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Comment by mrcwinn | Hacker News Reader

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mrcwinn·

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Is it being "invested" or is it being set on fire? Would you rather see capital be set on fire or hoarded?

We don't have to spend it on hardware with such short use-life to spend down those dragon hoards...

The amount of money we are talking about could have given the entire US high speed commuter rail.

Could it, though? California estimates the cost of SF to LA at $126 billion (and >20 years of construction time!); at that rate you'd have to spend $1T just to get a single cross-coast track. It is not obvious to me that the US's lack of high speed rail can be solved by money.

Or every teacher gets classroom supplies for five years.

Or treatment programs for addicts. There are a lot of economic benefits to helping folks on the lower side of the income spectrum.

Yeah but taxing 50% of all earnings below $100k could also do that. What money can be spent on is fine but I think we’ve got a good system where people can have reward for economic output and they can use that to allocate money where they want. There are places with central planning and I don’t like them.

Personally, I’d rather the money be spent on datacenters. And as it goes, the guys with the money also would prefer that.

We have central planning just not by a government

You would rather build data centers than buy school supplies or implement a nationwide high speed commuter rail network?

Yes.

To do the latter things as a substitute would require appropriation of other people's money to spend on highly captured industries. I'd rather that not happen.

But it wouldn’t have been so who cares? It’s a counterfactual.

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