I used to work for a native American nation. One of the anecdotes from the guy you could consider to be the CEO was that although he could get a grant for $50k from the federal government for road improvements, it cost him about $35k to jump through all the hoops (filing for the grant, documenting that the appropriate oversight was exercised, etc.). It was still a net win, but he would then add that even $50k wasn't really spit when it came to what he was spending overall.

>> Too many cooks? Constantly changing administration? Corrupt building industry and regulatory bodies?

I'd say not too many cooks, but too many head chefs. From my contact with federal projects there always seems to be too many bosses. Dozens of people/groups think they are the final word on the project. None work with each other. Instead of all sitting in a room to hash things out, project plans are emailed/mailed around. Each then sits on the project for weeks, or months if they feel they need public participation/input. By the time each stakeholder agency does their thing a year has past. Any change then restarts the email chain. European governments seem better at agreeing general concepts and then appointing educated individuals to act as reps. Meetings then move far more quickly.

I'm guessing these administrations are the result of laws and/or regulations, right?

And the US probably has way more regulation, simply because there is a bigger pot to pay politicians and lobbyists from, and they all need something to do/to promise their voters?

Here's an idea: What if every new piece of law and regulation came with a mandatory expiration date - say 10 years. After that date it must pass the legislator again, at which point a new date is set based on an exponential backoff algorithm. At each new vote I'd expect there to be some evaluation of the effects of that piece of legislation.

Now obviously, you still have the problem of strictly partisan politicians, but if you could even just have 5% of legislators not being corrupted by that it would be enough to swing the majority to one side or the other, based on facts.

It's not the amount of regulation on the books. Europe has more. It's a cultural thing. Americans don't trust their governments in the same way Europeans do. Even the most liberal-minded democrats still want government to be constantly checked. That makes those laws that are there very difficult to work with. Everyone sees is as his or her duty to watch what the government is doing. I don't mean just citizens. The American system of divided government often sees state lawmakers at odds with their federal government, doubly so when the project cross state lines. Everyone on the project tiptoes around slowly thinking any misstep will result in legal troubles. Europeans are far more trusting of democracy, taking such matters to the ballot box rather than the lawyer's office.

An example: There is a regulation stating that federal projects must notify and consult affected native tribes. Fine. That's sounds reasonable. But in practice "affected tribes" has become all tribes. Rather than risk getting it wrong, some feel they must officially inform and consult every tribe in the nation. There is a few weeks delay.

Here is the handbook for that reg. Note that this is not the regulation but a guideline on how to obey it. The reg itself is very simple (It's actually a body of several regs, but they all do basically the same thing). What makes it complicated is all the stuff over and above the wording, the stuff you do more out of fear than legal requirement. That stuff gets published in a *.gov PDF and the next thing you know everyone thinks they have to obey every letter of the PDF. The PDF is now a defacto reg and the cycle begins again.

http://www.achp.gov/pdfs/consultation-with-indian-tribes-han...

Maybe it's just a different local optimum. When the Swiss Republic was instated in 1848, the founders drew upon the old tradition of direct democracy, now on a national level. Swiss people are typically very weary of big organisations, which is why we aren't in the EU for one - the federal Republic had to overcome this problem by basically installing checks-and-balances on crack (no one person having executive power alone, two chambers, everything can be overruled by people's votes on every level of the administration). So it basically started with a profound mistrust, but I think through these instruments people over the generations have come to trust the system quite a lot - at least so much that the government has been allowed to do quite a few relatively progressive projects even when challenged by the people's vote.

s/weary/wary/ I think.

Thanks, I never noticed that difference.

> What if every new piece of law and regulation came with a mandatory expiration date - say 10 years. After that date it must pass the legislator again

The Patriot Act extensions show that the "re-evaluation" step will get skipped. Instead everything gets boiled down to talking points that can be used to attack your political opponents in the next election (so-and-so hates cute puppies! he didn't renew the save-the-cute-puppies act!)

Yes, that's what I meant with the past paragraph. But I'd also say the patriot act is (or hopefully should be) a rather special case as it's such an emotionally loaded piece of legislation, closely attached to 9-11.