• TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
    141·
    3 months ago

    Elon has all but admitted that the hyperloop was just a distraction to derail California’s public rail plans, and now that that ship has sailed he doesnt give a shit about hyperloop anymore. The Hyperloop concept is literally just a tool that Elon uses to prevent development of public transport in California so that people will buy more teslas instead.

  • nickiam2@aussie.zone
    68·
    3 months ago

    I live in a national park and the Govt just awarded a contract to a private company to build a fiber line to the villages for high speed internet, and the company building the thing will own the network while the govt is stuck paying the bill forever. So stupid imho. No private company should own a network that exists entirely on federal land, and everyone depends on .

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      10·
      3 months ago

      Wait, you live IN a national park?

      God damn that sounds awesome. But yeah, the private fiber line sucks. Same happening in my country with most “last mile” connections belonging to exactly one private company. Whereas our neighbours to the south (Latvia) nationalized the entire network and everyone benefits from having competition (same company, Telia, has their prices like 80% lower there than here - claiming that Estonians don’t care about price)

      • uis@lemm.ee
        3·
        3 months ago

        Whereas our neighbours to the south (Latvia) nationalized the entire network

        Adding this to my wish list for Russia of the Future. Not Latvia, nationalization.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
          3·
          3 months ago

          I think Latvia is already on the wish list for Russia unfortunately, just not yours

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      19·
      3 months ago

      This happens in most European countries as well, I believe?

      It works fine as long as the private companies are held accountable for their shit and the high-level planning is done by public offices.

      It breaks down when there are no consequences for budget or deadline overruns, or the actual deliverable failing to meet requirements, because obviously private companies are gonna fleece the tax payer.

      • Johanno@feddit.org
        6·
        3 months ago

        Well since the privatisation of germanies public transport systems everything went downhill.

        We have less lines and lots of late trains. Funny thing is that the private company “Deutsche Bahn” was doing so bad it is now 100%owned by the state but still a “profit orientated” private company that does weird shit in order to fake the numbers.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
          4·
          3 months ago

          I’m not a fan of privatisation of existing systems either. Nor a fan of private companies providing public transport, but in Estonia that works because they have to adhere to strict terms.

          What I meant was specifically in the context of private companies building infrastructure that’s specced out by the government and will be owned by the government - that it works in Europe.

          In the US a large problem is that the private companies can own the infrastructure they build and then deny other companies usage

          There is also an example of this happening here in Estonia too - Telia (which acquired Elion) owns way too much of the fiber optic networks, particularly the last mile connections and now you have relatively little competition - if you want an Internet connection at home, depending on where you live, you may only be able to get broadband from Telia.

          But at the same time - we also have private companies build our roads and that works fine for us, because the roads still belong to the country and everyone can use them all the same. Our rail network is owned by the government and while there’s only one (state-owned) company running people transport on it, many companies can use it for transportation of goods.

          • Johanno@feddit.org
            6·
            3 months ago

            As long as the product is owned by the government it works. You can pay a contractor to build it, maybe even manage it, but you can’t give the infrastructure to the private company that then has a monopoly

            • boonhet@lemm.ee
              5·
              3 months ago

              Exactly.

              Public money spent = public owns the end result

              Should be exactly this simple.

    • EherNicht@feddit.orgEnglish
      16·
      3 months ago

      This CAN actually make sense… if done right… which it is often not due to corruption.

    • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 months ago

      Public employees are almost always not the highest quality and tend to be overpaid, why is it bad to have private companies do the work?

      • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
        25·
        3 months ago

        I work in a large corporation, I can assure you that the same kind of people in the same proportions in corporations as in governments. You really should not let low resolution ideologies impose their make beliefs on your world.

        • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
          3·
          3 months ago

          I used to also, and I understand the issue, but the mega corps will still be more efficient than the government. This brings up the other issue of how the government funds all the tax dollars to large corporations and also props them up with regulatory protections.

          • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
            9·
            3 months ago

            It really depends what you mean by “efficient”. But even if you go with “profit maximizer” that’s still an ideological truth that falls apart easily for most human endeavor. Since both organizations are made of the same kind of humans, have the same basic technology and access to resources (when not crippled in some way). When you add on top non monetary social goals, task more complex than “deliver commodity at lowest cost and max profit”, especially if you consider externalities, tgen saying " corporation are more efficient" as a blanket statement for use in all cases by default, it seems to me this is an ideological statement, really, an article of faith more then anything else.

            • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
              1·
              3 months ago

              Its not an ideological statement, it is a comment on the structure of the organizations and how they have to work to survive. Corporations need to do things efficiently or they disappear, the reason large companies are able to be so inefficient is that they are propped up by the government. But the big corporations still have to be more efficient than the other giant companies or their business gets taken.

              When it comes to the government they can have irrational requirements and ways of doing things, and since they allegedly are beholden only to the voters (who dont have a clue what is happening) then they can be as inefficient as they want. An example that is non monetary is how the police will investigate themselves and find they did nothing wrong, they only have an incentive to protect themselves and their own people.

      • thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev
        9·
        3 months ago

        Basically because every time this happens the burden of debt is passed towards the tax payers. They just built a long toll lane in my city in what was a 2 lane highway. Adding another lane or two would have alleviated traffic immensely. The company that built it owns all profits for approx 50 years. What could have been a 5 lane highway is still two except now you have the option of paying a ridiculous amount of money to not have to deal with the traffic. This is money that could have been spent on improving the city’s other methods of transportation, trains, bicycles, etc.

        It doesn’t affect me personally. I ride a motorcycle every day. It’s just painful to see how private interests are almost never in line with what’s best for constituents

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    3 months ago

    Very good point and one that people often forget. It’s literally impossible to build high speed rail without first becoming an authoritarian dictatorship.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
      29·
      3 months ago

      California isn’t a private company, but it relies on private capital to do infrastructure development. Hope that clears things up for you.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
          21·
          3 months ago

          When your whole economy is organized around private ownership then the role of the state is to primarily mediate between different capitalist interests. It’s not like California has public sector capacity to deliver large scale projects that way state owned enterprise does in China.

          • Athelstan@persadon.com
            1·
            3 months ago

            @yogthos
            I asked about the decision-maker; is the state of California responsible for making the decisions regarding building speed railroads, cancelling it, switching to hyperloops, again cancelling it, etc? (yes or no)

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
              7·
              3 months ago

              You’ve asked a loaded question, and I gave you a response that includes important context. The scope of the decisions a government can make is inherently limited by the options the government has. Not sure why that’s difficult to understand.

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
    6·
    3 months ago

    China managed to overbuild high speed rail, they got so good at it. Their whole system is built to incentive huge infrastructure projects. Which has been good, but now they’re getting way into the diminishing returns.

      • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        3 months ago

        That’s an article all right! But it’s from 5 years before the article I posted, and it’s just detailing what China THOUGHT was going to happen.

        Here it is 9 years later and it turned out they were wrong.

        It’s okay for countries to make mistakes. We err on the side of not wasting money. They err on the side of preparation. They have more money to waste than we do so good for them.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          3 months ago

          What happened is that vast majority of these ghost cities have been filling up, and as a result of massive investment into housing 90% of the population in China owns their homes now. Meanwhile, US wastes billions on its constant invasions of other countries. Iraq alone cost over 3 trillion. Your regime errs on side of wasting absurd amounts of money on crimes against humanity while ignoring the needs of the people living in burgerland.