There are tons of loopholes, the biggest of which is running freights that are longer than every siding ...

I highly doubt Amtrak will suddenly run on time if enough people write Congress like their video suggests. The delays are egregious. Can’t they just pay for priority?

> Can’t they just pay for priority?

With what money? Oh, the extra money they could be allocated by… Congress?

Amtrak sells tickets.

Demanding that a passenger railway be self-funding while also trying to massively increase its scope is... not a path for success. Unless I'm wrong you know of any continent-scale railways that bootstrapped themselves into success recently...?

A possible strategy is to use money from ticket sales to pay for priority, boosting on-time performance which increases the competitiveness of their product.

Do you really think no one has thought of this?

And for a large portion of their routes are already overpriced and less convenient than almost any other means of travel (except for a handful of actually reasonably-priced routes. A local route on Amtrak costs almost $100 for a one way ticket traveling <200mi A bus ticket for the same route is $30. The bus takes an hour longer. I want amtrak to thrive, but they need to attract customers, not drive more away with higher prices.

System-wide load factor in Feb 22 was 38%. This is not competitive. Perhaps decreasing delays would boost ridership, making tickets cheaper.

Amtrak are freeloading on privately built and maintained railways.

If they want better track alignments, or prioritisation over other users, they should come to a commercial agreement with the infrastructure owners like anyone else. Alternatively, they can build their own infrastructure.

Railroads in the US run through land donated by the government, on tracks given to the railroads by the government, supported with funds from the government. Despite all that aid, the government has had to step in with additional funding to ensure they don't go bankrupt many times, especially in the 1920s, 1930s, 1970s, 2000s, and during COVID.

Fulfilling their legal obligations to Amtrak is the least they could do. It's worth noting that the corridors where Amtrak did build dedicated track have the fewest delays and the best safety in the network.

It was sold by the government in return for the railroad being built. Every bankruptcy was the direct result of government intervention.

The railroads did their part, in spite of being hamstrung at every step by the government.

I think you’ve misunderstood the arrangement. They were not granted the land where the rails were laid alone. They were granted vast amounts of additional real estate, and the value of that land could have maintained the railways in perpetuity. However, similarly vast fortunes were extracted from the railways instead, and the generational wealth created during these events in the 1800s has proved more durable than the commercial viability of the rails that the country had intended to support.

Yup. Those massive land grants begat timber companies. Which in turn begat real estate and development companies.

The story's similar for ranching, mining, power, telecommunications, etc, etc.

TLDR: The government is the source of all wealth.

Which is terrific. So long as the government's ongoing investments are repaid in kind.

You could also say that people choose a system that creates an environment for them to thrive and attracts more people who then also thrive. In other words the government doesn’t need to be the enemy, and that system, natural resources, and their industriousness combine to create wealth.

However, I agree that they should invest back into the system that created the conditions for their success, and everyone should be suspicious of people who claim their success was entirely self-made right before they attempt to destroy institutions.

>TLDR: The government is the source of all wealth. Which is terrific. So long as the government's ongoing investments are repaid in kind.

Governments are important but I think this is terrible logic. The government didn't use magic to create the land out of nothing.

It also seems to imply some sort of Perpetual debt, which can never be repaid. Like a parent that claim stuff on everything a child makes or creates.

If the government grants or sells land, the obligations end at the terms of sale.

I don't understand your objection.

You don't like the mental model (worldview)?

I gleened it from conservative economist Kevin Phillips' book Wealth & Democracy. I assume it's bog standard economic world building. Nothing I've read since has contradicted Phillips. (I'm noob, not some kind of economist. Though I did get to chat with Phillips one time and I felt like I understood his answers.)

What mental model do you prefer?

Or maybe you object to the implications ("logic") of this model. That notions like property, wealth, and government are social constructs. Just shared fictions which hopefully make the world a little bit more predictable (legible), without too much extra effort, so we can all muddle thru our daily lives.

PS- What's your view of the Homestead Act and such? Why would the govt just give people land, vs selling it?

I think the Homestead Act is a good example for explaining my objection.

First of all, I believe the government is the agent and servant of the people, not the other way around. Any government land is also owned by the people because the people own the government. The Homestead Act was a simple way of Distributing this land to to be held directly by the people instead of managing it on their behalf.

When considering the giving away of land, the government loses property. What the government gains is the hope or chance that people will do something productive with it. Even if those people only benefit themselves and retain the profits, they are increasing the economy and total wealth/value of the country. This is the repayment, and those individuals dont "owe" the government anything.

What I especially object to is the idea of retrospectively applied debt, often long after the fact.

You see this a lot in discussion of government grants for science and tech research.

The government creates and awards research grants to encourage development because the public would be better off if the medicine or whatever exists opposed to not exist, even if it is being sold for a profit.

However, when something does get invented and sold, some people then think the public is owed a debt. This isn't true. The government provided funding because it wanted the thing to exist. Once it exists, the government's objective and any obligation has already been met.

By analogy, imagine two neighbors. Neighbor A pays for the other (Neighbor B) to paint their house out of self interest, because it will make the neighborhood look better and raise their own property value. The neighbor B has fulfilled their obligation and any debt by painting the house. It is both logically and morally bankrupt for Neighbor A to come back at a later day and claim the other is in their debt, after they already got what they initially wanted and bargained for.

This comes back to the idea of the government as the "source" of all wealth, deserving repayment.

Like I said before, the government is important, and even essential for economic development.

Being essential is different than being the "source" or deserving repayment. A government built road is essential for me to get to work, however that doesn't mean the government is the source of all the work I did, or entitled to a share of my salary, provided I already paid my share for the road.

Because everyone involved understands that, as currently implemented, Amtrak is irrelevant and a joke. But freight rail isn't.

Amtrak doesn't need priority, they need to run their trains on time. That means not running old worn out,.under maintained trains. They nees to leave on time, every time. That also means fining the freights when they have the track blocked so they cannot get access in their allocated time which was planed months ago.

They don't have the legal authority to fine them.