The same robust property rights and multiple veto points that protect business also paralyze infrastructure that requires changing property rights. Litigation-ready groups can force review and delay, illustrated by the Port Authority inviting far-flung tribes into an environmental process—unthinkable in centralized systems like China.
— It implies 'Build America' reforms must prune veto points and streamline review or the U.S. will keep failing at large projects despite broad consensus.
by Anjeanette Damon, ProPublica, and Dayvid Figler, City Cast Las Vegas
2025.10.10
40% relevant
The story illustrates the flip side of the permitting debate: instead of being paralyzed by veto points, a major builder proceeded without approvals and accepted ex post penalties—aligning with Musk’s stated preference to 'pay a penalty if you do something wrong.' It highlights how discretionary enforcement can convert ex ante controls into negotiable ex post costs.
msmash
2025.10.06
50% relevant
Both argue that dense rules and veto points impose hidden, time‑consuming costs that deter ambitious projects; here, Europe’s dismissal costs and procedural hurdles delay or prevent reallocations needed for disruptive innovation, akin to how legal process stalls infrastructure builds.
Steven F. Hayward
2025.10.01
74% relevant
By calling CEQA a 'Full Employment for Environmental Lawyers Act' and noting Gov. Newsom’s push to carve it back, the article concretely illustrates how layered legal vetoes and litigation paralyze projects and force even progressive leaders to seek procedural pruning.
2025.09.29
65% relevant
The article details how the REA overcame state and local legal barriers and private-utility resistance by financing and empowering farmer co‑ops, illustrating that institutional design and pruning veto points—rather than just spending—can enable large‑scale build‑out.
Jerusalem Demsas
2025.09.24
72% relevant
Demsas argues abundance should 'rip apart' local processes and cultures that stifle housing and energy and instead concentrate power in governors/mayors—echoing the diagnosis that multiple veto points and litigation paralyze building and need structural pruning.
msmash
2025.09.19
68% relevant
The article attributes higher and more divergent wholesale prices to widening transmission congestion in PJM, SPP, and NYISO—evidence that grid build‑outs are lagging. This concretely illustrates how infrastructure bottlenecks (often due to permitting and veto points) raise system costs by blocking access to cheaper generation.
Judge Glock
2025.09.18
78% relevant
The article’s Brent Spence Bridge example—stalled by environmental lawsuits and long lists of conditions (e.g., diversity committees, bat and mussel mitigation, peregrine‑falcon inspections)—illustrates how overlapping veto points and process requirements paralyze major builds, mirroring the 'veto‑point' critique in the existing idea.
Santi Ruiz
2025.09.17
85% relevant
Liscow explicitly identifies permitting and litigiousness (NEPA reviews averaging four years; median lawsuits 1.5–2.5 years plus appeals) as a core cost driver, directly echoing the 'too many veto points' thesis and calling for reform beyond the litigation doom loop.
Alex Tabarrok
2025.08.31
80% relevant
The article reports decade‑long property cases, a massive litigation share of Mumbai’s built space, and an extreme judge shortage (16/million vs 150/million US), concretely showing how legal bottlenecks and insufficient adjudication capacity paralyze development and infrastructure.
Noah Smith
2025.08.29
78% relevant
Wang’s 'lawyers run America' vs 'engineers run China' thesis maps onto the claim that U.S. legal veto points paralyze infrastructure while China’s engineer-dominated leadership pushes construction—illustrated by California HSR vs China’s rapid rail build-out and U.S. housing delays vs China’s overbuilding.
Paul Moreno
2025.08.26
50% relevant
The article’s 'Rube Goldberg' account of bank supervision as cumulative 'institutional layering' parallels the broader thesis that overlapping rules and veto points create complex, underperforming systems.
Jerusalem Demsas
2025.08.25
40% relevant
By highlighting how the Housing for Older Persons Act carveout is used in zoning and approvals to steer what gets built and for whom, the piece shows how layered rules enable exclusionary outcomes even when 'building' occurs.
2025.08.25
55% relevant
The article name‑checks the Abundance movement’s critique of NEPA/PRA but contends that cutting red tape is insufficient without Rickover‑style selection and training systems—connecting regulatory reform to the deeper human‑systems problem.
Arnold Kling
2025.08.24
55% relevant
Dan Wang’s 'engineering-oriented China vs lawyer-oriented U.S.' dovetails with the argument that America’s legal veto points and litigation culture impede building and operations.
Tyler Cowen
2025.08.24
100% relevant
Cowen’s example of New York/New Jersey Port Authority outreach and his NIMBY/obstruction account of checks-and-balances.
Santi Ruiz
2025.08.21
70% relevant
The article describes HR veto points—managers can’t see resumes, keyword filters gatekeep hires, and firing takes years—as a parallel to legal-process overgrowth that paralyzes execution. It argues pruning HR vetoes (as Texas, Florida, Georgia did via at‑will, broadbanded pay, and no CBAs) improves capacity without the feared politicization.
Halina Bennet
2025.08.20
55% relevant
Colorado Governor Jared Polis tying $280 million in state grants to local compliance with state housing mandates (ADUs, higher occupancy limits, transit-oriented development) is a direct attempt to override local veto points and speed building.
Santi Ruiz
2025.08.15
70% relevant
The article argues that cutting agency headcount before reducing procedural and regulatory burdens cripples performance, echoing the existing idea that pruning veto points and process is a prerequisite for effective execution.
Ed Knight
2025.08.14
60% relevant
The author notes OCO‑2’s ~$750M cost was 'typical' under NASA’s bureaucratic rules and argues for a shift toward cheaper, refreshable constellations, echoing how process-heavy governance inflates costs and biases toward overbuilt, long‑lived projects rather than iterative delivery.
2025.07.28
50% relevant
It claims African cities face 'onerous legal and institutional barriers' and low governance capacity, paralleling how legal veto points block building—only with far higher stakes due to explosive population growth.
Santi Ruiz
2025.07.23
60% relevant
While focused less on permitting lawsuits and more on governance, the piece advances the same thesis that U.S. megaproject bloat is institutional: it argues Amtrak–commuter rail turf wars and poor coordination, not technical impossibility, inflate costs and timelines on the Northeast Corridor.