Why We Can't Build

Re:Why We Can't Build by cmrdporcupine on Thursday April 23, 2020 @03:41PM (#22960260)

I actually don't know much about how well France functions as a nation. My European experience is mostly in Germany where my dad's family is from, and infrastructure there is 50x better than in North America.

I'm speaking more from the Canadian perspective; we have a Westminster parliamentary system without vetoes (well there's the senate but that's mostly rubber stamp) and yet we have the same "getting things built" dysfunction that the US has.

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Re:Why We Can't Build by MattGaiser on Thursday April 23, 2020 @04:17PM (#22960721)

That's a procurement and implementation problem.

We order projects, but they become enormously over budget and poorly thought out, causing people to restart again or just oppose the project.

I'm a government developer. I can easily see how our bureaucracy leads to the Phoenix pay system. It is less a vetocracy and more about an overload of features.

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Re:Why We Can't Build by cmrdporcupine on Thursday April 23, 2020 @04:22PM (#22960795)

Thing is, I've worked in a few BigCorp private entities that have similar kinds of dysfunction, and things also blow up and are done inefficiently.

In both cases I feel it's a broader cultural problem. In companies, it's often putting career or team or self interest ahead of company success [empire building, self promotion, etc.]; in government it's often a lack of responsibility and ethics of citizenship.

I've been involved in bidding for government projects before, and associated with he non-profit sector to boot. It was awful to see how people think and behave.

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