Not so friendly reminder that musk specifically came up with, and pushed, for hyperloop knowing that it would never be made, as an effort to stop the development of highspeed rail in America and shift all political discussions of it because “something better is around the corner”:
As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it. Several years ago, Musk said that public transit was “a pain in the ass” where you were surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers, to justify his opposition.
Also: 2024 update, the total length of China’s high-speed rail tracks has now reached well over 45,000 km, or 28,000 miles, by the end of 2023.
They are additionally five years ahead of schedule and expect to double the total number within ten years. And, before someone inevitably complains about “how expensive it is”, they are turning over a net-profit of over $600M USD a year.
Only OP did argue it… it was part of his closing arguments of his post he even cited a WSJ article on it.
We do have eminent domain, but it is still a much harder process than in China where all land is owned by the central government. My point was to reinforce the fact that the process of building HSR is harder and more expensive in the US than in the CCP, not that it’s impossible.
Your “Whataboutisms” are either ill informed or disingenuous. The amount of badly built infrastructure projects in China vs the US aren’t even on the same scale. Feel free to educate yourself and google “tofu dreg projects”.
My bad, it was the very last thing the OP said. But either way we’re in agreement profits aren’t the way to measure success of a public service.
Anyway, I’ve learned it’s pretty impossible to have a reasonable discussion with someone suffering from “China bad”-ism