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Hypnotized by Hyperloop

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Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#91

Post by ethn »

adventured wrote: post #73
ethn wrote: post #25

The problem with the Hyper-loop and Elon Musk in general, isn't that Elon Musk is wrong or that the Hyper-loop won't work. The problem is that he engages in a nepotistic political-industrial complex. That is, he subsidizes his risk for the benefit of the shareholders and himself at the expense of the taxpayer. The same tax payers who are often in a state of financial uncertainty and destitution of education. The same…

> The same tax payers who know if they get sick, they won't be able to pay for it. You've made a grave mistake in your appeal. The top 40% of income tax payers are paying more than 100% of the total income tax base. The people that specifically do pay a massive share of the tax base, can overwhelmingly afford great health coverage. They're why we still have the health system we have, precisely because the system work…

Your riposte is a strawman argument on whether the rich should benefit more from the government because they pay more and their taxes help others (their same wealth that wouldn't have been possible without the government).

The government does not collect taxes, to privilege the wealthy to exclusive services. Quite the opposite, government provides services that benefits everyone instead of one minority group.

In redundancy, as I stated, I'm not a classist and I'm not disparaging the wealthy.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#92

Post by maxerickson »

protomyth wrote: post #69
maxerickson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would want to see such throughput numbers scaled to cost. (because if one or the other wins by spending 10x, well, duh)

Oh, absolutely, cost is a huge factor. I’m sure Californians are well aware of the cost of a rail project these days. I do hope part of the cos analysis is likely rent / housing costs paid by the commuters as a result of the build. I tend to think an extended range from higher speeds would decrease total housing costs but I too would want to see figures.

I bet trains win bigly for servicing bedroom communities. A stop is just a stop.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#93

Post by jcranmer »

alexandros wrote: post #6

Couldn't finish this. It started off badly by calling the hyperloop "vacuum-powered". First, it's not even vacuum sealed (just low air pressure), and second, how can something even be powered by the vacuum? Are we just throwing terms around for effect here? Then, the author continues with more material errors. The hyperloop/tunnel combo apparently "requires a hard reboot" of the modern city. No it does not. The whole…

> Couldn't finish this. It started off badly by calling the hyperloop "vacuum-powered". First, it's not even vacuum sealed (just low air pressure), and second, how can something even be powered by the vacuum? Are we just throwing terms around for effect here?

There's not really any such thing as a vacuum in a macroscopic sense, only how little air pressure you have. Hyperloop is a vactrain--it's using the same basic principle of "get rid of the air to eliminate air resistance"; it just avoids the name to make it not sound like a repackaging of a 100-year old failed concept.

> And then it talks about putting more money into Amtrak, when Musk's prime concern has been how slow and expensive the high-speed rail project in CA has been, precisely because of how hard it is to get land rights. Getting around existing commitments of surface land is the whole point of tunelling!

Tunnels are where you start measuring costs in hundreds of millions of dollars per mile--Japan's new, mostly underground maglev Shinkansen is costing $200m / km. Urban tunnels are expensive, because you often can't cut-and-cover (certainly not for long, linear corridors), which means expensive underground TBMs. You also have to avoid a maze of underground tunnels, wires, and pipes. Outside urban areas, land is quite cheap. It's just slow acquisition process because everyone wants to milk you for more money.

> Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is evidence-based.

Civil engineers have looked at Elon Musk's Hyperloop proposal. They've generally agreed that it is about as attached to reality as Donald Trump's campaign promises.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#94

Post by adventured »

ethn wrote: post #91
adventured wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same tax payers who know if they get sick, they won't be able to pay for it. You've made a grave mistake in your appeal. The top 40% of income tax payers are paying more than 100% of the total income tax base. The people that specifically do pay a massive share of the tax base, can overwhelmingly afford great health coverage. They're why we still have the health system we have, precisely because the system work…

Your riposte is a strawman argument on whether the rich should benefit more from the government because they pay more and their taxes help others (their same wealth that wouldn't have been possible without the government). The government does not collect taxes, to privilege the wealthy to exclusive services. Quite the opposite, government provides services that benefits everyone instead of one minority group. In redu…

> Your riposte is a strawman argument on whether the rich should benefit more from the government

That's incorrect. My post was about two simple things: the parent argument was wrong, presenting an overwhelmingly false narrative factually; and second, that there is very little to be concerned about regarding the top 1/3 of income earners partially subsidizing a Tesla or SpaceX (or NASA, they also pay for that too), it's a non-problem.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#95

Post by ethn »

methodin wrote: post #89
ethn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxpayer money is being diverted from services that are in dire need presently. That money is being used to privilege Musk and company to vast commonly owned underground land. In the past, fortunately still in some cases, companies were forced to pay the government for the externalities caused by the exclusive right to common land which deprives other tax payers of the same opportunity.

Diverted through what means? Are they somehow subsidizing his ventures apart from the electric vehicle subsidy?

Through avoiding externality payment due to the cost of "the tragedy of the commons" to the tax payer, as well as the massive subsidies to SolarCity, Tesla, and Space X. It is suspect to believe Hyperloop won't be massively subsidized as well, given his track record.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#96

Post by protomyth »

maxerickson wrote: post #92
protomyth wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, absolutely, cost is a huge factor. I’m sure Californians are well aware of the cost of a rail project these days. I do hope part of the cos analysis is likely rent / housing costs paid by the commuters as a result of the build. I tend to think an extended range from higher speeds would decrease total housing costs but I too would want to see figures.

I bet trains win bigly for servicing bedroom communities. A stop is just a stop.

Maybe, but a stop that can be twice as far away while taking the same commute time will probably yield lower housing costs since the amount of housing in an acceptable commute area is going to be much larger.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#97

Post by angstrom »

ethn wrote: post #84
methodin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "at the expense of the taxpayer"?

Taxpayer money is being diverted from services that are in dire need presently. That money is being used to privilege Musk and company to vast commonly owned underground land. In the past, fortunately still in some cases, companies were forced to pay the government for the externalities caused by the exclusive right to common land which deprives other tax payers of the same opportunity.

Curious, do you know the EROI difference for fossil fuels? How much difference is there in the opportunity cost? All energy is subsidized. Solar actually doesn't qualify for the subsidies oil does, same for electric cars. That's why they have a separate subsidy. Unlike oil's 15% the subsidy declines to 10% for solar and the EV car subsidy vanishes. All the things you mention can be covered by that 5% difference. That's opportunity cost.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#98

Post by TeMPOraL »

solatic wrote: post #38
dalbasal wrote: post #18

One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is almost infinite. If you can get 40kms in 45 minutes, then you can live within 40 miles of work and commute in that time. If you could go 400kms, then that becomes your commuting radius. We've seen people spread this way as earlier mechanized transport was invented. IE, average commute times didn't go down because of faster transport, distan…

> If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings. And that's a good thing, because it increases the amount of demand available to businesses. The more potential customers you have, the more product you can make to sell to that market, and the more product you can make, the better your economies of scale. The large population of New York is what allows it to offer so many…

OTOH, it reduces the amount of such businesses, since each one now has to compete with many more for the same customer base. In the limit (cheap teleporters) this leads to what we have on the Internet - winner-takes-all global competition.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#99

Post by kome »

methodin wrote: post #85
kome wrote: post #42

Hyperloop is such a bad idea on so many levels. Mass transportation is the future: trains, suburban trains and metros. Not cars or "mini metros for cars". Super fast trains are already there. Europe lives in the future compared to the USA.

It definitely seems problematic to put your entire foundation of travel in the hands of government or companies, though. They especially do not represent the concerns of all people. A car on the other hand is complete freedom. I would have expected to hear that driverless cars are the future since it's not contingent on an non-existent infrastructure, rather on the roads that already exist.

> It definitely seems problematic to put your entire foundation of travel in the hands of government (...) They especially do not represent the concerns of all people. A car, on the other hand, is complete freedom.

Well, car needs roads and roads are public goods. And, of course, they need a lot of public funding, planning and maintenance. All with public money.

Governments pushed for cars as a mean of transportation because in the Keynesian era was good for the whole economy (car factories employed a lot of people), and nature was less of a concern. But pushing for cars was a deliberate public policy that involved a lot of public infrastructure, city planning, etc...

Driverless cars would need a lot of infrastructure as well, but I don't think they are a good investment for the whole economy like normal cars were in the '50s. With putting a lot of public money for infrastructure to help a few companies that do not employ so many people anymore?

The future is not for cars, IMHO. But who knows...

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#100

Post by isostatic »

_delirium wrote: post #63
stale2002 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Transportation technology massively benefits the poor more than it does the rich. The biggest expense that the working class pay is rent. If you can cut long distance commute times in half, then that means that someone who works in the city is able to save 50% or more on rent by living outside the extremely expensive city. Transportation and housing (2 sides of the same coin) is arguably the single most importan…

Isn't the hyperloop focused on fast city-center-to-city-center transportation between major commercial districts? I don't see how making it fast to go nonstop between Manhattan and D.C. (the current proposal) helps the working class with affordable housing.

Where in manhattan? Travel from battery park to DC involves can take 50 minutes to get from the office to the platform at Penn station.

Now if hyperloop has stations at various NY locations (JFK, downtown, midtown, uptown) and a couple of Washington locations, that will save a fair amount of time.

I'll believe it when I see it, and when it can cope with 3000 people an hour in each direction

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