Hacker News Reader

Comment by dayvid | Hacker News Reader

Worth watching Modern MBA on the inefficiencies of transit in USA. Detailed analysis and comparison against Asian, European and Latin American systems along with private and government run operations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ3LSNXwZ2Y

View on HN

Repeating the oft-cited but questionable assertion that car companies dismantled city rail systems makes me uncertain about how trustworthy the rest of their claims are. Though they did mention that the US is the most wealthy nation in the world -- did they later offer an opinion whether that would still be true had we approached public transit and health care subsidies the same way European countries did?

Modern MBA videos are like ChatGPT. They sound reasonable when he's talking about something you don't know, but you'll notice him getting basic facts wrong in topics that you're familiar with. For example, he diagnoses the growth of public storage as people from single family homes to apartments in big cities and having no place to store their things, citing that America's urbanization rate has increased. However, the increased urbanization was actually driven by the growth of suburbs and actually, home sizes actually significantly increased during that period.

What is your alternative explanation for why people rent public storage space? Urban growth and growth in suburbs are not mutually exclusive.

> What is your alternative explanation for why people rent public storage space?

People buying a lot more stuff. The mutually exclusive part is saying that home sizes decreased when they actually decreased.

This is the most detailed I've seen covering numbers on train stats, especially around revenue per employee and different business models ranging from fully private to government subsidized around the world. I've also seen a number of other Modern MBA videos ranging from ok to good and this is arguably his best video

> whether that would still be true had we approached public transit and health care subsidies the same way European countries did?

Why wouldn’t it? I’ve heard many different explanations for the US’s wealth, but never that it’s wealthy because it saves on expenditures. There is also a solid case to be made that healthcare specifically would, if socialized, drive up productivity, earning power, and reduce fiscal risk (and risk aversion) for many demographics, all of which are good for GDP and other measures of a country’s wealth.

As for mass transit? It has costs and benefits too, but they’re a drop in the bucket compared to healthcare costs.

I would also love to know the real reason why US manufacturing seems to be so much more costly than it is anywhere else, even after adjusting for wage differences.

It's not that drastic after wage differences, but bringing manufacturing costs down requires efficient, reliable supply lines. Nothing in the US has been that way for decades given the incentive structure of corporate America.

The purchasers for buses, trainsets, etc., are bad- lots of unnecessary customization, last minute changes, low volume, etc. This drives down efficiency across the system.

Isn’t that true in other countries though?

RE volume, a couple of years back, Ireland, a country of a little over 5 million people, recently made an order for 800 electric buses over five years via the national transport authority. Meanwhile, the transport authorities in the article, in a country with 340 million people, made orders for 10 and 17 buses respectively.

Now, I think Ireland's extreme centralisation on this is unusual, but the US's approach of having loads of absolutely tiny transport authorities is, too.

Because US manufacturers/investors demand high profit margins and expect it to increase every year, if not every quarter. If a company makes the same profits year after year, US investors consider it a dead end if not a complete failure, despite the fact that everybody involved in the business is making money

unbelievably in depth channel, love all of the local business interviews (from other videos with restaurants and such)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com