You're talking to a Canadian, and I'm not scared of the "red menace". You should be more scared - those guys can build bullet trains while you Yanks are finding it hard to even keep the old ones you have running. The solution here isn't going to be some kind of ideological force that protects people from different ideas, and that's an unAmerican way to fix things anyway. Embrace other ideas; central planning doesn't have to be evil, you just have to find a way to stop putting evil people in charge.
Xi is an obviously more capable and effective leader than Trump, but the US actually does have ways to boot people out of office when they do a bad job, and clear methods to choose successors, and China has neither. That matters more than who happens to be in charge right now.
America has several sets of eminent domain laws depending on the jurisdiction. The most coercive is federal eminent domain law specifically as it relates to building infrastructure like railways and highways.
It's set up so that you can take the land first and eventually go back around and decide on what the right price should have been.
Not only does it superscede state and local law, federal infrastructure projects are also not bound by state laws like CEQA.
You can even apply federal eminent domain law by e.g. transferring a state-level project to the Army Corps of Engineers.
What America is lacking in these projects is will, not means. The federal government could take your house and run a train through it by the end of the week if they wanted, doesn't matter where you live.
[edit] In fact some states even ceded their eminent domain rights to private railways.
The Australian federal government is planning to build a high-speed rail line from Sydney to Newcastle (medium-sized city two hours drive north). Their solution to property rights, is >50% of the line will be underground. It will cost >US$50 billion, but if the Australian federal government wants to spend that, it can afford it. The US federal government could too, but it isn’t a priority for them
> local regulations make it prohibitively expensive
Local regulations can be pre-empted by state or federal legislation. The real problem is lack of political will to do it.
My understanding is that existing rail lines aren't flat/straight enough for high speed rail. There's no point to a bullet train if it has to constantly slow down for corners/hills.
The so-called inability to build trains is precisely because of a socialist/leftist style view that prevents this. I think you may not be aware that China has what's called a command economy. There is no one that is going to tell the Party that they cannot build a train in some area is because of ancient bush species or some kind of heirloom fruit and certainly not some awkward looking endangered species of fish.
Literal Trump Derangement Syndrome. America has a comically horrendous president but remains fundamentally a liberal democracy… and Canada concludes “literal Nazis are a better choice”. It’s uncanny how much can be taken for granted :(
(American talking, who’s had multiple Canadian friends make this mind boggling overcorrection)
The president of the United States has much to his dismay, been consistently legally constrained. The chancellor of Germany had significantly more power, both de facto and de jure.
"Man with itchy butt wake up with stinky finger."
As long as we're quoting maxims to claim authority for middling takes.
