illustrious development

One of my favorite things on the internet was @slatestarcodex writing about Cost Disease; basically, how the costs to do anything have basically tripled, completely disconnected from labor costs, material inputs, or inflation. No economists have an explanation for why costs have gone up so much, it seems like some dark force is acting on the US economy so that - while the Europeans can build lavish infrastructure, the US is stuck at 5-6x costs to build literally everything... and this underpins our fundamental debates about everything. The Interstate Bridge is an excellent example. Back when this was killed the 2nd or 3rd time (I forgot which), the *studies* performed to explore the new bridge cost ~$200 Million. I did the back of the napkin math and those studies cost 3x, inflation adjusted, what the original entire bridge cost to build. I think the dark force economists cannot detect is a combination of things, primarily though? Grift. You need to pay off the environmentalists, you need to pay off the labor unions, you need to pay off local interest groups. Those are the grifts that use social concerns as a cover... But the real grift is the Professional Managerial Class. All the various technical entities involved in the production of anything are 3 people who know anything about the subject encased in small to large organizations where 80% of the headcount has nothing to do with the task at hand. It is a baked-in, structural grift that underpins almost the entirety of the American economy. Vast swaths of the white collar economy are basically riding the coattails of a small - eroding - segment of SMEs who do actual work.