Can you elucidate on that line of reasoning some more? I am unconvinced.
It has been my experience -- which some more "keepin it real" journalism concurs with -- that New York's outlandish infrastructure costs, as well as the majority of the USA's public projects, are primarily due to two main agents:
1. White collar bureaucracy
2. Blue collar "bureaucracy"
Both parties -- and the multitude of agents that operate within them -- are all too able to align their "piece" of the project towards their own interests.
These interests very much involve time and money.
For money, it's simply rerouting costs. And for time, it's "making one's mark," by misallocating resources to personally-enriching matters, that do not benefit the project as a whole, and usually hinder it.
It's late, and I'm not at 100% to go into detail, but surely this is well-known already?
I did structure my argument to say that the optimistic estimates precede the other problems. Before ordinary problems of inefficiency and corruption arise, the project has to be sold as a viable investment.
I take the argument about selection bias from Brent Flyvbjerg, who has been studying megaprojects for a fair while now. He calls it "survival of the unfittest"[0].
A similar resource is Merrow's Industrial Megaprojects[1], which is based on a large dataset of such efforts. He identifies many factors in project overruns, but essentially notes that most projects start off with fanciful estimates that will never be met. For a book about petrochemical plants, bridges and power stations, it's a fun read.
It has been my experience -- which some more "keepin it real" journalism concurs with -- that New York's outlandish infrastructure costs, as well as the majority of the USA's public projects, are primarily due to two main agents:
1. White collar bureaucracy
2. Blue collar "bureaucracy"
Both parties -- and the multitude of agents that operate within them -- are all too able to align their "piece" of the project towards their own interests.
These interests very much involve time and money.
For money, it's simply rerouting costs. And for time, it's "making one's mark," by misallocating resources to personally-enriching matters, that do not benefit the project as a whole, and usually hinder it.
It's late, and I'm not at 100% to go into detail, but surely this is well-known already?