There is a lot of mob involvement in Quebec's construction industry. Are you saying the reason infrastructure is expensive in the US is mobs?

Yes, here in my city, construction is a racket. they get unfair contracts, make them shitty, then when they break they get another one.

I doubt it's organized in any large-scale sense, but nevertheless it's very corrupt.

But how corrupt could it possibly be? The comments are comments are comparing US infrastructure cost with Turkey's. Is the US (or Quebec for than matter) really orders of magnitude more corrupt than Turkey since its infrastructure costs orders of magnitude more?

I would posit there is a certain amount of self organizing in an emergent behavior kinda way.

Absolutely. When people have aligned incentives, the appearance of organization may emerge from the system even when nobody has actually conspired or coordinated with anybody else. Manufacturing Consent describes something like this in the context of media and the government, but I think it's broadly applicable:

> Institutional critiques such as we present in this book are commonly dismissed by establishment commentators as “conspiracy theories,” but this is merely an evasion. We do not use any kind of “conspiracy” hypothesis to explain massmedia performance. In fact, our treatment is much closer to a “free market” analysis, with the results largely an outcome of the workings of market forces. Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements, and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized,the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power.

> There are important actors who do take positive initiatives to define and shape the news and to keep the media in line. It is a “guided market system” that we describe here, with the guidance provided by the government, the leaders of the corporate community, the top media owners and executives, and the assorted individuals and groups who are assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives. These initiators are sufficiently small in number to be able to act jointly on occasion, as do sellers in markets with few rivals. In most cases, however,media leaders do similar things because they see the world through the same lenses, are subject to similar constraints and incentives, and thus feature stories or maintain silence together in tacit collective action and leader-follower behavior.

I wonder what's the plan to get the money back and prosecute.

It's rather incredible they were able to root cause costs overrun so precisely.