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"Poor economic choices" is building functioning railways that people use.
As opposed to the good economic choice of HS2 where you plan to build a London to Manchester rail in 12 years, and then proceed to spend 6 years building nothing before announcing your rail-line that doesn't exist is actually only going to go to Birmingham now.
No, I'm not envious of china being able to actually build railways while TERF island just plans to spend ~a decade imagining how cool it'd be if they hypothetically had a railway. /s
"No rail-less nations are building rails" shows the infantile level at which this guy's brain operates. Global north countries are steadily showing a decline in living conditions while most global south countries don't have the economic sovereignty to invest in public infrastructure. Rail-less nations are not building rails because of neoliberal austerity not because it is not a sound investment.
The real reason why no one builds railroads (except for china) is because of automobile industry lobbying. For instance, Brazil used to have a functioning rail system until around the 60s, until a bunch of car factories moved in and started pressuring the government to not only invest more on roads, but to abandon passenger trains altogether as an "incentive" for people to buy cars. It's also the reason why so many right wingers are so against walkable cities, they pretty much just gobble up corporate propaganda and think cars are freedom machines.
until around the 60s, until a bunch of car factories moved in and started pressuring the government to not only invest more on roads, but to abandon passenger trains altogether as an "incentive" for people to buy cars.
Is there any connection to the military dictatorship here?
Yes, actually. It was used to force the neoliberal 'experiment' onto the population, same as what happened in Chile and in other Latin American countries. Also, a lot of the supporters of the regime, as well as the upper echelons, were composed of capitalists. It's a textbook example of fascists and the bourgeoisie working together to suppress leftist movements and force unpopular economic policies.
This article talks about it in more depth, but it's in portuguese: https://app.uff.br/riuff/handle/1/24398
Thanks! Worst case scenario, I've got some friends who are Brazilian liberals who the article will be interesting to discuss with.
The real HSR was the profits made by consults along the way.