A good friend and hunting buddy of mine was in the contracting business (masonry) until he retired. He tells of times he worked on contracts to build something for the state of Pennsylvania. An example was a job he did for our Turnpike Commission. Dave says that nearly every day some engineer or other bureaucrat would show up at the job site with a change order. Some of those required work he had completed to be torn down and redone. He believes that this caused that particular job, which ordinarily would have taken less than a month for his part of it, to take nearly a year to complete. I guess bureaucrats need to justify their salaries.
I have no idea what has caused this high speed rail project to take so long with so little in the way of results, but would guess that the most massive element in the universe, Governmentium, has stood in the way at least some of the time.
Way back over a century ago as reported by a local historian, a group of farmers and craftsmen decided that they needed a bridge across a local stream, so they got together one weekend and built it. They used stone they had gathered from their fields and built a stone arch bridge across a 15 foot wide creek. Note: they built is in one weekend. Recently that bridge was replaced. It had lasted over 100 years. The new bridge took over six months to complete. Any guesses as to how long it will last before needing to be replaced?
trkyhntr
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
--Mark Twain (1866)
