Amtrak

China would be such a nice place to live if it wasn't such a bad place to live

Realistically, no one should want that thing. It's a death machine waiting to happen. It would absolutely get the nick name "HyperDeath" so fast.

Examples

https://youtu.be/0N17tEW_WEU&t=116

https://youtu.be/Zz95_VvTxZM

It is disingenuous to argue that High Speed Rail is profitable in China

Good thing that's not what OP or anyone else in here was arguing. Like you said, it's a public good. It doesn't need to be profitable to serve the public interest. In fact, profits run counter to the public interest. So why bring it up?

HSR is much more difficult in the US as the rights of private property are respected and projects need to pass a much higher threshold of review

We have eminent domain, and HSR has been built in Europe despite stricter envirobmental regulations.

There are many major infrastructure projects in China that turn out to be poorly planned and executed years after they have been completed.

Wow. Couldn't happen in the US. Never.

It is disingenuous to argue that High Speed Rail is profitable in China

High efficiency public infrastructure doesn't add economic value because it won't show up on China's domestic ledger as "profit for shareholders". You heard it here first.

government and Industry are often one in the same and the lack of good public accounting at Chinese companies makes any reports from HSR advocates out of china questionable

Yes, we have data to argue there is an economic benefit, but DON'T TRUST IT! Everything good you read about China is a lie and everything bad you read about China is a ten times worse.

HSR is much more difficult in the US as the rights of private property are respected

LO-fucking-L.

• In Iowa, an ongoing saga regarding a network of carbon dioxide pipelines proposed by carbon-capture companies has united predominantly conservative farmers and environmental activists on the issue of taking privately owned land for corporate gain.

• Despite feeling intimidated, the Averitts wouldn’t sell their 135-acre property, along with a 100-acre commercial site the family had hoped to develop. The company, Dominion Energy, ended up claiming the land anyway via eminent domain, the power to take private land for “public use,” which in recent years has been invoked with increasing frequency by oil and gas companies seeking to build new pipelines. After Dominion and its ACP partner, Duke Energy, canceled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in July 2020, the Averitts, who had been in the process of challenging the company in court, regained control of their land, but not without a serious financial and emotional toll. Others along the ACP’s route—often rural communities that are disproportionately BIPOC, low-income, or both—have fared even worse in the aftermath of the canceled pipeline, which was going to run from West Virginia to North Carolina, and elsewhere in the country.

And that's just the modern stuff. Google "Robert Moses" if you really want to get a taste for American style private property protections.

This is a great, nuanced post. Musk is still an asshat and we should still get HSR but there are a lot of practical reasons it's harder in the US. Part of that is the lobbying of the automobile industry. Obligatory "fuck cars."

Adam Something does a good job of savaging Musk's bullshit as well, along with lots of other "tech bro" bullshit in the same vein (and no misogyny that I'm aware of). He does talk a bit too fast, however, so I always slow his videos down a bit and they come out alright.

Yeah. Even if he were 100% genuine in his want for it, the challenges facing a nationwide network of pressurized sub-surface tunnels is unfathomable.

I mean, the engineering requirements of building a fucking basement can vary drastically in 2 locations 50 yards from each other.

It would be, by far, the most-difficult engineering project in the history of the world.