The legitimate criticism I read against "Abundance" is that for the most part regulations and due process emerged to protect public interests from private capture. In the article the author says we should use "pre-approved vendor lists" or "streamlined approvals" and that sounds great in principle, but could also easily be exploited.
One of the reasons American and German cities are made for cars is because of the influence of their car industry. However, this also pushed out investment in competing alternatives like public transport infrastructure.
I have to admit this essay struck me as sort of strange. On the one hand, the EV charging station seems like something fairly straightforward, that should be approved and built fairly quickly. On the other hand, it's just an EV charging station, and without knowing anything more about it, I am just as inclined to believe that this is some small pet project of interest to the author, who no one else really cares about, and he's invoking some grand criticism of government writ large as a way of bringing urgency and grandeur his idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
EV sales are in the middle of a nationwide decline, especially for one of the major manufacturers. I doubt it has anything to do with the 8-space parking lot in Seattle in particular. Add to this stories about charging station compatibility, and I'm not surprised there isn't a greater sense of urgency from the city.
I have my pet projects I'd like to see finished as well, but I don't blame my municipality for not prioritizing them. They have a lot on their plate. It has nothing to do with capture or overregulation, but priorities with constrained staff, budget, and time. People change their minds and city priorities change with popular sentiment.
In some ways, this is a good example of why some prudence is warranted, and maybe you should get the other side of the story. The essay neglects to mention that four of the eight charging stations would be owned by Tesla for example — something that if you're not opposed to, you might at least admit is reasonable for the city to reevaluate — and there is apparently contaminated soil at least nearby the site.
I'm generally in favor of reregulation or deregulation, but I generally feel like land use, environmental, and public space or resources are something where there should be a lot of scrutiny and layers of approval. Once it's gone, it's hard to reclaim and expensive to clean up. I also feel like many examples of complaints in this area and mention of things like Abundance are just like this — someone complains their personal project of interest isn't done fast enough, criticizing the government for being cumbersome and overwrought, while neglecting to mention all the reasons why people might not prioritize their pet project, or why their pet project might reasonably be seen as requiring safeguards or approval processes. The reason why the government is slow with your pet project is because not everyone agrees with you, and there is a commons issue involved.
Meanwhile, discussion about deregulation of things that actually involve personal choice, with little or no public commons issues involved, like medical care, go by the wayside and are never mentioned, or are even hyperregulated.
>In some ways, this is a good example of why some prudence is warranted, and maybe you should get the other side of the story. The essay neglects to mention that four of the eight charging stations would be owned by Tesla for example — something that if you're not opposed to, you might at least admit is reasonable for the city to reevaluate — and there is apparently contaminated soil at least nearby the site.
No, I think the "other side of the story" here is laughably weak. Four measly charging stations in the whole city of Seattle owned by Tesla? That barely warrants a comment on Hacker News, much less a town hall.
And "contaminated land"? How contaminated are we talking about here? It's crippling to any hope of widespread brownfield redevelopment that something so minimally invasive could be shut down by nebulous, ill-defined contamination. Perhaps we need a standard grading system for land contamination instead of just lumping gasoline and arsenic in the same category.
>I am just as inclined to believe that this is some small pet project of interest to the author, who no one else really cares about, and he's invoking some grand criticism of government writ large as a way of bringing urgency and grandeur his idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
I am inclined to think that this argument could be used to shut down any case study used to critique the bureaucracy. The idea that eight city-owned parking spaces are somehow personally important to anyone is weird enough to demand at least a little evidence.
> That barely warrants a comment on Hacker News, much less a town hall.
I think that's maybe what I'm saying? Or the other side of the coin? I personally don't think there's some compelling harm being done by the government in this case.
Maybe some general discussion of neglect in the use of the land might be more compelling to me, but I'm not sure that delays in allocating it to charging stations in particular seems like a grand failure of governance. The soil is contaminated and the government wants to clean it up while they're tearing it up? Next to a planned park apparently? And this is causing harm by... holding up EV charging stations? Not a light rail hub, or walking trails connecting neighborhoods, or cycling infrastructure, or a clinic, but EV charging stations?
> I am inclined to think that this argument could be used to shut down any case study used to critique the bureaucracy.
I guess another way of phrasing my reaction is that I don't find this particular example very compelling in critiquing bureaucracy. Maybe more to my point, the fact that the author presents it as urgent to me sort of ironically underscores the problems with the argument they advance. It's an urgent need to them, but maybe not to the public at large?
It's also maybe worth pointing out the converse is true: the argument in Abundance could be used to shut down any case study used to support the government in being prudent or thorough?
> And "contaminated land"? How contaminated are we talking about here? It's crippling to any hope of widespread brownfield redevelopment that something so minimally invasive could be shut down by nebulous, ill-defined contamination. Perhaps we need a standard grading system for land contamination instead of just lumping gasoline and arsenic in the same category.
If the article is accurate, the cleanup was completed by January 2024, and first phase of work started September 2022. So who knows how long cleanup took, long enough to mention, but less than 1.5 years. The city website about the project [1] says the contamination was removed in 2022, so maybe not very long at all. The site's former use was as an electrical substation, so I'd expect soil contamination from spilled transformer oil, and similar things; some nasty stuff, but usually not a lot of it.
Sounds like the root cause of delays is availability of appropriate chargers, and probably a lack of priority. Also, 8 EV chargers doesn't sound like much, but if they're level 3 chargers, that's a lot of power if 8 cars plug in at the same time, which necessitates a bit of engineering and oversight. If it were 8 level 2 ev chargers, that would probably be a quick and easy install.
[1] https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/in-the-community/current-...
>who no one else really cares about, and he's invoking some grand criticism of government writ large as a way of bringing urgency and grandeur his idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Everyone with a pet interest levies just about the same criticism at government and it paints a pretty consistent picture.
Whether you wanna develop EV chargers, buy discounted office space and turn it into residential, open a coffee shop, etc, etc, the same stupid government red tape born at the behest of generations of stupid voters who couldn't think a step ahead or about the big picture stand in your way.
>I'm generally in favor of deregulation or deregulation, but I generally feel <bunch of text>
Sounds like "believe in deregulation" only to the extent that you can lie to yourself and say that you do. You really believe in high regulation, but deep down you know that's a bad thing to believe in so you reframe it so you can sleep at night. You are a worse person than one who believes in regulation and is honest with themselves about the tradeoffs of it and has made some assessment that it is still worth it.
If you wanna prevent bad outcomes then make people liable for bad outcomes. The current status quo where all the cost of litigating a bad outcome must be born by every single party up front in the form of surveys, studies, impact assessments, etc, etc, steals money from literally all of us in one way or another, puts some in the pocket of government and puts orders of magnitude more in the pockets of well positioned private parties who government essentially makes work for is beyond insane and anyone who supports it is of bad character.
>In the article the author says we should use "pre-approved vendor lists" or "streamlined approvals" and that sounds great in principle, but could also easily be exploited.
As patio11 would say, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero". Fraud is bad, but if fighting fraud involves so much red tape that it costs more than whatever petty corruption could ever cost, it's bad.
[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
> "pre-approved vendor lists" or "streamlined approvals" and that sounds great in principle, but could also easily be exploited.
Nearly any kind of public spending can be exploited, including auctions. There are countless cases where the cheapest vendor that satisfies the written criteria is chosen, only to end up with delays, cost overruns that far outweigh the initial savings, or equipment that malfunctions and breaks.
I know somebody who was in charge of writing these auctions for their government department. They picked a vendor, and then worked backwards to write the requirements so that only that vendor would satisfy them. Not because of corruption, but because they knew that vendor's equipment was quality.
There was another case, in a different department, where this was not done - the auction was written naively (and honestly), and the cheapest vendor chosen. The equipment failed within months, putting people at risk, and a different vendor had to be quickly chosen.
It's better to just put some conflict-of-interest guards in place, and then trust the judgment of whoever needs those goods, than to try to eliminate corruption through bureaucratic procedures. Because it can't be eliminated with bureaucracy - but efficiency can, and will be.
> for the most part regulations and due process emerged to protect public interests from private capture.
In truth I think it's a mix of this, and the opposite--where private interests have already captured the public good.
> In the article the author says we should use "pre-approved vendor lists" or "streamlined approvals" and that sounds great in principle, but could also easily be exploited.
Every kind of regulation can be exploited and is currently being exploited. GDPR led to law firms squeezing money out of neighborhood bars with cease and desists. Government grants spawn companies doing the exact minimum to keep getting grants without building real businesses.
I totally agree that lobbyism is a massive problem (and often the reason we get such complex regulation—they shut out the little players). But any proposed solution will have to be some type of risk.
Regulations and process are just scar tissue from mistakes of the past. Excessive process indicates abundant past mistakes.
If we want to go back to taking risks and making mistakes, by all means, let's cut red tape and get rid of process. But, we should do it knowing the tradeoff we're making. I think some people here just think "regulation/process = bad" and "getting rid of regulation/process = good" but it's more complex than that.
Every regulation is a Chesterton's Fence.
Maybe there's a different regulation that fences in the past mistake. Maybe it's historically contingent and irrelevant. Most laws exist without a direct reference to their relevancy and it takes legal archeology to uncover the telos of each clause.
Has our system done a good job at preventing private capture? Are we better at preventing private capture than countries which build things more easily?
Our system is great at preventing private capture at the small scale and great at ensuring it on the large scale
“ that for the most part regulations and due process emerged to protect public interests from private capture”
I just flat out don’t buy this. The majority of regulations I see “abundance” type people arguing against were never aimed at curtailing private capture. They are aimed at keeping neihborhoods unchanged for generations, making sure everyone up-and-down society gets veto power over any project regardless of type or upside of it, and making sure arbitrary unrelated “goods” are enforced with as much bureaucracy as possible during development (the best example of this is trying to get solar panels built and having to fight many years of “environmental” review for something so desperately needed for our environment).
>keeping neighborhoods unchanged for generations, making sure everyone up-and-down society gets veto power over any project
You're giving government too much benefit of the doubt. It's not even private stakeholders vetoing these things. Often times is even opposed to these small projects in ways that the most tiny cheap concessions couldn't mitigate. A great many of these projects are dying because the government and its bureaucracy can't/won't approve them, not because anyone doesn't want them.
Biggest problems with "Abundance" are:
1) Somehow he decided euclidean zoning was a leftist project. Most leftists and environmentalists I've ever known hate euclidean zoning and this includes many urban planners. Euclidean zoning exists pretty much because property owners want to be able to exclude nearby land uses. It's fundamentally conservative, especially when the goal is to enforce limited housing density.
2) Setting up euclidean zoning as the main whipping boy and then saying "and also air quality regulations are basically the same thing" is a form of straw-manning the stuff he's arguing against.
3) He sets up a dichotomy between California and Texas ignoring that a lot of California's problems are conservative (downzoning, prop 13) and also ignoring the weaknesses in the Texas model including corporations running roughshod over locals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7_WDzPyoqU) a fragile power grid, huge flooding problems etc. It's possible to look at quality of life metrics and see that Texas is doing quite badly. Also, you had the whole tech moving to Austin thing that already fizzled out.
4) He set up developers as the heroes in the story and apparently got a lot of his info from private equity ride-alongs. He ignores that developers are also often land speculators and are in favor of blocking competitors projects and downzoning areas to keep land value high. (https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/abundance-hudson-yards-west?u...)
Basically Abundance is a way for Ezra Klein and his fellow travelers to repackage Clinton-era triangulation and Obama-era neoliberalism as something completely new, so the party can carry on with its pro-donor agenda and ignore why they keep losing. That's also the reason why it was astroturfed into every left media space with a massive marketing budget.