Your point is valid and a key problem with HSR in California. Where HSR excels is where the urban population density is high, like in China or Europe. The US has a far more suburban population, where point-to-point travel doesn't have the same economics. I was involved in a study looking at the United States Marine Highway Project, which is still ongoing. Given the US' massive amount of coastline and navigable rivers, in theory water transport should be the best because it's basically free train tracks; the water's already there. The problem came in with what's called drayage, or the last mile of transportation. No matter what with point to point transportation, you still need trucks and cars to get people to their final destination, and from a freight perspective it was still over 50% of the cost; you barely save anything from our current model right now.

California's issues are eminent domain and the cost of land, environmental laws, and litigation of all of this which is hugely expensive. But the primary issue is just that our population is highly distributed and in the end the economics just aren't there for point-to-point travel.

You must not have passed middle-school reading comprehension. I'm using Bren as an example, not to empathize with, but to show how someone like him will respond to this tax, and how the knock-on effects will lead to fewer businesses, lost tax revenue and people being laid off.

I know that the concept of unintended consequences might be foreign to a person such as yourself, but that doesn't change the fact that this tax will be more damaging to California's economy and the people in it than is proposed. That might be too complex for you though, so here's a ball for you to play with. Perhaps you'd like to bounce it.

Well we're about to, as it's poor people voting for this.

Very few so-called "billionaires" have billions of dollars in cash. Most of it is tied up in non-liquid ownership of their companies or their real-estate. Let's take on billionaire in California that can't "flee" like the tech billionaires, Donald Bren. Bren owns the Irvine Company completely; it's a private entity that owns around 125 million square feet of apartments, retail centers, and office buildings. Irvine Company is private, but his estimated net worth is $19.2B because of his ownership in the company and the real estate assets that underpin it; it's not cash.

There are two major problems with this. The first is "estimated" net worth; what is that? What is the value of his holdings? One could argue the value of the real-estate, but they fluctuate all the time due to supply and demand. If there was a sudden increase of real estate on the market, that would drop the value; what's it worth now?

And why would there be a sudden increase of property on the market? Simple, because of the second problem. If we assume his net worth is $19.2B, then he would need to pay $960M. He doesn't have that cash on hand, so he has to do one of two things: sell property in his portfolio (many of the targeted people for this tax are real estate developers/owners), increasing the supply of real estate on the market and depressing prices all around for everyone, or increase his rents to his tenants, who are all businesses who employ people. If the rent goes up, expenses go up in all businesses, meaning they will then lay people off or pass on the higher expenses in prices to consumers of their products. Most likely they will do both.

And absolutely believe these billionaires, who can directly influence companies, prices, and the like, will make any tax pain they feel punitive to all California residents, and for one simple reason: the tax is only one time, until the next time. If it can get voted through once, it'll be voted through again because the ballot initiative is clear, it's a "one-time tax paid over 5 years" to pay for "healthcare and public services" which are by nature on-going expenses; when the 5 years are up those expenses will still be there, requiring another 5% asset tax.

So you'll see companies lay people off, you'll see services go down, you'll see companies close, because the billionaires will have to sell assets, which are always companies that employ people, just to pay the tax. Hence, because of poor people, poor people are going to be laid off.

Actually, China is a signatory to the Berne Agreement (As of 1992) and the TRIPS Agreement when they joined the WTO. They are required by those agreements to follow the injunction according to their own domestic law to enforce it. I don't know what that means in CHina's specific case, but if they have laws protecting Chinese entities copyright, they must apply the same protections to the US entities' copyright. Now China may not do that, but then they would be in violation of the treaties they signed, meaning the other member countries could immediately allow for copyright infringement of Chinese entities' copyrights in their nation, so China would have to be very selective about how or why they would not follow the injunction.

So that's factually incorrect. Sweden IS a member of the Berne Convention, and they are a WTO member and the TRIPS Agreement requires a certain minimum set of standards of enforcement of copyright including banning domains that are actively engaged in the distribution of copyrighted material and providing for monetary damages for said distribution, and the material meets the definition of copyright because it is copyrighted in the US and the Berne Agreement requires them to recognize that.

Hello Sunday morning lawyer!

While a US judge does not directly have the power to order other countries around for an injunction, it doesn't mean that this injunction can't be forced, and it also doesn't mean that just being in another country leaves you free to just steal any copyrighted material from another country with no consequence. In fact, the Berne Convention goes back to 1886 and has 180 national member signatories that says that every member country must extend the same copyright protections to the creations of those in other nations as though they were their own citizens. Essentially it means that all signatory members must automatically recognize any US copyright protection, so by the judge ordering this injunction and stating that Anna's Archive violated copyright, by extension every member nation of the Berne Agreement recognizes the copyright of all of the plaintiffs and in essence would recognize that Anna's Archive violated their copyrights.

Further under the TRIPS Agreement in the WTO (1994), all members must provide the same copyright protections to foreign citizens that they would provide to their own citizens, along with a minimum set of standards such as no illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted works.

By ordering this injunction, he's declaring that under US Law Anna's Archive violated the US entities' copyrights, and under Berne and TRIPS at a minimum (and probably other treaties), every member nation of the WTO and the Berne Agreement would provide the same protections to those US entities against illegal copying.

So in effect, yes, he can order a worldwide injunction to at least member states of the Berne Convention and the WTO because all of those nations would provide the same legal protection. The enforcement may vary from country to country, but none allow for illegal distribution of copyrighted materials.

Totally different business but exactly the same problem. Nordstrom generally has the latest trend clothes in fashion and pretty good quality; it's known for it. But when it had leftover inventory it knew there were people a step down from their target demographic that would love Nordstrom's quality products even if they're a season or two out of fashion for cheaper, so they opened Nordstrom's Rack to sell off the excess inventory.

Nordstrom's Rack got so popular they couldn't keep it stocked, and eventually started developing their own dedicated Nordstrom Rack brands, which sort of defeated the purpose of Nordstrom's Rack as it's entire value was Nordstrom's quality, late season, at a discount, but now it's discount quality with the Nordstrom's name on it.

Law of unintended consequences I guess.

I spent my first working years in retail finance and financial planning. Generally people contributing to 401ks are already earning well; on average people who earn over $150k contributed around 15% to them, and overall contribution goes down the lower income you go. You also see white and Asian demographics contributing the most, whereas Hispanic and African American contributing the least. In general they have worked as intended, encouraging workers to save up for retirement, but they have had 2 unintended consequences that create an opportunity.

1) 401ks indirectly contributed, and i would argue was the single largest contributor, to the growth of private equity and asset classes like venture capital, which led to an explosion of startups and innovation. It works like this. VCs generally get the money they invest in startups from either wealthy families (family offices) or very large money managers like pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth, and the like. Pension funds, from a dollar perspective, are around 85% of all funds going into Venture capital, so in essence workers working every day and contributing to pension funds for their later pensions are a key contributer. However 401ks did as well, because pension funds generally are required to allocate assets according to some strategy. It's usually something like 30% bonds (US treasuries), 30% blue chip stocks (DOW, S&P 500, NASDAQ Index funds), and then some other areas like foreign stocks, foreign bonds, etc. Virtually every one has at the bottom 1-2% in "high-risk, high return asset classes"; this is usually VCs. What happens is 401k contributions also buy into usually index funds, like the S&P 500, and that also happens every pay period. That raises the value of those funds (and the stocks, it's great to be on the S&P 500). As such, at the end fo the year, maybe the allocation is now 30% bonds, 33% stock, other stuff, and now .6% high risk, high return assets. So they sell out of the stock classes to reallocate, and more money gets allocated to give to VCs. The constant influx of worker's capital into pension funds and 401ks that go into index funds that raise the value of those funds directly leads to reallocation of money to venture, leading to more startups getting funded.

2) 401ks end up being a bit of a burden when you're retired. While some people use them for sure as an income source, because your gains are taxed as income, if you have other sources of income you want to draw on this as little as possible. As such, Rollover IRA money, from the 401k, just sits there in an asset class, not being used. Many of the clients I helped saw their 401k RMD as a burden; they never needed it but were required to do it.

And let's add one more element here. Private equity, and in particular venture capital, has much longer market cycles from the public markets, so over a 5 year horizon might not beat the public markets, but over 20 years the returns will crush the markets. For example the last 5 years VC has struggled to compete with public stocks, but over a 20 year horizon the category has achieved 14.3% CAGR compared to say the S&P 500's 7.5%. This means over a 20 year horizon, $1,000 would become $15,533 when in VC vs. $4,247 in S&P 500; roughly 3X the gain.

I say all that because 401k money is long-term horizon. Gen Z appears to be good savers and is contributing well, but they're not touching the money for 30 to 40 years. That makes the capital patient, and with a long-term horizon looks very attractive. And given the size of 401k contributions, this would create a whole new pool of funds available to invest in the next generation of startups and keep the innovation cycle moving.

I'm not a fan of crypto, but i have to admit my issues with it have led me to miss out on the upside. But opening up the US 401k market, even just a small fraction such as 3 or 5%, would create an influx of capital available for VCs and as such for startups, creating a whole new generation of companies. And 401k money is great for this because it's long-term horizon and patient.

Today long-term tech development is heavily done in an academic setting, and while there are some companies that do think long-term (Qualcomm and other telecom companies tend to be on 5-10 year tech cycles, aerospace is on 10-20 year cycles, biotech and life science is on 10-20 year cycles), generally a lot of it has shifted to academic circles and universities now. Unfortunately, I think this has put a damper on things.

One thing Bell Labs did do correctly was by being part of a company, they had the needs and desires of a market and consumers to act as a pull, a "Why" so to speak. Even with some of the more speculative research they did, there was always an eye towards how would this get deployed to a market as a product and thus become a technology available to the broader world. Academia does not have this; most academia lives in a bubble. WHen you read academic papers, they all follow the same outline: 1) there's a problem in the world, 2) a new technology is hypothesized to solve it, 3) here is an experiment and data to show it cna solve it, and 4) that problem might be solved by this new technology.

While generally most papers I read have mid- to good- experimental design and data and decent conclusions, it's the first part about a problem that is almost entirely made up from nothing. In my field at least, when I read an academic paper that is supposed to relate to my field, the problem they are identifying isn't even a problem at all; it has no relevance to the field or what people want. As such the technology is funded, experiments are done, a paper is published, and it dies on the vine because it turns out no one wants it because it was never a problem in the first place.

It's noticeable that when it comes to silicon and chip-based technologies, academia does very little; the silicon industry basically took it all over through the formation of SRC. SRC unfortunately just got gutted by the Trump administration, but for a long time SRC and the industry ran all of the new technology development; there wasn't anything like chip architectures or new interconnects or anything coming out of academia at all; it was all industry led and academia only did niche stuff like graphene and organics and the like.

Industry at least provides a pull for a new technology academia has to push it and it rarely results in anything useful. It's different for different fields, but in my field at least I haven't found a single university program that's even remotely relevant; the Bell Labs model is sorely missed.

I think it's arguing that given their unassailable position with their monopoly, they had the freedom to focus on long-term technology development. I do believe competition and the need to report quarterly earnings creates incentives and pressures to focus on more short-term thinking, but I don't think having a monopoly is the only thing that would create fertile ground for more long-term tech development, nor was it the only factor for Bell Labs as the article points out leadership with vision was a key factor too.

NASA still needs to explain why. Never in history did we do science or major projects like this for no reason. Even Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about this; the original effort to go to the moon had geopolitical context of surpassing the Soviet Union and the dual-purpose military use of rockets-turned ICBMs. Columbus sailed around the world not to prove it was round, it was to cut out the Middle-Eastern middle-men in the trade of Asian goods in Europe; it was about money and geopolitics. Every major advancement in history has either an economic driver or a geopolitical driver. With that, the Moon, Mars, and the whole bit are just too far away, too costly, too dangerous, and don't generate enough economic or geopolitical benefit.

Or, if they do, they aren't articulating it well. Without that driving purpose, this moonbase or Lunar Gateway or whatever just simply won't happen.

It is not illegal to announce intended plans. The articles themselves say it will require approval by Congress.

I know it's knee-jerk to hate on the executive branch and Trump, but using terms like "illegal" becomes hyperbolic and meaningless if its overused and used in a factually incorrect way.

It's not ASML that'll be the problem. They'll buy a system and it'll be there in crates ready to be isntalled long before:

A) the permits are in place. This is Texas, so maybe "faster than California", but it'll cost.

B) The water and power is secured; again it might go faster but it's 18-24 months. However,

C) This is Texas, the power grid has been unreliable. Since foundries run 24/7 fully automated to produce the kinds of chips he's talking about, they'll need reliable backup power. Backup generator lead times are, as of today, around 48-90 months. This is very hard to go faster, as these gensets have specific bottlenecks, namely the castings for the crankshafts are typically done at specialized facilities, cannot be made to go faster, and have slots secured years in advance. Maybe you pay through the nose to buy someone else's gen set, or you're robbing them off of old recycled ships and turning them into gen sets, but they'll be pieces of junk; a real risk. I bet the EUV system will be ready years before the power requirements and backup gensets are ready.

D) labor - thanks to Elon's MAGA tendencies, we're now starting to face a labor shortage. We have a major skillset mismatch in that the kind of people to operate these tools typically aren't trained in America, so to go fast you'll have to, shocker, bring them over via H1-Bs. Heck even construction to build these fabs is facing labor shortages, particularly in places on the Southern border like Texas because construction is heavily staffed with Hispanic people, who are getting harder to find today thanks to Trump and ICE.

So yeah, odds are this is going to cost 2-5X as much as it should and take 2-5X longer than it needs to, and probably still won't be able to operate when "done".

I remember when Tesla was a capital P Progressive brand. It's stunning how much the world has turned.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, however if you're in Uber's position you can't afford to look at the now. The fact is, they attempted to build their own robotaxi and failed, which left them in the position of being a ride-hailer app only. That makes them vulnerable if there is only one player to provide automated taxi services. And so far, Waymo is really the only successful player in this. Tesla on the other hand, as much as I dislike the company has had naysayers against it for many years and while it never beats those naysayers when they say they will, the fact is that A) they are profitable, B) they have a large chunk of cash, and C) Elon has made many investors a lot of money, so if he asks for more investment he'll get it, and he is directly talking about muscling in on Uber's territory.

So while I think Musk is a clown, you can't discount what he can achieve when he stays focused. Right now he's vulnerable because the political focus made him distracted, which gives Uber time to support more players coming into the market. On top of that, if they make 12 bets on alternatives to Waymo or Tesla and only 3 or 4 of them make it, those 3 or 4 who are successful will be much smaller; operating through Uber's platform will give them revenue and allow them to survive, and that gives Uber control over them the way they'll never have over Waymo or Tesla.

So it's the smart move on their part.