Someone should tell China they are doing it all wrong.

No, China doesn’t count because that would challenge my worldview. I know I’m right, I just haven’t figured out how yet.

huh that's quite an elegant way to put it
Truths are complicated and challenging. We don't have to take sides or teams; although I know it's difficult given then times we live in, where we feel the pressure to take sides given how fast we are bombarded with information. Join me and others in the effort to be comfortable with cognitive dissonance...
(context)

I hate the attitude that professor exhibits. "Well we might've wasted years of work, billions of dollars, millions of man-hours, burned up large stockpiles of limited resources, arrested development of national infrastructure doing something we knew was impossible and in this process we've created absolutely nothing worthwhile, but at least I learned a lot! Gotta look on the bright side!"

If China did the same thing with state resources this dude would have a half chub for the rest of his life
- I doubt it, he'd probably find some reason why it was bad
He was a physics phd with a focus in gravitational waves, never a professor. His phd thesis has 0 citations.
You're right, but I feel like even without the hyperloop, the government (or other rich fucks) would find some way to avoid building a train line. Trying and failing to build a hyperloop was just a convenient excuse.
- Oh yeah for sure, but that's because they're rich dickheads. This guy is just an idiot engineer with his head up his ass going
  for "knawledge"
  He's not into this because of geopolitics, he's just a useful idiot

I know this is the second time this shit has been posted, but most rail-less nations are not building railroads because they do not have the nessecery capital intensive industry to build railroads, let alone build a poor man's railroad and then redevelop it, because the world is being purposefully choked of development funds by the IMF and World Bank. God forbid demand gets fulfilled.

that's fair, prior to the current in-progress de-industrialization of germany, do you think they had the capacity or could have reasonably built up the capacity for high-speed rail?
- I went to Germany in '96, and was amazed how on time the trains were. If the schedule said "7:52 arrival" then set your watch by it.
  Now? Not so much.
  https://www.dw.com/en/germany-rail-operator-deutsche-bahn-admits-major-drop-in-punctuality/a-60338352
  https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/2023-deutsche-bahn-delays-already-worse-expected
  At this point, it's startlingly clear that de-industrialization is wide scale corporate raiding.
  Can anyone point to a country that de-industrialized and maintained infrastructure?
- The entirety of Europe had the industrial capacity and know-how to transition towards both High Speed Rail and entire light rail system in the 80's and 90's, even after the chaos of the collapse of the USSR. It's honestly shocking that they didn't given the seriousness that the 80's oil crisis caused, but I have to assume at this point they were banking on the balkanization of Russia and were basically doing a test run in the former Yugoslavia.
  The problem is that the whole of elite European liberal intellectualism is completely wound up in essentially emulating what they perceive to be "American freedom", you'll still run into this with exchange students all the time. The problem is that 'American freedom' will ultimately completely destroy your infrastructural integrity and thus degrade your industrial capacity.

I do not understand how you can seriously look at china and go “Nothing but terrible economic choices here

”

because you believe that everything china does is a lie or is a scam somehow even though all of that is true about your own country.
honestly just thinking about it, megachurches and fucking mlms are fucking legitimate things to do here and we're pointing fingers at china for being sneaky and corrupt
- ~~even though~~ because
  If you think we got it bad just look at the conditions other countries live in. It must be because their liars and scammers in government are even worse. That was how I used to view these things anyway.
- Jordan Belfort is a glorified figure in the US, pure ideology
- I have to ask him, are we living in the same country? Because everywhere here feels so fake.
  Fake jobs
  fake hiring process
  HSR in California is vaporware thanks to NIMBYism
  fake high property values
  fake value of college degrees
Because every word out of an American’s mouth regarding China is a lie. At least, any AVERAGE American.
Why?
Because Americans are very, very, VERY stupid.

Lol, high-speed rail in the US is a joke. California's HSR program started in 1996 and hasn't produced anything substantial in nearly 30 years. They might be able to get 1/3 of Phase 1 into operation by 2030. It's not even in discussion unless it's bundled with some kind of meme shit like depressurized train tunnels and eliminating safety measures.

In China, Deng started the Chinese HSR program around the same time and went from virtually none to being the world leader in kilometers of HSR with ~45,000 Km of operational HSR. To put that into perspective, that's double the rest of the world combined. In fact, China has more HSR in construction than the rest of the world has active HSR today.

There's this thing called land ownership which is a right...the state can eminent domain them but they'd have to fight it in court.
Doubt they have that in China, if your home is in the way of a planned development...it won't be soon. You don't buy land from the government there, it's on a lease basis.
That and everyone in politics has to be aligned. If the top down order is to build a HSR, no cog in the system can just slow shit down for the hell of it. Doesn't work that way in the US, as witnessed by the myriad times that the government can never approve the budget before it's due.
- What is hilarious about your argument is that it takes far more land to build and maintain a highway, and yet we somehow never had any problems with forcing land sales with eminent domain clauses doing that.
  It's almost as if the government is owned by a series of interests that are not actually interested in investing and maintaining efficient consumption minimum and economical modes of transportation, and instead focused on making a system that is efficient at creating profit for it's ownership class. It's almost as if, instead of a focus on the money to commodity cycle, there is a perverse incentive for a money to commodity to money cycle that means there is no real incentive to ever substantially invest to improve your commodity production.
  Weird.
- Damn, it feels like your hypothetical system is designed to protect the interests of the rich and screw over the poor masses, and over time, increase the power the rich already have and further screw over the poor. I have some notes.
  Like can you imagine if such a system existed in the real world. If, say, they wanted to violate the "right" of land ownership for poor people to segregate cities by, idk, skin colour. They could separate them with massive, uncrossavle highways. The people that make cars and people who own oil fields will love that! The issue is that there may or may not be some poor people that live there. But even the ones that own land, well, they can be removed because of the system of eminent domain. Theoretically it'd also apply to the wealthy, so it looks like a fair system to the layman. But the rich can afford to take time off work and better lawyers. So on paper it sounds fair, but in practice, it favours those who are already wealthy!
  And it would feedback into even more advantages for the wealthy. All those highways will require cars, which is good, but cars need fuel. The fuel will need to be moved vast distances, your need a line of pipes from the oil fields! But that would once again require you to build a... "Line of pipes" across vast distances. But there are natives living along where those lines would go! And they theoretically benefit from the right to own land as well! And they're disadvantaged due to being survivors of a genocide. Treaties or no, the lines will get out through their land, they can fight back but obviously they're unlikely to win.
  This doesn't seem like a well thought out system. The only other thing the rich would have to do is to own media and education. Then they can pump out articles and curriculum one after the other saying this system is the only system that works! They can even tell people, over multiple generations, that this the only way, that the right to land is a human right (not food or water though, that would cut into the profits of some other rich people, obviously). And make it legal for the rich to have a stranglehold on the government, call it something other than corruption, make it sound less harmful. Eventually you can erode the political structure to consist only of 2 groups of people who both agree with your "right" to land ownership, so even if the masses wanted to (which they don't, thanks to media and education ;)), they literally can never change it
  Yeah imagine if this system existed irl. It's a dystopia disguised as a normal country. And basically everyone in it would believe theres no other way, since any alternative has been demonized since before their grandparents were born.
  Genius, and evil
- America: bulldozes entire neighborhoods to build highways, displacing everyone with minimal compensation.
  China: Nail house.
- Doesn’t work that way in the US, as witnessed by the myriad times that the government can never approve the budget before it’s due.
  "Our government is slow and inefficient can't take decisions in a timely manner (especially if it's decisions that benefit everyone at the expence of a fingernail of the bottomline of some rich dickhead for some reason
  ), that's how you know it's truely democratic"
- So...it's a good thing when someone can torpedo a massive infrastructure project that will benefit millions just because they don't feel like selling "their" land? Because they have a slip of paper that says they own a bunch of land, they can personally decide whether or not millions of people have access to public transport? Is that the argument you're making? That capitalism is a superior system because someone who is rich and powerful enough can inconvenience or even destroy the lives of millions just cause they can?
- Oh I'll just tell the poor Americans I know whose homes were bulldozed for transportation infrastructure that it didn't happen because they could have fought it in court. Dumbass.
- There's this thing called tribal sovereignty, which is a right. Doubt they have that in the US; if your tribe is in the way of a planned settlement... it won't be soon.
- Doubt they have that in China, if your home is in the way of a planned development…it won’t be soon.
  [citation needed]
  In fact there are many exemples of the opposite happening, China having to build around something because the person(s) refused to move and China didn't force them to.
- Doubt they have that in China
  hey genious, what's a nail house?
  no investigation, no right to speak
- Yeah you can't get in the way of public development in China. If they want to run a rail through your house they'll give you a fat stack of cash and move you into a nice new apartment. The system works.

Paragon of poor economic choices

"I mean its economics 101! If you always actually complete things instead of just throwing money at rich assholes, eventually you're gonna run out of projects that need doing. And where is your economy going to be then? That's right

"

throwing money at rich people is good as long as it's in the form of coins moving at several kilometers per second
- or whatever you got lying around
It was less smug, but I basically received this argument from one of my brothers when I tried to explain that China is (probably) striving towards a future where it's good enough for capital to do things people need instead of making financial profits.
Edit: I'm always open to the possibility that I'm an idiot, but it really seemed like he had never considered the possibility that resources could be used to directly meet needs. I'm not feeling like I was the one being stupid.
- Seems like standard capitalism apologia to me. Just absurd statements about how helping people is actually bad somehow and that society is better off if everyone is suffering. And it's so far off base from things like basic empathy that it sounds unbelievable, especially when it comes out of people we care about.

This guy's Twitter is the definition of bazinga: just endless posts of how everything can be solved with cool magic future tech. I'm shocked he actually admitted the Hyperloop is a failure.

He didn't admit that it's a failure, just that they failed. They "got close." The hyperloop cannot fail, it can only be failed
It sounds like he's saying the hyperloop failed because of drama and external reasons. Not because it was, in essence, a fictional project never meant to worm.

The vacuum train thing is honestly a waste and is incredibly dangerous, but the fact that China has progressed further than Musk at the testing phase, all the while improving their public train transportation network to be the best in the world, is just

I wonder if you could do one purely for cargo on a limited scale the way pneumatic tube systems used to work in office buildings?
- I was so disappointed when I found out a lot of the old office buildings in my city had those tubes and they tore them all out
  I always wanted to send something in a tube and I never got a chance
- Meh, you could just build more cargo lines
Can’t wait to get Byford Dolphin’d and have it all recorded on CCTV.

Hasn't China vastly improved its economic lot since the 80s?
- and before that, too
  China's GNP grew an average of 6.2% annually over the period 1952–1978.
- Yeah, but China told porky what to do, so it doesn't count.

Like a can of spray paint.

"My tech evangelism job failed so now please buy my story as book, streaming show, or straight-to-streaming movie about the wacky inner workings of Hyperloop!"

more like diaper poop lmao gottem

I know they mean it was all done domestically but I still think the use of the word homemade is funny.

Just some random Chinese bros hanging out in their garage tinkering with their maglev hypertrain.

but don't you know, the Chinese still live under Mao Zedong thought
, they still have those makeshift backyard furnaces and push trains, when they don't have enough coal

/s

Fucking lmao. TechBro-Nerd shit to the max. Get rekt.

If anyone can prove me wrong and build a viable vacuum train, it'll be CRCC.

- They did it at CERN, but the maximum passenger size is a few dozen femtometers, and collisions are common
- I also think it will be incredibly difficult and maintenance intensive to keep any structure that size at near vacuum.
  I think there may be a break even point between cost and effect where removing enough air to reduce (but not even close to eliminate) drag is worth the trouble though. Very large clean zone manufacturing facilities are routinely kept slightly above outside ambient pressure to prevent dust/moisture/insects from getting in.
- I am deeply skeptical as well. But again, if anyone can do it, it'll be CRCC.

800K views, 800 likes is very funny to me

0.1% audience agreement

Phd. in standing in front of money printer go brrr.

usians are the most propagandized people on earth

trying to build an impossible thing.

The tweet should end here

Average Silicon Valley PhD

https://nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/1738229120386171243 https://nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/1736108074342174985

But at what cost?

If everyone in the US who supported the Ansar Allah at this point was a "tankie" we'd have the 3.5% of the population needed to overthrow this fascist state.