• hpca01@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    There’s this thing called land ownership which is a right…the state can eminent domain them but they’d have to fight it in court.

    Doubt they have that in China, if your home is in the way of a planned development…it won’t be soon. You don’t buy land from the government there, it’s on a lease basis.

    That and everyone in politics has to be aligned. If the top down order is to build a HSR, no cog in the system can just slow shit down for the hell of it. Doesn’t work that way in the US, as witnessed by the myriad times that the government can never approve the budget before it’s due.

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      What is hilarious about your argument is that it takes far more land to build and maintain a highway, and yet we somehow never had any problems with forcing land sales with eminent domain clauses doing that.

      It’s almost as if the government is owned by a series of interests that are not actually interested in investing and maintaining efficient consumption minimum and economical modes of transportation, and instead focused on making a system that is efficient at creating profit for it’s ownership class. It’s almost as if, instead of a focus on the money to commodity cycle, there is a perverse incentive for a money to commodity to money cycle that means there is no real incentive to ever substantially invest to improve your commodity production.

      Weird. curious-marx

      • hpca01@programming.dev
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        11 months ago

        How many new highways do you see being built?? I’ve lived in California all my life and I’ve never seen a brand new highway being built. I’ve seen lanes expanded a few feet…But never a new one built.

        Also, you can’t just put rail tracks anywhere as you can with land.

        The politicians clearly work for reelection. Unfortunately, when a human being is placed in a position of power you usually get this kind of thing. Power corrupts.

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          The highways weren’t just magically placed there by the grace of God, they were built and expanded by the government using eminent domain. A highspeed rail system could be built using the same legal precedents, and would likely keep the highways from having to be expanded (ever).

          What you are saying is that we could never build a new system in the same way that we built the old system, which is patently false, which is still different from your claim that China can avoid red-tape when the U.S. does not which is also false. The U.S. picks and chooses when it decides to uphold ‘private property’ because it only cares about the private property of those that buy the political system, it demonstrably does not care about general private property rights of those that inconvenience whatever the agenda is. Which means that the agenda COULD be High Speed rail, and it is not ‘the law’ or ‘the government’ getting in the way but private companies.

          Also, for someone with a tenuous grasp on legal reality, I don’t think you should be discussing the realities of rail-based civil engineering. Highways aren’t particularly known for being good to work with on complex landscapes.

          I am saying that the literal incentives of a profit-driven capitalist economy will always inevitably degrade the commodity process, incentivizing profit generation and rent seeking over industrialization and economizing commodity processes. It has nothing to do with ‘corruption’, ‘power’ or ‘politicians’, nor did I ever indicate that is what we were talking about. It is the system working as intended.

    • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Oh I’ll just tell the poor Americans I know whose homes were bulldozed for transportation infrastructure that it didn’t happen because they could have fought it in court. Dumbass.

    • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Damn, it feels like your hypothetical system is designed to protect the interests of the rich and screw over the poor masses, and over time, increase the power the rich already have and further screw over the poor. I have some notes.

      Like can you imagine if such a system existed in the real world. If, say, they wanted to violate the “right” of land ownership for poor people to segregate cities by, idk, skin colour. They could separate them with massive, uncrossavle highways. The people that make cars and people who own oil fields will love that! The issue is that there may or may not be some poor people that live there. But even the ones that own land, well, they can be removed because of the system of eminent domain. Theoretically it’d also apply to the wealthy, so it looks like a fair system to the layman. But the rich can afford to take time off work and better lawyers. So on paper it sounds fair, but in practice, it favours those who are already wealthy!

      And it would feedback into even more advantages for the wealthy. All those highways will require cars, which is good, but cars need fuel. The fuel will need to be moved vast distances, your need a line of pipes from the oil fields! But that would once again require you to build a… “Line of pipes” across vast distances. But there are natives living along where those lines would go! And they theoretically benefit from the right to own land as well! And they’re disadvantaged due to being survivors of a genocide. Treaties or no, the lines will get out through their land, they can fight back but obviously they’re unlikely to win.

      This doesn’t seem like a well thought out system. The only other thing the rich would have to do is to own media and education. Then they can pump out articles and curriculum one after the other saying this system is the only system that works! They can even tell people, over multiple generations, that this the only way, that the right to land is a human right (not food or water though, that would cut into the profits of some other rich people, obviously). And make it legal for the rich to have a stranglehold on the government, call it something other than corruption, make it sound less harmful. Eventually you can erode the political structure to consist only of 2 groups of people who both agree with your “right” to land ownership, so even if the masses wanted to (which they don’t, thanks to media and education ;)), they literally can never change it

      Yeah imagine if this system existed irl. It’s a dystopia disguised as a normal country. And basically everyone in it would believe theres no other way, since any alternative has been demonized since before their grandparents were born.

      Genius, and evil

      • hpca01@programming.dev
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        11 months ago

        You could have saved the wall of text and just said America is also bad…It is.

        When someone has power, power corrupts. It’s a tale as old as time.

        • jaeme@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          It’s a tale as old as time.

          Liberals trying not to essentialize political systems into supposed “common” human culture in order to retroactively justify their own decaying societies impossible challenge.

          American exceptionalism brain mf (and that’s me being nice).

      • hpca01@programming.dev
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        11 months ago

        And everyone is free to fight you in court and sue the shit out of you if they find a flaw in your design.

        Btw, don’t you think that there are others that want to stay but didn’t get a chance to? It’s just the one dude who gets no water or electricity? No one else wanted to stay in the whole neighborhood?

        What do you think happened before nail houses?

        • RollaD20 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          And everyone is free to fight you in court and sue the shit out of you if they find a flaw in your design.

          “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

          Wonder how wealth plays into the material reality of going to court. phoenix-think

          How many of those lawsuits against eminent domain in the USA were successful btw?

    • TC_209 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      There’s this thing called tribal sovereignty, which is a right. Doubt they have that in the US; if your tribe is in the way of a planned settlement… it won’t be soon.

    • BovineUniversity@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Yeah you can’t get in the way of public development in China. If they want to run a rail through your house they’ll give you a fat stack of cash and move you into a nice new apartment. The system works.