Thread by @wmhuo168

The American high-speed rail debate is pure kabuki. It's not about engineering or cost. It's about a captured state where land, transit, and the future itself must be privatized or blocked. A thread on why the US will never have bullet trains. (1/11)

bbc.com/news/articles/…

Let’s start with facts. China will hit 50,000 km of high-speed rail in 2025. You can go from Beijing to Shanghai (1,300 km) in 4.5 hours, sipping green tea on a whisper-smooth ride. America? After 50 years of talk, still not a single line. (2/11)

Spain. Yes, Spain. They’ve built over 3,000 km of high-speed track and offer tickets under $30. Madrid to Barcelona takes 2.5 hours. Why? Because land acquisition is sane and public transit isn't treated like a Marxist threat. (3/11)

In the U.S., the moment you mention rail, a thousand Wall Street vampires hiss in unison. You can't lay tracks through hedge fund-owned land. You can't bypass car, oil, and airline lobbies. You can't build anything unless there's an IPO. (4/11)

HSR needs three things. Land. Central planning. Trust in the state. The U.S. has none of them. It has property-rights absolutism, political gridlock, and a ruling class that sees public goods as theft from private profit. (5/11)

The California bullet train is a case study in dysfunction. $33B ballooned into $100B, not because rail is hard, but because every consultant, county, and contractor treated it like a gold rush. It became a slow-motion looting operation. (6/11)

Meanwhile, China built a nationwide HSR backbone in 15 years. Why? Because land use is strategic. Planning is respected. And the state is not a corporate vending machine. The U.S. can't even replace a 50-year-old bridge without scandal. (7/11)

Brightline West, from Vegas to LA, might get done. Not because of good governance. But because private investors see a casino-fed gravy train. Even that is being built like a side project, not a national leap forward. (8/11)

Every new rail line threatens an old racket. Big Oil. Big Auto. Big Airlines. Big Suburbia. They don’t need to publicly oppose rail. They just whisper in the right ears. The project dies quietly, buried under "cost concerns." (9/11)

Spain and China show what’s possible. But the U.S. is a captured state in decline. Transit must be monetized. Land must be hoarded. The future must be collateralized. Bullet trains are simply too egalitarian for the empire. (10/11)

Tony Soprano said it best. When it comes to high-speed rail in America? Forgettaboutit. (11/11)