Desert Railway
After previously complaining about French people and griping about California, it could only have been a matter of time before I combined the grumbles into a single post. In that vein, today we take a look at the California high-speed rail project that so disgusted the French national railway that it fled to Morocco in search of better political management.
SNCF, the French railway operator with experience in operating high-speed rail, gave up on helping California build the express rail line it has hoped to construct between Los Angeles and San Francisco since the 1980s. Tired of dealing with political indecision and ever-changing plans, the French company abandoned California for a Moroccan desert project that the company completed in seven years instead.
The story appears to serve as another reminder that American government is incapable of doing anything at all, whether competently or not. Dispiriting as that is, it is also true that authoritarian governments, dictatorships, and (often) governments in countries so poor that they are dominated by corruption can manage to complete big projects. Government that permits so much public input through the political system may not ever get anything done—but that is because not enough people agree on the project’s aims. The resultant stasis, therefore, represents the honest-to-goodness consensus view.
Things that are run by the political system in a free, democratic, and unbelievably wealthy society that respects the input of its citizens and their various interest groups must inevitably fail. The variety of political inputs produces a cacophony of objectives rather than the clearly defined goals needed to embark on any engineering project of a large enough scope and scale. The result leaves everyone frustrated and looks foolish to the outside world. Its costs know no bounds. But it is also the ultimate end product of representative democratic government: a muddle, a mess, and endless attempts to find compromise that leave stakeholders entirely dissatisfied.
Uuummmmmmmmm. . . .yay America?
I wish I could remember what I read or listened to on this subject. I know it was from someone who lives there, and as I recall, there was no clearcut plan to begin with. It kind of reminds me of how CA is dealing with everything these days. They can’t decide what to do with their homeless population (I kind of laughed when I read that the homeless in San Francisco are suing for possessions that were removed). They keep letting people build in areas that are known to have mudslides and fires. They can’t decide what they want re the police. And, apparently, you need a permit to do anything.
I know it’s a beautiful state, but really, is the “squeeze worth the juice?” 🙄 (or is it “the juice worth the squeeze?) 😂