• TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
    137·
    4 个月前

    Elon has all but admitted that the hyperloop was just a distraction to derail California’s public rail plans, and now that that ship has sailed he doesnt give a shit about hyperloop anymore. The Hyperloop concept is literally just a tool that Elon uses to prevent development of public transport in California so that people will buy more teslas instead.

  • nickiam2@aussie.zone
    66·
    4 个月前

    I live in a national park and the Govt just awarded a contract to a private company to build a fiber line to the villages for high speed internet, and the company building the thing will own the network while the govt is stuck paying the bill forever. So stupid imho. No private company should own a network that exists entirely on federal land, and everyone depends on .

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      10·
      4 个月前

      Wait, you live IN a national park?

      God damn that sounds awesome. But yeah, the private fiber line sucks. Same happening in my country with most “last mile” connections belonging to exactly one private company. Whereas our neighbours to the south (Latvia) nationalized the entire network and everyone benefits from having competition (same company, Telia, has their prices like 80% lower there than here - claiming that Estonians don’t care about price)

      • uis@lemm.ee
        3·
        4 个月前

        Whereas our neighbours to the south (Latvia) nationalized the entire network

        Adding this to my wish list for Russia of the Future. Not Latvia, nationalization.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
          3·
          4 个月前

          I think Latvia is already on the wish list for Russia unfortunately, just not yours

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      17·
      4 个月前

      This happens in most European countries as well, I believe?

      It works fine as long as the private companies are held accountable for their shit and the high-level planning is done by public offices.

      It breaks down when there are no consequences for budget or deadline overruns, or the actual deliverable failing to meet requirements, because obviously private companies are gonna fleece the tax payer.

      • Johanno@feddit.org
        6·
        4 个月前

        Well since the privatisation of germanies public transport systems everything went downhill.

        We have less lines and lots of late trains. Funny thing is that the private company “Deutsche Bahn” was doing so bad it is now 100%owned by the state but still a “profit orientated” private company that does weird shit in order to fake the numbers.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
          4·
          4 个月前

          I’m not a fan of privatisation of existing systems either. Nor a fan of private companies providing public transport, but in Estonia that works because they have to adhere to strict terms.

          What I meant was specifically in the context of private companies building infrastructure that’s specced out by the government and will be owned by the government - that it works in Europe.

          In the US a large problem is that the private companies can own the infrastructure they build and then deny other companies usage

          There is also an example of this happening here in Estonia too - Telia (which acquired Elion) owns way too much of the fiber optic networks, particularly the last mile connections and now you have relatively little competition - if you want an Internet connection at home, depending on where you live, you may only be able to get broadband from Telia.

          But at the same time - we also have private companies build our roads and that works fine for us, because the roads still belong to the country and everyone can use them all the same. Our rail network is owned by the government and while there’s only one (state-owned) company running people transport on it, many companies can use it for transportation of goods.

          • Johanno@feddit.org
            6·
            4 个月前

            As long as the product is owned by the government it works. You can pay a contractor to build it, maybe even manage it, but you can’t give the infrastructure to the private company that then has a monopoly

            • boonhet@lemm.ee
              5·
              4 个月前

              Exactly.

              Public money spent = public owns the end result

              Should be exactly this simple.

    • EherNicht@feddit.orgEnglish
      16·
      4 个月前

      This CAN actually make sense… if done right… which it is often not due to corruption.

    • bountygiver [any]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      17·
      4 个月前

      he is indeed a part of a problem. Car manufacturers have been quite responsible for dismantling America’s public transportation infrastructure.

    • LemmyHead@lemmy.ml
      3·
      4 个月前

      Sounds ridiculous to me. If politicians didn’t decide on the rail system because of elon, it’s still a problem caused by the politicians

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
      27·
      4 个月前

      California isn’t a private company, but it relies on private capital to do infrastructure development. Hope that clears things up for you.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
          19·
          4 个月前

          When your whole economy is organized around private ownership then the role of the state is to primarily mediate between different capitalist interests. It’s not like California has public sector capacity to deliver large scale projects that way state owned enterprise does in China.

          • Athelstan@persadon.com
            1·
            4 个月前

            @yogthos
            I asked about the decision-maker; is the state of California responsible for making the decisions regarding building speed railroads, cancelling it, switching to hyperloops, again cancelling it, etc? (yes or no)

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
              6·
              4 个月前

              You’ve asked a loaded question, and I gave you a response that includes important context. The scope of the decisions a government can make is inherently limited by the options the government has. Not sure why that’s difficult to understand.

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
    7·
    4 个月前

    Very good point and one that people often forget. It’s literally impossible to build high speed rail without first becoming an authoritarian dictatorship.

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
    6·
    4 个月前

    China managed to overbuild high speed rail, they got so good at it. Their whole system is built to incentive huge infrastructure projects. Which has been good, but now they’re getting way into the diminishing returns.

      • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        4 个月前

        That’s an article all right! But it’s from 5 years before the article I posted, and it’s just detailing what China THOUGHT was going to happen.

        Here it is 9 years later and it turned out they were wrong.

        It’s okay for countries to make mistakes. We err on the side of not wasting money. They err on the side of preparation. They have more money to waste than we do so good for them.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          4 个月前

          What happened is that vast majority of these ghost cities have been filling up, and as a result of massive investment into housing 90% of the population in China owns their homes now. Meanwhile, US wastes billions on its constant invasions of other countries. Iraq alone cost over 3 trillion. Your regime errs on side of wasting absurd amounts of money on crimes against humanity while ignoring the needs of the people living in burgerland.