Hypnotized by Hyperloop • Hacker News Board

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#101

Post by ethn » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #94

ethn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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), i…

You've ignored the body of my reply, you're being extremely parsimonious. Any money from taxes that does not benefit the general tax payer, is at the expense to the common tax payer (not to mention the neglect of the collection of payment for the externality costs for the privilege to common land).

You are now arguing that it doesn't matter where taxes are spent because it comes mostly from the rich. If that was the case, imagine if government only spent taxes on frivolous and unproven projects for private enterprise. It is doubtful that any government would continue to exist. It's a strange claim considering that the government continues to be over-budget year after year.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#102

Post by isostatic » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:00 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #81

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…

Explain how the Concorde (an example in the article) benefited the poor more than the rich.

Concorde failed financially, partly due to USian "not invented here" policy, but mainly because not enough rich people were willing to pay for the speed.

However Ryanair was very successful by targettk f "poor" people

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#103

Post by gaius » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:00 PM UTC

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…

Right, but that can't be done by fixed infrastructure like rails. What happens to area as radius goes up? What happens to population density and demand?

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#104

Post by pasta » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:02 PM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #27

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…

Yes, but it creates huge economic positive impacts 1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper, and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which unlocks greater efficiency of the work place. 2. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces, prices of living r…

#1 most of the time isn't true because public transportation is very poor in those areas.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#105

Post by jcranmer » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:03 PM UTC

hsitz wrote: post #34

kfk wrote: post #2

Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds.

"I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds." Max persons per trip seems a metric of little relevance, if a pod is much faster and can make many more trips within the same time period. In any case, that would point to how the pod could compete: carry just as many people each day, but each person would reach his/her destination much faster than if they u…

High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, with similar or higher frequency for local trains on the same line. Even if you ignore the low-speed alternatives, you'd have to dispatch pods in the region of one per minute to achieve the same passenger throughput.

Well, there's the real problem with Hyperloop. It's not really feasible to operate switches more frequently than 45-second headways, even on conventional rail. Modern approaches generally have a capacity of 30 trains per hour, which means the same approach can service a dozen different routes. In Hyperloop, you would have to build a different approach for each of those routes, which requires duplicating the most expensive part of the infrastructure.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#106

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:04 PM UTC

Asdfbla wrote: post #20

kfk wrote: post #2

Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds.

>You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what? Besides, smartphones didn't come from nothing. Prototypes and similar things had been around since the 90s. And they are arguably a much easier problem than infrastructure.

> That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what?

No, but maybe the lesson is, people should chill a bit with criticism. It's easy to armchair-criticize anything, but the west has serious problems with infrastructure projects right now. Shooting down any attempt at doing something large-scale is counterproductive to the growth and survival of our society.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#107

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:06 PM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #27

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…

Yes, but it creates huge economic positive impacts 1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper, and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which unlocks greater efficiency of the work place. 2. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces, prices of living r…

The housing pressure from San Francisco looks like it currently extends at least as far as Gilroy to me (houses going for 1/2 million dollars).

That's without it being a viable commute to the peninsula.

http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/weekdaytimetable.html

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#108

Post by angstrom » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

ethn wrote: post #95

methodin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A subsidy, a tax cut, and an MLP walk into a bar. Each pays $5 for a draft beer. Each saved $1. The only difference is when they receive that $1. The punchline is thinking they're different.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#109

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #83

DannyBee wrote: post #41

I feel like one could have written this article back in the days of Tesla and Edison. The problem Geoff bemoans - that it's not good city planning, may even be true. That is rarely the only reason why things happen or not happen though, and that's been true as long as people have had cities. While wanting "whatever is really the best, boring or not, gets done" is a great ideal, it's simply unrealistic for how the wor…

I don't know. Since I see "hyperloop" as more akin to a pipe-dream, dangling this "cool" idea in front of people is destructive if a) it never gets done (probably because it's not cost-feasible, not from alack of imagination on the part of the public) and thus b) money to fund systems that actually do work and need funding (Amtrak) get short shrift.

I disagree. We're very short on dreams these days. And I also don't think "pipe dreams" will siphon money away from work that needs to be done - it's the general lack of will to do anything other than very incremental fixes that currently eats that money.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#110

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #54

usaphp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla and his solar company use pretty conventional technology The technology might be conventional, but having useful Electric cars on the road was looking like impossible task back in the days before Tesla roadster

Was it? If Tesla didn't exist would things look dramatically different today? All electric cars use pretty much the same technology. It's been developed by a variety of companies. No doubt Tesla has moved things along faster than if they weren't here, and they've made some fantastic products, but I think the economic argument for electric cars plays a far bigger role in their development than any one specific company…

> Was it? If Tesla didn't exist would things look dramatically different today?

Yes. Because the market didn't want electric cars, and if Tesla didn't force them down our throats it probably still wouldn't. At some point in the future the shift would eventually happen, but Tesla sped that process up.