Startups really do seem to be the best solution to problems like these. Elon Musk is leading teams that are solving some of the world's biggest problems. Those

Startups really do seem to be the best solution to problems like these. Elon Musk is leading teams that are solving some of the world's biggest problems. Those efforts greatly benefited from government subsidies, funding, etc. Let's just admit finally that governments are really only good at writing checks, that they suck at managing projects, and then just work very hard figure out where those checks should go. Our governments(s) should give a bunch of teams $10M to design projects, then a few teams $100M to prototype them, and then one or two teams the billions required to build them out. I bet there's a qualified and moral person on HN that could lead a successful high speed rail project with government backing.