Too bad we can't have good public transportation
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a space elevator
You'd have to harness carbon nanotubes first... then deal with all the debris in LEO, then come up with an elevator that doesn't take days to reach GEO (granted the counterweight can rest there and the cab can stop sooner).
wrote last edited by [email protected]Easy, just attach a huge rocket to the bottom of the elevator, problem solved. Oh, use AI to design the rocket, make the ticketing system use block chain, and when you get to orbit, a robot remotely operated by a human on the ground (but prentends to be fully autonomous) takes a picture of you and generates an NFT of it that you can purchase for 35000 USD in the gift shop.
I'll be over here swimming in my money pool.
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Houses don't stand long on their own. It takes a significant amount of time and money to keep these things from filling up with mold or collapsing.
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US Train travel has actually gotten worse since 1996.
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In Capitalist nations, the further we are from the era of peak Unions and in general civil society movements (which was just after WWII) the slower infrastructure improves from one year to the next, something visible not just in trains but at all levels (even National Health Services for those countries which have them).
The same thing will happen in China now that they're getting more Capitalist than Socialist.
It was never the Capitalist part doing the kind of improvements that benefit most people, it was the stuff outside Capitalism (that used it as a Trade Philosophy only) constraining it and guiding it for policy ends which were independent of Capitalism.
This of course accelerated with Neoliberalism, since that stuff is mainly about making Capitalism the sole definer of policy, or in other words make Capitalism the entirety of politics, hence unconstrained and unguided by interests other than those of Money.
Capitalism is reasonably decent at optimizing Trade in the short and mid-term, but is completelly shit for non-Trade interests such as Quality Of Life, as well as for anything which doesn't have direct and reasonably immediate action-consequence links such as situations where negative effects are very delayed in time (for example, companies enshittifying their products but keeping on going for years on the inertia of brand name) or emergent in nature (i.e. things that appear due to the accumulation of the actions of many actors, such as Global Warming).
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a space elevator
You'd have to harness carbon nanotubes first... then deal with all the debris in LEO, then come up with an elevator that doesn't take days to reach GEO (granted the counterweight can rest there and the cab can stop sooner).
This is a joke meme that doesn't mean anything ..... just like the American public transport system.
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
That requires political will to achieve objectives other than wealth maximization, or in other words a political philosophy other than Capitalism which, at least sometimes, is dominant over Capitalism.
The whole point of Neoliberalism from the beginning was eliminate those and make Capitalism the dominant political philosophy rather than just a trade philosophy, so almost 50 years into it the effects are all around us and painful to see.
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Concrete doesn't house CO2. When they created Biodome2, the engineers didn't factor in the curing time and CO2 output and the scientists had to vent the facility or suffocate.
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And now wait for five years and see if the Chinese one is still there.
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America: if ain’t broke don’t fix it
Every other country: yah it’s time, what are our new requirements? -
And now wait for five years and see if the Chinese one is still there.
Americans: "Nice infrastructure. Would be a shame if we had to come over there and liberate it."
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https://www.pekingnology.com/p/china-massively-overbuilt-high-speed
Good luck dealing with that financial bomb.
Given that we here in the US are still trying g to work out from under 150 year old rail infrastructure, I don’t think they need to worry about it for a while.
Rail generally lasts longer than roads even if you don’t maintain it. We’ve proven that
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Americans: "Nice infrastructure. Would be a shame if we had to come over there and liberate it."
I am as American as Pancetta.
It is just the glorification of China that is rubbing me the wrong way.Their buildings are collapsing. Yes, it is built fast, cheap and looks nice.
And then it fails.And the Chinese peope themselves. They suffer.
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Not just trains but all transportation services and systems is severely lacking in this country. Along with crumbling infrastructure and terrible build quality of cars and trucks and you got a recipe for disaster. But no one will care cuz Merica!
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I am as American as Pancetta.
It is just the glorification of China that is rubbing me the wrong way.Their buildings are collapsing. Yes, it is built fast, cheap and looks nice.
And then it fails.And the Chinese peope themselves. They suffer.
the glorification of China
The Chinese government has definitely run ahead of the pack on domestic investment. But you could play the same game with Spain or Japan or Turkiye. The numbers simply would not have been as impressive.
Their buildings are collapsing.
This is a meme from 2008. You won't find any more crumbling buildings in China than you'd find in the UK or Korea.
And the Chinese peope themselves. They suffer.
They'll never know the joys of bumper to bumper traffic
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I wonder if the early proliferation of rural cars / mega expressways kinda fucked us. When your transportation network grows around trains, upgrading the trains/rails makes good economic sense. We just kind of spread out everywhere quickly and made the train locations somewhat irrelevant.
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Given that we here in the US are still trying g to work out from under 150 year old rail infrastructure, I don’t think they need to worry about it for a while.
Rail generally lasts longer than roads even if you don’t maintain it. We’ve proven that
A feature of rail is very high building costs. If they wasted money on building HSR on a lot of places where it's not needed, this means there's gonna be a debt that never gets paid by the utilization of the rail. Bad investment.
So it's not about maintenance, but the up-front cost.
Not doing an investment where an investment would make a lot of money is of course a kind of reverse of this, but which leads to a similar outcome.
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And now wait for five years and see if the Chinese one is still there.
It seems pretty improbable to me that this infrastructure will be replaced in China in just five years.
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This is because public transportation is socialism and we can't have tax dollars going to that pretext for communism. Capitalism is far superior which is why we are instead spending over $150 billion on deporting immigrants, which will help promote a free and open capitalist market.
as much as I'd like to call this a win for socialism, I don't think socialism is actually necessary for good transit. Japan is very capitalist and has private rail networks which are comparable in quality and extent to China's.
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A feature of rail is very high building costs. If they wasted money on building HSR on a lot of places where it's not needed, this means there's gonna be a debt that never gets paid by the utilization of the rail. Bad investment.
So it's not about maintenance, but the up-front cost.
Not doing an investment where an investment would make a lot of money is of course a kind of reverse of this, but which leads to a similar outcome.
You could say the same about pretty much any infrastructure. It’s hideously expensive and will never get paid back by utilization.
- highways
- local roads
- bridges
- air traffic control
- utilities of most kinds
- canals
- flood control
- erosion mitigation
All are hideously expensive and will never get paid back by utilization.
Are they all bad investments?
I claim they all are critical for their indirect benefits to an economy, a society, and rail is exactly the same.
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the glorification of China
The Chinese government has definitely run ahead of the pack on domestic investment. But you could play the same game with Spain or Japan or Turkiye. The numbers simply would not have been as impressive.
Their buildings are collapsing.
This is a meme from 2008. You won't find any more crumbling buildings in China than you'd find in the UK or Korea.
And the Chinese peope themselves. They suffer.
They'll never know the joys of bumper to bumper traffic
Explain the sinking just finished metro. The ghost towns. The buildings collapsing. The bridges decaying because of concrete rot.
There are so many current projects going bad because of the use of bad materials and dodgy practices.
Skipping a geo research before building etc.The Chinese are surpressed by the CCP. More than 90% of the drinking water is not fit for consumption. Aside from the AI cleaned up videos and pictures, there isn't much of a clear sky with the smog.
And where are the birds?
... Also have you seen China. They too have traffic jams.
No country is a wonderland.
And if someone is really really really trying to convince me they are that magnificent, and better than everyone else.
I. Do. Not. Trust. Them.Actions say more than words. And the actions have spoken.