006 that quotes $100k without overtime. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/02/news/adna-sand2 http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/02/news/adna-sand2 The young guys probably make 125-160k, the old guys get overtime preference. IMO they deserve it -- it's a really dangerous job. In any large scale project, any issue cascades and costs a shit-ton of money. For government contracts in many states, you have stuff like "prevailing wage" (where the gov pays too much for labor), "project labor agreements" (where the gov agrees to employ X number of people), minority and women owned business quotas (a big pit of corruption). Also remember that governments are run by politicians, and politicians embrace magical thinking. Painting a rosy picture to get something approved and blowing huge money with no tangible result is a good way to raise capital in govt. (whoops, $X didn't do the trick, but to avoid wasting it, give me $X+Y)
Symmetry 13y ago
And yet somehow France, which also has high wages and unions, is able to construct rail for 1/5 the price per mile as the US.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  France's rights of way were in no small part established by Napoleon simply building roads where he wanted them to go. The USA, like many countries, has rules about simply seizing land that are of the form "well, OK, if it's for a good cause, but you better pay for it".

nostromo 13y ago

Many people don't know that the New York Subway was built and run by private companies until 1940. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Comp... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Transit_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Tran... Busses and ferries were private too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Avenue_Coach_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Avenue_Coach_Company

iskander 13y ago
Any idea why the street cars were scrapped?

digikata 13y ago

Personally, I suspect that modern management practices for large scale projects are more inefficient than ad-hoc practices of the day.