Private or Government

When comparing project costs, there is a difference that pops up that is universally glossed over in every handling that I’ve seen. In discussion comparing the cost of a hyperloop route and a high-speed rail route between San Francisco and Los Angeles , there is never a distinction made between hyperloop being privately funded and the high-speed rail being government funded, and there is indeed a very big difference between the two that comes down to accountability for using funds constructively and efficiently.

In private funding by anyone with a brain and isn’t trying to use the project as a money laundering operation, cost overruns are dealt with harshly, often by stopping funding and letting the project implode rather than let costs spiral out of control.

In government funding, better described as politician spending taxpayer’s money, failure to use funds wisely is met with more funds. It gets sold as “making jobs”. A project that starts with a $40 billion cost increasing to at least $77 billion while at the same time reducing the amount of work by 75% is not at all unusual. Neither, for that matter, are bridges to nowhere.

Add in that the people footing the bill for government funded projects rarely have any say in how the money is spent or how much of their money is taken for these projects, and are almost always fall most heavily on people on the lower ends of the economic spectrum, and there is ample reason to prefer private funding over government funding, even in cases where the project is exactly the same.

It comes down to, do you get a choice in the matter?