High Speed Rail

SCANALYZER The Happening World
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Lefties love trains, probably for much the same backwards-looking reasons they love windmills. But implementation is a problem for Western Lefties – with the financial disaster of California’s still non-existent over-lawyered HSR line being the stand-out example.

However even when HSR is done right, as in China, there are problems, as discussed in this article:
China’s fast-growing high-speed railway network faces reality - Asia Times

Anyone who has ridden China’s HSR cannot help but be impressed by its speed, cleanliness, and efficiency. But the financial side is not going so well.

"… In February this year, a group of Chinese commentators said a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) had found that China’s high-speed railway saw an “about 100 billion yuan of total loss” in the nine months ending December 31, 2024. NAO’s website did not officially announce this widely reported figure. …

… The article pointed out that China’s high-speed railway network was 45,000 kilometers at the end of 2023, but only 2,300 kilometers, or 6% of the total, could make a profit. It said that out of all 16 high-speed railway lines, only six in coastal cities are profitable. …

… He said the public should focus more on the high-speed railway network’s social value than its commercial value."

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And that is the crux of the matter. Are there cases where the “social value” (whatever that means) of something outweighs the “commercial value” (of which direct profit is just one measure)? Of course, it’s an extremely complex question and I’m sure that the correct answer is context-specific. It seems that in the West we’ve focused on short-term commercial value, which might just be worst choice of all.

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As usual the proper political economy approach to network effects is to eliminate all taxes on activity as well as Monopoly regulation and replace them with a single tax on liquidation value of net assets assessed by market bids kept in escrow.

It was kind of ironic that I first proposed this in 92 and the next year I was working with science applications international corporation to privatize toll roads.

Monopolists hate this and entrepreneurs love it once they get out of the mind control of monopolists.

As for “eminent domain” there are techniques involving conditional bids that permit routing around defectors in the prisoners dilemma. If you automate the execution of transactions under these conditional bids, it gets pretty difficult to game the commons even in the absence of eminent domain.

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