alt Hacker NewsI would like you to read up on the railroads, and WHY private companies built them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_land_grants_in_the_Un...
The government gave them over 700 000km2 of land as an incentive. In case that number means nothing to you: That is France. Or Texas.
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mrguyorama • last Wednesday at 9:03 PM
A reminder to all that thanks to this enormous subsidization of the railroads, we had one of the best railroad networks in the world, and Americans considered it normal to travel huge distances long before the car.
These rights of way were also essential to building the first information superhighway: The telegraph network.
America has always built great infrastructure, when people in office are willing to spend dollars for the public good.
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> government gave them over 700 000km2 of land as an incentive
Absolutely. I’m not arguing for the superiority of private enterprise. Just that we shouldn’t be biased to one model versus another, particularly when it comes to building versus operating infrastructure. It’s eminently true that this infrastructure was built by private companies. Same is true for what Uber is proposing. The lesson is that there needs to be public guidance, not that we should say no to protect bus drivers or whatnot.