It's not that we have forgotten. It's the fact that regulation, time to get approval, and other red tape make the timeline longer. Gone are the days when things just get done.
Really shallow analysis. A lot of the US regulations are just really bad. Does France have labor unions who force employers to hire people to stand around not doing anything useful? Is Japan’s environmental quality law so open-ended that it’s hardly ever actually used for the environment?
http://www.planningreport.com/2015/12/21/new-ceqa-study-reve...
Just recently, I was watching a housing development in San Francisco, and the neighborhood merchants’ association filed a CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) appeal to the Board of Supervisors claiming the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) was inadequate. Strangely, the Board of Supervisors refused to consider the merits of this claim, but kept delaying the hearing to talk about it.
After 6 months, the merchants’ association withdrew their complaint. Was it because the EIR was fine after all? No. It was because the local area’s supervisor, the merchants’ association, and the developer did backroom negotiations until the developer gave enough concessions that the merchants’ association was satisfied. These concessions will inevitably come out as higher prices for housing.
https://missionlocal.org/2017/05/deal-approved-to-green-ligh...
for instance: countries X, and Z could both have the same list of rules on the books, but folks in country X actually comply with the rules even when nobody is looking, whereas folks in country Z just look at the rules and ignore all the ones they think are stupid.
