Inescapable choices

From Realism on Infrastructure Investment by Alex Tabarrok.

An excellent post highlighting the typical issues which can be anticipated to distort the governmental capital decision making process, leading to lower than expected benefits. A similar list could and ought to be prepared for the human capital side of the equation.

1.Multiple policy goals
2.Geographic politics distorts and often dominates government investment in physical infrastructure.
3.Non-geographic politics can distort government capital spending.
4.Once “investment” is favored, everything gets relabeled as investment.
5.There’s a difference between government investments in the commons and government spending that primarily benefits individuals.
6.Government investment in physical infrastructure is slow.
7.Government investment in physical infrastructure is intentionally expensive because of “prevailing wage” requirements
8.We should evaluate the marginal productivity benefits of additional investment.
9.International comparisons of government infrastructure are silly.
10.Government investment faces no market discipline.
11.Government capital investment financed by raising taxes on private capital investment will slow long-term economic growth.

Every decision has a trade-off and individuals and organizations usually choose to act as if they are able to escape the trade-off decision and their consequences. They can't. Best to plan for those consequences no matter how much we dislike them.