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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26192 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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CAHSR should be finished because it would be an embarrassment not to finish it. Those (already built) giant unused bridges and viaducts in the middle of the central California scrubland would stand like a monument to the catastrophic absence of state capacity in the modern US.

And so they shall.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay.

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare.

Given the cost overruns California will not be finishing the project. In your old age you can visit the ruins like Ozymandias' giant stone head alone in the desert.

My state already has such a monument: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/satsop-nuclear-power-plant

Cooling towers visible from I-5 from a half-finished nuclear power plant.

Those (already built) giant unused bridges and viaducts in the middle of the central California scrubland would stand like a monument to the catastrophic absence of state capacity in the modern US.

Would that actually surprise you?

You know I actually think they’ll finish it, at least unless the state economy collapses. They’re rich enough and the people keep voting through more spending on it.

I always assumed that "finishing" CAHSR from Merced to Bakersfield would be more embarrassing than killing it. Most of the value of LA-SF CAHSR would come from end-to-end journeys.

They’re banking on the Merced to Bakersfield run being ‘impressive’, the president and a bunch of congressmen riding it on the opening day and cutting the ribbons on the stations etc, fawning news coverage, and then dropping another eighty billion or whatever it’ll take to cover the rest. Honestly, it’s not even a ridiculous plan, as long as they frame it as an ‘American’ achievement instead of a California one and talk about beating the Chynese and “world’s best railroad” or whatever regardless of truth they might well get it.

Maybe we need a monument like that to turn things around. Kind of like the end to Planet of the Apes (except there it was obviously too late).

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