What I don't understand about politicians is that few support a positive view of whats possible.
Consider California. It's a one-party state. One party has the governor, lieutenant governor, 30 out of 40 state senators, 60 out of 80 state assemblymen, both senators and 43 of 52 congressmen.
They're all more or less aligned on their vision. And their vision sounds great. High speed rail or low cost housing for instance. Nothing prevents them from capturing their vision, and yet they fail.
Markets exist within politics as much as they do for physical goods. Single-party governments tend to function poorly, regardless of the party, because there's no competition to try and capture the most swing voters, so bad ideas prevail.
California's state government is basically the Comcast of governments. There's no consequences to any of their actions, so their spending goes up and the quality goes down, and will continue to do so, as long as the monopoly is in place.
People in the same party are not always aligned. Representatives want to get pork for their district, so to get their vote you need to do something for them, e.g. route the high speed train through their district even if that is not the most optimal route.
Agreeing on low-cost housing or high speed rail in the abstract is not enough to form a coalition to implement them.
Up until 2016, cost estimates were reported as nominal prices, only subject to overall inflation. Since 2018, these estimates have been reported in terms of years-of-expenditure.
Anyone (video producer included) who doesn't account for this when talking about cost changes has an agenda.
It's unclear how to map "nominal prices" and "years of expenditure" onto "here's the money spent each year to get us to the point that trains run regularly", the latter being somewhat related (modulo interest) to the amount that must be paid by fares and subsidies going forward.
What I don't understand about politicians is that few support a positive view of whats possible.
Consider California. It's a one-party state. One party has the governor, lieutenant governor, 30 out of 40 state senators, 60 out of 80 state assemblymen, both senators and 43 of 52 congressmen.
They're all more or less aligned on their vision. And their vision sounds great. High speed rail or low cost housing for instance. Nothing prevents them from capturing their vision, and yet they fail.
Markets exist within politics as much as they do for physical goods. Single-party governments tend to function poorly, regardless of the party, because there's no competition to try and capture the most swing voters, so bad ideas prevail.
California's state government is basically the Comcast of governments. There's no consequences to any of their actions, so their spending goes up and the quality goes down, and will continue to do so, as long as the monopoly is in place.
That one-party is a party of idealists that hardly ever bring any realistic solutions to the table, so I'm not surprised by that outcome.
People in the same party are not always aligned. Representatives want to get pork for their district, so to get their vote you need to do something for them, e.g. route the high speed train through their district even if that is not the most optimal route.
Agreeing on low-cost housing or high speed rail in the abstract is not enough to form a coalition to implement them.
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Fresno to Bakersfield and back? Who wouldn't want that?
Give me a handcar!
This video isn't informative at all.
Better video explaining the delays: https://youtu.be/2NK0wBBZZ24
Up until 2016, cost estimates were reported as nominal prices, only subject to overall inflation. Since 2018, these estimates have been reported in terms of years-of-expenditure.
Anyone (video producer included) who doesn't account for this when talking about cost changes has an agenda.
It's unclear how to map "nominal prices" and "years of expenditure" onto "here's the money spent each year to get us to the point that trains run regularly", the latter being somewhat related (modulo interest) to the amount that must be paid by fares and subsidies going forward.
It's nick shirley, there is quite the agenda.
I don't know who that is. I was just talking about the content of the video.