Yeah, the only reason we still have tracks most places is for freight.

Came to say this. If it had literally remained unchanged they'd still be doing pretty good.

a space elevator

You'd have to harness carbon nanotubes first... then deal with all the debris in LEO, then come up with an elevator that doesn't take days to reach GEO (granted the counterweight can rest there and the cab can stop sooner).

i agree with your sentiment completely, just to point out a small technicality:

space elevators aren't technically feasible. i've done the calculations a while ago and practically, the weight of the space elevator itself would be so much that it wouldn't be able to carry its own weight. remember that it would essentially be a tower several hundred kilometers high. the highest buildings on earth today aren't even a single kilometer high.

i believe in spaceflight though

You know, I've been thinking about this a lot. And your comment reminds me of it. The aesthetics of evil. Racist segregation is an obvious evil. So if you tell black people to stand at the back of the bus because they're not allowed to mix with the whites, that's rather obvious and a horrific picture to have. But, if you handicap them, make sure they can only live in the cheapest communities and then limit the mobility of them. Same result. But because you didn't see it, and the enforced segregation is rather subtle... Well, looks better, doesn't it? So people are more likely to accept it. And if you say things like "The city has marked this black community unfit for investment." then it sounds already like a conspiracy theory. Making you the weirdo for speaking out. Horrid, but an elegant and efficient system for censorship, isn't it?

And to be absolutely clear: I reject racial segregation and censorship, obviously.

i think it's not only racism though. surely, there's also a lot of kicking-downwards on the poor. the poor shouldn't get a nice life, so they're motivated to work harder and be successful, so since public transport helps everyone, including the poors, we don't want that.

(not my words, just a common sentiment i've heard)

as much as I'd like to call this a win for socialism, I don't think socialism is actually necessary for good transit. Japan is very capitalist and has private rail networks which are comparable in quality and extent to China's.

Then there’s “if it ain’t broke… how can we break it to extract a few extra bucks from it?”

I mean this is sorta one of the things an autocracy does well. You might get substandard work and a lot of graft but when the order comes down no one gets to complain when they run a train line through your house.

And then turn a blind eye to all the broken stuff because "we have been living with it so it's not broken"

yeah it's so funny when people think the US has good car infrastructure, the truth is that the US just generally fucking sucks

yeah sure there's a lot of interstate highways which i guess you can consider good, but most people aren't using them for very large distances, most people are driving to and from work every day and that part is so hilariously miserable that i don't think people in the rest of the world truly believe it's a real thing that happens..

While continuing to produce the worst cars imaginable

You might ask if capitalism is the sole definer of policy, what’s the purpose of our elected parasites? If they can’t define a reason for their existence, they too need to be replaced with ai.

I don't know if this analysis is true generally, Japan is pretty fucking capitalist.

I would argue it's more a matter of what wing of the capitalist oligarchy has the upper hand. In the US and Canada, it's the extractive fossil capital and that ultimately holds power. In Japan, or the Netherlands it's more the manufacturing.

Don't extrapolate from the US to capitalism in general. It's more nuanced than that.

That's nature in general.

Just a reminder that concrete releases huge amounts of CO2 as it cures. Empty cities don't help anyone.

Bragging about encasing the natural world in a synthetic crust and displacing wildlife... Great flex

No the auto industry has lobbied against trains and similar projects. It’s not about the science but more about how our politicians have been selling their souls for centuries.

No, because cross-country trains and heavy use of them to move goods and people predates cars by quite a bit. Trains were a key component of the North winning the Civil War, for example.

Lots of existing train infrastructure needed to be torn out to make room for car infrastructure.

I definitely think this is the case. Something akin to tragedy of the commons (or maybe Braese’s paradox?) where small investments for short term gain trumps bigger investments for, comparatively, bigger gains.

Sweden, where I live, is in this situation too where the rail network is 50 years in reparation debt but it’s easier for politicians to budget for small road repairs and say that they make meaningful infrastructure work

If anything, shouldn't that make it easier? The US has quite open and wide streets/roads. You have more space to build stations and rail tracks than for example Europe with much narrower streets/roads.

We just kind of spread out everywhere quickly and made the train locations somewhat irrelevant.

Do you know any US history

Its so naive to think that this was the cause lmao

Public transportation in USA sucks, and people from USA often use we on social media platforms, assuming they are the majority :P

You say that, but... Iraq was a dictatorship, and they weren't all that efficient at anything other than killing Kurds.

Well, the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, which nobody want except the dictator.

I mean... some people do, but they're weird.

a brutal dictatorship which violates human rights on the regular

Don't you think you're a little harsh on the US?

Setting that cash on fire would be more practical use of tax payer money

Aircraft carriers don't let me travel to my destinations

Doesnt the us also have those powers and didn't they use them liberally in the construction of both the railways and interstates?

Right now, the Chinese government has effective eminent domain powers which allows them to acquire property for which to build public infrastructure, both expressways and high-speed railways

I've heard people claim as much, but at the same time, Stuck Nail Houses exist, I'm not sure how to reconcile the two. I think it's that their eminent domain is limited to property that was purchased after a certain point, so if it's property your parents owned since the 80s, it's literally easier for developers to route the highway around your home than win that lawsuit, but if they bought in like 2010, they can just give you a similar or better property, or the cash to buy one, and that's that.