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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Labor conditions are actually not a major factor. Hardhats are pretty cheap.

American construction costs are unique in the world. No other country is even in the same ballpark - this includes wealthy countries (Spain, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy) with plenty of safety rules. Delhi's construction costs are typical, they are not exceptionally low.

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...

I just bring up Delhi because a) the article is discussing an Indian solar project and b) I have a Delhi metro card in my wallet and am pretty familiar with it.

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> I just bring up Delhi because a) the article is discussing an Indian solar project and b) I have a Delhi metro card in my wallet and am pretty familiar with it.

And amongst all projects in India, Delhi Metro project is pretty unique. It is more an exception than a norm. Primarily, because it was driven by E Sreedharan [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Sreedharan

Hardhats may be 'cheap'. Go to most construction projects in India and see how many wear them.

Then control for costs of permits and bribes to arrive at an actual cost for the labour.

We can then discuss social technology some more.

I bring all this up as my family has handled many construction projects in India, and so I am pretty familiar with it.

For Delhi metro construction (which I pass by often), hardhats aren't uncommon. In any case, see above links; safety rules are NOT what drives up US costs.

I'm measuring the effectiveness of social technology by the outputs, not the frustrations of the people involved. Except in a few backward places like Bombay (c.f. Salman Khan campaigning against raising FAR restrictions), projects get done. In the US they don't.

I think you are wrong, and what you say does not follow from the links you provide.

There can be a loss in the ability of a society to organize stuff. Berlin is incapable to finish an airport, and a big reasons are batshit-crazy fire protection regulations which changed multiple times over the duration of the project (plus a bit of corruption, but in fact probably not the reason for the failure). In Stuttgart they are trying to construct a train station and are incapable to finish it with their budget and don't even have an idea why.

But: At least in Berlin, regulations are part of the problem. Safety regulations are also regulations. It is totally logical that costs for a project do rise when taking the proper safety measures. One can argue where the balance should be, but just saying "safety regulations are not a problem" when comparing the USA and a third-world country is pretty removed from reality.

...what you say does not follow from the links you provide....when comparing the USA and a third-world country is pretty removed from reality.

If only I thought of that before you wrote this comment. Then several comments up I'd have written this: "No other country is even in the same ballpark - this includes wealthy countries (Spain, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy) with plenty of safety rules. Delhi's construction costs are typical, they are not exceptionally low."

I'm not comparing the US solely to third world countries. I'm comparing the US to every other country in the world.

You pretty clearly didn't read the links, or even this comment thread.

I agree that safety regulations might raise costs, but they demonstrably do not raise costs to US levels. If they did, then trains in Spain would cost the same as trains in the US. In fact, trains in Spain cost about the same as trains in India.

Spain is not a third world country, but Spain is still on a very different level than core Europe or the USA. That argument does not hold. You'd have to show something that reasonably compares the different working and security conditions of projects in different countries, budgets them, and then shows that they are not the relevant factor. Which would not work in Germany in similar failing projects as they are the factor there, so I don't think it will not hold for the USA either.

Edit: It would not work in Germany, because it would be hard to decide whether the ever increasing fire-regulations are indeed batshit-crazy and thus a sign of a failing capabiltiy to organize, or just a security regulation raising costs. In a way they are both.

The links you provided don't do that calculation properly, as far as I saw. And I did have a look at them and read the comment thread here, it is useless to attack me on that grounds. Doing so only disqualifies you.

Does Switzerland count as "core Europe"? Lucerne costs $151M/km, compared to $170/km in Barcelona. Does Paris count as "core Europe"? $230M/km. Bangalore is $164M/km. Berlin is $250M/km.

You explicitly brought up Germany, so how do you plan to wave that one away?

In any case, none of these are remotely in the same league as the US's $1,300M/km (to choose one of the cheaper projects).

If you want to explain why you think the calculations are wrong, do it. So far you've just ignored them.

I'm not saying the calculations are wrong. I have no time to check their sources, and no knowledge about them. What I do know is that there can be specific safety regulations that drive up the costs. Again, see fire safety at german construction projects (which btw should have no connection to subway lines, apart from the station). Apart from that, stepping away from safety, there can be differences in the costs of obtaining the build rights, and vast differences in how the contracts are created. There can be corruption, there can be ineptitude, there can be the common failure of an unregulated market.

It it even worth arguing that? I'm saying "specific things can drive up costs, safety regulations for example". If I understand you right, you were saying "specific things drive up costs, I call it social technology". Why does my position even conflict with your theory? That fits together, just view those regulations as a factor in your social technology model. The sole position to give up would be "safety regulations don't drive up costs at all", which is ridiculous anyway, thus not a hard loss.

If you scroll up, you'll see that throwawayhn was arguing that India manages to successfully built projects "by not giving much of a shit about the conditions that labourers have to endure."

I was disputing the fact that this played a major role by citing Spain, Germany, Hong Kong, etc.

My specific claim is that we do not need to choose between Spanish/German/Singaporean levels of worker safety and not getting big projects done. We can have both.

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