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Comment by finid | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, but judging by how things are going in western nations, especially in the USA, we're more likely to emulate their "mistakes and authoritarian overreach" before we even break ground on that rail from SF to LA.

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Yup, the US is increasingly heading towards the worst of both. We're investing massively in building a police state, while completely neglecting infrastructure and quality of life.

Ground was broken on January 6, 2015, but perhaps your point is still valid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-S...

That is incredibly depressing. Good chance you're right, but that doesnt mean we should give up.

Politics is critical, and as technologists we can't just opt out and hope things will work out. We have to win these fights.

As technologists, we're often the ones implementing and designing the systems, infrastructure and algorithms that make such a thing not only possible, but likely :(

I have witnessed that very thing more times than I like to admit. I fail to understand what, other than sheer greed, motivates tech people to help build these police states. It's going to come back at us in terrible ways. Technology doesn't care whether it kills us all, it is completely value neutral. Only we can make the right choices.

I once worked at a place that was bidding on surveillance tech for some public transit systems in Australia and the cavalier attitude that management had about privacy was sad, to say the least. They just didn't think it was their job at all to decide what is right or make any ethical judgements whatsoever. To them, mass surveillance was merely a way to make a lot of money and that's all. They didn't care who got hurt when that tech eventually makes it to less democratic nations to be used to suppress and destroy the human spirit.

Well, that company went under, but others succeeded.

But we can't really discuss these type of issues at length on HN. It'd be deemed to political.

> before we even break ground on that rail from SF to LA

We already have, here's video of the construction: https://youtu.be/1lsiYkyEW0w

Monthly construction updates: https://www.hsr.ca.gov/buildhsr.html

This is sad. I thought I'd be able to see a map showing green as part of the rail line that was complete or percentage complete. It just has some random project names where there's some work going on. I drive to Fresno every other month and cant wait to ride this, but nothing on the route seems to indicate any urgency to complete this project.

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