Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive
&gt; 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&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>&gt; Smith concludes with this:<p>&gt; 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.<p>A thing that isn&#x27;t mentioned (but might be mentioned in the book) is the obstructionist effect of NIMBYism. To them, the above-mentioned &quot;inefficiencies&quot; are a critical feature and not a bug. Why does shit (the kind that can&#x27;t be built overseas and transported here in a shipping container) cost so much in US? Obstructionist NIMBYs (and the laws that enable them, like zoning &#x2F; land use regulations) play a nontrivial role. There&#x27;s nothing wrong with regulations that, say, preventing wanton dumping of toxic chemicals in the air&#x2F;ground&#x2F;water, but NIMBYs are scum that pervert well-intentioned environmental-protection laws to prevent harmless and critical infrastructure from being built.<p>NIMBYs will oppose <i>everything</i> -- regardless if it&#x27;s an airport (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;dr-gridlock&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;07&#x2F;are-you-the-person-who-filed-6500-noise-complaints-against-national-airport&#x2F;?utm_term=.bd044f080999" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;dr-gridlock&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;0...</a>), rail rights of way, high-density housing (whether public <i>or</i> private), medical clinics, cell sites, and literal <i>clothes lines</i> (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clothes_line#Controversy_in_North_America" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clothes_line#Controversy_in_No...</a>). You got that right, <i>clothes lines</i>.<p>Cell sites don&#x27;t pollute, aren&#x27;t used by equipment that pollutes, don&#x27;t create noise (OK maybe if you&#x27;re sitting next to it you can hear fans), don&#x27;t litter, don&#x27;t have any sort of odour, and really...don&#x27;t hurt anyone. It&#x27;s difficult to find <i>more</i> innocuous infrastructure! Of course, increasing the cost of building out infrastructure (the kind that needs to be local to the area served) decreases supply and decreases quality (and increases cost) -- but the NIMBYs are happy because their precious feelings are preserved because they don&#x27;t have to see a cell tower or whatever. They don&#x27;t care if your cell phone bill is higher than it&#x27;d otherwise be, or if you get shitty cell service. They don&#x27;t care if a rail line doesn&#x27;t get built, they don&#x27;t care if land use regulation means that real-estate costs for your doctor are huge and thus so is your healthcare costs. They do, however, care if your rent is super high -- in fact, it&#x27;s what they <i>love</i> to be the case, because it means that their damn single-family home has more worth. NIMBYism -- this desire to prevent one&#x27;s fellow citizen from benefiting from slightly better and cheaper public goods and infrastructure -- on this scale is incompatible with any sort of high-trust society.<p>A society cannot have this many citizens with this much power and desire to obstruct the construction&#x2F;maintenance of critical infrastructure that most citizens benefit from. It&#x27;s antisocial backstabbery, pure and simple, and to indulge in it (as the US has done) is a horrific corrosive mistake and poisons society from the bottom up. Infrastructure -- health care, transportation (of people, material goods, of data), housing -- should be a nation&#x27;s pride!<p>Until NIMBYs are forced to relinquish the obstructionist powers that they so preciously hold, infrastructure construction&#x2F;maintenance will keep being expensive and inefficient. Any reform that doesn&#x27;t explicitly address NIMBYs (either via the carrot or the stick) will fall prey to NIMBYs who will somehow reintroduce inefficiencies so their goals of preventing construction will be met.