I wish Elon was a railway nerd, it would be a much more effective way to spend the cash.
Also, Kim Jong-un and his people make decisions collectively: Kim suggests something and when his people agree (or just don't die), decisions materialize! These decisions are collective because nothing would happen if Kim acts alone.
Wait. Maybe "collective" does not mean "multiple people working together" but cooperating towards common and mutual benefits. Those who cannot afford not to work for those who owns the capital don't make a "collective" with those who own them and decide how things must be (e.g how much Amazon can pay less tax than individuals and small businesses). Also, democracy is more than a word: when you have no choice but to vote for candidates who support billionaires, there's no "collective" behind the election either.
And those 'lords' whatever that means got that rich because they invested their personal time and resources into things that ended up working out and that's why they have the resources they have.
EDIT: To be clear: markets≠capitalism
Markets without ownership are mostly meaningless. All models of market socialism are mostly theoretical. Even the inventor market socialism didn't get far in implementing it.
Yes there are some markets that can exist outside of that but not a central organizing principle of an economy.
> "they got rich cause they worked hard" is a very shallow take
The worked hard on the right idea. Its not a 'take' its a fact'.
I didn't say 'anybody that works hard will be rich'. That would be a shallow take.
There’s nothing stopping Vegas (or other cities) from doing something even smarter. Nothing except people and enough competent companies who can implement. At least Boring Company is helping with the latter and providing more options.
I can't count how many times people in the last 10 years wanted the government to go all in on hydrogen or whatever.
The Boring company is mainly about in city transport, not city to city transport, so its simply a different problem.
And there is a reason why commercial railroads are no longer effective, literally nowhere are they effective. Elon Musk is not magic, he picks the technology that he thinks can be commercially effective.
Of course we can make some of the same assumptions about highways.
If there was actual competition between these systems we might have a more accurate picture.
But private highways do actually seem to be profitable in some countries.
China invest untold billions in that system, and I don't know enough to say if this is defensible on commercial bases.
Yeah right, let's see if this assertion is true (keep in mind that all infra cost are budgeted into annual revenue). Numbers from 2019 which was not a great year for french companies (2020 was worse, but for everyone):
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200228005403/en/SNC...
So, -300m in 2019, with strikes costing 600m (so a net positive of 300m if not for the yellow vest and strikes). -300m for an EBITDA fo 5+bn, i'd consider that you assertion "The prices costumers reflect do not cover the cost" is false, and rail is profitable. High-speed rail even more so.
But i'd agree that some rails are not sustainable and are only still kept thanks to the profitable ones. But the Paris-Marseille or Paris-Bordeaux are definitly profitable.
Railroads have a 50% profit margin, and account for 43% of all intercity shipping in the United States. I don’t know why you would call them commercially ineffective.
This thing is a car in a tunnel. It can’t even compete with a single subway car.
For freight, railroads are the best possible.
Quite a few high-speed railroads are insanely profitable for SNCF in France (Paris-Strasbourg, Paris-Marseille, Paris-Lille), some of them are less profitable, or even run a deficit, but the SNCF budget is balanced every year since 2012 (was, pre-pandemic)