They were invented decades ago.
They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.
They require less maintenance.
There’s obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?
Not to defend capitalism in general, but it’s really good at answering these sort of “is it worth the cost?” aquestions. The whole point is to allocate scarce resources efficiently; the problem is that it assumes nobody is a scumbag and all the costs are accounted for.
It isn’t. Most decision makers of capitalism are very unaware of science. You’d know this if you work in research. The ideas that see light of day do so not because they’re good in any quantifiable sense. It is because they convince the capitalists. This can be affected by so many things that aren’t merit or even cost based.
Some things make sense from a cost perspective, but not a profitability perspective. Profit isn’t just about cost. There’s margins, competition, longevity, etc. Something can be of moderate costs, but if the margins are too low or it is too long term or a project, it is of low value to capitalists.
I’m really struggling to understand what you’re getting at here.
Whether or not a decision maker is aware of science, their products will still be subject to the laws of physics.
Some things make sense from a cost perspective, but not a profitability perspective.
For example?
The current, dominant form of capitalism isn’t and doesn’t, though. It maximizes short-term profits and ignores all other medium and long-term costs. The efficient allocation of scarce resources doesn’t happen when inefficient allocation yields greater short-term profit. The stock market ensures that high short-term yields with lower total returns will be favored over the inverse. In particular, it emphasizes competition over cooperation, which is more resource wasteful for the gestalt.
What kind of benefits are there to maglev trains that are not cost related?
They’re faster and more comfortable than traditional rail. They could help to reduce air and vehicle travel
They’re not that faster. Conventional train speed record is 574.8 km/h, Maglev record is 603 km/h. Maglev price doesn’t justify diminishing returns.
Then it’s good that we don’t have them, isn’t it? Kool_Newt’s post implies that it’s due to a failing of capitalism, but this sounds like a win to me. I’d rather my money go towards food and housing than a faster or more comfortable experience doing something I rarely need.
Better acceleration, steeper inclines, tighter curves at same speed, better ride quality and less wear. As someone has mentioned below, normal trains could go a lot faster than they do in practice, because the ride quality, wear and wind resistance get atrocious, and the tracks need to be exceptionally straight. Making a maglev go fast is more feasible, though you still have the wind resistance issue obviously.
Where are all the maglev trains in non-capitalist countries? Sooner or later, in any system, someone has to do a cost benefit analysis and decide whether it’s worth it. It’s not just about profitability. There are plenty of situations in the US where something is unprofitable but still funded because the benefit is worth it.
It’s basically evolution. It’s not that we don’t get the best things, it’s that when something evolves traits that require more energy than they are worth, they inevitably die out. I’m reminded of the film The Man in the White Suit.
It’d be nice to always have the “best” things, but the “energy” to support them has to come from somewhere.
But unfortunately the mechanism that is dictating which traits are carried through and which are left to die out, is capitalism. Not just that, but short sighted capitalism.
I’m not saying maglev is the be all and end all, I’m just saying that this “evolution” is sort of (extremely) fucked.
True. Similarly, unfortunately the mechanism that is dictating which traits are carried through is natural selection. Maybe this metaverse thing has some benefits after all 😆.
The way I see it is, if you have a set of entities all acting in their own best interest, the way they engage with each other is called “capitalism”. If a subset of those entities band together to act in the interest of their communal group, the mechanism within the group might be “communism”, but how that group interacts with other entities/groups is still capitalism.
It’s no coincidence that China, a communist state, is one of the strongest players in the wider capitalist economy. And even if the CCP was 100% benevolent toward everyone, they would still only be able to justify spending that makes sense at the global level. This is why they’ve opted to no longer buy our “recyclables” as raw materials. Sure it would be nice to always recycle stuff, but it was polluting their rivers, costing them more in healthcare.
At the end of the day, capitalism IS economic natural selection. So I view a government that embraces unchecked capitalism as a government that does nothing.
I think our best chance is if people to view a maglev train (and the benefits it offers) more like going to the moon: it’s inspirational. It gives people something to look at and say “look how far we’ve come” both figuratively and literally. It’s not impossible to fund, we just need to all value it so much that we’re all willing to divert funds from other places where they probably make more sense, i.e. act in a common interest. But we can’t even do that for healthcare so…
