Thank you for posting this! Suburban infrastructure essentially steals from the economically productive areas and gives to the wealthy and unproductive regions
CA HSR is moving ahead. Major infrastructure projects are more difficult and expensive in the US because we have far stronger property rights than China or European nations.
... minus the "HS" part. Last I checked it was on the politically brokered "non-I-5" corridor (a silly, absurd route) and had a proposed SF->LA trip time of over 2.5 hours.
This is a "high speed" train, circa 1975. Current technology, as demonstrated by running trains elsewhere in the world, would make that route in under 2 hours.
Why is stabilizing human beings economic anxiety not useful?
What theory of science dictates infrastructure is the best place to spend it? If the answer is none, it’s a purely social policy and you’re spewing politically correct memory. That infra spend is not an immutable law of reality means there are options other than “poison the sky with expansive vanity projects.”
Even then, there’s plenty of money for both, and human agency available for both. We can stop pretending money is what drives human invention and discovery. It’s politically correct spoken tradition since it’s not an immutable law; how we feel about other economic choices is a range of possibilities, not just the ones we have been raised to speak of