The problem with local infrastructure projects is their responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in this case local = state of California). These leaders are far less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement, ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so most local infrastructure projects are doomed from the start.
The problem with high speed rail, then, is that it is always going to be a local (=state) infrastructure project. America is far, far, far too large for high speed rail to be feasible at a national level, and so we have invested in airports. This is largely a success; much of the year you can travel from NYC to Miami (~1200 mi, roughly UK -> Spain) for $100-200 in a few hours. There are, of course, many issues with air travel that we are still working on, but unless there is a breakthrough to make supersonic land travel affordable, we are stuck with air travel at a national level.
But where do we go from here? We know the federal process is too bloated to succeed with infrastructure projects, and when it is forced to it ends up being prohibitively expensive. We know the state process is doomed to fail and similarly be very expensive. We have already tried privatizing it and failed, and even when subsidizing private industry we get subpar results at best. What options are even left at this point?
We could actually just pay more money to public governmental employees, allow them to build careers (and raise families), and stop contracting out everything. This would also increase competition for such roles.
How we got here is ultimately, especially for CA, land and legal cost, cost of living, and public employee salary relative to private salaries. That’s endemic to major metro areas in the US, with some small exceptions, but especially true in CA.
Before it was shut down, we did see a real reversal with 18F in getting things through, for software projects. Of course, they weren’t even being paid industry wages there.
> We could actually just pay more money to public governmental employees
When their pensions are taken into account, government employees are ridiculously overcompensated already. They’re basically minor nobility at this point.
I have done the numbers for myself, and even taking pension and treating an extra week of vacation as a 1/52 pay raise, doing a software job for the government would be a huge step down for me financially. Basically gives me 0% chance of ever buying a home where I currently live
> me 0% chance of ever buying a home where I currently live
The housing crisis is the Everything Crisis. It’s destroying competence of government services, as no one ambitious will accept this fate.
It destroyed competitiveness of our industry because you can’t pay a worker less than it costs to rent.
It’s causing apathy and rise in extremist views among younger population as they realise they have no path to dignified future.
I am hoping that China does well for itself and one day we can just consider them as an example of competent and coherent governance and sort out our shit.
I guess we'll see how I'm doing in 20 years to compare, but as of now, my dad is a former California public employee on a pension who had to move to the middle of the desert to stay within his budget, does all domestic work himself, and regularly needs to ask me for money. "Minor nobility" is a laughable characterization of his status in life.
For what it's worth, it's also quite illuminating these days to compare injury history with him. We've had a lot of the same stuff happen, but when it happens to me, he always overestimates the effect because he's still suffering from never recovering properly thanks to a lifetime of no-premium but shitty Kaiser HMO treatment that used the lowest-cost option for literally everything, whereas I had to pay for stuff but at least got the latest available surgical procedures and proper supervised rehab, so my injuries actually healed and I'm not just suffering for the rest of my life like he does.
Then you would have two retirees for every three working age people. And given that only ~70% of working age Americans are actually working, it would mean three non-working adults for every two adults with jobs. Either the retirees would have a really low standard of living, or workers would get much smaller share of the value they create than they currently do.
If you are not already retired or close to retirement, you should assume that the normal retirement age is ~70 years. Anything lower cannot be sustained with the current demographic structure.
You're right and everyone -- including government contractors -- has been quietly shouting this for ages, but existing efforts have already been ideologically co-opted and new efforts are too brash and can't wrap their head around spending more to save more.
Also 18F was not truly shut down and still lives on at GSA, albeit only the worst parts. They're hard at work adding as much red tape as they can imagine to procurement of software and recently boasted about their collective organization answering a whopping 1200 emails in a month.
I suspect we're dealing with the fallout of the loss of an American nomos (shared values, traditions, and moral principles formalized into law, custom, and convention) -- the very issue John Adams wrote about in a 1798 letter:
While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is working diligently under the cover of these pleasing appearances and employing the most insidious and base artifices, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world. Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
When moral virtue is not valued, who will rise to the top and be elected to public office but non-virtuous people?
Failing the development of something like what John Adams is referring to, I fear that the only way "forward" (if it can be called that) is a different form of government, in which individual liberties will be greatly reduced or denied altogether.
My personal opinion -- it's a spiritual problem that needs a spiritual solution. Pray for the nation.
Or we can just keep trying to run through molasses :)
>But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is working diligently under the cover of these pleasing appearances and employing the most insidious and base artifices
It's always amazing to me that slave owning men on stolen land could not see the hypocrisy of such a statement
John Adams in particular was not a slave owner, and he called slavery an "evil of colossal magnitude." So he and those like him (and there were many) shouldn't be condemned in any sense along that line.
I agree that slavery and ill treatment of Native Americans were egregious problems. But on both issues, there were prominent voices speaking out in favor of what was right, including among the founding fathers -- Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, etc. Also, William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania) was an awesome example of someone who insisted on honest, fair dealings with Native Americans, and he won their respect in a big way.
It is hypocrisy to preach about freedom and the equality of man while also owning slaves and believing some men to be unequal. It's not that this was unknown at the time either. Abolitionism was not a new idea in 1798.
Well sure, Adams in particular maybe not, but for him to warn about this hypothetical scenario while it was ostensibly unfolding in front of his eyes is still something i can find a bit ridiculous.
> for him to warn about this hypothetical scenario while it was ostensibly unfolding in front of his eyes
Well why wouldn't he? See something, say something.
I'm sure he saw direct reasons to be worried about people becoming ungovernably immoral, and I bet slavery was one of those reasons -- after all, he did believe it to be a colossal evil.
That's a misquote - that phrase doesn't appear in the letter. I don't think that idea was present either. Could you clarify which phrase(s) conveyed that to you?
If anything, I think he felt compelled to write what he did (not only in this letter) because he felt a sense of imminent danger -- that if the people individually and collectively failed to rise to the high calling of good moral character, the new republic would not last. Remember, the longevity of the United States was by no means a foregone conclusion at the time -- the US Constitution had been ratified a mere 10 years before he wrote this letter, and Adams himself had just been elected as the second president the year before.
(All of which doesn't make his thoughts inapplicable to our time.)
So I think the best argument against this is that the US has done massive infrastructure projects in the past. Some cities had (and some still have) decent public transportation and we've done large canals and even the interstate highway project. I've also seen local infrastructure (and I mean actually local, on the city/county level) be very impactful in the community.
My experience is that unless the community really wants the infrastructure it won't get done and I've seen a lot of opposition to forms of transport that aren't just roads (with the most extreme case of a vocal group in a town not wanting a rail line into the city because they were worried people from the city would come out to their town. They literally didn't want too easy of transportation into/out of the city).
Your theory does not explain why the state of California is capable of discharging $25 billion into freeway construction annually. It obviously cannot be the case that US states are incapable of executing public works projects.
It is so, so, so much easier to build freeways, roads, and highways than rail systems.
It is also absolutely necessary to have roads to move people and goods as not everyone and everything can be transported on rail or even is near rail (even post-HSR).
This is not really the point. Again, your hypothesis lacks explanatory powers. Virtually all of the works undertaken so far on the "rail" project have been roads: bridges, trenches, and relocations of car stuff. So if California can spend tens of billions every year on car stuff through the caltrans budget, it should be more than capable of moving a few of those dollars over the get the HSR project finished. It's a matter of political leadership.
> It is also an income center. California _makes_ money from spending on roads because of job creation (=tax revenue), taxes on vehicle sales, taxes on fuel, tolls, freight fees, and more: https://www.calbike.org/there-is-no-deficit-in-californias-t...
Please provide a reference for CA making money by building roads. Road building is foundational to other economic activity, but AFAIK, it's not turning a profit (nor should it be expected to). Unfortunately, we have a double standard where we consider public transport to be a failure if it doesn't generate a profit.
CA has built tens of miles, probably hundreds, maybe even into the thousands of miles of tracked transit in the time HSR has been building. CA can certainly do what it wants - or maybe do what it needs.
That doesn’t make sense. California is bigger and richer than all but the largest European countries. It has some of the top universities in the world. Why shouldn’t it have a higher caliber of public official than say Denmark?
> It has some of the top universities in the world. Why shouldn’t it have a higher caliber of public official than say Denmark?
Many officials in the current administration who are wreaking havoc on the US economy went to the top universities, like Harvard, Columbia, etc. Attending those universities doesn't imply responsibility or sense of duty to public service at all.
CA does have "high caliber" public officials, but it also produces very corrupt ones. As everyone knows, CA has exported many from both categories to the national stage.
CA is not like Denmark in many ways. California has huge wealth inequality, and its economy and governance are heavily influenced by plutocrats from industries that grow via massive scaling properties, like tech, entertainment, and agriculture.
Two of those industries have a history of labor exploitation, and the other has been actively trying to snuff out the power and leverage it mistakenly gave to its workers over the past several decades.
Without a doubt, Denmark has problems also, and it has plutocrats, but its politicians hold them more accountable to the populace that CA does.
Singapore and Denmark are far more similar to each other than either is to California. Not only are they far smaller, but both countries socially invest heavily in their citizens' quality of life, and by American standards both are egalitarian.
Singapore carefully manages housing, with the majority of the population living in public housing. Of course, both countries also have excellent public transportation.
Why are the politicians in California different than the ones in Denmark? And are those reasons related to it being a sub-national entity, which seems to have been the argument being made above.
> Why are the politicians in California different than the ones in Denmark?
> And are those reasons related to it being a sub-national entity, which seems to have been the argument being made above.
I'm sure it plays a role, but there are tons of convolved factors? They're different places, and your question is too non-specific to have a single answer.
Calling the leaders of the State of California, the 4th largest economy in the world, "local" and less efficient than the federal government is interesting.
Additionally the U.S. Government requires that the states have balanced budgets, a requirement that is not stipulated for federal national spending. Unfunded spending obligations are not a problem, the federal government just raises the debt ceiling.
HSR is perfectly viable for the east. decades of steady investment could have built a massive network out through chicago by now, and with a few more we could be closing in on the last gap in the network between kansas city and las vegas.
This would work if we could run state governments like mini "countries" but there is not enough interest from the electorate and thus very little oversight so they end up in a bad way.
I would like very much for California's state legislature to be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population size & dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure). Unfortunately it operates much more like Thailand or El Salvador pre-"throw everyone in jail".
> This would work if we could run state governments like mini "countries" but there is not enough interest from the electorate and thus very little oversight so they end up in a bad way.
Which is circular; there's less attention because we don't.
> I would like very much for California's state legislature to be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population size & dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure).
About 1/4th the land area of California and much more .. "square". The long line in South Korea is 275 miles long; versus roughly 800 miles for the California HSR system. And California's system is facing a public that's much less accustomed to and receptive to rail, and endpoints that basically require you to have a car anyways.
We should have spent all this money on making local rail awesome. It'd make a much bigger difference in day to day life, would pay off quicker, and would prepare the ground for doing HSR.
they have more efficient central planning, less red tape, and they don't let people like Elon Musk come in and derail the project with dubious and irrelevant alternatives
It really all comes down to civil vs. common law. In America, anyone can hold you over a barrel in court, indefinitely, for any or no reason, until you agree to their extortion.
unfortunately it is worse than that.. a basic and non-trivial State of California project was being done in an office near me, and I knew some of the people. So I saw a bit about how it progressed.. lots of requirements, lots of people from multiple unrelated and slightly competitive groups. The work was mostly intellectual assesment and evaluations with a lot of reports. The thing was funded at professional values.
About six months of work with lots of progress meetings with State of California bureaucrats to "keep them informed" .. and lo-and-behold.. as the required deadlines started getting closer, the State reps changed requirements, made amendments to deliverables.. the last three weeks, even MORE change orders "non-negotiable" .. I have never in my life seen major requirements changed on a multi-party project in the last weeks of a deadline like that. It was like the bureaucrats drank a lot of something, felt the "excitement" and HAD to change things to be "involved and hands on" .. it was STUPID and caused DAMAGE. There was no choice -- the State was paying.
That is how they do things in "infinite income" Sacramento ?
What does that have to do with civil vs. common law? There isn't anything inherent in rule of law based on cases and precedent that should restrict infrastructure projects.
I get so tired of hearing that HSR doesn't make sense federally.
The entire country east of the Mississippi has comparable population and density to western Europe. Plus the sheer size and lack of people sure doesn't stop the federal government from maintaining thousands of miles of interstate through vast swaths of nowhere.
If you look at it by map there's not much more interstate highway than railway.
Interstate highway is also far cheaper to build and maintain than you would imagine. It took around $114 billion to build interstate across the entire country, while the high speed rail project in just California is already upwards of $128 billion.
On Europe that is kind of exactly my point, high speed rail in Europe is built and maintained by federal governments with high levels of participation, interest and oversight from their population. This can never happen in the US because our federal government has to oversee a very wide amount of area and states are not so autonomous and self-governed that their populations primarily interest themselves with their state governments.
The problem with high speed rail, then, is that it is always going to be a local (=state) infrastructure project. America is far, far, far too large for high speed rail to be feasible at a national level, and so we have invested in airports. This is largely a success; much of the year you can travel from NYC to Miami (~1200 mi, roughly UK -> Spain) for $100-200 in a few hours. There are, of course, many issues with air travel that we are still working on, but unless there is a breakthrough to make supersonic land travel affordable, we are stuck with air travel at a national level.
But where do we go from here? We know the federal process is too bloated to succeed with infrastructure projects, and when it is forced to it ends up being prohibitively expensive. We know the state process is doomed to fail and similarly be very expensive. We have already tried privatizing it and failed, and even when subsidizing private industry we get subpar results at best. What options are even left at this point?