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Americans pay a lot into public infrastructure, but we just get much less for our dollar. (An insane 10x less when talking about urban rail.)

I don't think the American voter is what is broken here. People still believe in infrastructure projects. It's the public sector that has shown they can't be trusted to complete any worthwhile project for a reasonable amount of resources.

The quintessential example of this is urban rail, which is ridiculously expensive in America:

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex...

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-constr...

That's because the public sector doesn't build hardly anything anymore. They pay the private sector to build it.

There are tons of examples of the public sector doing major works throughout the history of the United States. Only now, during a time of incredible distrust in our capability to do public works, does it become expensive/impossible.

public/private ventures seems the worst of both world. In France a few big projects of this nature got news coverage, it was a super sad view. Hospital unfit for operations. Millions sunk .. no warranties, nothing.

More like public/semi-private. Usually private money but the primary contractors have a very close relationship with the public side. Government contracts have been incestuous for a long time.

That's because the public sector doesn't build hardly anything anymore. They pay the private sector to build it.

With little in the way of warranties, or so public perception goes. So then the public sector has to pay even more money to get stuff fixed, and contractors have little to no incentive to increase quality. Germany has warranties on roads. Their roads are supposed to be good. Italy isn't as good about warranties on public projects. Their road projects are supposed to be quagmires of corruption.

The US? In the past, the practice had been for 1 year warranties on road projects, but following the example of countries like Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Great Britain, federal officials have been trying to extend that out to 5 years for all federally funded road projects. New Mexico had a 20 year warranty on one project.

(EDIT: I did some Googling, and found that some progress had been made, actually. My opinion on this was formed in the 90's, but there's new information now.)

The private construction sector is simply a lot less honest and more incestuously intertwined with government than it used to be.

To give one example, the Hoover Dam was completed under budget and two years early, and cost well under one billion in today's dollars. There were actually large penalties written into the contract for various stages of the construction taking too long, e.g. $3k per day the diversion tunnels were late, and there was no additional money to be made by fucking up and running over-budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam

Contrast with construction projects today, where the goal seems, essentially, to go over budget and over time, because you get paid more that way. The government doesn't hold the companies accountable, and because of this, they purposely run up costs and billable days.

Amazing feats of construction are possible these days with modern technology, way more than what was accomplished with the Hoover Dam, but not when incentives aren't aligned.

There are plenty of other countries where the relationship between private construction companies and the government remains honest, and those citizens thus get a lot more bang for their tax dollar in infrastructure projects.

Cost plus contracts are a huge problem for efficient public funding of projects. Also see NASA'a SLS rocket versus SpaceX's falcon heavy. SpaceX's next generation rocket is going to be so far ahead of the SLS in capabilities and cost it is ridiculous to continue the NASA program. I would not be surprised if the SLS program will even survive the first launch of the BFR. Hopefully they will be able to cancel it at that point and use the funds for funding sending people to mars using SpaceX tech.

SLS is a great example because, incredibly, the contractors get paid no matter what. They don't have to achieve goals, meet timelines, or come in on budget. They simply do things and get paid for them.

Contrast with SpaceX, which has to have successful launches in order to survive. They are incentivized to succeed, and so they do. The SLS program has little incentive to succeed, so instead it turns into a game of extracting as much money as possible (which is inimical to succeeding quickly!!!).

" They are incentivized to succeed, and so they do."

Well, they have succeeded so far due to a huge amount of capital and talented people working very hard. I think more importantly is, if a system fails, that it shrinks in power and eventually disappears instead of getting bigger and stronger. A well working free market seems the best way humans have devised to do that so far.

That is a selective view of the free market. For any company under pressure to succeed there are others whose expertise is extracting, rather than producing, value. Failed projects, both private and public, are often run by such companies that are successful in what they do, just not in what they deliver.

I think if there is any comprehensive reason why companies like SpaceX, Tesla or e.g. Amazon are successful is because they are vertically integrated. The limited the amount of activity, and responsibility, not under their own control. These days the government is often prevented from doing this, and large companies often want to cut cost in the short term.

These companies have understood that their is less of an information gap these days, so there is little reason to let others take care of you core activities.

It feels like the difference between today and projects like the hoover dam is a combination of:

* Private sector grift/contract savviness

* Government corruption or lack of authority to deal with above

* Individual safety prioritized over all else - work stoppages for the most relatively minor of unsafe situations

* Environmental reviews/lawsuits

* Cost of modern materials/manpower

* Lack of will over the past 30 years to fund necessary maintenance

As a total layperson who doesn't work in either construction or government, I'd love to hear whether I'm on the right track here.

Voters are the broken piece. They don't vote in local elections, they don't demand accountability, and they like to talk about non issues like weed, abortion, and funding the military industrial complex and being world police.

So few people care about voting that local budgets are subject to the approval of the family and friends of police and firefighters, so we get to pay ever increasing taxes to their unsustainable pensions. Everyone moved to 401k 30 years ago, except for police, fire, and judges. Why is that? Because they all vote, and the rest of the public sits at home watching TV.

Some people don't have enough time, etc, blah blah, but while that is a valid excuse for some, over time, I have realized people are just lazy and they don't want to participate in their communities, they don't want to read the news or go to town meetings even if they have the time. Hence it is the voters fault. It is taken for granted that we have mostly corruption free elections.

I wish local elections were non-partisan for this reason.

I know a lot of folks in far-left cities that think that public sector union benefits are much too generous -- and wish the local government would take crime more seriously -- and wonder if additional tax increases are really in order.

And yet when it's time to vote they choose the candidates on the extreme left... as a rebuke to Trump or something..? even though he has nothing to do with city politics.

Left, right, democrat, republican, it doesn't matter. In local elections, as a candidate, if you're not supporting the police, firefighters, and judges, you're not getting anywhere. Those elections are decided by a couple thousand votes, and every single government employee is going to come in and vote for the candidate that is giving more pay and benefits. Americans also have a weird patriotism fetish anytime police/firefighter issues come up, as benefits do get cut for all other government workers and teachers, police and firefighters are never touched. Obviously, it's important for the rich to have their security guards on their side.

I would love to find a place to live where the government payroll is all cash, no benefits. Pay whatever you have to, six figures and whatnot, it just has to be in cash, so that taxpayers can see and compare the costs accurately.

Pensions and health benefits are nice, since those numbers can be fudged. It gives mayors and city council members plausible deniability and lets them claim they aren't raising taxes or keeping them low, and shove the costs 20 years into the future. Most people aren't going to want to hear about the conflicts of interest on the board of trustees for pension funds or the actuarial consultant being hired by the same people benefiting from the pensions.

"The public infrastructure is terrible! Why should our taxes go towards this awful system?"

Rinse, repeat. There are politicians pushing this in the UK (most notably with the NHS) - starve [public institution] of cash, make it worse, bring in private companies to plug the gaps and provide a pathway to privatise the whole system. Everybody wins! /s

Same thing in Portugal. Happened with loads of public enterprises, now it's happening with trains.

Block fleet renovations, investment into long-term sustainability, disregard expert's advice |> as it all comes inevitably crumbling down, point at it and go "look how terrible the rail system is, look how terrible the state is at managing enterprises" |> when the company goes 100s of millions in the hole sell it to a private company for pennies (preferably to some well-connected friends in this fucking revolving door "democracy") |> move on dismantling the next public enterprise

Well, the opposite view, "let's dump even MORE money into this black hole" is also not a smart path forward.

New Yorkers pay handsomely for their mediocre transit -- an amount that always seems to be growing beyond inflation. And yet less and less seems to be returned for their largesse.

Partly that is because you need to allocate money for upgrades and maintenance upfront otherwise you will get stuck in a pit of having no money because of old infrastructure and having old infrastructure because you have no money.

The only way to make it work is to hold the private sector accountable of the quality they produce.

It’s important to note that in the UK a lot of people think the undercutting of the NHS by the Tories is privatization by the back door. For personal reasons (crony capitalism) and ideological reasons (small government has to be a crippled government) this appeals to people on the right in the UK and US, along with whatever passes for a Libertarian these days.

> all the busy works laws and regulations that quadruple the cost of any project

I want proof of that. I would argue that a larger problem is that politics is too involved in the actual approval process, which is corruption. A great example would be when a local city council needs to approve an apartment complex, and a bunch of homeowners come and complain because their home prices might go down.

I would argue that this occurs on any number of projects, and is probably a primary concern. If it is a complaint about environmental regulations, well, environmental regulations should get top priority at this point.

> It's all about profit, preferably short term, than making something lasting, and even less so, about being proud in it.

My sense is that we are culturally pushed towards being ostentatious about the wealth that we own. A bigger house, a nicer car, that trip to some other nation - all wasteful carbon-wise, but that's the point. The whole system is exploitative of people and environment and we are pushed to participate, and escaping that is difficult because we've built out so much infrastructure around those ideas.

>I want proof of that.

See stcredzero's comment below. I'm not an American, but that's the impression I've got from all I've read -- crazy regulations and litigation-happy climate working together to drive costs prohibitive.

To be precise, the US public has been told the government is rotten, and the play is to sell off/contract out the infrastructure to private firms, who then make huge profits and build crap.

The problem is the propaganda and the desire for private firms, who have incentives opposite the taxpayers.

I read a ~fun story about public bus companies. They get a city as a contract, replacing a public service. Naturally they gather statistics, and naturally they cut the lines below some threshold. Soon enough half the city is void of bus, the other is now of greater value with lots of buses. A pleasant conclusion maybe.

This Kirksen Dirksen video has one Sonoma landlord's brilliant take on this. On the surface, it's about stuff this guy has built, but underneath it's somewhat of a documentary about how regulations and laws progressed from post WWII to 2019, and how it has completely changed California's housing market, economy, and culture. 28 minutes, though, but I think it's worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg

tl;dr is that houses were once dirt cheap, because fewer laws meant that people could innovate. Now, it takes $60k worth of permitting to even just add an addition to a house, and people are reduced to building sheds and outdoor "living rooms" on their deck.

(That's how much freedom we've lost by voluntarily taking it away from ourselves, basically to deny freedom to people lower down on the socioeconomic ladder.)

Agree that's a factor, but the fact that we stopped building housing to accommodate population growth and the move to cities (and California) is probably the largest one.

It has to do with trust, can't trust a public servant now to act in the interest of the public or educate themselves on the best course of action. It seems they will find a way to enrich themselves.

I hate public transp. I would rather be stuck in a traffic jam.

I have to get on and off in a packed subway during rush hour so many times that at the end of my journey I am so exhausted and sick.

I also get less sick when I travel by car.

So, let's ruin cities, pollute the environment, waste resources, and screw the poor, because some people "hate public transport".

That is not what I said. I just stated my preferences.

All of the things you liked were private infrastructure.

But you bashed private infrastructure a line earlier.

Not sure what you're going for.

And no, the military budget can't go down, look at how much German is complaining about just being asked to pay it's NATO dues.

> All of the things you liked were private infrastructure.

Route 66 was not private infrastructure, and even the private development along it was subsidized by public infrastructure.

> And no, the military budget can't go down

Yes, it can.

> look at how much German is complaining about just being asked to pay it's NATO dues.

Germany isn't complaining, and the issue isn't even about paying NATO dues but moving it's own total defense spending up to NATO targets. (And the major controversy isn't about whether to do that, but how aggressively to do so.)

And the big reason European NATO members can continue to drag their feet on that is US excessive defense spending.

>All of the things you liked were private infrastructure.

Well, Route 66 is not "private infrastructure". Neither was the Interstate system for that matter (Einsenhower and co, iirc). The skyscrapers are.

But I was talking about how the US now lacks both kinds of infrastructure.

That is, I'm not against private infrastructure per se. But I said, today's private investors "are happy to cut all kinds of corners. It's all about profit, preferably short term, than making something lasting, and even less so, about being proud in it".

>And no, the military budget can't go down, look at how much German is complaining about just being asked to pay it's NATO dues.

Then again, we don't need NATO. It was a cold war "coalition" where european governments were either strong armed into entering, paid off, or the right wingers pushed them in, in opposition to the USSR. Today's there's no real enemy, if anything NATO is constantly on the offensive expanding and pushing into Russia's neighbors. It's just a show put on to justify the huge budgets -- it's only alluring to the ex-eastern bloc countries that are actually having old beefs with Russia.

If anything, the joint NATO efforts in the middle east and around, not only do not protect, but destabilize those regions and cause more mayhem and terrorists coming into Europe.

My country, and others, have voted into power politicians that promised to get us "out of NATO", and still kept us in.