Quote:
Originally Posted by Danth
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If we had no government assistance we might well still mostly have dirt roads. Our highways are obviously government-maintained for the most part. Most of the major U.S. railroads, including all but a couple of the transcons, were heavily subsidized via government loans and/or land-grants*. Passenger rail, in particular, only existed in comprehensive form far into the 20th century because the ICC required the railroads to maintain the service (which usually lost money, even back into the 19th century) otherwise it would've died out even sooner than it did. The experience is the same in nearly any nation, and those nations which did not heavily subsidize their transportation networks usually suffer badly for it.
*If you want amusing reading sometime, look through archived newspaper editorials from the 1860's and 70's and you'll see opposition to railroad subsidy in much the same form as today: "It won't pay!" "It's a railroad through useless wilderness!" etc, etc. Times and technology change, people stay the same. So does the grifting. Look at the Union Pacific railroad's construction contractors and the Credit Mobilier scandal as prime example.
Danth
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ok ok yeah I agree with all of that, but kavah was saying that the only reason airplane tickets are cheep is because the goverment pays the airline industry and manufacturers, and if they didn't that trains would be better.
Obviously my answer to that question would be: nobody would or could ever build the train system without the goverment.
So yeah, let me change it to, if they each got 50 billion a year from the goverement - which would be better?
My argument still would be planes would be vastly superior.
Lets not even talk about the amount of eminent domain we'd have to just "give" the trains to be able to work.
Lets not forget what American above ground trains are like:
The arguments that like, japan does it well compared to how we would do it are completely irrelevant, because in japan they wore masks when they were sick before we even knew they ate bats in china.
Ours would be shit - as was the air travel system during the low low prices of covid:
So yeah in utopia, or type 2 society? Sure trains. In ours? No.