4/19/2012

Last Exit

Cost overruns on public road projects average at least 8.4% with a very large standard error, indicating some overruns are much greater. It appears this consistent pattern of under estimating the cost of public projects is due to strategic misrepresentation or "lying" as the authors of the study on the matter determined.

Policymakers continue to ignore improvements in technology that would increase lifespan of roads and reduce long term maintenance costs dramatically. This is because they come with high up-front costs that are politically expensive. Meaning there is little incentive for them to take the short-term heat from voters of raising spending/taxing just because it is the best decision and will be save money - as well as lives - in the long run. In other words, the inherently short run focus that is government is what is responsible for maintaining the long term health of the nation's infrastructure. I wonder what Apple's stock price would do under that type of leadership....

The traffic control system in many cities today were developed by inexperienced public officials for whom the automobile was a new mode of transportation. By refusing to use superior methods road congestion, and thus emissions, is greater. Safety is worse, unemployment increases, and data indicates the health of newborns is adversely affected.

Private highways have replaced human operated toll booths with ETC, an electronic method. This allows for easy implementation of congestion pricing, which would result in benefits in the areas mentioned above. Government regulations restricts the adoption of this method by the privately owned highways. However, the government does use ETC on a few highways of their own. Sadly, they still have not implemented congestion pricing. Instead, they charge a higher toll fee because consumers react to increases in an electronically paid fee with much greater indifference than they do towards the physically paid one.

The preceding sentence is exactly what all the "we need govt bc evil businessmen would take advantage of us otherwise" people would claim would happen by private firms in a free market. Yet, here it is. Obviously. Because that entire world view is a nonsensical, logically contradictory, fairy tale. What exactly makes greedy or bad people transform into angels upon donning the government hat?

And upon having discovered it, there are vastly fewer options a consumer can persue to protest it. As opposed to a private firm which would directly (through loss of sales) and indirectly (bad reputation) be exposed to consumer sovereignty.

I am on a cell phone with no spell check so this post will probably have tons of grammar errors. But I needed to share this info before proceeding on to the next section of this awesome book.


4 comments:

  1. This is a great post all on its own. But the fact that you wrote a relatively long and very coherent blog post, complete with an embedded photo, all on a cell phone is incredibly badass. I salute you, sir!

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    1. Thanks bud! It's crazy what these new smartphones can do!

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  2. What makes bad people transform into angels upon entering government, you ask? Well it must be the unilateral authority to use physical force. Doesn't that make perfect sense?


    Well done with the cell phone.

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    1. That's a great point that for some reason I've always neglected to bring up. If people are inherently bad, giving them the corruptible power of government authority would only make them even worse! What a tough position to have to defend...

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