4 ms·

This is not construction. It's real estate.

by LegitShady 3y ago

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
It's real estate development, at scale.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  If you just build a railroad and sell off parcels you aren't doing any development, nor anything that tech bros can use to slide into the industry. Actual development involves a lot of heavy earthwork, drainage plans, development of water and sewer networks, maybe road planning, fire hydrants, etc etc. Just buying and selling land isn't development. Railroad companies control where we build railroads and they are conservative after decades of closing unprofitable lines. This is not the wild west.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    As I mentioned in the GGGP comment, they don't just build the railroad; they develop most of the parcels before they sell them off. Several buildings they do not sell; they for example tend to build shopping malls, hotels, and apartment complexes directly around the station, and hold onto those, leasing them out to businesses, or operate them themselves. Railroad companies in Asia are much less conservative than in the West, where they mostly have shed all their business except slow freight.
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      then those companies are not scaling up in tech bro style with a minimum viable product and looking to sell services, they're laying out tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on real property and construction before making any back. They're not tech bros and they're not doing what they do through tech. You aren't going to beat them with this one cool AI trick you discovered in an LLM. They have people on the ground moving millions of tons of earth, designers working years in advance to plan all of this, applications to government for approval etc. This isn't "magic construction sauce" that allowed them to do it. Its massive amounts of money, labour, time effort like every other construction company. You won't disrupt them if you aren't better at their business than they are.

This is not construction. It's real estate.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago

It's real estate development, at scale.

LegitShady 3y ago
If you just build a railroad and sell off parcels you aren't doing any development, nor anything that tech bros can use to slide into the industry. Actual development involves a lot of heavy earthwork, drainage plans, development of water and sewer networks, maybe road planning, fire hydrants, etc etc. Just buying and selling land isn't development. Railroad companies control where we build railroads and they are conservative after decades of closing unprofitable lines. This is not the wild west.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  As I mentioned in the GGGP comment, they don't just build the railroad; they develop most of the parcels before they sell them off. Several buildings they do not sell; they for example tend to build shopping malls, hotels, and apartment complexes directly around the station, and hold onto those, leasing them out to businesses, or operate them themselves. Railroad companies in Asia are much less conservative than in the West, where they mostly have shed all their business except slow freight.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    then those companies are not scaling up in tech bro style with a minimum viable product and looking to sell services, they're laying out tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on real property and construction before making any back. They're not tech bros and they're not doing what they do through tech. You aren't going to beat them with this one cool AI trick you discovered in an LLM. They have people on the ground moving millions of tons of earth, designers working years in advance to plan all of this, applications to government for approval etc. This isn't "magic construction sauce" that allowed them to do it. Its massive amounts of money, labour, time effort like every other construction company. You won't disrupt them if you aren't better at their business than they are.