[V_Terranova_Jr]

It's a bug. Nowhere in any of the rationale you lay out is there anything about competence and active involvement/oversight on the part of the government. Neither major political party in the U.S. focuses on this, though the Republican mentality is largely that the government can never be competent. However, at a minimum, the government is the buying agent of the people in procuring infrastructure or infrastructure improvements. It sets the requirements, oversees execution, and signs off on the delivered products. Companies perform work, but their interests are not aligned with the interests of the taxpayers. Incompetent or unempowered government employees cannot prevent the abuse of the taxpayer by companies, nor can they establish boundary conditions for successful project completion. The checks you indicate, e.g., environmental review, are procedural devices that can have radically different outcomes depending on the competence of government employees.

The U.S. system will not get appreciably better until we focus on government competence. The layperson's go-to explanation for these outcomes is something in the tree of corruption but the truth is likely closer to Hanlon's razor.