Comment by KingMachiavelli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KingMachiavelli | Hacker News Reader

KingMachiavelli

Every time any land is going to be developed where I live (Denver/Boulder/etc.), there is always a thread on Nextdoor advocating for people to stop it by raising environmental concerns and putting in a ton of comments. If 1/10 projects get canceled due to individual objections that means a lot of time and money gets wasted. Another 4/10 projects might eventually get built but only after long drawn out discussions and after many iterations to address individual concerns making the project less standardized and more expensive.

The remaining projects that built aren't really infrastructure projects rather they are statement pieces. Instead of building a $200M subway station we build a $1B community gathering area that includes a subway station. The optimistic hope is that these larger projects will encourage public adoption and support for more of these types of projects but in reality their costs spiral out of control and construction takes far too long at which point the public is just tired.

It's things like this that make me yearn for the government of yore that just fucking did it, no questions asked i.e. the federal government laying out the interstate highway system. They didn't care it tore apart neighborhoods, they did it because if they didn't, the evil Soviets would eventually build a better highway system and the US couldn't have that embarrassment. A shitty motivator? Sure, but it was a motivator. Now in the 3 decades since the end of the Cold War, what accomplishments has any government done that rivals what happened during the Cold War era? None.

But isn’t a lot of the bad infrastructure and urban sprawl a consequence of those very decisions? Perhaps a more considered approach would have worked better in the long term. For instance, in Amsterdam, local people fought back against plans to put highways through the city which has resulted in a much more pleasant urban environment.

NASA developed and gave away TCP/IP. That was a fundamental networking piece for everyone.

GPS?

The article hints at this NIMBYism. Many of the other things that factor in are not unique to the US. Government waste, bureaucracy, etc... are all things in other wealthy countries too, but NIMBYism and 'public input' seems to carry more weight in the US.

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