Alternatively, let’s nationalize Starlink

It’s worth noting that they’re never talking about actual privatization, which is when a thing that was formerly a government service is turned over to private enterprise, but a grotesquely inefficient hybrid system in which the service is still funded by the government, and the only thing that changes is that rather than the budget being turned over to a government agency, it’s turned over to whichever private contractor offers the best bribe and kickback package.

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference, Elon Musk criticized U.S. passenger rail as “embarrassing” compared to other countries.

Elon Musk? The same Elon Musk who helped cancel a high-speed rail transit project by touting his quickly-abandoned, far-fetched sci-fi transit system?

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference, he criticized U.S. passenger rail as “embarrassing” compared to other countries.

Well we agree on one thing, we just disagree greatly on the reasoning…

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he criticized U.S. passenger rail as “embarrassing” compared to other countries.

He’s actually right about that but 100% wrong about why: US passenger rail is embarrassing due to

• a pitiful lack of political will for public investment in it (in spite of the vast majority of the population being in favor),
• billionaires like himself and others with competing interests spending ridiculous amounts of money lobbying against it
• private and ridiculously under-regulated freight companies (such as Norfolk Southern of East Palestine catastrophe infamy) being allowed to privately own the tracks that tax funded public works projects built, and thus setting schedules and speeds that are not conducive to effective passenger transit.

In short, the Apartheid Nepo Nazi wants to pretend to fix it by doing more of what ruined it.

Rail (and public transport) should be publically owned. As someone who lives in Victoria, Australia, it is painfully obvious just how much damage the privatisation of our rail system in the 90s did. There was virtually no investment/expansion of the network for over two decades and it’s now too late - we’re stuck continually playing catch-up to the increasing infrastructure demands of our cities.

I’m not familiar with the ownership of Amtrak, but it should be fully government owned and operated. A vertically-integrated transport system was the most cost-effective approach for us and that lasted about a century before the more conservative of our two major parties sold it off.

My understanding is that Amtrak is what happened when the private railroad operators were failing, and the govt needed to step in to stop the passenger railroad network from collapsing completely.

Its by and large not profitable. Air travel, for better or worse, eats its lunch.

Personally, I think it would be better to keep Amtrak majority state owned and throw billions of dollars at it. In fact, why not send out a $3 trillion stimulus package to get some Jobs going?

I guess no one told him that Amtrak pretty much is privatized.

ever since germany privatised rail (and post) while remaining mayority shareholder it has become ultra shit.

quality and reliability has gone down extremely over the years. efforts to mitigate the damage done thanks to neglect probably cost much more than proper maintenence would have cost them. those efforts are paid for by the state ofc.

deutsche bahn is so unreliable, neighbouring states have to cope with them disrupting their own schedules. if anything its reliably unreliable

but you already have a shitty underfunded rail system, so not much change there. the post office on the other hand will be heavily noticeable

I call for Elon Musk to bite me.

Meanwhile, the UK is re-nationalizing privatized infrastructure because private monopolies provide even worse service than public ones.

Elon wants the USPO privatized. And I want Elon euthanized. What beautiful Symmetry.

We should seize his means of production instead