• 2 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I get it, that’s obvious, but it’s a public service… and there’s public money available. Tons of tax payer money goes into unprofitable endeavors that still serve a public good and are needed public services (for example: the overwhelming majority of libraries turn no profit, but they are seen as a public good and are funded). An airport-rail connection (especially one enhancing the existing connection of an airport to a metropolitan downtown) is most definitely a public good… why not fight to make it happen? Makes no sense.

    The Dade County, the City of Miami, and the Miami International Airport are majority tax payer funded organizations… so is Amtrak. Why not look at the public good this stop would do and fight to get the public monies to make it happen? Just still makes no sense.







  • I’d urge you to organize your workplace and form a union. You can contact organizers at the AFL-CIO (a kind of union of unions in the US) and find which union is right for your workplace. If you don’t work but are still able to do physical or intellectual labor, start getting as involved in your local community as possible… volunteer at food banks, after school programs, nursing homes, etc. The more people you can reach out to and help or with whom you can organize the better. If you cannot do those things due to personal issues (disability, etc), do what you can in encouraging others to take these steps. You have a voice here on the internet (at the very least), educate yourself as best as you can on how folks can help one another and encourage others to take these steps.

    A massive action like a general strike isn’t just organized over night by total strangers… it takes communities with common cause and familiarity with one another. Realistically, if anyone is calling a general strike, odds are it’ll be like the United Auto Workers kicking shit off. Maybe the railroad folks or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than likely the UAW will lead the charge.

    You’re on the right track asking “how to” and that’s great! Organizing is a rough road, but it’s vital and worth it… the more people doing it the better in any capacity. United we bargain, divided we beg.








  • Just watch, Brightline West will complete on time and people will bitch about how CAHSR is moving so slowly… as if CAHSR isn’t tied up with other vital projects like the CalTrain modernization/electrification, hundreds upon hundreds of grade separations, almost a dosen stations being built from scratch, infrastructure improvements all throughout the Central Valley, etc, etc, the list goes on for miles. Meanwhile, BWHSR has the task of eating up a mostly flat ROW that’s already cleared and build like three stations max. There’s no comparing them to one another and yet idiots will… same with Texas Central.



  • This is accurate. On the private sector side it’s the same. One of the things driving up costs is that the private sector doesn’t have a company big enough to do this job, so Cali HSR is sub-contractors all the way down. Every private company contacted by the government has to be vetted and then there’s the paper work on contacts and those contacts need to be enforced by yet more people who need yet more contracts.

    How China built so much so fast was that the PRC national government founded a handful of big companies (read: state-backed monopolies) to sort everything out and build it. Lots less overhead when one entity basically runs the whole show. China HSR is corporate vertical integration combined with centralized state planning on a scale that is only rivaled by other things the Chinese government has done before or that other nations have done however over longer periods of time (like the US’s Eisenhower Interstate Highway System… asperational national project on an immense scale and it took half a century because it was delegated to fifty states to plan and flesh out).