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Comment by cucumber3732842 | Hacker News Reader

Nah, that's just the bullshit they tell you.

A municipal or state government will not be held liable for the consequences of shitty infrastructure unless there's like 9/11 levels of "the system was blinking red and you ignored it" and even then it's coin toss at best. Like maybe if they kill a ton of people there might be a lawsuit that sticks that's sooooo unlikely for the scope of the kind of thing we're talking about here.

The bureaucracy is put in place because none of the people putting it in place are paying for it, headcount is power, control over resources is power, etc, etc, and all the other perverse incentives you see in government workplaces. And of course once the gravy train is running all these parties have an incentive to keep it running.

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> Nah, that's just the bullshit they tell you.

I mean, this is the "bullshit" that our DOT told us when talking about guerilla urbanism at a real city meeting. I agree that it's frustrating, but it is what we were told. I don't know how to "disprove" a defensive posture. And yes, our city goverment has been sued in cases on the grounds of poor street design (though they've only had to pay out once in 20 years.)

> The bureaucracy is put in place because none of the people putting it in place are paying for it, headcount is power, control over resources is power, etc, etc, and all the other perverse incentives you see in government workplaces. And of course once the gravy train is running all these parties have an incentive to keep it running.

Do you have any real experience in city or local government?

>. I don't know how to "disprove" a defensive posture. And yes, our city government has been sued in cases on the grounds of poor street design (though they've only had to pay out once in 20 years.)

You ask them how much money they'd pay out to lawsuits, how much money they were paying out before adopting those policies. You ask them how much these policies cost (I bet they haven't even calculated it because they'd rather not have that number exist). Etc. Etc You make them spell out the math for you.

>And yes, our city goverment has been sued in cases on the grounds of poor street design (though they've only had to pay out once in 20 years.)

Suing the .gov is often the only way to get them to shape up and do the thing they should have in the first place. Getting sued doesn't mean much. It's all about the results.

The fear might be real in the minds of the decision makers but that doesn't mean it's well founded or the policies that arise out of it are not wasteful.

>Do you have any real experience in city or local government?

Worse, state. MIC prior to that.

> The fear might be real in the minds of the decision makers but that doesn't mean it's well founded or the policies that arise out of it are not wasteful.

I mean I 100% agree with this by the way. We tried to tell the DOT to look at its own stats. The one lawsuit they actually paid out in was from street design before the formation of the DOT itself and the fact that they fell behind on the paving schedule. If you actually amortize the payout over 30 years (I think the city has had one of these roughly every 30 years) it ends up being some minuscule part of the budget. But they still shut us down.

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