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Last week, Bloomberg's Noah Smith wrote an article titled "The U.S. Has Forgotten How To Do Infrastructure" that asked a lot of questions that would get us to a [David] Goldhill like analysis of our infrastructure approach. Just like on Healthcare Island, on Infrastructure Island we have our own way of talking about things. And we never talk about prices, only about costs. And as Smith suggests, costs go up and nobody seems to understand why.
He goes through and dismisses all of the usual suspects. Union wages drive up infrastructure costs (yet not true in countries paying equivalent wages). It's expensive to acquire land in the property-rights-obsessed United States (yet countries with weaker eminent domain laws have cheaper land acquisition costs). America's too spread out or our cities are too dense (arguments that cancel each other out). Our environmental review processes are too extensive (yet other advanced countries do extensive environmental reviews with far less delay). I concur with all these points, by the way.
Smith concludes with this:
That suggests that U.S. costs are high due to general inefficiency -- inefficient project management, an inefficient government contracting process, and inefficient regulation. It suggests that construction, like health care or asset management or education, is an area where Americans have simply ponied up more and more cash over the years while ignoring the fact that they were getting less and less for their money. To fix the problems choking U.S. construction, reformers are going to have to go through the system and rip out the inefficiencies root and branch.
Much like health care, our infrastructure incentives are all wrong. Until we fix them -- until we go through the system and rip out the inefficiencies root and branch -- throwing more money at this system is simply pouring good money after bad.
Source: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/4/this-is-why-infrastructure-is-so-expensive
(Score: 4, Interesting) by linkdude64 on Sunday June 11 2017, @08:49AM (3 children)
The problem is that Nobody Gives A Fuck(TM).
It has been popularized in media that America's attitude toward everything is "We don't care. I'm getting what's mine," and what do you know? The populace has internalized it.
When people care about what they are doing, and care about the impact they are having, they do a better job. I am one of the hardest workers in my Union facility and it is because I care - not just about my paycheck, but about everything tied to it. Many people only care about what the paycheck gets them, because that's what they've been instructed to be concerned with above all else. The push for materialism is one of the biggest Divide and Conquer operations in history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:40AM
Noam Chomsky agrees, http://RequiemForTheAmericanDream.com/watch/ [requiemfortheamericandream.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:05AM (1 child)
My view is that there is a subtle distinction here, one which you make. It isn't materialism that is the problem, but the push for materialism. People will want more, better, shinier stuff. That's human nature. But we have institutionalized various incentives for encouraging people to get more stuff. Also, we currently measure the success of our societies in ways that encourages the encouraging of materialism. GDP for example is higher (at least in the short term) when people are buying stuff rather than saving or investing.
For a particular perverse example, I've seen a fair number of would-be anti-materialists (mostly "living wage" advocates) tout the demand-driven model [wikipedia.org] of economics as if it were an iron law, usually with the justification that higher wages means more consumer spending means a better economy. But more consumer spending is an increase in materialism.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:24PM
Yes, I do not think that people are even naturally so inclined to the mad rush of materialism that many experience - I think it's beyond that. I think it is being pushed as the one, the only, the "all" and if trinkets don't make you happy, well I have some anti depressants to sell you.
Brings to mind the Tibetan "Gross National Happiness" index, which, although obviously difficult to quantify, serves as a symbolic reminder for their leadership to keep the well being of their citizens in mind from a distinctly non-economic angle.