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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   Edited 3yr ago   36616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I loved the story from California's HSR where they talked about the french rail builder coming to the US to bid, throwing in the towel after finding their time here wasted, leaving, and completing a new HSR project in Morocco, while California spent twice their expected budget to build nothing.

If that's not a great illustration of the US problems, I don't know what a better one would be.

OTOH, the French company's recommendations -- such as to run the route along Hwy 5 in the Central Valley rather than Rte 99, where people actually live -- would not have effectively served Central Valley residents. It is easy to save money by building a less effective system.

This (as I understood it) was actually part of a policy dispute about what the HSR project even was for. Was it supposed to be primarily a replacement for LAX-SFO flights? If so, travel time is one of, if not the major consideration, which would be negatively impacted by significant stops in, or meandering routes around, the Central Valley. Or, is it a commuter tool to facilitate Central Valley exurban travel into the major coastal metropoli? That would require, yes, building stops and stations where people actually live in the Central Valley, but do we really need a bullet train for that? And what would the ridership really actually be? And why would it need to run from LA-SF in that case, rather than just building out from existing metro centers in a hub-and-spokes model? Lord knows we don't actually have this in LA yet...

Well, the argument in favor in the ballot pamphlet (see link here) -- said that the proposition would "bring California . . . Routes linking downtown stations in SAN DIEGO, LOS ANGELES, FRESNO, SAN JOSE, SAN FRANCISCO, and SACRAMENTO, with stops in communities in between. —High-Speed Train service to major cities in ORANGE COUNTY, the INLAND EMPIRE, the SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, and the SOUTH BAY."

As for why we need a bullet train for that, or what the ridership would be, I voted no, so IDK

California HSR is LA->SF, that is close enough to 100% of the economic value. Failing to serve central valley residents is entirely irrelevant.

Plus, transit brings development. It might be the case that people currently live on rt 99, but once transit to places that matter becomes available, folks may choose to live near it. This is literally what happens in China: they build a subway stop in an empty field and a few years later it's a walkable mass of 20 story mixed use buildings. Then again, China has legalized the construction of 20 story mixed use buildings, unlike California.

Well, as I noted in my response to Supah_Shemendrick, the official ballot pamphlet argument in favor of the 2008 bond initiative explicitly said it would serve downtown Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley in general. Since CA courts look to the ballot argument in order to interpret ballot initiatives, People v. Floyd, 31 Cal.4th 179, 187 (2003) ["Our construction is also supported by the ballot argument distributed to voters for the November 2000 General Election."], that implies that CA HSR was not supposed to be LA->SF.

I don’t know, 1 train line to nowhere seems more cost effective than 0, especially when people can build around the new infrastructure.

I doubt there would be much building around the new infrastructure; Hwy 5 is 50 miles from downtown Fresno, for example.

Yes. Some examples of countries that have managed to build high-speed rail: Morocco, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, and Turkey. Kazakhstan, Iran, India, and Egypt all have projects under construction. Meanwhile in North America all there is so far is CAHSR, which at present seems unlikely to be completed. The Texas HSR project shows promise though.

The California project was quite devoted to "made in America" solutions and seemed very hostile to European technologies and perspectives. One of the big boondoggles of the project was the attempted creation of their own signaling system "CBOSS", which cost over $200 million before they abandoned it in favour of the off-the-shelf European tech.

The Texas HSR project is currently held up by political opposition while being fully funded.

No really, the group building it raised the money then tried to eminent domain a bunch of rural ranch land to build a nonstop Dallas-Houston route. Good idea, except Texas’ political system gives ranch owners a lot of say, and the HSR group laughed off their demands and just generally alienated them. So they declared it part of the new world order and dragged in the Texas nationalist movement(actually an important political machine that can swing state specific issues, especially if aligned with other interests) to hold up permits for eminent domain.

If the HSR group decides to negotiate with the ranchers then they’ll call off the nationalists and everyone will be happy. Instead there’s a knock down political fight and both sides have some portion of the blame.

The original offer was to waive their rights to compensation under eminent domain law in exchange for more stops in rural areas/small towns- in other words, they want more of the economic benefit, proportionally, going to rural areas. This is, by the by, a reasonable demand- if you’re extracting resources from rural areas(in this case land), requesting that the rural areas see some benefit is the least you can do.

I’m not an expert on cattle/train interactions, but I believe the situation is considerably more complex/inconvenient for ranchers than that, btw- the track almost certainly has to be fenced off which requires designated crossing points which makes moving the herd considerably more complicated.

From some quick back of the napkin math hitting a 1300 lb Steer at 120 mph yields an impact energy on the order of 850 kJ, probably not enough to derail a train, but enough make a mess out of even a fairly substantial steel structure. Accordingly I would expect the rails to be fenced off, out of concerns about safety.

Cattle also don’t move in groups of one, so a train hitting a 1300 lb steer is probably hitting multiple 1300 lb steers, which ranchers don’t want because it’s losing money and train operators don’t want because it’s damaging the trains.

So, in effect, the ranchers were offering to let the HSR group bisect their land for free on the condition that the trains made additional stops, which wouldn’t benefit the ranchers but would benefit whatever towns the trains stopped at. This seems to me to be the kind of civic mindedness that we should laud of our community leaders.

Separated grade HSR? Are you certain they will be allowed to cross?

Well no, the ranchers weren’t objecting to building a train to begin with- they had a set of requests for the train, those requests were rejected, either because they were unreasonable to begin with or because the blue tribe technocrats involved thought they shouldn’t have to compromise with stupid hicks. There’s probably a compromise that will would make them both happy, but we haven’t reached it.

In any case ‘not having one of the state’s biggest political machine declare it their pet issue’ was an entirely achievable outcome because the ranchers showed up eager to negotiate and put major concessions on the table up front(and if you think that high speed rail enthusiasts were going to call in Texas nationalists under any circumstances, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you).

This adds only heat, no light, to the conversation. More effort than this, please.

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is a unique weakness

How so? Most urban economic activity (especially in modern times) is rent-seeking and management, and having a system of government that forces (as much as possible) the rent-seekers to have to fairly deal with the value-creators is a unique strength that only the US really retains.

As the saying goes, "you might not be interested in politics, but politics is definitely interested in you". I believe a system of government that limits how interested politics can be in someone who's too busy doing things to want to worry about it is a unique strength of the US, a country that is... head and shoulders wealthier than most of the other first-world nations, and is also unique in that its young men are willing to go to war to defend it (so they must think they have some stake and that political decisions aren't solely for the benefit of the rent-seeking HR class... and they're still right, for now anyway).

Genuine question- why? Should rural people and nationalists not have representation?

Quite the opposite. It is, in many ways, wise to prioritize the votes of land over people. People are silly, particularly when they get packed in. OTOH, the interests of land and cattle are less silly, and more fundamental.

You believe the interests of people are less fundamental than the interests of cattle and land?

I assume not.

Not the one you asked but I will argue yes.

The farther you get from the mud and the blood, the less skin you have in the game, the more lawyers of abstraction that exist between you and the world, the less "fundamental" your interests become.

If the entire staff of Goldman Sachs dropped dead tomorrow there might be some momentary disruption in the stock market but society would continue as it has. If the entire staff of Tyson Foods dropped dead tomorrow much of the US's eastern seaboard would starve. Goldman Sachs might have a higher stock valuation than Tyson but Tyson is more fundamental. A society can survive without stock-brokers and think-piece writers but it can't survive without food.

Edit: that should have been "layers of abstraction" but serendipitous typo was serendipitous

What makes a rancher's interests more intrinsically valuable than a plumber's, policeman's, teacher's, or doctor's?

The land and the food.

"We are the Lorax, we speak for the trees. If DCers think they can do as they please, the trees 'bout to start speaking Vietnamese"

Please speak plainly.

Vâng thưa ngài

Most of your posts have been "hot takes" and low effort sniping. This post in particular picked up three reports. Not everything you write has to be a long effort post, but at least some of them should be.

Three day ban for now. Use the time to browse themotte more and get a sense for the level of discussion around here.

I am not trying balance moderation for a single discussion thread.

Technologically, cities are amazing. Politically, they are a disaster. Every city in history would be best served by a rural dictatorship running it. BLM is the most recent example of this problem, but it has existed since at least the 1700s when Jefferson wrote extensively to the same end.

Jefferson is a bad example to use as your role model, not just because of the "he was a white slaveowner yadda yadda." His entire self-conceit as a "gentleman farmer" who envisioned a nation of gentlemen farmers was a pastoral fantasy. His fantasy was not economically feasible at the time, and certainly isn't now. (And regarding the slaveowning, his model absolutely required slavery to make it sustainable, especially for the elite of which he was a member.)

Arguments about the rural/city political divide should probably not be based on the musings of an 18th century philosopher/politician who repeatedly demonstrated the value of his own principles by breaking them every time he had to make a hard choice.

Every city in history would be best served by a rural dictatorship running it.

Singapore and Hong Kong are merely the most obvious exceptions. More seriously, one of the things that makes early modern Western Europe generally, and Northern Italy (which was the richest bit of Europe at the relevant time, hence the Renaissance) in particular globally unusual is the degree to which cities were not run by monarchies with a largely rural power-base. Max Weber wrote the book about this - it certainly looks like a pre-condition for the transition to capitalism.

During America's rise to power, New York was run tolerably well by Tammany Hall and the only reason why the rural areas were run better was because they were de facto run by railroad barons who took their orders (and their capital) from J P Morgan Sr in New York. Functional big-city municipal government remains the norm in the 1st world outside the United States.

How do you feel about Plato and Aristotle?

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but it has existed since at least the 1700s when Jefferson wrote extensively to the same end

For those who want to read an exact quote from Jefferson (and a parallel I found in Aristotle): https://old.reddit.com/r/SlowHistory/comments/sa1rmd/jefferson_on_the_virtue_of_the_farmer

Jefferson was sufficiently lacking in the rural virtues that he preached that he died bankrupt and his children (by Sally Hemmings, who he had intended to free) were sold by auction.

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