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China: Builds 40,000 miles of high speed rail in 12 years https://twitter.com/xiaoyewen/status/1494588071483875333 https://twitter.com/xiaoyewen/status/14945880

by qgin 5y ago

China: Builds 40,000 miles of high speed rail in 12 years https://twitter.com/xiaoyewen/status/1494588071483875333 https://twitter.com/xiaoyewen/status/1494588071483875333 United States: Thinks about vacuum tubes for awhile, gives up entirely.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
China took on lots of debt to do that, and it will take a while to pay it off if ever (we can argue whether SOE debt is government debt or not). It might make for some interesting development opportunities in the future, but only an authoritarian government could divert so many resources. I’m much more excited by Japan’s new maglev that will go from Tokyo to Nagoya by 2026 or 2028. Hyper loop had a lot of potential to avoid the problem facing most rail projects in the states (lack of land for straight shots needed for HSR, and the government’s unwilling to use eminent domain to get that, also, I think Americans are more adverse to viaducts everywhere than the Chinese). A vaccine tube underneath would solve a lot of that.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  The USA is more in debt than China, it's just been badly spent.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Only if you don’t count SOE debt as government debt. It gets weird when so many companies are owned by the state. That SOE debt also includes all the debt used to build china’s HSR system.
disambiguation 5y ago
Also somehow its easier to build self-driving cars than it is to invest in public transportation.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  You meant to say self-crashing?
- trhway 5y ago
  that is actually a competition between AI and collective public intelligence, where the first being a pure engineering problem with no limits for growth has been improving exponentially over mere decades while the second has been improving really slow over the observable millennia. So, i'd bet on AI :)
- soco 5y ago
  One is cool and the other brings people to their destinations.
iab 5y ago
Look, we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas

by qgin 5y ago

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

China took on lots of debt to do that, and it will take a while to pay it off if ever (we can argue whether SOE debt is government debt or not). It might make for some interesting development opportunities in the future, but only an authoritarian government could divert so many resources. I’m much more excited by Japan’s new maglev that will go from Tokyo to Nagoya by 2026 or 2028. Hyper loop had a lot of potential to avoid the problem facing most rail projects in the states (lack of land for straight shots needed for HSR, and the government’s unwilling to use eminent domain to get that, also, I think Americans are more adverse to viaducts everywhere than the Chinese). A vaccine tube underneath would solve a lot of that.

akvadrako 5y ago
The USA is more in debt than China, it's just been badly spent.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Only if you don’t count SOE debt as government debt. It gets weird when so many companies are owned by the state. That SOE debt also includes all the debt used to build china’s HSR system.

disambiguation 5y ago

Also somehow its easier to build self-driving cars than it is to invest in public transportation.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
You meant to say self-crashing?
trhway 5y ago
that is actually a competition between AI and collective public intelligence, where the first being a pure engineering problem with no limits for growth has been improving exponentially over mere decades while the second has been improving really slow over the observable millennia. So, i'd bet on AI :)
soco 5y ago
One is cool and the other brings people to their destinations.

iab 5y ago

Look, we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas