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Rail is "socialist" (not meant in a political way) in that it is generally a government investment for the people. My sense is the US is generally less apt to d

Rail is "socialist" (not meant in a political way) in that it is generally a government investment for the people. My sense is the US is generally less apt to do this vs e.g. europe where there has been much more investment. I think this has more to do with it than the money not being available because of wars.

syops 5y ago
We could have done both. Opponents of rail decry it’s apparent inefficiency and call it wasteful spending. Even assuming it is wasteful spending it’d still have been much better spending $6 trillion on building trains than on the wars. Has so many resources ever been spent for so little gain?
CheezeIt 5y ago
We happily have planes and buses, which are usually superior to passenger trains. Removing the TSA would create more total value in infrastructure than adding more trains, even though some trains are worth it.
edmundsauto 5y ago
Is it much different than the Hoover Dam, or interstate highway system? We praise those accomplishments...
- sershe 5y ago
  The interstate highway system is actually an interesting example, because US did have a bunch of private rail and trams, before the govt built the highways, subsidized suburbs and made it all much less relevant. Apparently building the cities around driving is now considered to have been the wrong choice. It's good that we know exactly what the right choice is /this/ time around, so we just need tons of taxpayer money to shove it thru ;) (for the record, I do not support either war or transit spending).
southerntofu 5y ago
> My sense is the US is generally less apt to do this vs e.g. europe where there has been much more investment. The US government has a lot of investment in infrastructure, however these investments almost always go to private contractors who produce bad results raking in a lot of money (comparatively to any sort of however-inefficient public service). Unfortunately European governments have been following this way for a few decades now and privatizing everything. Of course, only profit is privatized. The private sector still largely benefits from considerable sums of public money, and States take action quickly to save endangered businesses (eg. banks). Or, to paraphrase some thinkers, "Socialism for the rich, exploitation for the masses." > the money not being available because of wars There's two assumptions that irk me in this sentence: 1) Capability has nothing to do with money. The entire value of money is based on public confidence in the monetary system. Whether you have those virtual (or paper) numbers of not, a community or State has considerable infrastructure, skills and resources it can leverage to help improve life for all. There's usually legal provisions to enable "requisition" of private resources/infrastructure in times of needs, but there's also nothing stopping a government from developing a volunteering-based economy without money (like a huge cooperative). 2) The money is pretty much there, and it's spent not just on the military. There's a lot of infrastructure money that's being misspent on contractors doing a poor job and not doing any form of maintenance. There's a lot of bureaucracy money spent on managers making life miserable for field workers and making sure they can't do their job properly: education, health, regulation enforcement... As an outsider to the USA, i found a lot of Last Week Tonight episodes enlightening in this regard. You could also take Medicare for example, which is designed as a scheme to siphon money into private healthcare (insurances and cliniques), where it appears funding a public socialized healthcare infrastructure (as in many other countries) is far less costly overall. I've found this humorous rap clip from the 2016 elections to summarize the situation pretty well overall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Qv6S_GtLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Qv6S_GtLo (to watch with your favorite invidious instance).

syops 5y ago

We could have done both. Opponents of rail decry it’s apparent inefficiency and call it wasteful spending. Even assuming it is wasteful spending it’d still have been much better spending $6 trillion on building trains than on the wars. Has so many resources ever been spent for so little gain?

CheezeIt 5y ago

We happily have planes and buses, which are usually superior to passenger trains. Removing the TSA would create more total value in infrastructure than adding more trains, even though some trains are worth it.

edmundsauto 5y ago

Is it much different than the Hoover Dam, or interstate highway system? We praise those accomplishments...

sershe 5y ago
The interstate highway system is actually an interesting example, because US did have a bunch of private rail and trams, before the govt built the highways, subsidized suburbs and made it all much less relevant. Apparently building the cities around driving is now considered to have been the wrong choice. It's good that we know exactly what the right choice is /this/ time around, so we just need tons of taxpayer money to shove it thru ;) (for the record, I do not support either war or transit spending).

southerntofu 5y ago

> My sense is the US is generally less apt to do this vs e.g. europe where there has been much more investment. The US government has a lot of investment in infrastructure, however these investments almost always go to private contractors who produce bad results raking in a lot of money (comparatively to any sort of however-inefficient public service). Unfortunately European governments have been following this way for a few decades now and privatizing everything. Of course, only profit is privatized. The private sector still largely benefits from considerable sums of public money, and States take action quickly to save endangered businesses (eg. banks). Or, to paraphrase some thinkers, "Socialism for the rich, exploitation for the masses." > the money not being available because of wars There's two assumptions that irk me in this sentence: 1) Capability has nothing to do with money. The entire value of money is based on public confidence in the monetary system. Whether you have those virtual (or paper) numbers of not, a community or State has considerable infrastructure, skills and resources it can leverage to help improve life for all. There's usually legal provisions to enable "requisition" of private resources/infrastructure in times of needs, but there's also nothing stopping a government from developing a volunteering-based economy without money (like a huge cooperative). 2) The money is pretty much there, and it's spent not just on the military. There's a lot of infrastructure money that's being misspent on contractors doing a poor job and not doing any form of maintenance. There's a lot of bureaucracy money spent on managers making life miserable for field workers and making sure they can't do their job properly: education, health, regulation enforcement... As an outsider to the USA, i found a lot of Last Week Tonight episodes enlightening in this regard. You could also take Medicare for example, which is designed as a scheme to siphon money into private healthcare (insurances and cliniques), where it appears funding a public socialized healthcare infrastructure (as in many other countries) is far less costly overall. I've found this humorous rap clip from the 2016 elections to summarize the situation pretty well overall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Qv6S_GtLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Qv6S_GtLo (to watch with your favorite invidious instance).