The Plot Against Trains
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Proof: Look to the projects that are already approved, like, say, the California train. Look at why they're running over budget and past schedule. It's not because libertarians are running around, yelling and scaring the poor, hard-working train workers, who then have to take unexpected hazard pay. It isn't for lack of money, which gets generously ladled over many of these projects.
When I vote against these sorts of sweeping projects, I'm not really doing it as a libertarian, I'm just doing it as a pragmatist. If the voting public is reluctant to fund more of these things, they're quite possibly just being rational. Michigan, for instance, just voted down a big bill to raise taxes and fix up the roads, and believe me, Michiganders are almost uniformly of the opinion we need to do more for our roads... but we voted it down quite hard because really all it seemed to do was throw money at the problem, and not even all that competently. The sheer governmental incompetence at public works projects has reached a point where even Michigan, a state that is at least Blue-ish, is hardcore voting these things down because we simply do not think the projects are being done well.
Fix that, and I'll vote you money. Even me.
Looking back, even when they did large projects in the past there were companies involved that did most of the projects. The government just funds it across all because it is beneficial to many or all and it may not be a market investment now but will be long term. Many people got rich determining where the roads, rails and projects got made and fortunes were made. That is when people started caring, many projects in when there were economic benefits. We also built up after WWI/WWII because the entire world was in ruin and we had an opportunity to get far ahead. I am convinced that if that happened today, with our extreme views, that we would have just not built up after those wars and we would be living in a much different place, with much less business and economic opportunity. Rarely does a big project like this cause economic issues other than the initial cost but the long term it adds many times more worth. We now have some of the worst rickety infrastructure and we still aren't doing anything now so why would we have then with this outlook. We use public fees and funds to build stadiums but not much else.
I'd be fine with us giving Tesla or Elon Musk funds to make the US have electric highways. Maybe even giving Google and others funds to build the fiber network that will always be upgradeable and on a schedule. But that is the flipside, lots of people wouldn't be fine with that without some oversight, America is a big team that isn't playing for the better of the whole team but tribes within it. It seems to be just black or white to most people when these things take time to get right. We are like working at an office with a really demoralized team, so why do anything for the team at all then right?
We have forgotten how to build and fund things for the common good that elevates everyone's quality of life and provides a better platform for business and economic development. That American attitude of betterment for all and strong base was left in the former century.
I wonder after all these wars when we will finally get back to infrastructure and projects like better roads, high speed rail, water projects like Hoover Dam, the interstate system, bridges/tunnels, and more. What are we going to do when we need drone infrastructure? What about high speed internet and fiber in a constant upgrading capacity? Is our solution to continually fall behind waiting for the market to be right?
Why don't we have the same grand efforts to build an electric highway (highways with electric charging stations), or better high speed rail not 50 year old Amtrak trains, or that killer fiber network. These are quality of life improvements, that directly increase economic power for all, that we cannot get funding for but we can go to war.
We need a War on Infrastructure Aging and somehow tie it to War on Terror funding or War on Drugs funding and scare people into doing it as that seems to be our modus operandi this millennia.
"What we have, uniquely in America, is a political class, and an entire political party, devoted to the idea that any money spent on public goods is money misplaced, not because the state goods might not be good but because they would distract us from the larger principle that no ultimate good can be found in the state."
This is a very strong statement, but it is simply not true, and cannot be substantiated by any reference to public statements of the people Gopnik is criticizing. The best case he could make is that this is what they "really mean", or that it is some logical conclusion of their statements. But that ignores a lot of what they do say. Republicans have voted for all kinds of public spending, on all kinds of things, since Reagan was elected. In fact there is all sorts of criticism of some of that spending within the party, going all the way back to Stockman. And almost all spending "cuts" championed by those evil Republicans turn out to be refusals to increase spending.
If you want to know why our country is so divided, and our debate is so sterile, just look at the massive mischaracterizations of pieces like this. When you don't even listen to what the other side has to say, and can't bring yourself to an honest account of the opinions you criticize -- yeah, there won't be much dialogue.
We've come a long way from Dagny Taggart.
The american train disaster is not a failure due to selfishness - it is a failure due to central planning in the worst fashion: corruption.
This. The NTSB has been trying to get safety systems that automatically enforce speed limits (which would've prevented the recent fatal crash) in place since 1970 (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/05/more-proof-of-americas-...). The freight operators have successfully lobbied Congress to push it off to (thus far) 2020.
The NTSB seems to have higher standards for railroads than elsewhere in the world, that's one reason why we can't just import high speed trainsets, pretty much every other passenger rail car is much lighter and less sturdy than ours. I think much of that is due to our rail system handling both freight and passenger traffic.
This is ridiculous, because it means we can't import those high speed trainsets, even in the northeast corridor, where the tracks are Amtrak-owned, and do not see freight traffic, just because the rails do link to the freight network.
Well, everywhere west of Harrisburg and south of DC, Amtrak runs on the right of way of freight railroads. That isn't "lease" exactly, but Amtrak pays to use those tracks, which is essentially the same thing.
I have lived in cities like Boston, Berlin, London and I believed I had seen crowded places. But living in big cities in China or Japan is another world.
Asia has an enormous population density, so trains(and bikes) make sense there. Now I live in Europe(already crowded place) and I feel a void of all this people everywhere.
Places like the US or Australia just have such low population density. They already need cars for everything they do so they are car centric, and distances are so big between cities that it makes sense to use planes instead of trains.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/dec/23/glory-r...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/bring-b...
These were published a few months after his premature death in 2010. Judt was a prominent American/European historian and intellectual who wrote a series of serious, elegant, and spirited essays for the NY Review, all of which can be recommended.
Now public transportation, ie mass transit, is a financial mess whereby the riders don't have to pay the full cost as its been acknowledged they would use the service if they did; oddly some studies have found the percentage increase if fares were removed didn't increase significantly.
Dollars spent on mass transit have increased from 1.6b in 1970 to over 20 billion today. The twenty plus billion of subsidies doesn't include nearly ten billion to maintain it or almost eight billion for improvments.
The problem is light rail is super expensive, you could get more bang for your buck with dedicated bus lanes and double decker buses. Consider cities like Portland were expansion of the light rail is costing nearly a hundred million a mile.
The only plot against trains for mass transport is there exceptional cost to build and maintain versus ridership which even subsidized doesn't pay for it
As for the article, attempting to capitalize on a tragedy and then completely ignoring already know facts is not journalism and its tasteless and unprofessional
"American railroads accounted for just 17.2 billion passenger-kilometres in 2010, according to Amtrak, America's government-backed passenger rail corporation. In the European Union, railways accounted for nearly 400 billion ..."
(http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/08/ec...)
Personally I think trains are awesome, and I've love to see high-speed bullet trains criss-crossing America. But I don't want the government involved in it, and if that means we go without the trains, that's an outcome I find acceptable.
Confusing then that the US spends so much on war.
EDIT: I'm not trying to make any political point. Parent post said that many Americans are agaisnt subsidizing industries. The military budget is an obvious counter to that point. Don't read anything else into this.
I'm not sure if you bring that up because you think I'm in favor of that particular bit of spending, or what... but for the record, I'm opposed to almost everything we've done under the rubric of "war" (including the "War on Drugs", "War on Terror", "War on Poverty", etc.) since WWII.
I think that in a world where we have Nation-States like the US, Germany, etc., that those governments should at least "play by their own rules". That doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer a world without them. In the case of WWII, the point I'm making is that WWII was the last time there was an actual Congressional declaration of war, and perhaps the last time the US government was actually somewhat justified in invoking it's military - at least relative to more recent overseas military actions.
As for private militias... yeah, if a bunch of guys in the US in 1941 had said "Hey, we're going to organize and go help the French and Brits against Germany", I would have had no problem with that.
I'm not making any other point.
Only private companies should build roads, and drivers need to pay tolls wherever they go.
Government shouldn't be in the business of propping up failed, unprofitable infrastructure projects, like roads.
If people don't want to pay for roads, then it shouldn't be built.
Sarcasm duly noted, but I agree with this sentiment 100%
Weak people should be eliminated. Government shouldn't be in the business of providing for their protection and safety. There is no inherent right to defense.
The world is only meant for the strong.
Well, personally I'd argue against the existence of "countries" as we know them today anyway. Voluntarily assembled, organized mutual defense entities, yes. But "nation states" with all these borders, and boundaries, and rules, and regulations, and controls? I say "give 'em the axe".
So.. countries then?
Countries today do a lot more than just self defense. So to answer your question - "no".
What would you say to this proposal: triple the gas tax or institute a property tax on vehicles so that the roads are fully funded by users.
Just because you want me to pay for your defense, doesn't mean I should. I don't particularly care if you live or die.
If you want me to pay for something for you, such as your defense, what are you going to offer me in return? Are you going to pay for my health care? Want to pay for a new plasma TV for me?
I'd be interested in hearing your rationale for that line of thinking. I believe there is, because I believe in self-ownership. I own my body, and I have the right to defend it (me) from harm.
Just because you want me to pay for your defense, doesn't mean I should. I don't particularly care if you live or die.
Where did I say anything about you paying for my defense? I'm a Voluntaryist[1], dude... I don't support any arrangements that aren't voluntary. When I say the State is "the collective extension to our innate right..." I mean to say that a group of people should voluntarily be able to create a State (or State-like entity) for mutual defense, if they want to. I don't propose anybody be forced to do so.
That's not a "right". That's just an "action".
Rights are protected by a legal structure. There are no 'rights' without a higher-power legal structure to provide it.
Anyone can say they have any 'right' - defense, speech, a Plasma TV in the bathroom, etc.. doesn't mean you're given that 'right' without a higher power granting and enforcing that right.
Rights are protected by a legal structure. There are no 'rights' without a higher-power legal structure to provide it.
We are working with very different definitions of what a "right" is. A "right" in my book is "something you don't need anyone else's permission to do". So, defending myself, obviously is a right. Walking into your home, opening your refrigerator and taking a swig from the milk jug, is not a right I have.
Sounds like we basically come down on the different sides of the argument about "negative right" vs "positive rights". I don't believe in "positive rights", so the idea of "the right to a Plasma TV in the bathroom" is basically nonsense to me. All it means to me is, "of course you have the right to buy a Plasma TV and put it in your bathroom, if you want to and can afford it".
And how do you resolve your 'don't need permission' with the fact that powers bigger than you can do what they wish with you. Do you have the right to defend yourself if government is trying to arrest you?
You basically redefined 'action' again. You don't need permission to do any action... you just do it.
I can't tell if you're just trying to be provocative, or if you genuinely don't get the distinction here, but I'll err on the side of good faith. What I'm saying is that most of the time, when people talk about things like "the right to have a Plasma TV" what they are saying is that they are entitled to a Plasma TV and that someone else (can|must|should) be compelled to provide them said TV. That would be a "positive right" and I disagree that such rights exist. However, of course you have "the right to purchase a Plasma TV and install it in your bedroom". Because you don't need anyone's permission to do so.
Do you have the right to defend yourself if government is trying to arrest you?
Of course you do. The government may not recognize said right, and since they may employ more men with guns than you do, they may be able to compel you to go along with their dictates through force, but that doesn't mean it's right.
At the end of the day, there's probably no way to ever totally escape "might makes right" since a person (or persons) with sufficient power can over-power those who disagree with them. As far as I'm concerned though, that's a meaningless tautology. The issue that concerns me is to what extent we institutionalize the use of force, particularly in any offensive mode.
I would note that this is expressly at odds with the model of government enshrined in the Constitution (and I mean, even the original text + bill of rights, not later amendments), which clearly envisions even the federal government as having a much larger role than as "the collective extension of our innate right to self-defense", at least as one would normally conceive that phrase.
And, I'd further note, that I can't see any government not empowered to take action to internalize external costs and benefits of economic transactions as being worthwhile, or in fact of such a minimal government as being anything but oppressive-in-effect. Of course, on the externalized cost side, one could view such costs as a form of violence (unconsented harm inflicted by others), and defending against them as part of the innate right of self-defense, and then the limitation on government you propose would still admit a government empowered to address economic externalities. At which point, defending government involvement in transit becomes a lot easier, even within the framework you set out.
Agreed. But I never said I thought the Constitution was a big deal, or the model for perfect government. As it happens, I have a LOT of issues with pretty much all aspects of our government as it exists today.
That said, I do wish they'd at least play by their own rules, as a federal government strictly bound by the Constitution would almost certainly be smaller and less corrupt than what we have now. But nobody really seems to give a shit about the Constitution these days.
And, even if they couldn't, my answer would only be to say that I don't hold that I'm entitled to a road, an ambulance, or a hospital.
Can you imagine the US without the Interstate? That's the sort of opportunity you're missing out on here.
The subsidy the government has given American businesses a huge competitive advantage, you can ship almost anything cross-continent within a few days. This has enabled companies like UPS to exist.
High-speed trains have the potential to dramatically shrink distances between major hubs, giving people an alternative to aviation for their mid-range transportation needs, and could allow people to live in more affordable neighborhoods without an unbelievably long commute.
There are people that live in northern France and commute to London and it takes them about an hour. Meanwhile getting from Buffalo to New York City takes a full day.
50 years ago that railroad was private. Freight rail today in the USA is privately owned and doing really well.
I would fully support all interstate highways being private toll roads, but I don't think highways and rail travel are comparable any more than highways and air travel is. And airlines are privately owned (though heavily regulated).
Believe it or not, this was known 5 years ago -- you can find it on old documentaries, where they talk about it with conviction this was the future of transportation. The problem is simply the early investment. The tech is here.
With our current pace of innovation, a pharaonic transportation project with recoup costs on the order of a century is hard to justify. The need to physically displace yourself is changing rapidly with the internet, and who knows what we'll need in 100 years!
It's been known for a lot longer than that. Larry Niven had them in his novel A World Out of Time (1976) and I think Heinlein had them in some of his novels from the 1960s.
I suspect the concept predates those novels.
I am currently of the opinion that major logistical infrastructure can't feasibly be done by any non-governmental entity since such company can't force land acquisition and usage approval by their own fiat. A company could propose a project to legislators, but would have to invest significantly before that stage with no guarantee of return. If a company could feasibly be granted such power plenipotentiarily, it would be a huge bill of rights issue (that eminent domain is controversial is another discussion). Other than government, I don't see a feasible solution here.
I never said it would be easy.
If we can eliminate government, we can eliminate the people's protection racket. This will allow private companies to flourish, and the weak to be eliminated.
I find it amusing that you would cite that example as an argument FOR government, as I think it stands as a classic example of the worst of what government enables.
Every company that exists as separate juridical entity (e.g., every corporation, for starters) does so with the explicit sanction of a government and is an exercise of government power.
The East India Company was a private company in exactly the same sense as any other "private" corporation.
That's just being pedantic. It was a "private company" yes, but a private company that was granted powers far beyond those given to pretty much any other private company. They were allowed to maintain their own private army and effectively rule large parts of India as though they were the government. That's a HUGE difference from the typical private company.
It seems like you didn't think your cunning plan all the way through, because you seem to be implying that you need more government regulation on what private corporations can do, correct?
Or are you saying that, without government regulation, the East India company wouldn't have formed their own private army?
Do you think private armed militias, that are legal today in the US, be allowed to exist?
You're going to have to reconcile your position of "less government" with "leads to more private armies".
Most likely. Of course it's all hypotheticals, but since we - for the most part - define government as that entity which has (mostly) a monopoly on the use of force, a private company would not generally be considered empowered to do that without the sanction of a government.
Or are you saying that, without government regulation, the East India company wouldn't have formed their own private army?
Correct.
Do you think private armed militias, that are legal today in the US, be allowed to exist?
Of course they can exist. Now, of course, we're at the bottom of the stack, so to speak. What if one of these private militias "goes rogue" and commits unspeakable atrocities? Who's to stop that, right? And I guess your answer would be "the government"? I'd argue that the answer is "some other voluntarily assembled mutual defense entity, or no one". Anyway, all we've really shown here is that if you drill down deep enough, human conflict is inevitable and at some level we may never get away from "force vs force". But I argue against institutionalizing the idea of using force to compel people to do things, and keep the use of force reserved for self defense.
You're going to have to reconcile your position of "less government" with "leads to more private armies".
I'm not opposed to private armies in general. I'm opposed to private armies, operating with the sanction of the State, and essentially becoming one more arm of the government, and being used to violate people's rights. Or, you could even omit the "with the sanction of the State" bit, and the rest would still stand. The problem is, when we accept the presence and authority of something like a State, and then it endorses or sanctions "evil" (for lack of a better term) acts, it's that much harder to muster opposition to those acts, since they're nominally "legal".
>Correct.
This is why libertinism is often relegated to that of a sweet, innocent 12 year old idealists, because they do not know about the real world.
In the real world, what happens without government is that warlords form. This happens throughout history, such as colonial expansion into indian territory, or after the collapse of the Soviet Union, etc. And it's happening RIGHT NOW in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan.
You don't need a state to sanction violence for violence to happen. Violence will happen when there isn't a state to sanction it.
This is why the correct solution that adults agree on is a strong, centralized government with power. The whole point of a strong, centralized powerful government is to limit the rights and freedoms of individuals, so people AREN'T allowed to do what they want.
Because, when people are allowed to do what they want, they form violent armies. Government limits peoples rights and freedoms to do that.
To stop this, you need a) a strong, powerful government, and b) that government to say "no violence."
Government is the social contract you offer to other people. And only though a social contract can you prevent violence.
That's what you get with your "strong, powerful, centralized government".
If there's ever been a government that actually said "no violence" and followed through on it, I haven't heard of it.
Can you name a few?
Which system is better? A libertarian warlord system? Or the US government?
What exactly makes a warlord system more favorable than the US government?
If you want an example of a government, you don't need to bring up Stalin's Russia or Nazi Germany.. you have an example of government right here in the US!
Clearly you thought through your cunning "less government" libertarian plan, and have concluded that such a system, which results in warlords, would be better than the US government, right? Let's hear that rationale then.
And please drop the silly "cunning plan" business, this is Hacker News, not reddit.
You're pretending that the only options are no central government at all, on the one hand, and an all-powerful central government on the other.
That's not actually the case.
Can you give me a plausible scenario for how, without a government and its concomitant military power, a band of people from a small island in the Atlantic ocean could take over the entire Indian subcontinent?
Specifics, please.
No question. Like I said, I'm pro-train. I just don't think that subsidizing trains is a proper role for government. If there is enough market demand to fund and support trains (or Interstate highways, or the Post Office, or whatever) then more power to them. If not, I don't believe in propping them up through taxpayer funded subsidies.
One idea behind taxpayer subsidies for these things is that they have external benefits (either directly, or in that they have less externalized costs than alternatives). With trains, particularly, the argument is that they have less externalized costs than other forms of transit.
(Of course, you could address this by imposing taxes on the more-externally-costly alternatives, but that's equivalent to subsidy to the alternative with less external costs, so it amounts to the same thing.)
Now you can have some routes (such as the Buffalo to NYC one that you mentioned), but again if it is paid for federally, then unless there are similar situations that the majority of the country could take advantage of, it doesn't make sense.
This is specious. It's the whole Bastiat "That which is seen and unseen" problem of economic manipulation. You don't know what would have happened if trillions in resources hadn't been diverted. I find it very easy to argue things would be better if Ike had never taken over the highway system and federally subsidized it. We've wasted massive amounts of public resources spreading thinly used infrastructure out all over the land and it's been largely enabled by the interstate system. Also consider the absurd highway fatility/injury rate in America and how much that costs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_%28U.S....
The Great Northern was the only privately funded — and successfully built — transcontinental railroad in U.S. history. No federal land grants were used during its construction, unlike all other transcontinental railroads
And the Great Northern was quite successful throughout the booms and busts of the late 19th century, outlasted most of its 'competitors' that were propped up by the government, because they had a proven market.
Why would you assume a big problem? The funding just needs to be strictly derived from user fees. If truckers can't profitably transport goods when bearing the full cost of their activity, then what they were doing was an uneconomic waste of resources.
At the moment it's something like $2K USD per household that gets dumped into road infrastructure, from general tax revenue not user fees like the gas tax. This is ridiculous. Modern tech makes toll roads not a big problem anymore. Most roads should be separately incorporated toll roads. There shouldn't be a cent of general revenue public money going into the major roads.
Public funding for intercity passenger rail is equally ridiculous, at least in America. The financials simply don't work and almost any route you can name would inevitably be a boondoggle. Even the NE corridor is pretty dicey. Rail only works with greater urban density than currently exists in the USA. As it is there's no reason not to simply run buses rather than trains, or "light-rail".
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/amtrak-a-national-haza...
Do you also oppose highways? They are an (almost) entirely public endeavour, they aren't even funded solely by usage fees in the form of gas tax. In fact 42% of highway funding comes from general funds(like income tax). And, most of them are giant money pits.
Can you site your source for that including continuing capital spending?
You would think, but not really when you break down the numbers. They lose money there too once you properly factor in asset depreciation. They cannot compete with buses and airplanes anywhere in the country at all.
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As it is, Amtrak’s current fare on this route is about 15 cents per passenger mile and apparently it cannot go much higher if it wishes to remain competitive with air. Yet why in the world should bus drivers in Minneapolis pay Federal taxes in order to provide what amounts to a $600 subsidy per ticket on the 180,000 tickets that are sold annually on the Chicago-Los Angeles route? And the latter is only typical of most of the other routes outside the northeast corridor.
Obviously, there is no means test to get a $600 subsidy from Amtrak, or any other plausible criterion of public need. Like so much else which emanates from Washington, these Amtrak subsidies are distributed willy-nilly——in this case to retirees with enough time and money to see the country at leisure or to people with fear of flying who don’t wish to drive.