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Comment by GenerWork | Hacker News Reader

>Resident conservative here - we need to nationalize the rails.

Imagine calling yourself a conservative and supporting the idea of nationalizing the rails. Nationalization is quite possibly one of the most unconservative ideas out there.

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Nuanced thought is to be commended. As a moderate conservative, I am not opposed to nationalizing the rails. Certain shared infrastructure is impractical when privately owned, primarily when (as parent points out) private ownership creates misaligned incentives.

As a fiscal conservative, my views are that we should reduce government waste. As long as Amtrak continues to be worthless, the money we spend on it is wasted. When unprofitable rail lines are torn out, the money we spent building those rail lines may have been wasted. If we genuinely want eco-friendly transportation, one option to explore is to centralize our rail infrastructure with the goal of it becoming useful to all.

I don't know if it is the best option, but I think we should explore it and see what the benefits would be.

Maybe for two different definitions of conservative. But it seems easy enough to want to conserve something that the market will destroy, and to realize that one feasible way to do that is nationalization.

Free market capitalism only works when you have free markets. Look at the cost of airline tickets post ICC. We could see something similar with freight, and will see major Amtrak gains - ideally even Brightline gains.

Depends on your perspective. It creates a market of competition for services upon those rails.

Ding ding ding. Treat them like highways, they basically are anyway. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

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