641–650 of 983 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see, fair enough, cheers for pointing that out. I'm in the UK and we're pretty well connected by rail, I wasn't expecting the alternative to be that ridiculous, just normal slower trains.
In the US, rail is optimized for freight, not people.
"In the case of the Hyperloop, Musk started focusing on public transportation after he grew disenchanted with the plans for California’s high-speed rail system." And who says that big government stifles entrepreneurial innovation? If ALL Musk does with the Hyperloop announcement is shed more light on the potential debacle that is to be our $70b+ high-speed rail in California, we owe him a debt of gratitude. PS - Dire…
but why to ask California State for subsidy? Why not to build it using private funds? I'd imagine that if this is economically sound idea there must be potential investors lining up to have their share in the Project? The estimated cost is $7B. Now, Musk just needs to make a few calls to his friends at Google, Amazon, etc. Can't these guys just form a company together just to build it? Maybe I'm naive... or maybe Mus…
few investors would touch this. It doesn't fit into any investment category that's approved.
There are infrastructure funds but they're looking for sleepy assets. Stuff like toll roads and ports that have an established operating history and are supposed to be low risk.
This is a whole different animal. It's almost infrastructure VC. I don't see how this fits in any part of the institutional world. That leaves wealthy individuals and I don't think there'd be a lot of interest there. They're looking at Berkshire and steady growth vs. an investment in speculative infrastructure. I could see $10M investments but I think it'd be hard to get people to put a big chuck of their net worth into it, which is what you need (i.e. you need a couple people putting in $1-2B). Furthermore, historically public transportation hasn't been very profitable. Realistically you probably need the state to build it.
"In the case of the Hyperloop, Musk started focusing on public transportation after he grew disenchanted with the plans for California’s high-speed rail system." And who says that big government stifles entrepreneurial innovation? If ALL Musk does with the Hyperloop announcement is shed more light on the potential debacle that is to be our $70b+ high-speed rail in California, we owe him a debt of gratitude. PS - Dire…
If ALL Musk does with the Hyperloop announcement is shed more light on the potential debacle that is to be our $70b+ high-speed rail in California, we owe him a debt of gratitude. Really? Because it looks like this is an attempt to derail CA HSR using a proposal for an experimental technology that offers a fraction of what CA HSR does, but is potentially faster. CA HSR replaces/upgrades two metropolitan rail systems…
Not to mention their estimates actually include going into downtown SF and LA, unlike Musk's $6B figure.
None of this is to say that Hyperloop is a bad idea. The idea sounds very interesting and I'd rather spend sixty billion building a Hyperloop --even if it fails-- than the ridiculous California high speed rail project. Cost is probably off by an order of magnitude, if not more. Why? Unions and other groups. Building anything in this country costs massively more (and takes significantly longer) than one could imagine…
I think I'm going to have to go over michaelochurch's article again on unions and bloc voting power, which are very relevant to these ideas: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/statistics-co...
To be clear, I am not one to say that unions are not necessary. I think they most definitely are in a number of industries. I am also not saying that union membership is evil in any way. A good deal of union workers are nice hard working people who are only after stability and a decent wage in their lives. Nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that our unions have become monsters that have gobbled-up massive amounts of resources to the point of bankrupting companies and cities and making every US taxpayer liable for the benefits they have extracted. Union leadership AND the industry or government representatives they sit down to negotiate with are the evil in the system.
And, yet again, I am not sure I can even place the blame on union representatives. What's their job? To extract as many benefits as possible from the employers to the benefit of the membership. They do, and have done, that very well.
So maybe it is a case of a set of systems that have taken an optimization almost to the highest possible level and, as a result, caused a paradox of sorts: At the limit, making things better for members ends-up making things worst because they can cause irreparable damage not just to the company or entity they work for but the the entire "ecosystem" (the town, city or country) that supports them.
In other words, the optimization kills the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Unions need to learn to be better citizens and to truly understand and partner with businesses. Then, and only then, everyone wins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>He's also traditionally been an opponent of government waste. he is in bed with gov employees unions (the unions are primary driving force behind 200-300K/year gov employees pensions ( http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/pensions ) with retirement age of 55, CA is something like $200B deep in that hole), and especially with prison guard union - of course huge prison population resulting from "toughness on crime" may…
This argument is like saying he's an opponent of extramarital affairs, but he's in bed with his wife. Of course he's with the government employees unions, he has to live with them every day.
>>> Of course he's with the government employees unions, he has to live with them every day.
Having to work with them and being in bed with them is not the same thing. Though many politicians fail to see the difference, it is a known problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, can you not abuse this wonderful idea for a political forum on unions , of all things?
There's a difference between theory on a piece of paper the the reality of building something. In the real world unions will be all over a project like this. Up every crevice. So will environmental groups and other special interest groups. None of this is good for any major civil engineering project. I asked a question in my post. Can you name any new major civil engineering project in the US in the last fifty years?…
Boston's Big Dig (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_big_dig)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The $9.95 billion was for the initial bond issuance. The estimate on the ballot was $40 billion versus the current estimate of between $98.5 billion and $118 billion. Edit: correction from dragonwriter, via wikipedia [1]: "The cost of the initial San Francisco-to-Anaheim segment was originally estimated by the CHSRA to be $33 billion (2008) / $35.2 billion (2013), but a revised business plan released in November 2011…
Those numbers still seem absurd to me. $120 billion? France built the entire TGV network, about 2,000 km (1250 miles, ~2x the length of LA-SF, including numerous stations in urban areas) for around $20-30 billion. Maybe the U.S. should borrow some management practices from inefficient socialist "old Europe".
$6.4 trillion in total government expenditures.
Largest welfare and entitlement programs.
Nearly 15% U6 unemployment. Collapsing labor force. Falling real incomes. 15% on food stamps. Massive fiscal mismanagement in every respect. Endless QE just to fund the government. 0% interest rates just to reach 1% GDP growth. Healthcare is clearly moving toward a completely socialized approach over time and completely away from any free market solution. Taxes are extremely high, between federal and state; typically higher than supposedly socialist European countries. America also has more economic regulations on the books than any other country (and that's rapidly expanding). The largest land owner in America is the government, by a drastic margin. Half of all mortgages are held by the government. And on and on.
Doesn't get any more old European Socialist than what America is today. It would be fiscally impossible to go any further.
None of this is to say that Hyperloop is a bad idea. The idea sounds very interesting and I'd rather spend sixty billion building a Hyperloop --even if it fails-- than the ridiculous California high speed rail project. Cost is probably off by an order of magnitude, if not more. Why? Unions and other groups. Building anything in this country costs massively more (and takes significantly longer) than one could imagine…
I'm with you that Musk seems to have ignored the human factor when estimating the cost or even the feasibility of the project. But think about how many aspects of our lives it would revolutionize. Simple example: can you imagine what would happen to the SF real estate market if it suddenly had to compete with the LA real estate market? If talented people who live in LA could suddenly commute to and from companies in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too late: http://www.seattlepi.com/technology/businessinsider/article/... > If you don't want to be searched at the train station, you have the freedom to not ride the train.
I wonder what the security checkpoints would be like on the HyperLoop if it ever got built? They are saying capsules could depart 30 seconds apart. Imagine is there was an attack in on of them, with several others travelling at high speed just behind. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23677205 I'm sure there some contingency has been thought of, unfortunately it's just the world we live in these days :(
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between theory on a piece of paper the the reality of building something. In the real world unions will be all over a project like this. Up every crevice. So will environmental groups and other special interest groups. None of this is good for any major civil engineering project. I asked a question in my post. Can you name any new major civil engineering project in the US in the last fifty years?…
Can you name any new major civil engineering project in the US in the last fifty years? Boston's Big Dig ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_big_dig )?