Comments by "Samson Soturian" (@samsonsoturian6013) on "PolyMatter" channel.

  1. To add: The most profitable high-speed rail is in Japan. This is because they have a high GDP per capita, and are one of the most densely populated places in the world. So much so that it is often faster to walk 6 miles than to drive. The perfect place for a HSR.
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  2. Raising the price of a ticket doesn't help them, either. That simply reduces ride numbers. So most rails will raise the cost of freight to the point it is often cheaper to move by truck than by train. This contributed to their fuel shortages a few months ago, as the ability to move coal across country was limited.
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  3. Given how most of these Chinese mega-projects go to companies owned directly or indirectly by the government officials subsidizing the projects, I'd say these projects fill their intended purpose quite well. One common antic is that planners will give the contract to a dummy corporation they own, and then subcontract the entire project out for a profit. Or they simply give the contract to whomever pays the biggest bribe.
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  4.  @Fishmans  corrections. Most of the firms behind Chinese HSP rail are owned in whole or in part by the officials putting the projects together. Most Chinese roads are junk anyway, and it's much cheaper to drive than use rails. And yes there are alternatives as many Chinese people rely on buses or low speed rails that double as freight rails. The prestige of building HSR was one of the main motives for Chinese blowing their budget on junk like this.
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  5.  @Homer-OJ-Simpson  China's population stats are exaggerated. Local governments compete with each other for allocation of state resources, and a large portion of the population are internal migrants that don't have provincial citizenship where they work (many farmers plant their crops and get temp jobs in the city). Ergo, double counting is systemic at every level of census taking. It is not known if any population figures were straight up falsified, though.
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  6.  @Homer-OJ-Simpson  rail tickets cost money. If you're poor enough, it is better to take a long cheap route. And in order to justify the high cost of HSR you need A LOT of people who can afford daily tickets within walking distance of the station (or at least a short bus ride away).
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  7.  @Fishmans  Perhaps. But it is better if it's profitable or at least breaks even.
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  8. Expat is applied to persons that intend to return home.
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  9.  @michaelg5945  I ain't subscribed to him
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  10. The whole premise of the video is flawed. Wages have soared in much of China but so has cost of living. In rural areas you can rent a house for 10-20 bucks a month, but in a first tier city you'll have to pay at least 1000 plus commute times as much as 3 hours are not unheard of. Even office workers at high flying Chinese startups struggle to buy food. There was never a middle class in China.
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  11.  @saumyacow4435  lose the rhetoric. Besides, road costs come directly out of fuel and vehicle taxes and the builders operate at a profit.
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  12. Cost of living is just high in Norway. The excess population just leaves, they don't make new houses
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  13.  @dennythedavinchi3832  what does all that babble about the 1980's have to do with HSR?
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  14.  @JohnJones-lb6xo  not exactly. You pay for them in gasoline taxes.
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  15. @Oddwaffle  vhut? He's talking about how voters in Ontario are trying to regulate their own landlords out of business
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  16. Because the Norwegians aren't corrupt. Simple as that.
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  17.  @saumyacow4435  if it can't break even, then it ain't worth the tax dollars
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  18.  @saumyacow4435  Lose the digression. That is not the matter at hand
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  19. Also, in Japan, all houses are considered haunted. A lot of people don't want to buy a house from the estate of a dead guy, even if he died peacefully in a hospital.
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  20. Also note R&D spending is a tax write off in the US.
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  21. There was a time when Porche was making three times as much trading stock options as selling cars... They were a hedge fund that sold cars on the side!
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  22. Consumers get what they pay for, and states get the governments they deserve.
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  23. Unfairly harsh on Brits, as always. But frankly, British colonies were more often a reflection of the native population than they were London.
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  24. @mikeburke7053  lying isn't necessary in this instance. Selling building permits is a thing in Britain but the fees are meant to cover admin costs, not be a primary source of revenue
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  25. @mikeburke7053 ........you don't even know why Britain left, don't you?
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  26. Shut up, People
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  27. Because of the sins of the Haitians
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  28. I guess because he posts about many subjects. Poly = many.
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  29. There's no way their paying market price for those shares.
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  30. These goons expected to achieve world domination with cheap labor. That should show how China was never a first world state.
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  31.  @Hahaha41241  Southeaster, you mean. Even then most of those rails are hampered by how most people are a little poor.
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  32.  @williamgordon5708  We can afford cars over here. Most people in China own things like motorbikes, ebikes, scooters.
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  33.  @ClockworksOfGL  Japan's economic bubble had nothing to do with excessive debt or railroads. It was a combination of how they're a nation of savers, and how their economy really bounced up after WWII since they no longer had an army to support, and an accounting loophole allowed corporations to count paper gains from stocks as income. Result? Growing companies invest their extra money until they can decide what to do with them, this make the value of Japanese stocks to go up, this makes corporate earnings look good, causing more people to invest in Japan, and continue on a loop until it becomes unsustainable (IIRC, at one point the land value of the Imperial Palace was that of a country).
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  34.  @konsta9600  traffic really is that congested. You'll sit at intersections most of the trip
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  35.  @konsta9600  Dude, if you live in a mid-sized North American city or smaller, I understand your incredulousness. But understand there's stretches of many hundreds of miles in many parts of the world that are uninterrupted urban sprawl. In Japan's case there's simply not enough land on the island to go around.
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  36.  @frontierproloteriat  perhaps, but these services should definitely break even or else it ain't worth it.
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  37.  @frontierproloteriat  ain't worth the tax dollars and loans needed to set them up.
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  38.  Jun Kun  I'm too lazy to fact check that but whatever be the case Japan's prices didn't effect ridership while many in China are willing to take the bus to save money.
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  39.  @henrytudor8537  you talking to me?
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  40.  @peterparker9954  That's China, I was talking about Japan
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  41.  @peterparker9954  the average debt to equity ratio among Chinese companies is twice that of US companies. And note that Americans aren't exactly known for their prudent fear of leverage and this doesn't include systemic practices of hidden debt in China. That doesn't count the huge public debts as many local governments have defaulted over the past few decades With Japan's case, it's a matter of their bubble decades ago. Their government made huge bailouts and quant easing and now has the highest debt to GDP ratio of any developed nation. The government, however, is not the economy. Also, their bubble wasn't produced by borrowing, but by savings.
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  42.  @weizhang2834  you ain't fat enough to be considered 5000 bureaucrats
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  43.  @real_dddf  mostly do to purchasing power issues. The rails are cheap as the labor in China but that doesn't mean locals can afford it
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  44. @George Smith Patton Jr. that guy also bought a meme coin. He's no guru and he's looking at the same fraudulent data as everyone else
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  45.  @LongIslandIced-Tea  Chinese rails also derail all the time due to unsafe speeds and tight schedules and cheap builds.
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  46.  @LongIslandIced-Tea  quit proving the point
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  47.  @jamieminnell7316  not if you know economics.
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  48.  @bigfatseal4430  Depends where you are and time of day but congestion in Japan is really that insane.
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  49.  @Peterpanza52  that doesn't mean it doesn't need to break even in order to be worth it
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  50.  JokoJo UK  you mind making sense?
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  51.  @pepelepew1227  what are you even angry about?
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  52.  @AG-GA  Honest question: Are you a robot?
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  53.  @AG-GA  A robot wouldn't be able to creatively insult half the people on this thread. And it's easy to see you're misusing a VPN by your video post history
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  54. ​@WVgrl59 it's called fraud
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  55. @jsmith8147  shut up
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  56. The Roman Republic/Empire was, in a way, ruled by corporations. Note they didn't distinguish between the exec and the corporation, and the richest Patrician families often held several unpaid public offices and provided public works out of their own pocket. When Rome burned and Pompeii buried, the emperor rebuilt much of it out of his own pocket. You can imagine the weird incentives this created, like one oligarch who created a fire brigade but allegedly forced homeowners to sell their land for peanuts while it was on fire.
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  57. Ontario, not the whole of Canada.
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  58. ​@Septimus_ii It was voter induced in Ontario. Id10ts want to regulate landlords out of business and they want nature reserves they can visit every weekend.
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  59. @elvisng8225  meanwhile in the less well-known parts of north America yearly income to house cost ratio is more like 2
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  60. ​@Global-yt ontario is not Canada and that's a different issue
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  61. @hlo695  no. The Arab "refugees" do not do that, why would genuine immigrants uproot again?
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  62.  @wentoneisendon6502  I don't care what you said, that is how the word is used
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  63.  @ronidude  yes, but overwhelmingly both rails are operated by the same company.
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  64.  @dadikkedude  as I said to the other guy, the rail companies own both rails
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  65.  @Homer-OJ-Simpson  yeah. That's what I meant. Same companies own both rails.
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  66.  @madman5042  there are too many sources to choose from. Some more reliable than others. I'm a historian, you see.
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  67.  @full-timepog6844  most of the time, anyway. Sometimes even if you are a party member your peers will get jealous
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  68.  @Blox117  One problem: That didn't happen. If you're going to be whataboutist, find a scandal someone actually went to jail for.
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