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Their only demo went back and forth for 200 meters, and nothing happened ever after. SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM, there is no way for the bus to turn except for tearing

Their only demo went back and forth for 200 meters, and nothing happened ever after. SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM, there is no way for the bus to turn except for tearing down infrastructure and using 10 lanes. The creators made a fund out of the project(promised 12% annualized return) that attracted a lot of small investors and scammed them out of their money.

m3kw9 9y ago
Anything that promises a rate higher than what govt can promise is a scam. Ie tbills
- cesarb 9y ago
  Having a higher rate than what the government gives you just means it has more risk, not necessarily that it's a scam. And 12% isn't that high, it was a common annualized rate of return a few years ago here in Brazil.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    Yeah well in some European countries, there is a negative return now - the government is essentially saying "pay us for keeping your money".
    - kogepathic 9y ago
      > the government is essentially saying "pay us for keeping your money". Yes, but the real message here is "we'd rather you spend your money than save it, so we're going to charge you money to keep it with us" The whole point of a negative interest rate is to try and drive up spending/investment. If it costs money for banks to keep their deposits in the central bank, then there's (theoretically) more incentive for the banks to loan the money to someone. It's meant to be a means of economic stimulus, and the government isn't the one setting the negative interest rate, that would be the central bank (in Europe's case, the ECB).
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Right. Anyways, money can't be saved for free because production can't be saved for free. If you have long term savings needs, you have to invest with some risk because you'll need extra production enabled by that investment in the future. The same would still be true if you kept gold under your mattress.
        Spooky23 9y ago
        That's only true in the modern era where banks get unlimited dollars for free from the central bank. More typically in modern history, banks can deliver decent rates of return by capitalizing loans with deposits. Risk gets reduced by FDIC or other insurance. As recently as 2006, savings accounts with zero risk for >80% of the US population paid 4-5% interest.
        euyyn 9y ago
        > As recently as 2006, savings accounts with zero risk for >80% of the US population paid 4-5% interest. I was gonna ask how was that "zero risk" possible, but I'm thinking the answer is "it wasn't actually possible as we all found out the following years."
        cesarb 9y ago
        Domestic government bonds of stable countries are usually treated as "zero risk", even though they still have a small risk. A savings account with "zero risk" would be one that has as much risk as a "zero risk" bond, usually by both being backed by these bonds, and having a government-backed insurance scheme (if the bank fails, the account holders are still paid). (It might help if you think of risk as a scale, and the "zero" as an arbitrary point in that scale. It's useful to set the "zero" to "the lowest risk you can actually get", even though there might be something with an even lower risk.)
        euyyn 9y ago
        So US bonds were yielding 4-5% back then?
  - gduncan12 9y ago
    I think the operative word was promises
- aquadrop 9y ago
  What would be the point of using anything but the govt's promise then?
crispyambulance 9y ago
The strange thing is they actually built a full-size "working" demo, which if anything, only reinforces how precarious and ill-advised the whole concept was to begin with. It makes me wonder if it wasn't a scam at all, but just a really bad idea with believers that wanted to make it real?
- api 9y ago
  The line between folly and scam is not absolutely sharp. It's like murder. There's first degree premeditated murder, crimes of passion, insanity, and manslaughter. Manslaughter can in some cases be charged for gross negligence, or the death can occur as a result of another crime where murder was not the intent. Scams can be similar. A pure scam is like first degree murder. The scammer(s) plan it as a scam and execute it with intent. But sometimes a failure or misadventure can evolve into a scam. This happens when those behind it double down in the face of clear evidence of total non-viability. When the tech doesn't work for fundamental reasons, nobody is truly interested, etc., but the operators keep ratcheting up the salesmanship and doubling down, they are heading into scam territory. You see this a lot with quack medicines backed by people with actual medical degrees. Sometimes a doctor or researcher comes up with an idea and then their ego gets into it. They start fantasizing about being the greatest genius in medicine, the person who cured cancer, etc. So even when the data comes in and shows that their treatment doesn't work any better than placebo they refuse to "see" this. Their ego won't let them and they delude themselves. Over time they devolve much like Walter White from Breaking Bad, going from legitimate doctor to quack. It's rarely a sudden thing.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Great point. For example, Ponzi's original scheme was a real if somewhat abusive scheme involving arbitrage of international postage coupons. It wasn't until he realized that it was impossible to carry out this arbitrage on the required scale that it turned into a scam.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    The line is super blurry. Some inventors seeking capital for their borderline idea may team up with investors that are anything but honest. One unfortunate compromise after another turns a dubious idea into an out-right scam. Your idea for the next breakthrough technology might be the very thing some parasite "angel investor" is looking for to be the crystal at the core of their next big scam. Watch who you team up with.
marcinx27 9y ago
The name's Lanley -- Lyle Lanley. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest ... Aww, it's not for you. It's more of a Shelbyville idea.
Retric 9y ago
That does not actually kill the concept as long as you treat it like an above ground subway system. The real limitation is the buses can't cross 4 way intersections while cars are blocking their path and they can't travel around obstructions. Another options is you placed them on slightly elevated tracks and add bridges over intersections, the larger problem is they need a lot of space above them which means overpasses etc could limit placement without major investments and it really just reinvents the monorail concept. So, IMO it's unlikely to work in most cities, but there are a lot of city's and you only need a few. Thus, it probably did not start as a scam even if evolved into it.
- pizzetta 9y ago
  A group of people developed the idea, then another different group bought the patents. It's the second group who sough investment with apparently no intent to deliver.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Yea, it clearly became a scam. I just mean the first ~thousand hours likely started with the best of intentions. I think of it as the Theranos cycle where something seems possibly viable, but not 100% viable. However, with a closer look it's probably not going to work. But, at that point it's only the people doing the investigation that know this, thus making for a good investment scam. AKA getting other people to throw good money after bad let's you extract some value from a failure.
- simias 9y ago
  Well, an other big limitation is that anything taller than a car can't fit underneath, so you'd need to leave at least one more free lane for trucks, buses and motorcycles.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Continuing to play devils advocate... IMO, a better fit would be to scale down and have two way bike lanes and pedestrian traffic beneath them vs. car only traffic. But, scaling these up to say 16' of clearance could also be viable, just more expensive.
microtherion 9y ago
Amateurs! They shouldn't have built a prototype at all and gone straight for an ICO.
- dave_sullivan 9y ago
  It's a train... but instead of tickets, it has CryptoTickets, the ICO of which will fund the development of said train. Huge! Although to be fair, can't you pre-sell condos to finance their construction?
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Blockchain? Old! Tired! Now how about blocktrain, huh?
izacus 9y ago
So it was basically your average Kickstarter hardware startup? :)

m3kw9 9y ago

Anything that promises a rate higher than what govt can promise is a scam. Ie tbills

cesarb 9y ago
Having a higher rate than what the government gives you just means it has more risk, not necessarily that it's a scam. And 12% isn't that high, it was a common annualized rate of return a few years ago here in Brazil.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  Yeah well in some European countries, there is a negative return now - the government is essentially saying "pay us for keeping your money".
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > the government is essentially saying "pay us for keeping your money". Yes, but the real message here is "we'd rather you spend your money than save it, so we're going to charge you money to keep it with us" The whole point of a negative interest rate is to try and drive up spending/investment. If it costs money for banks to keep their deposits in the central bank, then there's (theoretically) more incentive for the banks to loan the money to someone. It's meant to be a means of economic stimulus, and the government isn't the one setting the negative interest rate, that would be the central bank (in Europe's case, the ECB).
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Right. Anyways, money can't be saved for free because production can't be saved for free. If you have long term savings needs, you have to invest with some risk because you'll need extra production enabled by that investment in the future. The same would still be true if you kept gold under your mattress.
      - Spooky23 9y ago
        That's only true in the modern era where banks get unlimited dollars for free from the central bank. More typically in modern history, banks can deliver decent rates of return by capitalizing loans with deposits. Risk gets reduced by FDIC or other insurance. As recently as 2006, savings accounts with zero risk for >80% of the US population paid 4-5% interest.
        euyyn 9y ago
        > As recently as 2006, savings accounts with zero risk for >80% of the US population paid 4-5% interest. I was gonna ask how was that "zero risk" possible, but I'm thinking the answer is "it wasn't actually possible as we all found out the following years."
        cesarb 9y ago
        Domestic government bonds of stable countries are usually treated as "zero risk", even though they still have a small risk. A savings account with "zero risk" would be one that has as much risk as a "zero risk" bond, usually by both being backed by these bonds, and having a government-backed insurance scheme (if the bank fails, the account holders are still paid). (It might help if you think of risk as a scale, and the "zero" as an arbitrary point in that scale. It's useful to set the "zero" to "the lowest risk you can actually get", even though there might be something with an even lower risk.)
        euyyn 9y ago
        So US bonds were yielding 4-5% back then?
- gduncan12 9y ago
  I think the operative word was promises
aquadrop 9y ago
What would be the point of using anything but the govt's promise then?

crispyambulance 9y ago

The strange thing is they actually built a full-size "working" demo, which if anything, only reinforces how precarious and ill-advised the whole concept was to begin with. It makes me wonder if it wasn't a scam at all, but just a really bad idea with believers that wanted to make it real?

api 9y ago
The line between folly and scam is not absolutely sharp. It's like murder. There's first degree premeditated murder, crimes of passion, insanity, and manslaughter. Manslaughter can in some cases be charged for gross negligence, or the death can occur as a result of another crime where murder was not the intent. Scams can be similar. A pure scam is like first degree murder. The scammer(s) plan it as a scam and execute it with intent. But sometimes a failure or misadventure can evolve into a scam. This happens when those behind it double down in the face of clear evidence of total non-viability. When the tech doesn't work for fundamental reasons, nobody is truly interested, etc., but the operators keep ratcheting up the salesmanship and doubling down, they are heading into scam territory. You see this a lot with quack medicines backed by people with actual medical degrees. Sometimes a doctor or researcher comes up with an idea and then their ego gets into it. They start fantasizing about being the greatest genius in medicine, the person who cured cancer, etc. So even when the data comes in and shows that their treatment doesn't work any better than placebo they refuse to "see" this. Their ego won't let them and they delude themselves. Over time they devolve much like Walter White from Breaking Bad, going from legitimate doctor to quack. It's rarely a sudden thing.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Great point. For example, Ponzi's original scheme was a real if somewhat abusive scheme involving arbitrage of international postage coupons. It wasn't until he realized that it was impossible to carry out this arbitrage on the required scale that it turned into a scam.
- astrodust 9y ago
  The line is super blurry. Some inventors seeking capital for their borderline idea may team up with investors that are anything but honest. One unfortunate compromise after another turns a dubious idea into an out-right scam. Your idea for the next breakthrough technology might be the very thing some parasite "angel investor" is looking for to be the crystal at the core of their next big scam. Watch who you team up with.

marcinx27 9y ago

The name's Lanley -- Lyle Lanley. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest ... Aww, it's not for you. It's more of a Shelbyville idea.

Retric 9y ago

That does not actually kill the concept as long as you treat it like an above ground subway system. The real limitation is the buses can't cross 4 way intersections while cars are blocking their path and they can't travel around obstructions. Another options is you placed them on slightly elevated tracks and add bridges over intersections, the larger problem is they need a lot of space above them which means overpasses etc could limit placement without major investments and it really just reinvents the monorail concept. So, IMO it's unlikely to work in most cities, but there are a lot of city's and you only need a few. Thus, it probably did not start as a scam even if evolved into it.

pizzetta 9y ago
A group of people developed the idea, then another different group bought the patents. It's the second group who sough investment with apparently no intent to deliver.
- Retric 9y ago
  Yea, it clearly became a scam. I just mean the first ~thousand hours likely started with the best of intentions. I think of it as the Theranos cycle where something seems possibly viable, but not 100% viable. However, with a closer look it's probably not going to work. But, at that point it's only the people doing the investigation that know this, thus making for a good investment scam. AKA getting other people to throw good money after bad let's you extract some value from a failure.
simias 9y ago
Well, an other big limitation is that anything taller than a car can't fit underneath, so you'd need to leave at least one more free lane for trucks, buses and motorcycles.
- Retric 9y ago
  Continuing to play devils advocate... IMO, a better fit would be to scale down and have two way bike lanes and pedestrian traffic beneath them vs. car only traffic. But, scaling these up to say 16' of clearance could also be viable, just more expensive.

microtherion 9y ago

Amateurs! They shouldn't have built a prototype at all and gone straight for an ICO.

dave_sullivan 9y ago
It's a train... but instead of tickets, it has CryptoTickets, the ICO of which will fund the development of said train. Huge! Although to be fair, can't you pre-sell condos to finance their construction?
- astrodust 9y ago
  Blockchain? Old! Tired! Now how about blocktrain, huh?

izacus 9y ago

So it was basically your average Kickstarter hardware startup? :)