[annon]

> The fact that we've lost faith in humanity's ability to improve things by taking on large, ambitious projects, even if some, even if most, will fail, saddens me every day. It doesn't prevent me from trying to make the world a better place though, and I hope nobody else was discouraged by low-quality, knee-jerk thinking like this, either.

Exactly! The author pick and chose grand ideas from the past that didn’t work. We’re a nation that built the interstate highway system as well as the transcontinental railroad. Both of those ideas were considered impossible by many at the time but completely revolutionized transportation.

[wpietri]

> We’re a nation that built the interstate highway system

I think you mean this as a positive example, but a lot of people would disagree. It was an enormous public subsidy for a lot of behaviors that now don't look so good, including increased energy dependence, destruction of natural habitat, and a significant increase in racial segregation.

History is what it is, but I hope we can learn some lessons about the downsides of uncritical techno-utopianism.

[aaron-lebo]

Those were both networks built off of scaling existing technologies (the highway is as old as people, and the railway was ~40 years old at that point).

It's a very different thing than entirely new tech outcompeting old and outscaling it, which is what Musk is attempting.

The question is why don't we have a national high speed rail network and if that hasn't or can't work, what's Hyperloop and Boring gonna do better?

[cmrdporcupine]

We don't have a national (or contintent wide) high speed rail network because North Americans by and large don't believe in community efforts and social investment (except for military). There is absolutely incredible private wealth and an incredible poverty of public wealth.

And so we are beholden to private visionaries like Musk.

[vinay427]

It's rather misleading to ignore the convenience of existing modes fo transit (cars in particular) in North America relative to other places in the world. People don't widely support rail investment because cars work well enough. There is just enough parking, inefficient but tolerable traffic, etc. As a result, a lot of people just don't see the problem with the car culture here. Given an immediate problem, they (as with anyone else) will support a solution.

[jpalomaki]

National high speed rail network sounds like something that requires a political consensus (and public money). Probably not feasible to try to build something like that as private company.

For me Elon's ideas feel more like something private company could take.

[briffle]

Isn't the hyperloop scaling tunneling? Making it faster and cheaper and smaller diameter? Subways have been around for a VERY long time...