[class4behavior]

In the comments right at the top a video was posted about that. Some evidently neoliberal group blaming environmentalists and labor unions for the high construction costs in the US. As if their counter examples, Canada, Japan, and the UK, don't have even better established labor unions and environmental oversight.

[rayiner]

In broad strokes there are more environmental and labor protections in Canada, Japan, and the U.K., but at the same time, US law has some unique features that have been weaponized. For example, while the US is sometimes relatively more lax on environmental issues in the private sector, it’s very strict for environmental issues in the public sector. Nobody has the equivalent of NEPA, which requires every significant public project to undergo years (4-5 on average) of environmental review and litigation before even getting started. See: https://legal-planet.org/2012/05/13/comparing-canadian-and-u...

> US environmental law is much more generous in allowing for judicial review of decisionmaking by government agencies that is alleged to violate relevant environmental laws. It is also much more generous in allowing private parties to enforce environmental laws against other private parties who are alleged to have committed violations.

The US is unusual in the degree to which it allows private interests (environmentalists, landowners, etc.) to litigate and hold up projects that the government has already approved.

[mkohlmyr]

I mean I don't think saying that the unions in the US inflate costs is too out there..

Perhaps this is just my perception, but I would say the difference is that European unions (at least northern European, can't speak to the rest of Europe) seem less inclined to engage in dodgy behaviour than their US counterparts. I'm specifically thinking about construction, ports, etc.

I mean the fact that there are people employed to literally do nothing, "because that job used to exist and must never go away" is one example of this. It's not something I've heard of happening in Europe to the same extent it seems to in the US.

[runarberg]

I like to say this and HN never takes it too kindly, but it seems like corruption is the problem in the US, not unions. Many people just like to “blame the union” and leave it at that, without actually asking the logical follow-up question: “What is it exactly that the unions are supposedly doing, and can it be stopped?”

[gok]

The issue isn't unions per se, it's that there's overt collusion between the unions and the government officials who are supposed to be controlling costs. The United States has the unique situation where those government officials are often directly affiliated with the union they're supposed to be negotiating with. You can guess what happens when both sides have an incentive for costs to overrun and timetables to be blown.

[kalium-xyz]

We just had a farmers revolt in the Netherlands because of environmentalists groups pushing very restrictive laws which would result in both the amount of cattle in NL being halved and a lot of construction stopping. One major reason they protested was the news reporting that nitrogen kills trees.

It can go both ways, depending on how well things are thought out and executed. We have a lot of people who don't have realistic expectations and don't seem to realize that the Netherlands is largely made up out of artificially build nature which needs to be maintained and kept in check instead of left alone.