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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

The high speed rail is nothing to do with bureaucrats (not sure what the term means anymore), but is delayed due the really difficult task of land acquisition, while maintaining property rights, and address thousands of lawsuits about communities objecting to various routes. It is easy to comment on the abstract, but I bet even Marc Andreseen won't be happy if a high speed rail runs in his backyard in Atherton

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We used to be able to accomplish things like raising of Chicago[1] over 150 years ago but we can't move a few tiny communities in the middle of I-5 to build an infrastructure project of enormous economic value in 2020? I think that's case in point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

You can view that as a negative. But you can also interpret this as a positive development, where people at grassroots are empowered to protect their own communities, and cannot be simply swept over.

Any research that such thing is a net positive for society at large?

The way to solve this problem is by (largely) adopting the premise of the Coase Theorem, but we've created an environment where that's impossible. So now a community of a few thousand can hold millions of people and hundreds of billions of wealth hostage.

>> The lack of drainage caused unpleasant living conditions, and standing water harbored pathogens that caused numerous epidemics including typhoid fever and dysentery, which blighted Chicago six years in a row, culminating in the 1854 outbreak of cholera that killed six percent of the city’s population.

I think that's the key point right there. Action was taken only after six percent of the city was wiped out. I'm sure we could (and will) be able to do any number of things when faced with an existential crisis of that magnitude.

My hope for the present crisis is that it gives us enough pause to reflect on what we are capable of when our lives are on the line, and extend this into tackling our other social ills -- healthcare, or lack thereof, homelessness, poverty, education.

You mean CA99, not I5 (unless you're thinking about the segment inside LA county).

Half of Andreessen's personal wealth is based on SV commercial real estate (cf John Arrillaga). Anything that helps people get around CA easier is against his direct interests, even if it doesn't run literally through his backyard.

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