Related, Grady Hillhouse on the myth of Roman concrete.

> The miracle of modern chemistry has given us a wide variety of admixtures like superplasticizers to improve the characteristics of concrete beyond a Roman engineer’s wildest dreams. So why does it seem that our concrete doesn’t last nearly as long as it should? It’s a complicated question, but one answer is economics. There’s a famous quote that says “Anyone can design a bridge that stands. It takes an engineer to build one that barely stands.” Just like the sculptors job is to chip away all the parts of the marble that don’t look like the subject, a structural engineer’s job is to take away all the extraneous parts of a structure that aren’t necessary to meet the design requirements. And lifespan is just one of the many criteria engineers must consider when designing concrete structures. Most infrastructure is paid for by taxes, and the cost of building to Roman standards is rarely impossible, but often beyond what the public would consider reasonable.

https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/9/was-roman-concre...

A large part of why Roman concrete lasted longer than ours tends to is that we suffer from a shortage of narcissistic emperors with the means to wield entire economies towards their own immortality.

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modo_mario 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The same is said for why we don't build classical buildings anymore and trend towards more featureless stuff... and it's also mostly bullshit with plenty of counterexamples.

Truth is it's often just a bit cheaper so we trend that way under capitalism, we change styles faster and have come to subconsciously accept shorter lifespans and the kind of things you can build more practical for cars, large overhangs, etc

	▲	anal_reactor 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		But it's also true that modern world changes much faster than in the antiquity. If you built a church, a market, and a few utility buildings like tavern and blacksmith in 500BC you could rest assured they'd still remain used in 1000 years practically unchanged unless the structure or wider economy collapsed. Meanwhile "office building, shopping mall, nightclub, school" all varied highly in popularity within last 50 years, and it's difficult to convert one type of building to another, not to mention the costs of modernizing an old building.

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userbinator 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most infrastructure is paid for by taxes, and the cost of building to Roman standards is rarely impossible, but often beyond what the public would consider reasonable.

Would you pay 10x more to have something that lasts 100x or even 1000x longer? The upfront cost is higher, but the TCO is ultimately lower. IMHO it's ultimately a form of planned obsolescence. This becomes even more obvious when plenty of expense is spent just on "engineering" to deliberately reduce lifespan.

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Aurornis 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, for two reasons.

First, we can’t summon infinite money to pay for things. Paying 10X more per bridge means we can build 1/10th as many bridges or we have to start stealing from other budgets.

Second, we don’t know what the needs will be for the bridge in that location 100 or 1000 years from now. It could need to be torn down to be widened. Maybe we’re all riding around in electric vehicles that coordinate perfectly with each other and the bridge isn’t needed for cross traffic any more. We don’t know.

	▲	golem14 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, invading a few fewer countries could pay for a few longer lasting bridges … it’s a matter of priorities.

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Alpha3031 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, because there are public projects that make sense at 3–4% discount rates that haven't been funded, so it would clearly make more sense to direct funding towards those projects first before trying to fund anything that requires a sub-1% discount rate.

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6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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TylerE 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The thing is, we're actually pretty crappy at knowing what we'll need 50 years from now, much less 500. Doesn't make sense to overbuild for an unknown future, when hundred years from now us will likely be able to do a far better job anyway.

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hirako2000 5 hours ago | parent [-]

That's to consider the commons solely materialist utility. The Romans built meaning through arts that still speaks to this day. Efficient construction becomes worthless over time.

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TylerE 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Efficiency is never worthless in a world where resources (if nothing else, labor) are not infinite.

	▲	hirako2000 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The kind of efficiency we focus on seem to be plentiful. Labour is a good example, see unemployment rates and the number of bullshit jobs anyway. What's covered in the article is also a great example of material resource that could be used, but short term profiting primes.

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seydor 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> we suffer from a shortage of narcissistic emperors

not recently

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defrost 7 hours ago | parent [-]

but not ones willing to put the effort into properly fixing a pond.

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fragmede 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Who's pond? I'm willing to bet billionaires' estates have well tended ponds, contrary to public ponds. Or a reflecting pool.

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kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you're talking about the algae, it came back after Obama's $34m renovation, too.

Turns out algae is hard to kill, especially when you feed the reflecting pool from a tidal basin.

	▲	DannyBee 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I don't remember Obama pretending it was being caused by political agitators, etc.