Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive
TL:DR - the way to combat rising costs is to constrain the supply of capital.This isn't going to work. Infrastructure contractors will just turtle up and say that it can't be done at the lower price. Lowest-bid mechanisms are intended to harness Adam Smith's invisible hand, but aren't working as intended.The essay touches upon two distinct points:
a) the private developer cared deeply about how his money was spent, but the public developer did not
b) general incompetence of public management, by misunderstanding how contractors manipulated costs to reach their estimates and establishing perverse incentivesThe way you typically solve this kind of problem, at least in the private sector, is to set up a way for the manager to personally earn a fraction of what he saves the organization - the organization still saves a lot of money overall, even after paying the bonus. But if you bring up the concept of performance-based pay for public employees, you find massive opposition - both from a public worried about corruption and graft, and from public employees themselves, many of whom were drawn to public work in the first place specifically because of the stability and security of a public paycheck.That's when you understand that what really needs to be talked about is a culture change in public work culture, and when you understand that, you understand just how high the mountain is that needs to be surmounted.