An example of “too big to fail” never mentioned in discussions of the financial crisis are big public-works projects: In spite of staggering cost overruns, which occur in practically every project, they are never stopped. The latest example is London’s Crossrail, a new train crossing London. Original estimated cost: 3 billion pounds. Current estimated cost: 16 billion pounds. And construction hasn’t started!
I heard a talk about why this happens. I think the speaker said there was no motivation to be honest. The companies that underbid dishonestly pay no penalty; the politicians that approve their dishonest bids risk nothing. Curiously, in notoriously corrupt China, this sort of thing doesn’t seem to happen (although my Chinese isn’t good enough to be sure). Maybe Dubner and Levitt will write about this in Superduper Freakonomics.
At a talk by Laurie Garrett at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, I made this point about science journalism: There is no motivation to be honest. The scientists dishonestly inflate the importance of their work, and pay no penalty for doing so; the reporters dutifully write down their lies, and benefit by doing so (because it makes the story seem more important). No, no, this doesn’t happen, said Garrett. Of course it does. The most visible examples are the press releases that accompany the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, the most prestigious prize in all biology: the whole field should be embarrassed by the claims about the practical importance of teleomere research, which Nicholas Wade dutifully repeated in the New York Times.
There should be some term for these screw-the-public-they’re-too-stupid-to-realize-it situations.
An example of “too big to fail” never mentioned in discussions of the financial crisis are big public-works projects: In spite of staggering cost overruns, which occur in practically every project, they are never stopped. The latest example is London’s Crossrail, a new train crossing London. Original estimated cost: 3 billion pounds. Current estimated cost: 16 billion pounds. And construction hasn’t started!
I heard a talk about why this happens. I think the speaker said there was no motivation to be honest. The companies that underbid dishonestly pay no penalty; the politicians that approve their dishonest bids risk nothing. Curiously, in notoriously corrupt China, this sort of thing doesn’t seem to happen (although my Chinese isn’t good enough to be sure). Maybe Dubner and Levitt will write about this in Superduper Freakonomics.
At a talk by Laurie Garrett at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, I made this point about science journalism: There is no motivation to be honest. The scientists dishonestly inflate the importance of their work, and pay no penalty for doing so; the reporters dutifully write down their lies, and benefit by doing so (because it makes the story seem more important). No, no, this doesn’t happen, said Garrett. Of course it does. The most visible examples are the press releases that accompany the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, the most prestigious prize in all biology: the whole field should be embarrassed by the claims about the practical importance of teleomere research, which Nicholas Wade dutifully repeated in the New York Times.
There should be some term for these screw-the-public-they’re-too-stupid-to-realize-it situations.