As a side note, i hope they go bankrupt and we expropriate them. Railroads are too important to leave largely to the private sector. Our rail infrastructure compared to really any developed nation is abysmally sad.
The Brightline model is surprising because it shouldn't work. Miami and Orlando aren't well thought of for there public transit systems. Yet, this premium intercity train is expanding. I'm not convinced they are profitable as a train, but they own the property around downtown train stations which is really hot right now.
For European countries your point stands.
If companies in the US and Europe had the same sense of social duty that companies in Japan do, this wouldn't be an issue in the first place, though.
E.B. White wrote a marvelous essay on the subject called The Railroad.
It was doing just fine when Reagan decided to privatize for some reason.
Nationalizing actually fixed the situation so I don't kmow where you got the impression that it made things worse
This one? Maybe I missed it in my brief skim but I don't see anything negative
Its going to be interesting to see the interplay between infrastructure/healthcare/environmental regulations with this completely preventable, entirely foreseeable accident over the coming years.
They could cover health insurance for the entire town for a similar cost per year.
Replacing the train is likely to be more expensive.
The real cost will probably be environmental testing and remediation. Even if there isn't an big impact, it will take a lot of money to collect the data to prove it.
Such as when your well is contaminated...
Instead:
1) freeze or reduce the budget
2) put incompetent people in charge with crazy mission statements
3) wait a bit for the program to fail and skilled employees to leave
4) point at how inefficient and useless the government program is
5) replace it by private sector and contractors
It is a classic move and not just in the US.
It's been slowly crippled, putting more and more pressure in the system, and eventually the solution to be proposed when the system finally collapses through malicious maladministration will be to privatise it.
In other words, unfortunately, this is theory is a non-falsifiable conspiracy theory.
Edit: It is rather validating when poking a pet theory produces a negative yet non-substantive response. Sure, go on believing in fairies and yeti. Best of luck to your children.
Look at the bits about denationalising the NHS.
I'd like to see your rebuttal to this book, genuinely [1].
Edit: also this op-ed contains some more examples of the process going on [2].
Please, refrain from name-calling and instead point exactly where I'm wrong on what you so called a "conspiracy theory". It's a baseless comment and you haven't provided me anything to look further.
[0] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ebr.2005...
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-NHS-Easy-Steps/dp/178...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-...
The results in reality is a system that has not coped with its usage, one such example is presented in the op-ed article I shared on [2] which states that McKinsey was commissioned to provide a report which they concluded there would be less need of nurses, which was false, that report was used to reduce the budget for nurses which as a result caused further reduction in force of nurses as they quit because of lower pay. I can only derive that it's malicious since the report is wrong and no action was taken to correct the government's actions when reality hit. The same op-ed links to another analysis with this exact question [0].
> “In other words we didn’t have enough nurses before to provide a high quality service? Ah!” said John Humphrys in shocked tones - as if this was a revelation the BBC’s flagship news programme had never heard before.
> But the BBC failed to ask the key question – why were all the warning signs about nurse shortages, ignored?
> After all, NHS chiefs and ministers had been warned clearly for years that there would be a shortage of nurses, as a result of David Cameron’s coalition government cutting training places for nurses and doctors from 2010 onwards. From 2010 through to 2013 the numbers of nursing places commissioned at universities in England were cut by 12.7% – resulting in 2500 fewer places. In 2012 experts warned that this would result in a “disaster” in two or three years. In all, the 2010 cutbacks (reversed only relatively recently) meant that around 8000 fewer nurses were coming into the system.
Can you point me to any counterpoint to this where the government's actions align to a non-malicious plan to actually help the system, as misaligned as that plan might be? Because every action I can find points to a plan where the system is put under further struggle without giving a good reason why it is sensible to, for example, train less nurses when they were advised by NHS chiefs and specialists they will require more. You can't say that ignoring your chief specialists is not malicious.
[0] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/nhs-staff-shortage-s...
It seems obvious to me that it would be falsifiable by looking at a statement like "putting more and more pressure on the system" and seeing if that has actually been happening.
The more the company purposefully puts people in danger, the more nationally owned they are. Especially when it comes to infrastructure like this.
"Sorry, you've been nationalized due to your continued efforts in proving you cannot be trusted". Fines large enough to matter would arguably hurt infrastructure and safety. Start taking shares.
A company this big doesn't need to sell shares to get operating capital. This should apply to any company that does stock buybacks to inflate stock price, rather than reinvesting into their company, employees, etc.
Say the company is worth $1B and has 10M shares that are trading at $100 each. Now there's an accident that will lead to a $100M fine. This get priced in, the value of the company is now $900M, and the stock goes to $90/share. Whether they send $100M to the government in cash or by issuing 11M shares, either way the stock price stays at $90 and investors are equally affected.
On the other hand, if the amount of the fine is higher than the value of the company you'd much rather be a creditor than a shareholder, since in bankruptcy the stock goes to zero.
Look at Steven Donzinger. He reported on toxic spills by Chevron in Nicaragua that poisoned indigenous water supplies. Chevron hired a private prosecutor and found a judge in their favor to force him into house arrest(for over a year) for not supplying a document.
Large corporations have the cards stacked in their favor.
The nationalization of railroads under Wilson lasted from December 1917 to March 1920. During this time, operation (including expansion and maintenance) of all railroads was organized by the federal government. When the nationalization was repealed in 1920, the US paid rail companies for lost profits.
1) if there is a demand to have something, it usually raises price of that thing. You could interpret this as a forced buyback, which may raise prices of shares (and thus reward bad behavior)
2) what does the govt do with the stock after it has the stock? It doesn’t have a system for processing it, as it does with USD
Also, why shouldn’t you penalize shareholders? In the future they’ll think twice about investing in companies that cut corners to juice short term gains
+1
Losses speak louder than words.
Maybe you could call voters to action by saying we need to “protect our -lands-“ (stronger ring than air or water) or even better, “protect our -people- from having to live in a toxic environment”.
In my experience, conservatives care way more about the environment than anyone. They are the people who live, hunt, hike, farm, fish in the woods. The average conservative farmer/hillbilly has a much more personal connection with "the environment" than the average urban liberal.
But all things environment became associated with the left, so republicans have to reject it as a matter of course.
I think we need one good advertising campaign to seriously change people's minds. Something like, "Be a good steward of God's green earth". If we spoke their language, it would click.
The EPA wasn't looking like they were gonna do much until the situation was so fucked, or at least fucked looking, that there were potential political brownie points to be earned crapping on their inaction at which point they cleaned up their act and did something.
Environmental protection has been a very mixed bag for middle America over the past ~60yr. This disaster is doing anything but endearing the EPA to the people of Ohio or Middle America generally. I think at best it's a lateral move.
Also, with this being in Ohio, I hope people in Ohio realize how valuable the EPA is and stop voting for people who want to cut every Gov Program except for Defense.