[Belopolye]

> It really feels like we can't have nice things anymore.

Economists talk about the middle-income trap, but I feel there’s another trap in developed economies. The economics of low-cost, high-skill labor that made the public and private architecture of the past (my small city of around 70,000 people has a gorgeous post office that was built in the early 1900s in a grand neoclassical style) so comparatively extravagant and beautiful just doesn’t work today.

Blame doesn’t lie with the high-skilled working class for not wanting to work for what would amount to poverty wages, but at the same time shareholders and city council meeting-goers refuse to pay the correct price to build beautiful things anymore. It’s a cycle that nobody wants to (or can) give ground on.

[lazide]

That’s BS. Very little of the cost of these projects is labor actually doing the work. Most of it is planning, admin, and opaque costs nowhere near labor costs to subcontractors.

[Belopolye]

If you believe that’s the case why aren’t you founding a disruptor to the construction industry with high-skilled, highly-paid labor? Should be easy to eliminate those “opaque costs” and undercut all of your competition, right? Easy money.

[lazide]

Hahaha, the money is going to the folks playing the games with procurement and management. My skill is actually building things. Which is completely uninteresting to all parties involved in that mess. Often actively avoided, actually, as it tends to ruffle feathers.

Similar to Beltway bandit type software work.

That isn’t going to change until there is clear motivation by taxpayers/constituents to actually get something done quickly that doesn’t suck, and they can agree on what that is. Which isn’t going to be anytime soon.

In the mean time, plenty of folks happy to sit back and cash paychecks ‘helping’ the various entities.