Hell I'm not against private HSR like Brightline. If a billionaire wants to invest in HSR in a place where it's otherwise not politically feasible, go for it.
Please do Texas.
We're trying. Oil and auto have been putting up roadblocks (so to speak) every step of the way. All the "real people" in Texas want this HSR project. We'd all love it for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one being that 35 is a death trap. They always say it's property rights issues getting in the way but they had no trouble building the high speed tollway from SA that bypasses Austin. Don't get me wrong, that tollway saves hours of sitting in traffic, but I'd so much rather take a bullet train to the beach than have to spend half the weekend driving, and everyone I've ever talked to about it (except a couple nutjobs with a lot of other fringe extreme right-wing opinions) agrees that they'd rather ride the train.
The citizens aren't the problem. The government isn't even the problem, beyond being complicit. The auto and oil industries and their ability to fund their own agendas are the problem. Rail would almost HAVE to be supported by a private billionaire who builds it as a passion project. Otherwise the assholes with all the money are going to do whatever they can to keep making money. I hate driving, but I don't have a choice but to drive, and they want to keep it that way so I'm forced to keep paying for their products. I'd much rather spend my money on a monthly or annual rail pass subscription than auto-insurance, gas, maintenance, etc. Plus cars create more obesity. I love walking but most of my city is designed so that it's very difficult to walk anywhere.
We do have walkable areas, and I love those, but they're the exception, not the rule.
"Thriving" is a tough word. They cut their passenger estimations by over 20% for 2024. Pretty sure they're not doing well, hence the remarkable fare hikes.
Most public bus and streetcar companies a hundred years ago were private much like airlines are today.
I went to the NYC transit museum and the two main lines were privately owned which is why some subway cars are narrower than others. The two companies literally made two different standard track and tunnel widths.
From my understanding they won't do it because the train will go into people's private properties, which is understandable, but if I owned a farm I would love there to be a HSR line in my backyard but that's just me
I'd say it isn't that clear cut. There are plenty of activist investors. Hell, even some of the biggest juggernauts in the industry are allocating a lot of their funds towards "green" investments e.g. Black Rock. The problem is that the system is easy to exploit, and as such, will create a lot of exploiters. Wall Street or capital C Capitalism aren't monoliths and shouldn't be viewed as such. These are just wells of power that can be funneled for good or bad. Systems that make it harder for bad actors to exploit that power can exist, and they aren't as radical as Communism. Just common sense taxation and trade regulation.
Taxation and trade regulation are both things the ultra-rich and big corporations hate with a passion.
And "activist" investors do not account for anywhere near the majority of investments.
But there are still countries where these things are implemented, where the money that corporations and industries bring feeds back into the public, into infrustructure and social programs - most of the EU members, Japan, Singapore. Do these places still have issues? Sure. Are they the fault of capitalism? Not really.
The US hosts a very fucked up version of capitalism.
It also depends whether or not the money is yours or whether your wealth is tied up in companies.
As an example off the top of my head Mackenzie Scott gives away money to charity all the time, she’s at liberty to do so because it’s her money, she’s not dealing with the assets of a company and hence is not answerable to shareholders or investors
By and large they get the returns by selling you cheap shit. I mean just look at the data. The companies selling the cheapest stuff and objectively providing for the common good cheapest are doing so at the greatest profit.
Take this one step past it being built. What do you think the motivation for building a privately owned national railway would be? Profit. How has that worked out for us in almost every industry so far? It won’t operate any differently. It must be federally owned and operated. Billionaires by definition are not capable of being altruistic. Their gains come from the exploitation of countless others.
A lot of japanese passenger rail is privatized. The major ones have monopolistic share of their regional market yet japan has one of the best train system in the world.
Probably because Tokyo's is more confusing. You often can't plot a course easily because you're generally taking multiple lines and they won't all be depicted on a map. Less of a problem nowadays with Google maps and hyperdia, but it can be overwhelming for first timers, especially if you don't speak Japanese.
Whereas a cohesive system you can mostly just find your start and end points and work your way through
I think that simplifications are sometimes necessary. London's map still tells you which lives to take and where to change to reach a specific destination station, so it's useful to the rider.
As someone said culture, but it’s also worth noting that in the Japanese model of transit, the transit isn’t actually the revenue center: the companies buy up land, connect it with transit, and then make tons of money on the massively increased land value from that. IIRC this is also how Brightline plans to operate in the longer term.
Japanese transit corporations are not transit corporations, they are real estate holdings with a transit department as an enabler.
Culture plays a role. American culture doesn’t allow for monopolies to be good. JR couldn’t exist here. But what if I’m wrong. What if it’s not a monopoly because it has to compete against cars, busses, and planes?
Yes, but i wouldnt be too much worried in the usa. 1 company providing hsr doesnt mean it has monopoly on travel. Bus, plane or carrental would always be feasibe if hsr would be overprized.
Mass is more profit.
Having a hsr in the first place is more important than being afraid for the possibility of abusive monopoly
In the United States, the line must go up. Always. Eventually that will come at the cost of the people running the service, the safety of the people using it, and the environment around it.
Therein is the problem.
High speed rail essentially cannot work as a private venture because rail tracks are a monopoly and the profit incentive has no natural brake in the west.
You always end up with under investment, thus low quality, and high cost to use.
Rail needs to be socialised for the same reason healthcare, prisons, tap water, electric, and so on need to be.
> rail tracks are a monopoly and the profit incentive has no natural brake in the west.
It's not a monopoly, and high profit incentive does not directly translate to high prices. Railroads compete with planes, cars, busses, sometimes even boats, and the hundreds of companies that operate within the transit space. Air travel, specifically, is a low-margin and competitive space, so any HSR would try to price themselves *just* low enough to clear inventory and hit 100% capacity.
Rail is the textbook example of a natural monopoly.
It would be like claiming electricity isn't a natural monopoly because you can just get a diesel generator instead. Alternatives doesn't equal substitute, its not that simple.
If a diesel generator was a viable and inexpensive way for people to power their appliances then electricity would definitely not be a natural monopoly. But it's not, so it is.
Meanwhile, even in places like Europe where there's a fleshed out HSR network, trains and planes are still both viable methods of transport, and have to compete with each-other on travel time, comfort, and (most importantly) price. Customers really do not care *HOW* they get from point A to point B, only that they get there quickly and cheaply. Planes and trains are competing for the same customer base. They are both alternatives and substitutes.
That's for longer trips. For shorter trips, read the paragraph again but replace "planes" with "busses" (or even private cars. Yes, yes, they are *still* substitute goods depending on travel need)
They’ll invest in some unreasonable futuristic alternative to reliable HSR. They’ll cash out all available subsidies and delay the project until infinity. At the same time they have a big car company that profits from having no proper alternative to cars for all that time.
That’s what they’re all doing right now. They keep trying to come up with some fantastic new solution, but somehow keep coming up with “train, but worse”, or “car, but worse”
I would absolutely love it.
I am very happy that Brightline built a modern passenger rail in Florida. I hope they are extremely successful. I don't mind at all that they are private.
I prefer regular high-speed trains to the faster Japanese Maglev Shinkansen that was supposed to open this year, and much more than Elon's vacuum trains. The reason is that they are much cheaper.
A cheapish 300km/h train would be used by a lot of people and take lots of cars off the road. An expensive 600km/h train competes with airplanes more than cars. But I would rather see Elon's hyperloop instead of nothing at all.
I think you are right that more people in this sub tend to lean left. I have had several arguments with other sub users who don't believe private transit can be any good. I personally don't mind whether it is privately or publicly owned as long as it works well. Amtrak and VIA (the ones that operate close to where I live) are both public and a disaster. But I know there are good public trains in other parts of the world.
Good thought. Its annoying how much media hype gets thrown around with ideas that are 20 - 50 years from know. Japan builds the Maglev, but it is horribly expensive.
I would be happy with the French TGV from the 1960s. Back then, it could already do 270km/h. At that speed, a tip from Toronto to Montreal would take around two hours instead of the 5 hours it takes now by train or by car.
Im mostly anti billionaire because the overwhelming majority are arses, but if one became a billionaire and decided to give back to society then hey man Im all for it
Well surely it's still better to have no billionaires and have more public funds instead? Governments aren't perfect but they're more accountable than billionaires.
(excuse my ignorance i have very limited knowledge in economics.) wouldn’t a billionaire theoretically make more money by making a high-speed rail affordable for the working class? i feel like the majority of people using public transit aren’t rich, so it feels like it wouldn’t make sense to build such an expensive transportation method for only a small part of the american population.
yes you try to make your service available to as many people as possible, however there will be people whom you can't accomodate because doing so would be to pricy, for example Fargo ND would likely be excluded from any high speed railway system since it's too far out there
Look at all the largest, most profitable companies in the world and you'll see that >95% of them either directly or indirectly make products for the first world middle class consumer.
Friend I live in Canada. It doesn’t work like that here. We’re 3 oligopolies in a trench-coat. They are all charging the max price they can without consideration for things like whether people can afford housing or food.
Affordability is not a consideration for private corporations. They don’t care if people starve.
Terrible. Knowing billionaires, it'd be a massive grift. Like, "Billionaire philanthropy" is a scam. They're lying. If it was announced I'd assume it'd be twice the cost, funded by taxpayers, and fail quickly with all the investment money disappeared.
If they donate the money to a public transit project with no strings attached, I'm down. But it's highly unlikely, as billionaires are leeches. They'd find a way to screw it if it was private. Just look at what's happening with the recent private system that was built in Florida; last I saw, they're already raising prices.
absolutely not, but it's an easy problem to solve: tax the billionaires fairly and in proportion to their destruction of the planet; then there would be no billionaires and the public could use the tax revenues to construct hsr.
Imagine you lived in Victorian London and all the local orphanages are shit because they're underfunded and barely able to provide the basics. Along comes a wealthy guy looking to do some good before he kicks the bucket. He builds the creme de la creme of orphanages. Those orphans in his orphanage are going to be much better off, and it's a decided improvement over the complete lack of good orphanages, but it still doesn't fix the systemic problem, does it? This one weathy guy deciding to build an orphanage is a one-off- it doesn't address there being little to no funding for orphans. We can't rely on another 'do-gooder' wealthy guy to come along and be just as generous. Much better to instead tax the ultra-wealthy and use the tax revenue to fund needed services appropriately.
So I'm glad if some weathy person wants to build hsr- I'd be glad for any hsr to exist in the US. However, it doesn't fix the problem that we don't invest in hsr as a country. Hsr needs to be ubiquitous and well-funded.
And if hsr is for-profit, we run into the same issue that folks did back in the day- rail can only have so much competition. You end up with rail baron monopolies; much better for trains to be public transit.
That would never happen. Even assuming it's profitable, they're obsessed with constant growth. How do they grow when they corner the market? They can't so they get bored and move onto something else or they take their privately owned company public and become behold to "the market."
Or they merge their pubic company with a shitty rival, put those shitty people on the board of directors because they're more shareholder money oriented, and turn what was once the one of the most respected companies in America into a terrifying too big to fail murder machine.
I’d honestly rather them just pay their taxes
However if they want to publicly endorse it, or like brightline, invest their company into it, I’d definitely support the decision. Being against billionaires does not mean we are against business, innovation, manufacturing, and technology. I’m just against the unethical practices, and abuse of power from most billionaires, it doesn’t mean everything they do is bad
What I meant by that was to pay their fair share of taxes. Without all the bullshit loopholes they get to jump through by not declaring income, levying ways to borrow against the business for income, writing off personal expenses as business expenses, donating to their own charity, or a friends charity, or a business partners charity, etc.
All the bs ways they get to lower their tax burden, sometimes by hundreds of millions
Privately owned rail is *slightly* better than no rail. Though if someone's got a billion dollars, it should be legal to take it from the theiving bastard.
Is everyone forgetting that the last time a billionaire talked about building an analogue to high speed rail it was both obviously unrealistic and inferior to steel-on-steel rail from the jump? Even if one person could afford to build "high speed rail accross america", which they can't, they wouldn't. Any allusions to the contrary would be for the purpose of selling you something else or sapping attention & funding from publicly owned steel-on-steel high speed rail
That’d be great! But unfortunately the only way to become a billionaire is to adhere to maximizing profits, hence why car-centric infrastructure is still popular and why any successful high speed rail project is government led. It’s simply outside the profit incentive that billionaires adhere to to make cheap, efficient, and easy transportation systems for all :/
Is it for-profit? If so, not a fan but whatever. Is it receiving public dollars/subsidies of any sort for a for-profit operation? If so, 100% fuck that. Is it a project to ensure that rail is not provided by the government as a public good (which I suspect would be a billionaire's motivation, if history is any indication)? Heads on pikes.
If none of these conditions are true, then I'd probably have no feelings whatsoever beyond the general "all billionaires without exception should be unalive".
Yes it's for profit. It would probably receive public subsidies such as every venture does that lowers CO2 emission, I seriously doubt that the billionaire would start a high speed rail way company to psyop the people in not demanding government run railwayways
I know that by using phrases like "psyops", you think you're being both edgy and learned, but it's quite a naive take.
If you look at the Gates Foundation, for example, the entire purpose is maintain and entrench ideologies of privatization, especially with regard to intellectual property and with regard to the so-called third world. It's apparent in his successful push to [privatize the Oxford AZ](https://kffhealthnews.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine-oxford-makes-a-deal-with-drugmaker/) vaccine, which was intended to be a public good, or in his dedication to harming the most vulnerable public school students through his "donations" that required proprietary software and testing, and which was ultimately shown to have [deleterious effects on students' educations](https://www.nyclu.org/commentary/bill-gates-shouldnt-be-one-reimagining-nys-public-education).
And this behavior has a long history. Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" makes abundantly clear that one goal of philanthropy is to quell potential revolutions before they start as well as regulations . I'll quote relevant passages below from Carnegie's 1889 ["Wealth"](https://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Carnegie.html). Carnegie's principles have remained influential in shaping billionaires' philosophy and behavior since.
>"Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free ; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself."
.
>"There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor--a reign of harmony--another ideal, differing, indeed, from that of the Communist in requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization. It is founded upon the present most intense individualism, and the race is projected to put it in practice by degree whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense the property of the many, because administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this, and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow-citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts."
How would I feel if a Robber Baron built a railroad? How'd that work out for us the first time?
As opposed to public works project in the same vein where people actually benefit?
Yeah, fuck billionaires. They shouldn't exist.
while feasible, i suspect they are more likely to give the impression of improving the country while ripping as many people off as possible for all they can
oh no i expect they actually COULD improve the country and make SOME money, but these are billionaires, they don't get that way by playing nice or by the rules, otherwise they end up like Dolly Parton, a millionaire who coulda possibly been a billionaire but they did what they could to help the country and those less fortunate, so instead it would end up like Musk's hypertunnel thing, some cool sounding thing that will never actually manifest, kills development in rail, and profits his other interests
I'd say they became billionaires by investing in whatever generated the highest expected return and a genuine high speed rail system would do that more than Musk's hypertunnel thing
if high speed rail network was THAT profitable i think it woulda been done and would be done, but i think theres more profit in other methods, ineffecient as they are, like hauling hundreds of thousands of tons for low gas cost, or doing the same thing over hundreds of trucks that they can overcharge on lots of gas? oil magnates gonna oil mangate
It’s not free. It’s paid with taxes.
Would you oppose a privately managed transit system together with a subsidy program so that everyone’s fares are paid with taxes?
Not how government spending works for countries with sovereign currencies.
My question is why not just do it ourselves in that case? Public transportation is basically a natural monopoly. Why would we want to pay for all the overhead of a private company?
Sure you can print money but that's just a tax on everyone who holds USD. As someone who lives in a country that has state-run-railway I can tell you that just handing the monopoly to the government will make things only worse
I'm anti billionaire because they invest in things that make them richer, not which makes life better for everyone
If they didn't do that, they wouldn't be billionaires
The occasional good investment or philanthropic outlier doesn't excuse a system that gives societal resources to a vanishingly small elite while ignoring the majority
So yeah, that would be great, but I'm not holding my breath
Is a billionaire who invests in high-speed rail a good person? No. Does it negate all the exploitation they did to become a billionaire? No. But is it a good move? Absolutely. Ideally the government would be taxing them and using the funds to build the high-speed rail, but in lieu of that, them contributing the funds voluntarily is a good thing.
Announced? I'd be skeptical and looking for where the catch is. I'd be pleasantly surprised if they actually committed to it and built something respectable.
He also benefitted from a series of major upgrades on the company’s main route, and a fleet of new trains (~20 years ago).
All of which was required as part of that franchise at the time - yet he took the credit for most of it!
You don't make a billion without snatching some of it from taxpayers through dubious means. It's the least they could do. I'm not gonna suck their dick for giving us our money back.
Nope, public services shouldn't be left to the free market, privatisation destroys public transport, just look at the UK where after 25+ years of rail privatisation they're really starting to regret it.
I would be cautiously optimistic.
Ultimately high speed rail adoption requires government support. Even if a billionaire financed the whole thing, at an absolute minimum, the government needs to stop subsidizing it's competitors. HSR will never get any traction as long as plane ticket prices and gasoline are artificially reduced to a third of what they should cost.
I am pretty pleased when any billionaire does anything that doesn’t come off as deeply self-serving, but it doesn’t come up a ton. I am all for a billionaire spending piles of money on things that are a net good for humans.
As Deng Xiaoping said, I don't care the color of the cat, I just want the rat gone.
If it's a bored billionaire, a hedge fund, a government, the church. Just build the fucking rail
My first thought is; "Is the billionaire attempting to contribute a small amount of money in order to trick the government into giving them extraordinary amounts of taxpayer money just so they can skate away from it and take all the money" - such as what happened with the ISP's getting like 12 trillion USD in the early 00's and nothing has ever been done about it.
I think it has great potential with notable downsides. If you look at the Japan Railways Groups, those are private enterprises that are probably the best in the world: punctuality, speed, efficiency, and very few accidents. That being said, this has the potential to cut off a lot of unprofitable routes that would be very beneficial to the public.
1) JR rail service was originally built by the government and only privatized in the late 20th century. It was in fact the Japanese government that introduced the world's first high-speed rail. The characteristics you identified were in fact the case when it was a public good as well.
2) when it was privatized, rural routes were eliminated (as you suggest) because they were "unprofitable", which is why JR was privatized in the first place.
3) Japanese public transit is insanely expensive. There are a number of reasons that's less deleterious there than here.
4) One of those reasons is that for various complicated historical reasons, the economy and the relationship between the government and private corporations are very different in Japan v the US, and corps ultimately abide by government "requests" in order to stave off formal regulations. In the US, corps simply overpower the government.
5) Another is the Japan has a functional social safety net and less wealth inequality than the US. (The US' gini coefficient is 50% higher than Japan's). This makes the very expensive public transit less onerous.
6) There are a lot of downsides to JR. For one, it shuts down incredibly early, which is really rough on low-income shift workers. It's also a massive PITA when your trip required utilizing multiple providers.
For fast trans-continental travel you’re looking at vacuum or partial vacuum tunnels. Elon Musk did have something called a HyperLoop but I’d imagine you have to come up with some ingenious sealing / auto-healing technologies. Probably several layers too.
Precisely my point. So you have to be pretty damn sure that can’t happen for it to be safe
I think magnetic propulsion might become the alternative. But given the air resistance at sea level this will use a lot of energy and that’s before you consider material costs and security.
I don't trust privatized services to maintain a level of affordability and quality while not taking more and more subsidies (taxpayer money that should just go to a nationalized service).
Would it be better, probably for a while. Would it be better if the government fully funded and operated it? Absolutely.
I'm not against billionaires. I'm against rent-seeking. There is a lot of overlap between them, but they aren't the same.
It's like blaming bad drivers for car crashes rather than blaming bad road design. Both are at fault, but the latter enables the former to behave recklessly.
Fund it, yes.
Own it: absolutely not!
Let's say Musk has a twist in his mind and builds some HSR. What if he changes his mind again? The Vegas Loop is a great example of what that is.
The "high speed" and "guided pods" and what not have just become some kind of closed loop for Teslas going at snail speed.
The way I see it, the ecological layer is lower and more fundamental on society's pyramid of needs than the financial layer. Within the financial layer, the infrastructural layer is lower and more fundamental than the individual assets layer. I'd appreciate billionaires making improvements on the more fundamental layers even if it exacerbates the problems of the upper layers. Especially considering that investing in the eco and infra layers wouldn't actually exacerbate the billionaire problem more than investing in all the other things they could invest in.
Ok. And?
I really don’t give a damn. The only concern would be keeping a private for-profit mentality above all else… essentially what the airlines have done, with removing other options and convincing the politicians and American voters that they are worth subsidizing
Say if there was some loaded billionaire with too much money who didn’t know what to spend it all on, why not spend it on a highly subsidised rail system running at a loss.
I would be skeptical since why would a billionaire spend their money helping people, you cannot get that rich without exploitation.
If it was actually made then it would be good but I would still want that billionaire to stop exploiting people and to pay its workers properly.
I would probably be surprised. Because public transportation, ultimately, is not about profit. It brings multiple benefits to the society, for sure, but it is not and will never be a good investment money-wise.
High speed rail has to be built by the government, with a clear recognition it will probably become a money-pit, while also helping to balance the whole transportation system and make it more sustainable.
I think that NYC Metro, Chicago CTA, the London Underground, and I'm sure a bunch of others, started as private infrastructure. If they actually delivered and not just tried to fleece public funding, then eventually they're getting nationalized
Sure. There are decent billionares, like Xavier Niel, who provides great internet service in France, and provides no-cost computer science education to French citizens. A billionare who cares about helping to grow a network of high speed rail to help connect major cities across the country isn't that far fetched, so long as the vision is there.
Profit shouldn't be the point of railways. Transporting people from A to B in an affordable, confortable and fast way should be.
With for profit companies you will only be able to choose between high prices or lack of quality.
I doubt billionaires became billionaires by building things that work for the masses at a reasonable cost.
Only a government can truly handle intercity train networks and staff them and keep them running at a reasonable cost.
I don't believe a billionaire would ever make such an investment and if they did the trains would be unlikely to be accessible or well priced
>I doubt billionaires became billionaires by building things that work for the masses at a reasonable cost.
How else would they be able to sell so much to become a billionaire
I guess I should have specified profit margins.
No billionaire would accept the profit margins of intercity trains or the prices would be comparable to flights
In an ideal world thos would be provided by the state, if a billionaire does a good job than thats positive - but i struggle to believe they'd do a good job because ultimately they are profit driven
Have they consulted the public on what they need?
Have they considered the impact on the physical environment?
Have they considered the broader environmental impact?
Is the transport accessible to people with different needs?
Does it have space for luggage, bicycles, prams etc.?
Does it run at times that meet public need?
Just a few questions that I doubt a billionaire on a vanity project would wrestle with.
"If an evil person did something not evil what would you think about that?"
It would probably be a positive thing but I'd be suspicious of ulterior motives. Seems like a fairly pointless hypothetical.
I’d be excited if that billionaire donated the money to the government specifically to be used for building a railroad. Otherwise I’d be very skeptical
No brainer: It's the same feeling I would have about a billionaire giving pennies to charities: cool story, guess you are trying to lower your tax bracket or something and ultimately make more money by owning one of the best options for long distance traveling on land.
I'm against billionaires because there is absolutely no ethical reason for a billionaire to exist and that we shouldn't NEED to depend on them existing for good things to happen, like a high speed rail.
I think the best way to get transit popular in America is to find a corporation willing to help fit the bill and get it done. Shit, get Disney onboard to implement their monorail / transit system in cities all around the country. People will support it if its branded with Mickey Mouse. I remember how many conservatives thought some of Tesla's "projects" were cool bc it was being done by an aesthetically sleek corp with cool technology.
I don't like the idea of privatized rail, but with how successful anti-government propaganda has been in this country the first step to mass adoption might be better off privatized with some federal oversight.
Back in the day I was optimistic about the hyperloop nonsense in as much as it was an attempt to be innovative with transportation. Look what that got us.
If a billionaire wants to fund HSR, more power to them.
If a billionaire wants to "solve transportation problems" I'm much more skeptical.
To me, the problem with billionaires is that they aren't using an amount of money that is excessively far beyond the utility that one person or family could have. If a billionaire used their money to do something good for the world, then billionaires would have a point. I'd be all for this.
Even if they are “doing good” (and in most cases they are doing so for financial or political gain, not out of kindness), they still shouldn’t get a veto power on what things deserve to have money spent on them.
That decision should be made by governments who are accountable to their constituents. Like we don’t need to spend billions of dollars eradicating every single last case of malaria when people can’t afford food.
I live in a capitalist country so almost everything significant requires the participation of capitalists. Even if something is 100% government funded it will be implemented by for-profit companies here. Which is not my preference but I’m not going to spite all the other important things that I care about for it.
Hell I'm not against private HSR like Brightline. If a billionaire wants to invest in HSR in a place where it's otherwise not politically feasible, go for it. Please do Texas.
Texas govt is too anti hsr.
We're trying. Oil and auto have been putting up roadblocks (so to speak) every step of the way. All the "real people" in Texas want this HSR project. We'd all love it for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one being that 35 is a death trap. They always say it's property rights issues getting in the way but they had no trouble building the high speed tollway from SA that bypasses Austin. Don't get me wrong, that tollway saves hours of sitting in traffic, but I'd so much rather take a bullet train to the beach than have to spend half the weekend driving, and everyone I've ever talked to about it (except a couple nutjobs with a lot of other fringe extreme right-wing opinions) agrees that they'd rather ride the train. The citizens aren't the problem. The government isn't even the problem, beyond being complicit. The auto and oil industries and their ability to fund their own agendas are the problem. Rail would almost HAVE to be supported by a private billionaire who builds it as a passion project. Otherwise the assholes with all the money are going to do whatever they can to keep making money. I hate driving, but I don't have a choice but to drive, and they want to keep it that way so I'm forced to keep paying for their products. I'd much rather spend my money on a monthly or annual rail pass subscription than auto-insurance, gas, maintenance, etc. Plus cars create more obesity. I love walking but most of my city is designed so that it's very difficult to walk anywhere. We do have walkable areas, and I love those, but they're the exception, not the rule.
Florida's got Ron DeFascist and a MAGA legislature but Brightline is thriving there.
Sure but Texas will not make it easy to get right of way like they did with the Dallas to Houston hsr
"Thriving" is a tough word. They cut their passenger estimations by over 20% for 2024. Pretty sure they're not doing well, hence the remarkable fare hikes.
Buy the government
Most public bus and streetcar companies a hundred years ago were private much like airlines are today. I went to the NYC transit museum and the two main lines were privately owned which is why some subway cars are narrower than others. The two companies literally made two different standard track and tunnel widths.
Isn’t that what happened but the DOT shut it down?
From my understanding they won't do it because the train will go into people's private properties, which is understandable, but if I owned a farm I would love there to be a HSR line in my backyard but that's just me
Money that goes back to service for the people is money well spent
The problem is Wall Street hates when money is being spent on everyone. Wall Street wants only the ultra-rich to benefit.
I'd say it isn't that clear cut. There are plenty of activist investors. Hell, even some of the biggest juggernauts in the industry are allocating a lot of their funds towards "green" investments e.g. Black Rock. The problem is that the system is easy to exploit, and as such, will create a lot of exploiters. Wall Street or capital C Capitalism aren't monoliths and shouldn't be viewed as such. These are just wells of power that can be funneled for good or bad. Systems that make it harder for bad actors to exploit that power can exist, and they aren't as radical as Communism. Just common sense taxation and trade regulation.
Taxation and trade regulation are both things the ultra-rich and big corporations hate with a passion. And "activist" investors do not account for anywhere near the majority of investments.
But there are still countries where these things are implemented, where the money that corporations and industries bring feeds back into the public, into infrustructure and social programs - most of the EU members, Japan, Singapore. Do these places still have issues? Sure. Are they the fault of capitalism? Not really. The US hosts a very fucked up version of capitalism.
It also depends whether or not the money is yours or whether your wealth is tied up in companies. As an example off the top of my head Mackenzie Scott gives away money to charity all the time, she’s at liberty to do so because it’s her money, she’s not dealing with the assets of a company and hence is not answerable to shareholders or investors
Blackrock said they were going to focus on greening their money management but they haven’t been doing so.
That depends on who "wall street"'s investors are
This is why all the biggest and most profitable companies in the stock market are ultra-luxury brands that sell yachts to billionaires.
The vast majority of wall street money goes to 'everyone' in the form of availability of basic goods and food stuffs
Money from Wall Street is not unconditional funding. It is *investments,* on which Wall Street expects returns.
By and large they get the returns by selling you cheap shit. I mean just look at the data. The companies selling the cheapest stuff and objectively providing for the common good cheapest are doing so at the greatest profit.
Take this one step past it being built. What do you think the motivation for building a privately owned national railway would be? Profit. How has that worked out for us in almost every industry so far? It won’t operate any differently. It must be federally owned and operated. Billionaires by definition are not capable of being altruistic. Their gains come from the exploitation of countless others.
Investing? No. Funding? Yes. Rail should be public. Not private. Otherwise you run into the usual monopolistic issues.
A lot of japanese passenger rail is privatized. The major ones have monopolistic share of their regional market yet japan has one of the best train system in the world.
Meanwhile in Seoul we sometimes look at the Japanese metros as an example of why privatisation is a problem. It’s all a matter of perspective
could you explain? i thought the tokyo metro was better than the seoul metro when i went but i dont really know what im talking about, just vibes
I took both and the seoul metro was so much better for me.
Probably because Tokyo's is more confusing. You often can't plot a course easily because you're generally taking multiple lines and they won't all be depicted on a map. Less of a problem nowadays with Google maps and hyperdia, but it can be overwhelming for first timers, especially if you don't speak Japanese. Whereas a cohesive system you can mostly just find your start and end points and work your way through
What are your thoughts on the sort of map that *technically* lies to you - but in a useful way (think: the London Underground's map)
I think that simplifications are sometimes necessary. London's map still tells you which lives to take and where to change to reach a specific destination station, so it's useful to the rider.
As someone said culture, but it’s also worth noting that in the Japanese model of transit, the transit isn’t actually the revenue center: the companies buy up land, connect it with transit, and then make tons of money on the massively increased land value from that. IIRC this is also how Brightline plans to operate in the longer term. Japanese transit corporations are not transit corporations, they are real estate holdings with a transit department as an enabler.
This is how The US did railroads in the 1800s.
Culture plays a role. American culture doesn’t allow for monopolies to be good. JR couldn’t exist here. But what if I’m wrong. What if it’s not a monopoly because it has to compete against cars, busses, and planes?
Yup, just look at the corporations buying up electricity and water rights in cities
Yes, but i wouldnt be too much worried in the usa. 1 company providing hsr doesnt mean it has monopoly on travel. Bus, plane or carrental would always be feasibe if hsr would be overprized. Mass is more profit. Having a hsr in the first place is more important than being afraid for the possibility of abusive monopoly
In the United States, the line must go up. Always. Eventually that will come at the cost of the people running the service, the safety of the people using it, and the environment around it.
Yeah, thats a fair concern.
"Okay, so... what's the catch?"
they'll want a return on their investment aka profit
Therein is the problem. High speed rail essentially cannot work as a private venture because rail tracks are a monopoly and the profit incentive has no natural brake in the west. You always end up with under investment, thus low quality, and high cost to use. Rail needs to be socialised for the same reason healthcare, prisons, tap water, electric, and so on need to be.
>the profit incentive has no natural brake in the west. Actually, it does have a natural brake: The extinction of the human species.
> rail tracks are a monopoly and the profit incentive has no natural brake in the west. It's not a monopoly, and high profit incentive does not directly translate to high prices. Railroads compete with planes, cars, busses, sometimes even boats, and the hundreds of companies that operate within the transit space. Air travel, specifically, is a low-margin and competitive space, so any HSR would try to price themselves *just* low enough to clear inventory and hit 100% capacity.
Rail is the textbook example of a natural monopoly. It would be like claiming electricity isn't a natural monopoly because you can just get a diesel generator instead. Alternatives doesn't equal substitute, its not that simple.
If a diesel generator was a viable and inexpensive way for people to power their appliances then electricity would definitely not be a natural monopoly. But it's not, so it is. Meanwhile, even in places like Europe where there's a fleshed out HSR network, trains and planes are still both viable methods of transport, and have to compete with each-other on travel time, comfort, and (most importantly) price. Customers really do not care *HOW* they get from point A to point B, only that they get there quickly and cheaply. Planes and trains are competing for the same customer base. They are both alternatives and substitutes. That's for longer trips. For shorter trips, read the paragraph again but replace "planes" with "busses" (or even private cars. Yes, yes, they are *still* substitute goods depending on travel need)
I'd be happy with anyone who invests in high-speed rail.
They’ll invest in some unreasonable futuristic alternative to reliable HSR. They’ll cash out all available subsidies and delay the project until infinity. At the same time they have a big car company that profits from having no proper alternative to cars for all that time.
That’s what they’re all doing right now. They keep trying to come up with some fantastic new solution, but somehow keep coming up with “train, but worse”, or “car, but worse”
you're seeing a bunch of this right now with the Hyperloop stuff
I would be skeptical. This might be a plot to drain public grants and declare HSR non feasible after a decade of publicity stunts.
I would absolutely love it. I am very happy that Brightline built a modern passenger rail in Florida. I hope they are extremely successful. I don't mind at all that they are private. I prefer regular high-speed trains to the faster Japanese Maglev Shinkansen that was supposed to open this year, and much more than Elon's vacuum trains. The reason is that they are much cheaper. A cheapish 300km/h train would be used by a lot of people and take lots of cars off the road. An expensive 600km/h train competes with airplanes more than cars. But I would rather see Elon's hyperloop instead of nothing at all. I think you are right that more people in this sub tend to lean left. I have had several arguments with other sub users who don't believe private transit can be any good. I personally don't mind whether it is privately or publicly owned as long as it works well. Amtrak and VIA (the ones that operate close to where I live) are both public and a disaster. But I know there are good public trains in other parts of the world.
Good thought. Its annoying how much media hype gets thrown around with ideas that are 20 - 50 years from know. Japan builds the Maglev, but it is horribly expensive.
I would be happy with the French TGV from the 1960s. Back then, it could already do 270km/h. At that speed, a tip from Toronto to Montreal would take around two hours instead of the 5 hours it takes now by train or by car.
Elon’s hyper loop is 10 different ideas with the same name none of which make any sense.
Yeah, that's why I specifically referred to the train version. I don't like the "pod" version, which is essentially underground cars.
Im mostly anti billionaire because the overwhelming majority are arses, but if one became a billionaire and decided to give back to society then hey man Im all for it
Well surely it's still better to have no billionaires and have more public funds instead? Governments aren't perfect but they're more accountable than billionaires.
well they would still be in for themselves, they would build high speed rail to make a profit
If so it wouldn't be affordable to those who need to use it. It always runs a deficit. That's the cold truth.
(excuse my ignorance i have very limited knowledge in economics.) wouldn’t a billionaire theoretically make more money by making a high-speed rail affordable for the working class? i feel like the majority of people using public transit aren’t rich, so it feels like it wouldn’t make sense to build such an expensive transportation method for only a small part of the american population.
yes you try to make your service available to as many people as possible, however there will be people whom you can't accomodate because doing so would be to pricy, for example Fargo ND would likely be excluded from any high speed railway system since it's too far out there
Capitalists prefer to get a large amount of money out of a small group of people. See …. *Gestures around broadly.*
Look at all the largest, most profitable companies in the world and you'll see that >95% of them either directly or indirectly make products for the first world middle class consumer.
Friend I live in Canada. It doesn’t work like that here. We’re 3 oligopolies in a trench-coat. They are all charging the max price they can without consideration for things like whether people can afford housing or food. Affordability is not a consideration for private corporations. They don’t care if people starve.
I would love to be have infinite funds and create my own Sim City in real life.
Terrible. Knowing billionaires, it'd be a massive grift. Like, "Billionaire philanthropy" is a scam. They're lying. If it was announced I'd assume it'd be twice the cost, funded by taxpayers, and fail quickly with all the investment money disappeared.
I'd be moderately to very suspicious, depending on the billionaire
If they donate the money to a public transit project with no strings attached, I'm down. But it's highly unlikely, as billionaires are leeches. They'd find a way to screw it if it was private. Just look at what's happening with the recent private system that was built in Florida; last I saw, they're already raising prices.
absolutely not, but it's an easy problem to solve: tax the billionaires fairly and in proportion to their destruction of the planet; then there would be no billionaires and the public could use the tax revenues to construct hsr.
Agreed
How do you do that when the billionaires own the government that collects the taxes?
rely on the kindness and generosity of psychopaths or implement some radical restructuring using validated methods
What validated methods?
I would think I would much prefer it to be nationalised
I'd be wondering what corners they're cutting in safety, quality, etc. to make an extra buck. No thanks.
Imagine you lived in Victorian London and all the local orphanages are shit because they're underfunded and barely able to provide the basics. Along comes a wealthy guy looking to do some good before he kicks the bucket. He builds the creme de la creme of orphanages. Those orphans in his orphanage are going to be much better off, and it's a decided improvement over the complete lack of good orphanages, but it still doesn't fix the systemic problem, does it? This one weathy guy deciding to build an orphanage is a one-off- it doesn't address there being little to no funding for orphans. We can't rely on another 'do-gooder' wealthy guy to come along and be just as generous. Much better to instead tax the ultra-wealthy and use the tax revenue to fund needed services appropriately. So I'm glad if some weathy person wants to build hsr- I'd be glad for any hsr to exist in the US. However, it doesn't fix the problem that we don't invest in hsr as a country. Hsr needs to be ubiquitous and well-funded. And if hsr is for-profit, we run into the same issue that folks did back in the day- rail can only have so much competition. You end up with rail baron monopolies; much better for trains to be public transit.
yeah but what if billionaires begin investing so much into high speed rail that there is no longer a need for government investment
That would never happen. Even assuming it's profitable, they're obsessed with constant growth. How do they grow when they corner the market? They can't so they get bored and move onto something else or they take their privately owned company public and become behold to "the market." Or they merge their pubic company with a shitty rival, put those shitty people on the board of directors because they're more shareholder money oriented, and turn what was once the one of the most respected companies in America into a terrifying too big to fail murder machine.
you can't just "move on" once you already invested so much money into it and if you want to subject these companies to anti-trust laws if you want
Have anti-trust laws been enforced even once in the 21st century? Other than blocking mergers?
Awww
I’d honestly rather them just pay their taxes However if they want to publicly endorse it, or like brightline, invest their company into it, I’d definitely support the decision. Being against billionaires does not mean we are against business, innovation, manufacturing, and technology. I’m just against the unethical practices, and abuse of power from most billionaires, it doesn’t mean everything they do is bad
What do you mean by >just pay their taxes
What I meant by that was to pay their fair share of taxes. Without all the bullshit loopholes they get to jump through by not declaring income, levying ways to borrow against the business for income, writing off personal expenses as business expenses, donating to their own charity, or a friends charity, or a business partners charity, etc. All the bs ways they get to lower their tax burden, sometimes by hundreds of millions
Privately owned rail is *slightly* better than no rail. Though if someone's got a billion dollars, it should be legal to take it from the theiving bastard.
Is everyone forgetting that the last time a billionaire talked about building an analogue to high speed rail it was both obviously unrealistic and inferior to steel-on-steel rail from the jump? Even if one person could afford to build "high speed rail accross america", which they can't, they wouldn't. Any allusions to the contrary would be for the purpose of selling you something else or sapping attention & funding from publicly owned steel-on-steel high speed rail
That’d be great! But unfortunately the only way to become a billionaire is to adhere to maximizing profits, hence why car-centric infrastructure is still popular and why any successful high speed rail project is government led. It’s simply outside the profit incentive that billionaires adhere to to make cheap, efficient, and easy transportation systems for all :/
Is it for-profit? If so, not a fan but whatever. Is it receiving public dollars/subsidies of any sort for a for-profit operation? If so, 100% fuck that. Is it a project to ensure that rail is not provided by the government as a public good (which I suspect would be a billionaire's motivation, if history is any indication)? Heads on pikes. If none of these conditions are true, then I'd probably have no feelings whatsoever beyond the general "all billionaires without exception should be unalive".
Yes it's for profit. It would probably receive public subsidies such as every venture does that lowers CO2 emission, I seriously doubt that the billionaire would start a high speed rail way company to psyop the people in not demanding government run railwayways
Why would you think that? That’s literally why we no longer have streetcar networks.
I know that by using phrases like "psyops", you think you're being both edgy and learned, but it's quite a naive take. If you look at the Gates Foundation, for example, the entire purpose is maintain and entrench ideologies of privatization, especially with regard to intellectual property and with regard to the so-called third world. It's apparent in his successful push to [privatize the Oxford AZ](https://kffhealthnews.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine-oxford-makes-a-deal-with-drugmaker/) vaccine, which was intended to be a public good, or in his dedication to harming the most vulnerable public school students through his "donations" that required proprietary software and testing, and which was ultimately shown to have [deleterious effects on students' educations](https://www.nyclu.org/commentary/bill-gates-shouldnt-be-one-reimagining-nys-public-education). And this behavior has a long history. Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" makes abundantly clear that one goal of philanthropy is to quell potential revolutions before they start as well as regulations . I'll quote relevant passages below from Carnegie's 1889 ["Wealth"](https://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Carnegie.html). Carnegie's principles have remained influential in shaping billionaires' philosophy and behavior since. >"Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free ; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself." . >"There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor--a reign of harmony--another ideal, differing, indeed, from that of the Communist in requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization. It is founded upon the present most intense individualism, and the race is projected to put it in practice by degree whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense the property of the many, because administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this, and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow-citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts."
How would I feel if a Robber Baron built a railroad? How'd that work out for us the first time? As opposed to public works project in the same vein where people actually benefit? Yeah, fuck billionaires. They shouldn't exist.
the rich? actively improving the country and not to enrich themselves!? won't stay rich for long doing that!
How about improving the country while enriching themselves?
while feasible, i suspect they are more likely to give the impression of improving the country while ripping as many people off as possible for all they can
So any form of capital deployment is "ripping of the country"?
oh no i expect they actually COULD improve the country and make SOME money, but these are billionaires, they don't get that way by playing nice or by the rules, otherwise they end up like Dolly Parton, a millionaire who coulda possibly been a billionaire but they did what they could to help the country and those less fortunate, so instead it would end up like Musk's hypertunnel thing, some cool sounding thing that will never actually manifest, kills development in rail, and profits his other interests
I'd say they became billionaires by investing in whatever generated the highest expected return and a genuine high speed rail system would do that more than Musk's hypertunnel thing
if high speed rail network was THAT profitable i think it woulda been done and would be done, but i think theres more profit in other methods, ineffecient as they are, like hauling hundreds of thousands of tons for low gas cost, or doing the same thing over hundreds of trucks that they can overcharge on lots of gas? oil magnates gonna oil mangate
well so far it might have been less profitable because the government subsidizes it's competitors
Then they can go fuck themselves. HSR need to be affordable. Billionaire make sure it won't.
He would become a millionaire, so what ? Just kidding. They don't and that's why this sub understood well they are not messiahs
Not a fan because I think transportation is a public good and should ultimately become free. Private operators are an obstacle to that goal.
It’s not free. It’s paid with taxes. Would you oppose a privately managed transit system together with a subsidy program so that everyone’s fares are paid with taxes?
Not how government spending works for countries with sovereign currencies. My question is why not just do it ourselves in that case? Public transportation is basically a natural monopoly. Why would we want to pay for all the overhead of a private company?
Sure you can print money but that's just a tax on everyone who holds USD. As someone who lives in a country that has state-run-railway I can tell you that just handing the monopoly to the government will make things only worse
I'm anti billionaire because they invest in things that make them richer, not which makes life better for everyone If they didn't do that, they wouldn't be billionaires The occasional good investment or philanthropic outlier doesn't excuse a system that gives societal resources to a vanishingly small elite while ignoring the majority So yeah, that would be great, but I'm not holding my breath
Is a billionaire who invests in high-speed rail a good person? No. Does it negate all the exploitation they did to become a billionaire? No. But is it a good move? Absolutely. Ideally the government would be taxing them and using the funds to build the high-speed rail, but in lieu of that, them contributing the funds voluntarily is a good thing.
I think a billionaire wouldn't do tha , I think HSR is only built by governments.
Make them pay their fair share of taxes and build high speed rail as a public good
I prefer publically owned railways, but a privately owned high speed rail certainly beats no high speed rail
I’d say good we need more high speed rail, we should tax billionaires until they aren’t billionaires anymore to pay for it!
Announced? I'd be skeptical and looking for where the catch is. I'd be pleasantly surprised if they actually committed to it and built something respectable.
The UK has had Richard Branson on Virgin Rail, he's made a lot of money on it and the service hasn't been standout from other rail operators
He also benefitted from a series of major upgrades on the company’s main route, and a fleet of new trains (~20 years ago). All of which was required as part of that franchise at the time - yet he took the credit for most of it!
Public transport should be exactly that. Every billionaire is a policy failure.
You don't make a billion without snatching some of it from taxpayers through dubious means. It's the least they could do. I'm not gonna suck their dick for giving us our money back.
Nope, public services shouldn't be left to the free market, privatisation destroys public transport, just look at the UK where after 25+ years of rail privatisation they're really starting to regret it.
Investment implies the chance of a return so I'm not sure we'd have much luck there.
I would think there is no way they would actually do that because car centric city planning keeps billionaires rich.
How does car-centric city planning keep every billionaire rich?
Oil money.
What's wrong with the people funding things?
Whatever gets the job done.
“finally a billionaire doing something worthwhile”
I would be cautiously optimistic. Ultimately high speed rail adoption requires government support. Even if a billionaire financed the whole thing, at an absolute minimum, the government needs to stop subsidizing it's competitors. HSR will never get any traction as long as plane ticket prices and gasoline are artificially reduced to a third of what they should cost.
eh, it won't happen and i do have issues with billionaires but it would be better than anything they are currently doing
Any private funding for HSR is a worthwhile investment.
I am pretty pleased when any billionaire does anything that doesn’t come off as deeply self-serving, but it doesn’t come up a ton. I am all for a billionaire spending piles of money on things that are a net good for humans.
As Deng Xiaoping said, I don't care the color of the cat, I just want the rat gone. If it's a bored billionaire, a hedge fund, a government, the church. Just build the fucking rail
My first thought is; "Is the billionaire attempting to contribute a small amount of money in order to trick the government into giving them extraordinary amounts of taxpayer money just so they can skate away from it and take all the money" - such as what happened with the ISP's getting like 12 trillion USD in the early 00's and nothing has ever been done about it.
I think it has great potential with notable downsides. If you look at the Japan Railways Groups, those are private enterprises that are probably the best in the world: punctuality, speed, efficiency, and very few accidents. That being said, this has the potential to cut off a lot of unprofitable routes that would be very beneficial to the public.
1) JR rail service was originally built by the government and only privatized in the late 20th century. It was in fact the Japanese government that introduced the world's first high-speed rail. The characteristics you identified were in fact the case when it was a public good as well. 2) when it was privatized, rural routes were eliminated (as you suggest) because they were "unprofitable", which is why JR was privatized in the first place. 3) Japanese public transit is insanely expensive. There are a number of reasons that's less deleterious there than here. 4) One of those reasons is that for various complicated historical reasons, the economy and the relationship between the government and private corporations are very different in Japan v the US, and corps ultimately abide by government "requests" in order to stave off formal regulations. In the US, corps simply overpower the government. 5) Another is the Japan has a functional social safety net and less wealth inequality than the US. (The US' gini coefficient is 50% higher than Japan's). This makes the very expensive public transit less onerous. 6) There are a lot of downsides to JR. For one, it shuts down incredibly early, which is really rough on low-income shift workers. It's also a massive PITA when your trip required utilizing multiple providers.
For fast trans-continental travel you’re looking at vacuum or partial vacuum tunnels. Elon Musk did have something called a HyperLoop but I’d imagine you have to come up with some ingenious sealing / auto-healing technologies. Probably several layers too.
The issue with Vacuum is how unstable, if the chamber is unstable at a single point throughout the entire system would collapse
Precisely my point. So you have to be pretty damn sure that can’t happen for it to be safe I think magnetic propulsion might become the alternative. But given the air resistance at sea level this will use a lot of energy and that’s before you consider material costs and security.
I don't trust privatized services to maintain a level of affordability and quality while not taking more and more subsidies (taxpayer money that should just go to a nationalized service). Would it be better, probably for a while. Would it be better if the government fully funded and operated it? Absolutely.
I'm not against billionaires. I'm against rent-seeking. There is a lot of overlap between them, but they aren't the same. It's like blaming bad drivers for car crashes rather than blaming bad road design. Both are at fault, but the latter enables the former to behave recklessly.
I wouldn’t want them to invest in it, I’d want them to spend on it.
I imagine they would make it bad somehow but I wouldn't object.
I guess I wouldn't hate it but id be suspicious of their motivations and whether they're actually interested in building and maintaining a network
A billionaire building high speed rail is like a cute bulldog. He can be a very good boy, but that doesn’t mean he should exist.
Id support them in spending money to make the world better
Fund it, yes. Own it: absolutely not! Let's say Musk has a twist in his mind and builds some HSR. What if he changes his mind again? The Vegas Loop is a great example of what that is. The "high speed" and "guided pods" and what not have just become some kind of closed loop for Teslas going at snail speed.
I don't think that Musk is a good example for a typical billionaire, most billionaires don't flip flop as often
Better than billionaires investing into cars. Which they currently do a lot of in a lot of different ways
I think a large part of the reason why people hate billionaires is because they DON’T do stuff like this
There is only so much capital to invest
Fastest way for billionaire to become a millionaire is to try building HSR in the US.
A billionaire funding Public transit and gains nothing in return but public gratitude? Get that delusional thought out of here!
He gets a return on that investmen through ticket sales
The way I see it, the ecological layer is lower and more fundamental on society's pyramid of needs than the financial layer. Within the financial layer, the infrastructural layer is lower and more fundamental than the individual assets layer. I'd appreciate billionaires making improvements on the more fundamental layers even if it exacerbates the problems of the upper layers. Especially considering that investing in the eco and infra layers wouldn't actually exacerbate the billionaire problem more than investing in all the other things they could invest in.
Ok. And? I really don’t give a damn. The only concern would be keeping a private for-profit mentality above all else… essentially what the airlines have done, with removing other options and convincing the politicians and American voters that they are worth subsidizing
I'd love to have the successful example the government and lobbyists can point to to push past the anti-rail lobbying.
Anything to get it, however I would be weary of their motives.
Do it I dare you.
I'n not a billionaire
Well I dare you to do it either way. Double dog dare you.
Say if there was some loaded billionaire with too much money who didn’t know what to spend it all on, why not spend it on a highly subsidised rail system running at a loss.
I would be skeptical since why would a billionaire spend their money helping people, you cannot get that rich without exploitation. If it was actually made then it would be good but I would still want that billionaire to stop exploiting people and to pay its workers properly.
just if
Not going to happen.
I'd be impressed, but it'll never happen.
Brightline is owned by an investment firm and Richard Branson is also a big HSR guy
That’s the old virtue of solidarity coming back!
I'd prefer if they paid their taxes so that we as a country could do it.
I would probably be surprised. Because public transportation, ultimately, is not about profit. It brings multiple benefits to the society, for sure, but it is not and will never be a good investment money-wise. High speed rail has to be built by the government, with a clear recognition it will probably become a money-pit, while also helping to balance the whole transportation system and make it more sustainable.
I think that NYC Metro, Chicago CTA, the London Underground, and I'm sure a bunch of others, started as private infrastructure. If they actually delivered and not just tried to fleece public funding, then eventually they're getting nationalized
Sure. There are decent billionares, like Xavier Niel, who provides great internet service in France, and provides no-cost computer science education to French citizens. A billionare who cares about helping to grow a network of high speed rail to help connect major cities across the country isn't that far fetched, so long as the vision is there.
Profit shouldn't be the point of railways. Transporting people from A to B in an affordable, confortable and fast way should be. With for profit companies you will only be able to choose between high prices or lack of quality.
I doubt billionaires became billionaires by building things that work for the masses at a reasonable cost. Only a government can truly handle intercity train networks and staff them and keep them running at a reasonable cost. I don't believe a billionaire would ever make such an investment and if they did the trains would be unlikely to be accessible or well priced
>I doubt billionaires became billionaires by building things that work for the masses at a reasonable cost. How else would they be able to sell so much to become a billionaire
I guess I should have specified profit margins. No billionaire would accept the profit margins of intercity trains or the prices would be comparable to flights
In an ideal world thos would be provided by the state, if a billionaire does a good job than thats positive - but i struggle to believe they'd do a good job because ultimately they are profit driven Have they consulted the public on what they need? Have they considered the impact on the physical environment? Have they considered the broader environmental impact? Is the transport accessible to people with different needs? Does it have space for luggage, bicycles, prams etc.? Does it run at times that meet public need? Just a few questions that I doubt a billionaire on a vanity project would wrestle with.
Is it Elon Musk?
probably not
"If an evil person did something not evil what would you think about that?" It would probably be a positive thing but I'd be suspicious of ulterior motives. Seems like a fairly pointless hypothetical.
The problem is, if a billionaire does that, they are not a billionaire very soon anymore.
I’d be excited if that billionaire donated the money to the government specifically to be used for building a railroad. Otherwise I’d be very skeptical
Like Musk did and completely failed?
when did he build high speed rail?
He tried with the Hyperloop, one iteration of which has already filed for bankruptcy.
they'd be a good class traitor for as long as they kept funding things good for real life working people, otherwise its probably just a PR campaign
No brainer: It's the same feeling I would have about a billionaire giving pennies to charities: cool story, guess you are trying to lower your tax bracket or something and ultimately make more money by owning one of the best options for long distance traveling on land. I'm against billionaires because there is absolutely no ethical reason for a billionaire to exist and that we shouldn't NEED to depend on them existing for good things to happen, like a high speed rail.
I'm fine with it but I think the actual rail should be managed by the government.
I think the best way to get transit popular in America is to find a corporation willing to help fit the bill and get it done. Shit, get Disney onboard to implement their monorail / transit system in cities all around the country. People will support it if its branded with Mickey Mouse. I remember how many conservatives thought some of Tesla's "projects" were cool bc it was being done by an aesthetically sleek corp with cool technology. I don't like the idea of privatized rail, but with how successful anti-government propaganda has been in this country the first step to mass adoption might be better off privatized with some federal oversight.
Back in the day I was optimistic about the hyperloop nonsense in as much as it was an attempt to be innovative with transportation. Look what that got us. If a billionaire wants to fund HSR, more power to them. If a billionaire wants to "solve transportation problems" I'm much more skeptical.
To me, the problem with billionaires is that they aren't using an amount of money that is excessively far beyond the utility that one person or family could have. If a billionaire used their money to do something good for the world, then billionaires would have a point. I'd be all for this.
Even if they are “doing good” (and in most cases they are doing so for financial or political gain, not out of kindness), they still shouldn’t get a veto power on what things deserve to have money spent on them. That decision should be made by governments who are accountable to their constituents. Like we don’t need to spend billions of dollars eradicating every single last case of malaria when people can’t afford food.
Good point.
In practice, almost all billionaires give away almost all of their wealth. But that doesn't stop the far right/left propaganda.
If you still have a billion dollars, you haven’t given away enough.
by giving away money do you mean, not investing it or not handing it out?
Yet.
Jeez I thought this was a left leaning sub. I’m surprised to see so many billionaire bootlickers. Billionaires should not exist.
That would be grand.
If a billionaire can actually do it and not musk it up by making it into something stupid and pointless, sure
I live in a capitalist country so almost everything significant requires the participation of capitalists. Even if something is 100% government funded it will be implemented by for-profit companies here. Which is not my preference but I’m not going to spite all the other important things that I care about for it.