You explicitly brought up Germany, so how do you plan to wave that one away?
In any case, none of these are remotely in the same league as the US's $1,300M/km (to choose one of the cheaper projects).
If you want to explain why you think the calculations are wrong, do it. So far you've just ignored them.
It it even worth arguing that? I'm saying "specific things can drive up costs, safety regulations for example". If I understand you right, you were saying "specific things drive up costs, I call it social technology". Why does my position even conflict with your theory? That fits together, just view those regulations as a factor in your social technology model. The sole position to give up would be "safety regulations don't drive up costs at all", which is ridiculous anyway, thus not a hard loss.
I was disputing the fact that this played a major role by citing Spain, Germany, Hong Kong, etc.
My specific claim is that we do not need to choose between Spanish/German/Singaporean levels of worker safety and not getting big projects done. We can have both.
Edit: It would not work in Germany, because it would be hard to decide whether the ever increasing fire-regulations are indeed batshit-crazy and thus a sign of a failing capabiltiy to organize, or just a security regulation raising costs. In a way they are both.
The links you provided don't do that calculation properly, as far as I saw. And I did have a look at them and read the comment thread here, it is useless to attack me on that grounds. Doing so only disqualifies you.