● Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back
Marc J. Dunkelman
Interview with author via NPR
Q: When New York City built its subway system in the first part of the 1900s, it took about three years to build the first subway line through Manhattan. It’s impossible to do anything in three years in the United States today, certainly anything of that scale. What do you make of that comparison?
A: I think that’s exactly right. We had a long period in our history where we gave centralized power to certain authority figures to make big decisions that were designed to help everybody. And often they weren’t beneficial. Sometimes they were abusive. There are lots of stories where we awoke to that in the 1960s and seventies.