It’s the same with many infrastructure problems. You hear about some interesting infrastructure project that’s going to transform regional travel, improve transit, make biking/walking safer, or prepare for future natural disasters. Then it takes forever for them to go into place because it takes a long time to plan, do the legal work, and build. But then the infrastructure goes into place and no one thinks twice about the long process behind it.
I have an item that costs me 40 to buy. I sell you the item for 200. I get a hundred now and a hundred when you get the item. If I fill the order now I get my 100. However if I wait a year I get an interest free loan on the 40 bucks. Maybe I push you off for 10 years. I not only get the 100 you owe me I also doubled that 40. If I am a big company I can pull this off, if I am a one man operation I can’t. Guess who gets hired for these projects. Hint it isnt Jeff’s gutter repair.
And that is just fixed priced contracts. You can imagine the horrorshow of open ended ones.
And we should also consider the longevity of these infrastructures. Cities that built their subways in the 19th century are still running them today and are vastly superior in terms of transit abilities than car cities. The population densities of today are unimaginable without central sewers and water infrastructure. Having continent spanning electricity grids are gigantic achievements. All these have shaped our lives for decades and sometimes centuries already and they are set to do so for centuries to come.
It’s the same with many infrastructure problems. You hear about some interesting infrastructure project that’s going to transform regional travel, improve transit, make biking/walking safer, or prepare for future natural disasters. Then it takes forever for them to go into place because it takes a long time to plan, do the legal work, and build. But then the infrastructure goes into place and no one thinks twice about the long process behind it.
I have an item that costs me 40 to buy. I sell you the item for 200. I get a hundred now and a hundred when you get the item. If I fill the order now I get my 100. However if I wait a year I get an interest free loan on the 40 bucks. Maybe I push you off for 10 years. I not only get the 100 you owe me I also doubled that 40. If I am a big company I can pull this off, if I am a one man operation I can’t. Guess who gets hired for these projects. Hint it isnt Jeff’s gutter repair.
And that is just fixed priced contracts. You can imagine the horrorshow of open ended ones.
And we should also consider the longevity of these infrastructures. Cities that built their subways in the 19th century are still running them today and are vastly superior in terms of transit abilities than car cities. The population densities of today are unimaginable without central sewers and water infrastructure. Having continent spanning electricity grids are gigantic achievements. All these have shaped our lives for decades and sometimes centuries already and they are set to do so for centuries to come.