For longer lines with more than 100m passengers a year and travel times of five hours or less—such as the one between Beijing and Shanghai—the more expensive type may be justifiable.

It is less so for journeys between commuter towns, during which trains only briefly accelerate to top speeds. For longer journeys serving sparse populations—a description that fits many of the lines in western and northern China—high-speed rail is prohibitively expensive.

…

But the network expansion now under way is even bolder than Mr Liu had envisaged. China has a four-by-four grid at present: four big north-south and east-west lines. Its new plan is to construct an eight-by-eight grid by 2035. The ultimate goal is to have 45,000km of high-speed track. Zhao Jian of Beijing Jiaotong University, who has long criticised the high-speed push, reckons that only 5,000km of this will be in areas with enough people to justify the cost. “With each new line, the losses will get bigger,” he says.

It appears to be the argument that the Economist is making. High Speed rail is a good technology that should be implemented, just not at the scale China implemented it at.

Why do we have to consider public transport “a waste of money” when they are not being run as a business.

Because, even if it isn’t being run as a business, it is still being run as a government service. Since no country has infinite money, there is still a cost benefit ratio that should be looked into. There are a lot of government projects or there which are bad investments and should be deprioritozed over other better investments.

This ties into use. A lot of Chinese still use low speed rail because they can’t afford the high speed rail tickets. There may be some lines where it is better to fund and and expand low speed rail because the demand isn’t there for high speed.

I’m speaking in context to Sina’s comment. Because a company/service becomes shitty doesn’t mean that the company/service loses a lot of market share.

But the Nazi bar still has patrons.

Lately?

Will it? Twitter is a Nazi bar, but it still has a large customer base.

The reason to own a browser is to shape the Internet to your company’s favor.

Internet Explorer was designed to ensure web apps would be hard to build, helping to ensure the Windows monopoly.

Chrome was designed to open the Internet, but tie it to Google search and keep Internet browsing lucrative for advertising, helping to benefit Ad Sense.

An AI startup owning Chrome is probably going to be the biggest privacy nightmare since Copilot.

I don’t. This is fundamentally worse than Google owning Chrome.

There’s a reason why the USA built the Panama Canal.

The bust is definitely pushing wages down, but a lot of tech companies have been able to decouple work from location.

Amazon doesn’t have to pay a wage competitive in Seattle any more for new talent. In the process of searching for the second HQ, Amazon got a lot of information from various cities on what they could offer Amazon, which let Amazon build out new offices where the cost of living is lower. If the job is full remote, you’re competing against applicants from around the world, not just the city you’re living in.

So you don’t need to go the path of visas, but it doesn’t mean the only alternative is well paying jobs in high cost of living cities.

They didn’t choose the silver.

It is an attempt at legitimizing it to prevent diplomatic action against it.

Israel is past the point where its allies have had elections and, generally, has either had people elected who maintained the status quo or allowed Israel to do more than the previous administration. Israel can now eat Gaza in diplomatic peace.

Was [it] ever fully forgotten?

Among some people, yes. For some, there is a willful ignorance.

I’d rate the Italians as less problematic, but the Imperial Japanese have a lot of blood on their hands as well.

And as horrific chattel slavery has come out to be, there are still whitewashers of it.

It seems like you have two questions combined into one. First, is why do people do historic reenactment of wars? Second, why do Americans choose this war?

For the first answer, performing historic reenactment of wars isn’t solely an American thing. It is common for Europeans to reenact Napoleonic war battles. I’ve also seen cases of people dressing up as Roman soldiers in military camp. Beyond that, historical reenactment of various forms of veracity are common in different parts of the world as a type of cosplay. Wars end up being a popular thing to cosplay because there is narrative conflict; it is a real life story.

Why the American Civil War? It is a very significant war in American history, one of the three most important wars. Compared to World War II, it isn’t problematic to depiction both sides fighting; it is a lot more problematic for people to dress in Nazi, Imperial Japanese, or even fascist Italian uniforms. Compared to the American Revolution, the uniform matches more modern fashion, so it is easier to buy equipment to cosplay. Also, the equipment was mass produced, so it is easier to buy replica equipment, including firearms.

It is important to keep in mind that corporations, at that time the Constitution was written, usually required a law to be passed for each corporation. There is also some federal regulation due to the interstate commerce clause.

Unfortunately, the US being a somewhat more homogeneous country at its inception

It was never a homogeneous country at its inception. The colonies were considered to be internally sovereign and the initial federal government was little more than a mutual defense fact, a joint military, and customs union.

Hell, the Continental Congress which conducted the war consisted of representatives of the various colonial legislatures.

I imagine that these kinds of issues come up a lot in other federal systems. Not all decisions are made at the national level, with significant decisions made at the local or state level. Hell, a lot of federal agencies’ jobs is to be a resource for states, in both budget and technical expertise.

States in the United States have a lot of the competencies that nations in the EU do, including state run militaries. It is just usually hard for a lot of non-Americans to understand how much power is given away.

It gets worse.

A lot of incorporation law is done at the state level, so most corporations are incorporated in Delaware where there are no corporate taxes and specialized corporate law courts.

A lot of credit and gift cards are out of South Dakota because that state has favorable credit card and gift card laws.

A lot of the laws of the country are written at the state level by design.

It may help, but credit cards aren’t the reason.

Sales tax is something that can be charged at all levels of government, including individual cities in some states. It is easier to advertise one pre-tax price than deal with the variance of advertising post-tax prices.