Should Infrastructure be Politically Controlled?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Nevermind the precedent it sets where team owners can extort taxpayer money by threatening to take their business to another state.

Extort?

Pretty much in all cases when a state/county/city wants to put up new taxes for a stadium, the citizens have to vote for it. Anecdotally, in my state, we always seem to pass new taxes for stadiums and pass transportation funding about 25% of the time.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

A non-profit corporately owned infrastructure where all of the locals are considered shareholders, giving everybody a controlling interest. Tasks are determined by a board appointed by the shareholders and their decisions are voted upon by the shareholders.

Going with my state's 25% pass rate, I bet what would happen is that the shareholders would nominate board members who would pledge to spend none of the money so that everyone just gets the tolls back in taxes.

Which means that when disaster strikes and there is no money there, then we just have to dip into federal and state funding anyway.

And what Styphon said about the non-elimination of politics.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

If that would be the case, though, then there's no amount of surpluses being made since nobody is using the shitty roads.

This bridge in Minneapolis was considered deficient for seventeen years. What do you mean that no one is using the shitty roads? Tolls will still be made until you can't get over the road without a 4x4.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Of course, if people are still incapable of acting rationally, despite the information made available to them, how does that change the present situation where the government neglects infrastructure and expects the Federal government to bail them out?

It doesn't, which is the point. If it's broke and you can't fix it, don't.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

The stadium example illustrates that it is.

If anything, with how much you hate the spending, the stadium example only shows that voters can't vote on the right spending and that they can't elect officials that will get them the proper maintenance, and I have no idea why you don't think those same shortcomings wouldn't transfer to a populace selecting a board to handle the problem.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

You shouldn't try to fix a broken system that you can't fix. Yes.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

You live in, what, Arizona? What are the conditions of your roads? Because without many bridges, 25% approval may actually be the appropriate amount of spending.

Arizona's problems are roads that need frequent repair due to the intense heat and roads that can't handle the amount of traffic put on them, meaning widing projects and strengthening everything underneath them. Arizona has some of the worst traffic in the country and one of the highest traffic death rates.

Plus, we own part of what is probably the most important interstate highway in the country: I-10.

We actually have many bridges (they are relatively new, however). Dry rivers still have to be crossed.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

I'm guessing that there's some non-privatizing solutions to the problem of infrastructure priority, but there is apparently no solution, according to you.

Nah, I wasn't saying that. I don't believe this is a workable solution or at least worth the effort it would take to make the changes. There might be a modest increase in quality, at best, assuming everything works absolutely perfectly. As many have stated, this will most likely just lead to more of the same.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

If the graph you provided is any indication, the state is certainly on the ball in regards to bridges.

So, what are you saying, that bridges are the only thing that applies in your scenario here? That the interstate highway system is perfectly fine if not for those pesky rivers it has to cross? That, infrastructurally, everything else is doin' great and doesn't need money set aside in federal and state budgets?

Or do you just want these special non-government governments on everything?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

You're also skirting my question again. What would you say the state of roads and highways are in your state?

I already told you, crumbling from the heat and not wide enough. You came back and told me that it didn't matter because Arizona didn't have many bridges.

Your idea wouldn't even work here because you can't toll Arizona residents. They would just stop using the pay roads and all the traffic would funnel through city streets, making things even worse.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

So all roads are tolled? Heh.

And all the poor people stop grocery shopping because their food stamps don't pay for toll roads.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Bradylama

As Guru points out, cycling is very practical in the immediate area. The reason people drive everywhere in this country is because gas is so cheap. If we remove the subsidies for gas, and people decide to live in closer proximity to their place of work, then the incentives for cycling increase.

I don't think you and Guru understand how impractical it is to say, "Well, everyone, why don't you just live closer to where you work??" What about the janitors and food wokers who are employed in rich parts of town but can't afford living there (and don't say buses, when you increase gas, you decrease their ability to ride buses)? What about the people who work hard to be well off but work in places that aren't close to anywhere but slums (see: people who work in downtown LA)?

I love how the more you branch out in your little Libertarian fantasy island, the more you attempt to completely destroy the entire United States economy.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Or not enough are collected!

You can't just make a blanket statement that maintenance ALWAYS comes before new. That's absurd. What if new things were the priority without political motive, would you care then?

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

Too bad. I just did. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that existing infrastructure should be insured not to fail before remaining funds are used to expand the infrastructure or be used in other, non-infrastructure related things.

Things fail. I mean, what more do you want? Accidents happen. Take an engineering course or two.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that this is a completely isolated incident and that another one won't happen for another 20 years (which is almost how long it took this one to fail after someone said it was deficient).

You're telling me that we should halt all new projects until we fix the things that are in need of repair, even though they fail at an astonishingly slow rate??

It is obvious to me that you are just trying to apply some Libertarian ideal to something you clearly have no clue of what the fuck you're talking about.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

then you're justifying fatalities.

As if that isn't done every single day in this country. Everything we do has some loss or risk associated to it and we do it. What's the single biggest way people die accidentally? That's right, car accidents. If we disallowed driving, you would nullify the fatality rate. There is an accepted loss of life when we have laws that allow driving. You used gasoline recently, I'm sure. Releasing harmful carcinogens into the air? No doubt, cancer caused by air quality causes loss of life.

What you're angry about is the justified tragic loss. If it takes a long time or if it's common, just in small quantities, you're fine with it -- we're all fine with it. It's not politically correct to say that the Minneapolis bridge collapse was unavoidable, and perhaps that exact instance was, but to claim that you can avoid all instances of it by throwing any amount of money at it in any single way, whether the feds or your ridiculous scheme, is completely ignorant.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

How is putting carcinogens into the air unavoidable? Make a law that people can't burn gas anymore. Make a law that people can't drive cars anymore. That's no different then spending inordinate amounts of money to fix a problem that, in 17 years of known problems, counts for under 20 deaths.

The funny thing is that you think that being T-boned in the middle of a busy intersection is consentual, but driving over a bridge isn't.

How is making a law for preventing death any different than putting money in a budget to prevent death? Further, the ways I've given you are responsible for a hell of a lot more deaths than this bridge falling down. If your whole reason for doing this was because a few people died, then you're going to have to do a hell of a lot better than spending billions and billions of dollars to fix a few bridges.

There is not enough money in the world, tax or otherwise, to prevent all deaths due to infrastructure from happening. It is impossible. So, if a few people die on a bridge every couple decades, I view that certainly as acceptable. Chaos theory, laws of physics, reliability engineering and all.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

You're right. Spending several million to repair or replace a bridge would be just like setting us back to to the stone age, before the discovery of fire.

I didn't say it would be just like it. But you told me I'm not allowed to justify fatalities amd you just did. So which is it? Are we just not allowed to justify fatalities that pose a direct threat to you? It's OK to drive cars, we need them!, even if tens of thousands of people die every year but it's definitely not OK to have a faulty bridge!, twenty people die every couple decades on those!

My point is that Congress (and you) are more than willing to open the checkbook -- DAMN THE COSTS! -- when an extremely rare and very vivid tragedy happens, but the every day shit you (and Congress) just don't care about. Not enough to do anything about it, certainly less than you'd do about the bridges.

You are perfectly fine with acceptable deaths, thousands of them, as long as it doesn't set us back in to the stone age (which is apparently when cars were invented). But if it doesn't set you back at all, we should open the floodgates to the budget to save even one life!

Making a law to fix bridges saves almost no lives and costs an extremely high amount of money to save the very few people who would die from accidents.

Quote:

No, there is not enough money to prevent all infrastructure failure, because oftentimes it is unexpected or unforseen. It's not like, oh, say, being declared unstable for 17 goddamn years.

If a bridge survives for 17 years after being declared unstable, how reliable is that report? Not to mention all the other bridges that were surely declared the same thing but haven't fallen down yet.

I was speaking idiomatically.

But the bridge obviously wasn't a predictable liability! It remained standing 17 years after they said it was unstable! Reread RR's post.

I didn't say it wasn't worth repairing any bridges, I never said that. I also never said it wasn't worth trying to avoid risk. You have to find the trade-off between fixing bridges and the cost of fixing bridges. You've been sitting here telling me that there is NO trade off, that fixing bridges always comes first no matter what!

Let's say for the sake of argument bridges are 99% reliable. To make it 99.9% reliable, it will take X dollars. Every 9 you add on after that grows the cost exponentially.

(Or if they are 50%, go to 75%, then 85%, then 90%, etc. etc.)

We could spend $50 trillion dollars and make it so the bridges are 99.9999999999% safe, probably. Do you consider that worth it? Since we obviously aren't allowed to justify the loss of life, we should spend an infinite amount of money on fixing the infrastructure.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Stop trolling this thread or I will ban you from it.

You will do no such thing. She's not trolling because you disagree.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

Claiming that it would take an infinite amount of money, however, is a bit shortsighted.

But that's the thing. 100% reliability is impossible, which means it would take an infinite amount of money to reach it.

So, define "fix". Works for 10 more years? 50 more years? Works forever?

How about it's reliability? 80% stable for 10 years? 70% stable for 50 years?

You have to find where your acceptable loss point is. My point is that whatever it is that got us to here isn't too bad.

FELIPE NO