Comment by antisthenes
21 hours ago
That makes sense. It seems like during the continuous "building up America" period of the late 40s through mid 70s there was no problem of getting shit done at reasonable cost, because of continuously available institutional knowledge.
Once large infrastructure projects become sporadic in nature, you begin to run into issues.
The solution has to be continuous stimulus, but that also runs into problems of corruption and capture by special interests (the longer the stimulus, the more incentive there is for 3rd parties to appropriate funds).
Somehow, other nations have managed to figure this out. Of the developed world, seemingly only Americans are resigned to the belief that such things are sadly impossible.
That's because we're richer and can object. The Europeans get bulldozed by their governments. It's why they're always protesting some online ID law or some "show your photo ID to browse Wikipedia" shit but no one listens to them.
> we're richer and can object
> some online ID law
Texas and Utah in the US also have similar online age verification laws. Texas is the second richest state in the US by GDP per capita, but even that was not enough.
Yes, Europeans are completely distraught over their (checks notes) functioning public transit systems.
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the important part of the American system you're not addressing is that it makes sure no one accidentally gets something they don't really deserve.
It has far more to do with respect for private property due to the existence of a class of sophisticated, politically literate professionals capable of opposing development. Europe and Canada are similar; the extent to which this retards the economy is more obvious in Europe. It isn’t hard to build a road when you can just expropriate all the land and completely disregard environmental impacts.
"no one" = poor people.
All the old money already got a ton of wealth they didn't really deserve (conquest through Native american genocide)
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Robert Moses did a lot of bad that we don't want to repeat. We have gone too far the other way but those big projects often did come at high cost - but the cost wasn't dollars
Robert Moses was a governance problem. The biggest issue with him is that he was the smartest guy in most rooms, but nobody could control him. 1915 attitude in 1960 was an issue.