Post #4025583

2026-07-22 21:21 UTC

Consider that the Holland Tunnel opened in 1927, connecting New Jersey and Manhattan. It cost about $48 million to construct, equivalent to about $890 million today. Consider that the Hudson Tunnel Project, an ongoing effort to build and revitalize rail tunnels to New York City, is currently estimated to cost more than $16 billion. Why has infrastructure gotten so much more expensive to construct in places like the US? There are a variety of ways to answer this question. Labor has gotten more expensive. Regulations have proliferated. Raw materials are harder to source. And so on.

Replies (2)

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social 2026-07-22 21:33

There’s a kind of meta-answer we can also answer, one that encompasses all the rest: Complexity. Social complexity is a problem-solving tool. Societies often add complexity when they confront new problems: new specializations, new layers of bureaucratic management, new interconnections between components of those societies. But every additional layer of complexity requires resources. A general doctor has to be fed and clothed by the labor of other people while they are performing the labor of medical care. Expand medical care from general medicine to a whole ecosystem of highly specific specialists, though, and you now have many more people to feed and clothe while they are performing their specialized care. Critically, the marginal returns on those specializations decline. The very first doctor in a community might not be able to treat every ailment, or treat them very effectively, but a generalist provides a very high marginal return on those resources invested. These are the low-hanging fruit of complexity. But a hyper-specialized doctor might only be able to provide care to a small number of people, in highly specific settings. That care is very important to the patients receiving that care, but the marginal returns on those invested resources are lower.

Open ##4025582
@P6zem0@mastodon.com.pl 2026-07-23 15:33

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social check, how many $$ were printed meantime.

Open ##4039590