You say "only well-off people will be able to afford" the train, but that's not the case in other places where there is high speed rail.
There are many reasons: 1. In other locations with high speed rail (Europe, Japan, China), many people use trains as an alternative to owning a car. That is not reasonable in America. 2. All other HSR is in densely populated corridors. For SF to LA, only the endpoints are dense, and most of the route is through farmland. 3. This train is required by law to be run without subsidies (only the construction is supposed to be paid by taxes). Most projections for the unsubsidized ticket price put it far above the cost of a bus or plane ticket. 4. All the cost projections assume that there will be absolutely no technological progress at all during the decades this train is under construction, and when it is finally done, there is no chance that it will have to compete with, say, cheap high speed self-driving buses or vans that offer door-to-door service.
Not really - as soon as they announce the project (with the current spending estimates), all the property along the route immediately increases in value.
Do you truly believe this was totally unforeseeable? There is no possible way for them to have predicted it, and taken the price rises into account when budgeting? Let's say they look at 100 past projects, and 98 of them went WAY over budget because of "land price increases", then it is perfectly reasonable for them to just assume that land prices will not be a factor for new projects?
Or do you believe that they look at those 100 past projects, and realize that they made billions and billions by intentionally lowballing the initial bid and then demanding cost overruns, and decide that it is in their financial interests to do it again?
Yes, but not in the direction of the "outskirts". SFO is closer to the center of the SF Bay Area than SF itself. In fact, in the San Francisco Metro Area, San Francisco isn't even the biggest city, and there are three major airports. SJC is less than ten minutes from downtown San Jose, and OAK is about the same distance from downtown Oakland. The only time I go to SFO is when I am flying international, and now that there are non-stop flights from SJC to PVG, I rarely even do that anymore.
Hogwash. If you believe that nonsense, then you were probably also dumb enough to have believed the original budget. There is no way in hell that this train is going from downtown SF to downtown LA in 3 hours. The "3 hour" story (actually 2 hr 40 min from SF to Anaheim) was made up to push the project through the approval process. But there are already a lot of compromises being made just to get down the peninsula from SF to SJ, including running through existing Caltrans routes. Since the project is already approved, and is unlikely to be cancelled under almost any circumstances, the construction companies have no incentive to honor that promise, and every incentive to cut corners.
What is so difficult anout doing ground radar surveys so that you know in advance what you are going to encounter
Because if you identify all the problems upfront, and give an accurate estimate, then YOUR PROJECT WILL NOT BE APPROVED. It is much smarter to drastically lowball, and then start jacking up the costs after enough has been spent to invoke the "sunk cost" argument. Business people are taught to ignore sunk costs, but in politics, sunk costs are never ignored.
a significant part of the project cost the fluctuating cost of that land
If this were the real reason, then those fluctuations would be as likely to go down as up, and, on average, would net to zero. Yet public works projects almost always miss their budget in the same direction... by going WAY over.
Must be nice to be this incompetent and still have no fear of losing your job.
This is NOT incompetence. It is corruption. They are intentionally lowballing to get the project approved with the connivance of the politicians. They knew exactly what they were doing. The only incompetents are the voters who continue to tolerate this behavior.
-mass transportation needs to be able to pay its own way or it isn't something we should be putting in.
I disagree. Some forms of mass transit should be subsidized. The problem is that THIS ISN'T ONE OF THEM. This is long distance travel that only well-off people will be able to afford, that will carry a small proportion of traffic on a route that is not congested anyway, and is already well served by other mass transit options (airplanes, buses, Amtrak).
It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors.
Sure, but we should give credit where credit is due. The rule of thumb is that public works eventually cost three times their original budget. So if the overrun is only 50%, that is pretty good. But I am skeptical, since overruns generally follow the "salami algorithm" of publicising the overruns in small digestible slices. This is most likely just a slice, not the final figure.
Indeed. At my company, people have the freedom to pick their own title. With a few exceptions (you can't say you the CEO, president, or a director) it can be anything you want. One of our warehouse clerks has business cards that say "Supreme Commander".
Hmm... 65,000 visas auctioned off for $1000 each would net about $65 million, possibly more.
I think it would net WAY more than that. My company paid a lawyer $10k to do the H1-B paperwork for an important employee from a site we were closing in Europe. It turned out that we didn't even get the visa. If we could have just bid instead, I think we would have been willing to pay at least $50k, and likely a lot more, to guarantee a quota.
An even better solution - move to a points system and no guest workers.
Here's another even better solution: Set a fixed limit, and then auction off the visas to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the US Treasury. Currently, they are free (other than a processing fee) and issued to whomever is first in the queue. An auction would ensure they go to the companies that value them the most, and have a real need to import critical skills, rather than just looking for cheap labor.
There is a big difference between a fake demo to generate buzz, and a fake demo used to actually collect money from people. The first is lying. The second is stealing.
The real hurdle to ISP-propagation is the local governments' corruption and ineptitude
If there were high prices and lack of competition in 5 or 10% of locales, then simple corruption and ineptitude would be a reasonable explanation. But when the problem exists everywhere, you need to look for systemic structural problems.
You're either poor or got too much money to play with."
The poor folks are mostly in southern or western Virginia, where they have lived for generations. The rich folks are mostly Yankee immigrant lawyers and politicians living around the beltway. There are now enough northern immigrants that Virginia has gone blue in the last three presidential elections.
In order to reduce costs, the government can help introduce competition.
Here is how to do it: When trenching the streets, install a wide (12" or more) PUBLICLY OWNED conduit pipe. Then allow any bonded provider to run cable or fiber through that pipe for a small standard fee. Since 99% of the cost of providing service is the trenching, this will make the market far more competitive.
Imagine how competitive the package delivery business would be if FedEx, UPS, and USPS each had to build their own network of roads? A single network of publicly owned roads fixes that problem, and allows competition to thrive. We can do the same with cable conduits.
...users did not have standing to sue it because they purchased apps from developers, with Apple simply renting out space to those developers.
This may bite Apple.
Indeed. Apple vets apps before allowing them in their app store. It may be reasonable for them to screen them for malware or bugs, but they also reject apps if they compete with Apple's own apps. That is hard to justify if they are just "renting out space".
Slashdot Mirror
You say "only well-off people will be able to afford" the train, but that's not the case in other places where there is high speed rail.
There are many reasons:
1. In other locations with high speed rail (Europe, Japan, China), many people use trains as an alternative to owning a car. That is not reasonable in America.
2. All other HSR is in densely populated corridors. For SF to LA, only the endpoints are dense, and most of the route is through farmland.
3. This train is required by law to be run without subsidies (only the construction is supposed to be paid by taxes). Most projections for the unsubsidized ticket price put it far above the cost of a bus or plane ticket.
4. All the cost projections assume that there will be absolutely no technological progress at all during the decades this train is under construction, and when it is finally done, there is no chance that it will have to compete with, say, cheap high speed self-driving buses or vans that offer door-to-door service.
Not really - as soon as they announce the project (with the current spending estimates), all the property along the route immediately increases in value.
Do you truly believe this was totally unforeseeable? There is no possible way for them to have predicted it, and taken the price rises into account when budgeting? Let's say they look at 100 past projects, and 98 of them went WAY over budget because of "land price increases", then it is perfectly reasonable for them to just assume that land prices will not be a factor for new projects?
Or do you believe that they look at those 100 past projects, and realize that they made billions and billions by intentionally lowballing the initial bid and then demanding cost overruns, and decide that it is in their financial interests to do it again?
SFO is at least 30 minutes from downtown by car
Yes, but not in the direction of the "outskirts". SFO is closer to the center of the SF Bay Area than SF itself. In fact, in the San Francisco Metro Area, San Francisco isn't even the biggest city, and there are three major airports. SJC is less than ten minutes from downtown San Jose, and OAK is about the same distance from downtown Oakland. The only time I go to SFO is when I am flying international, and now that there are non-stop flights from SJC to PVG, I rarely even do that anymore.
the trip that high-speed rail will do in 3.
Hogwash. If you believe that nonsense, then you were probably also dumb enough to have believed the original budget. There is no way in hell that this train is going from downtown SF to downtown LA in 3 hours. The "3 hour" story (actually 2 hr 40 min from SF to Anaheim) was made up to push the project through the approval process. But there are already a lot of compromises being made just to get down the peninsula from SF to SJ, including running through existing Caltrans routes. Since the project is already approved, and is unlikely to be cancelled under almost any circumstances, the construction companies have no incentive to honor that promise, and every incentive to cut corners.
What is so difficult anout doing ground radar surveys so that you know in advance what you are going to encounter
Because if you identify all the problems upfront, and give an accurate estimate, then YOUR PROJECT WILL NOT BE APPROVED. It is much smarter to drastically lowball, and then start jacking up the costs after enough has been spent to invoke the "sunk cost" argument. Business people are taught to ignore sunk costs, but in politics, sunk costs are never ignored.
a significant part of the project cost the fluctuating cost of that land
If this were the real reason, then those fluctuations would be as likely to go down as up, and, on average, would net to zero. Yet public works projects almost always miss their budget in the same direction ... by going WAY over.
Must be nice to be this incompetent and still have no fear of losing your job.
This is NOT incompetence. It is corruption. They are intentionally lowballing to get the project approved with the connivance of the politicians. They knew exactly what they were doing. The only incompetents are the voters who continue to tolerate this behavior.
-mass transportation needs to be able to pay its own way or it isn't something we should be putting in.
I disagree. Some forms of mass transit should be subsidized. The problem is that THIS ISN'T ONE OF THEM. This is long distance travel that only well-off people will be able to afford, that will carry a small proportion of traffic on a route that is not congested anyway, and is already well served by other mass transit options (airplanes, buses, Amtrak).
It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors.
Sure, but we should give credit where credit is due. The rule of thumb is that public works eventually cost three times their original budget. So if the overrun is only 50%, that is pretty good. But I am skeptical, since overruns generally follow the "salami algorithm" of publicising the overruns in small digestible slices. This is most likely just a slice, not the final figure.
"Letting traitors go free" won't play well to the "tough on crime" Republican crowd.
I didn't think protectionism and cozying up to Russia would play well with Republicans either.
job titles are to easy to game
Indeed. At my company, people have the freedom to pick their own title. With a few exceptions (you can't say you the CEO, president, or a director) it can be anything you want. One of our warehouse clerks has business cards that say "Supreme Commander".
Hmm... 65,000 visas auctioned off for $1000 each would net about $65 million, possibly more.
I think it would net WAY more than that. My company paid a lawyer $10k to do the H1-B paperwork for an important employee from a site we were closing in Europe. It turned out that we didn't even get the visa. If we could have just bid instead, I think we would have been willing to pay at least $50k, and likely a lot more, to guarantee a quota.
For example, Steven Chu - a Nobel Prize laureate tapped to lead department of Housing?
The Nobel Prize in physics was just one of his many accomplishments. Steven Chu also invented the ubiquitous scroll lock key.
Why won't the boomers take personal responsibility for the generation they raised?
I let the village raise my kids. So it isn't my fault they turned out they way they did.
An even better solution - move to a points system and no guest workers.
Here's another even better solution: Set a fixed limit, and then auction off the visas to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the US Treasury. Currently, they are free (other than a processing fee) and issued to whomever is first in the queue. An auction would ensure they go to the companies that value them the most, and have a real need to import critical skills, rather than just looking for cheap labor.
Business deals have been done based on trade show demonstrations.
That falls under the category of "actually collecting money from people".
There is a big difference between a fake demo to generate buzz, and a fake demo used to actually collect money from people. The first is lying. The second is stealing.
i've lived in Northern Virginia all my life.
Do you know how to make cornpone? Do you eat biscuits with gravy? Have you ever BBQed a road killed possum?
It's amazing the similarities.
The dissimilarities are also amazing:
Microsoft once had over 95% of the desktop OS market.
Apple has 19% of the smartphone market.
The real hurdle to ISP-propagation is the local governments' corruption and ineptitude
If there were high prices and lack of competition in 5 or 10% of locales, then simple corruption and ineptitude would be a reasonable explanation. But when the problem exists everywhere, you need to look for systemic structural problems.
You're either poor or got too much money to play with."
The poor folks are mostly in southern or western Virginia, where they have lived for generations. The rich folks are mostly Yankee immigrant lawyers and politicians living around the beltway. There are now enough northern immigrants that Virginia has gone blue in the last three presidential elections.
In order to reduce costs, the government can help introduce competition.
Here is how to do it: When trenching the streets, install a wide (12" or more) PUBLICLY OWNED conduit pipe. Then allow any bonded provider to run cable or fiber through that pipe for a small standard fee. Since 99% of the cost of providing service is the trenching, this will make the market far more competitive.
Imagine how competitive the package delivery business would be if FedEx, UPS, and USPS each had to build their own network of roads? A single network of publicly owned roads fixes that problem, and allows competition to thrive. We can do the same with cable conduits.
If a user is allowed to do things like zoom, rotate to non-square angles or even calibrate gamut, fidelity problems can become visible
If you want to do that, then right-click to download the original image. But for the other 99.9% of the time, this will save bandwidth.
...users did not have standing to sue it because they purchased apps from developers, with Apple simply renting out space to those developers.
This may bite Apple.
Indeed. Apple vets apps before allowing them in their app store. It may be reasonable for them to screen them for malware or bugs, but they also reject apps if they compete with Apple's own apps. That is hard to justify if they are just "renting out space".
An app developer is free to charge whatever they want or make it free.
Also, customers are free to buy a non-Apple phone. Apple is not a monopoly.