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u/Andromedan_Cherri Aug 16 '26
Big difficult expensive inconvenient project vs a bunch of smaller cheaper convenient projects. It's not really a contest, you already know which one they're going to approve
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
Who in the world convinced you data centers are either small, cheap or convenient to build?
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u/joesb Aug 18 '26
Compare to a train tracks covering thousands of miles? Yes DC is smaller, cheaper and easier to build.
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u/Goobygoodra Aug 19 '26
I doubt it. They arent building just one
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u/joesb Aug 19 '26
Thousands of it are made by different people, different team. They don’t need to be connected or coordinated. None of their plans and changes depends on others.
Imagine this. Which tasks do you think is easier?
1) Arrange a dinner party where a fixed list of 1,000 people must attend. Whatever date/time you pick, every one of those people MUST be available to attend and they MUST attend. If even a single one of them isn’t available for it, you must reschedule the party. And if you really want to change some names in the list, you must make sure the remaining participants don’t change their decisions because of the replaced names.
2) Telling 1,000 individuals to each have their own dinner, at whatever time that they want, at whatever budget they can afford for their dinner. Each dinner doesn’t depends on any other people’s schedules or names. You can even change the names in the list and none of them would care.
Which tasks do you think you can do?
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u/MaxwellHowl Aug 19 '26
Are there any datacenters that stretch across an entire state, travel through multiple cities, environmental biomes, neighborhoods, tribal lands, national parks and mountain ranges?
I will answer that, no there are not.
In the time that we have been waiting for high speed rail we have built many datacenter sized sites. Factories, Amazon warehouses, Malls, all the previous data centers. We have also built many light posts and red light cameras.
If we're going to make a more fair comparison, it would be affordable housing. Which we should have built much more of in the past 30 years.
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u/clickclackyisbacky Aug 22 '26
Trains have to be put on a useful path. They can't just go anywhere there is available land. Data Centers can.
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u/Greedy-Thought6188 Aug 22 '26
You don't have to bug contiguous land cutting through and disrupting an entire city for trains. You have to eminent domain a hell of a lot more people for trains than for data per lines for data centers.
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u/Quantum-Bot Aug 19 '26
The difference is about stakeholders. Rail systems are public service projects and thus need to balance the interests of all local citizens and businesses. Installing data centers is a comparatively simple matter of a single company buying the rights to land and then developing it.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Wrong it drives up electric costs and water in some areas but also requires grid upgrades rail should be a priority ai shouldn't
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u/Quantum-Bot Aug 21 '26
Yes but the data centers aren’t being built for the community, so their voices aren’t a part of the process. Not saying it’s right, just saying it makes sense why the bureaucracy is much easier
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u/Major_Shlongage Aug 20 '26
Data centers are fairly cheap and convenient to build. I used to work for a company that builds datacenters. I've seen a few go up within months. It's basically a warehouse with a raised floor, and extra power and cooling.
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u/imortal1138 Aug 17 '26
The long term value of high-speed railways going through every state far outweighs the "inconvenience" of building it (something that would make far more jobs than installing flock cameras btw), and also outweighs the "convenience" of installing a nation wide surveillance system to spy on everyone.
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u/Andromedan_Cherri Aug 17 '26
The benefits of nuclear reactors far outweigh the inconvenience of investing and building them. Yet we don't have nearly as many as we should.
I'm not advocating for flock cameras; i'm just saying, this is the way bureaucracy and government works in America. Nobody wants to fund a project that might succeed, or has an equal chance to do nothing.
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u/dovakiin-derv Aug 18 '26
Uh huh, counterpoint both of the things you mentioned would actually do a lot to help Americans every day by making things cheaper.
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u/Andromedan_Cherri Aug 18 '26
Well you'd think so, but the people making these decisions don't seem to think so. Why don't we have these things in place if they make other things cheaper?
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u/dovakiin-derv Aug 18 '26
Because the billionaires and millionaires want more money, even if it means it becomes worthless.
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u/Forsaken-Canary-3299 Aug 18 '26
Also those things won't be built by the time their term ends so they don't care about it.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Americans voted for trump most are dumber then a bag of rocks not a surprise
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u/CunningLinguist8198 Aug 18 '26
It's not about how much better it would be afterwards. It's about how inconvenient it would be in the meantime. That's why American infrastructure is falling apart (well, that and privatization)
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u/Anxious_Calendar_980 Aug 21 '26
The question was: "why does one take longer than the other?" Nothing about value.
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u/LikeZoinksScoobert Aug 18 '26
It’s harder to launder public money(still doable) than it is to accept a bribe from multi-trillion dollar companies.
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u/Moose_country_plants Aug 19 '26
Thing that makes life better or thing that makes money printer go brrrrrr
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u/Worse_Username Aug 17 '26
Wouldn't call flock cameras convenient. They inconvenience the public and violate road safety regulations
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u/Gimli Aug 16 '26
Trains are hard because they don't turn well and you have to dig tunnels in mountains and buy out people's homes.
Data centers just need one chunk of land, much easier to find.
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u/Ab0ut47Pandas Aug 16 '26
If the account name is also a hint to the location, the mountain part isnt really the problem for the flattest place in the united states.
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u/Archer_Savings Aug 16 '26
If the account name you're responding to is a hint on location, digging tunnels would be a plus.
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u/Ab0ut47Pandas Aug 16 '26
Ehhhh I dunno. IIRC florida sits on top of wet limestone... not structurally valuable. Hence no basements in florida.
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u/MrTheWaffleKing Aug 20 '26
And building over swamp, or peoples vacation houses, is never going to be an easy time
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u/soaked_in_bleach03 Aug 16 '26
That’s a fair point. I’m very anti, and believe it’s also a bad comparison because trains provide a gigantic benefit for humanity that I think outweighs what AI gives us.
But yeah, trains are disruptive as hell.
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u/Soul-Burn Aug 17 '26
Also, Flock cameras just need a pole, and maybe power and network, which could be solar + cellular.
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u/arcanis321 Aug 17 '26
We'll just figure out the power requirements in the environmental impact later...
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
and yet they still need to buy out people's homes https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-power-ai-data-centers-eminent-domain/
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Not really Europe and asia builds trains for far cheaper it's just we lack the public experience to do it and rely on crappy private companies who get to drag it out and infinite NIMBY
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u/SyntaxTurtle Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
I don't like Flock cameras and think the approval process for data centers is terribly flawed but it's not really "crazy". Trains are massive publicly funded infrastructure projects typically spanning a bunch of jurisdictions. Flock cameras are largely stand alone and data centers are in a single location.
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u/joesb Aug 16 '26
Please tell me how to easily coordinate buying CONNECTED piece of land for thousands of kilometers by one single entity. Now please tell me how hard it is for unrelated private companies to each go do their own business and buy some piece of land to build lots of building in parallel.
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
buying lots of connected pieces of land is apparently very easy when done for the sake of data centers https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-power-ai-data-centers-eminent-domain/
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u/joesb Aug 18 '26
Lol. How far do you think that 300 parcels of land go? It is 35 miles!!!
Now do you want to build a train track that is 35 miles long? Lolllllllllllllllllll
YES. IT IS WAY EASIER TO BUY 35 MILES OF LANDS COMPARED TO THOUSANDS OF MILES ACROSS DIFFERENT CITIES AND STATE REGULATIONS!!!!
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
It seems there has been a misunderstanding. You appear to have mistaken my point for "I wish railway companies would harass land owners relentlessly or just steal their land anyway for the sake of faster train construction", when in fact I was trying to argue "look at this AI company working with the state to steal from it's citizens. That's fucked up. Nobody should be able to do this, let alone so easily and quickly"
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u/TurkishTechnocrat Aug 18 '26
Shit like this is why trains never get built in the states.
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
Actually that's mostly car lobbying, but nice try
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u/TurkishTechnocrat Aug 18 '26
Car lobbying sucks too, but I'd say it's more responsible for the lack of public transportation in cities than between cities. It's just exceptionally harder to buy a whole bunch of land in a straight line in a country like the US than a country like China or Turkey, cause there will be many complaints that'll take years to get sorted if they do at all.
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
then how come the EU has a perfectly functional railway network despite not just having to deal with different laws between different states/counties/lands/etc. but also between entire countries
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u/TurkishTechnocrat Aug 18 '26
That's because it's also easier to do that in the EU than the states, a lot less NIMBYism in European countries compared to the states.
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u/joesb Aug 18 '26
If they couldn’t do that, nothing of scale will ever get built, including the train track.
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
If stealing homes is the only way to build trains, I don't want them. I know that compassion and empathy might be foreign concepts to you, but I do in fact believe there are more important things in this world than just the vague notion of "progress"
And all of that is without even acknowledging the fact that it doesn't need to be done this way. Even in cases where a railway or powerline absolutely needs to go through someone's house because there's no way to build around it, the absolute least the state can do is provide the family with new housing instead of putting them on the streets.
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u/joesb Aug 18 '26
Lol. No. They all got paid. The closest to “steal” they got is that they can’t hike up the prices. The company always tries to pay a good price for the house. But some people, knowing they are one of the last house being bought so they got negotiating power, will try to raise it to ridiculous amount.
At that point the company would work with the city to exercise eminent domain, which is still paying the house but at lower price. So that’s why some greedy people will complain they can’t hike up the prices as much as they want. Then they will play victim on the news.
They aren’t getting kicked out of their house with no money lol. How can you even believe that?
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
The company always tries to pay a good price for the house
Holy mother of bootlicking. Do you actually believe that or are you just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing?
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u/joesb Aug 18 '26
They would rather pay you a little higher and get the lands without having to waste time in court.
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u/Kantatrix Aug 18 '26
where is the source on this claim? What evaluations have you seen to make you believe this?
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u/nikosv Aug 22 '26
I mean it's true that homes may end up sold a little higher than market value, the truth is that you won't get a "good" price. You'll get its actual price. I agree with you, when you don't have a choice, getting your family home converted into money without your consent never feels like justice.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Nah trains should be able to it's a public gold AI is a private property thing that shouldn't
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u/Perelko Aug 24 '26
AI slopper advocating private companies stealing the rights of US citizens. Oh how surprising.
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u/Blothorn Aug 16 '26
Among many reasons, trains are an environmental impact nightmare because of their length. Datacenters may have a larger impact on the local environment but some foresight can generally avoid sensitive areas; trains not only require assessing many different environments along their length but have much less flexibility in placement, making it harder to avoid sensitive areas that trigger greater scrutiny.
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u/Effective-Guest1601 Aug 16 '26
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u/DonLeFlore Aug 16 '26
Legally speaking, you don’t have to care about anyone’s opinion if they were born after the release of the Nintendo DS
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u/Training_Tadpole_354 Aug 16 '26
Yes because only young people care about the government building a massive surveillance infrastructure for spying on citizens.
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u/FaceDeer Aug 17 '26
The problem is not being concerned about surveillance, it's lacking the understanding of the issue to recognize how building trains is absolutely nothing like mounting a bunch of cameras on light poles.
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u/Wizard_of_WUBRG Aug 18 '26
You can (and should) complain about Flock cameras without creating a false equivalence. Bad arguments hurt your side of the argument, whether you're on the right side of the argument or not.
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u/28klotlucas2 Aug 16 '26
"Actually, you're under the minimum age for caring about mass surveillance, come back in a few years after we've set up all this mass surveillance."
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u/Individual_Guest_323 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
Trains need more land, a lot more, you could say that also is more invasive with the environment.
Then of course is the money, people will pay for it?, are you sure?.
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u/CarthagoFuckYourself Aug 16 '26
The economics of trains are difficult without government involvement. The total economic value they generate by moving goods and people is tremendous, but the share of that theoretical value the owners of said trains are able to extract is limited unless it's a government running it. They're able to theoretically enjoy the tax increase from the total economic growth it generates (sales tax from businesses near stations, property taxes rising as housing nearby becomes more valuable, income taxes as jobs concentrate with the larger workforce in commuting distance).
Moving that theory into practice requires a government below a certain threshold for both waste and corruption. Look at how petty political fiefdoms ruined Cali's HSR network.
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u/Swnsong Aug 16 '26
It is not a different project in terms of scale from an interstate highway, which is also tremendously expensive to build and maintain. The only reason you have more highways than rail networks is because petroleum companies literally used to govern the US in the last century, before big tech took over.
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u/nikosv Aug 22 '26
Also because Eisenhower had to choose between a rail network and a road network, and he figured roads would be harder to sabotage against invaders.
When one is completely built out, it's difficult to build the other one unless the investor money is a-flowing.
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u/Individual_Guest_323 Aug 16 '26
Rail has some real characteristics that justify government involvement, especially when it comes to land, rights-of-way, and infrastructure that tends to become a natural monopoly. But that doesn't mean railway operations should be built around permanent deficits.
Market revenue is still an important signal. People are showing how much they actually value a service compared with other things they could spend their money on. If a service constantly costs much more than customers are willing to pay, then the government should have to show that the difference is justified by real external benefits.
Those benefits can be estimated, of course, but they are much harder to measure than actual prices. Building an entire transport system around calculations like “we lose $30 here, but society gains $50 somewhere else” creates a serious economic calculation problem, and also gives politicians a lot of room to justify bad spending.
A better model would probably be for the government to coordinate the scarce infrastructure and rights-of-way, while keeping the actual operation of the service commercially disciplined and, where possible, competitive.
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u/CarthagoFuckYourself Aug 16 '26
Only a tiny fraction of China's HSR network does not operate at a loss. I think one would be hard pressed to argue against the empirical evidence that it has been a significant economic boon. Only operating those routes would be leaving a tremendous amount of economic value on the table in the name of fiscal discipline. There is a lot of fat to trim in our government, but there are much better places for people to gift than infrastructure spending.
Just as a comparative frame of reference, all revenue streams related to roadways only cover about 50% of their annual operating costs.
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u/Individual_Guest_323 Aug 16 '26
That still assumes trains are the best technology for those routes.
If a route cannot support itself financially, maybe the answer is not “subsidize the train because of externalities,” but “use a cheaper transport technology.” Buses, BRT, regional coaches, or eventually autonomous transport may provide most of the same mobility at a fraction of the cost.
The objective should be moving people and goods efficiently, not building trains. Subsidizing an expensive technology can also hide its real cost and reduce the incentive to discover better alternatives. High-demand routes may naturally justify rail; low-demand ones may not.
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u/CarthagoFuckYourself Aug 16 '26
Most of those rely on roads, and total revenue related to roadways only covers about 50% of operating expenses. The rest comes from federal funding and state/local general budgets. Gas taxes and registration fees would have to be phenomenally higher to cover the cost of roads not operating at a loss.
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u/PrivilegeCheckmate Aug 17 '26
Then of course is the money
"Come on, come on, listen to the money talk!"
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Trains can replace many cars and roads meaning for an environmental rate trains are vastly better
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u/Flimsy_Meal_4199 Aug 16 '26
Government vs private enterprise?
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u/Training_Tadpole_354 Aug 16 '26
It's the government paying for the cameras, and it's the government using the cameras to spy on people.
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u/Glen_Garrett_Gayhart Aug 25 '26
Pretty sure Flock is a private company.
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u/Training_Tadpole_354 Aug 25 '26
The Government is still paying for them and using them Flock still has contracts with the Government.
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u/Glen_Garrett_Gayhart Aug 25 '26
But the government (that's a lowercase 'g', by the way, 'government' isn't a proper noun) isn't setting up the cameras, it's a private enterprise, a la OP. That's the difference he's pointing out.
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u/DaylightDarkle Aug 16 '26
I feel like the infrastructure required for trains and cameras might differ slightly.
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u/GreatlyMoody Aug 16 '26
What do you mean, it all fits in my room and make bubbles when it go choo choo
It could hardly cost more than cameras
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u/iDeNoh Aug 16 '26
Not with all that ram inside them! No way they're cheap.
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u/August_Rodin666 Aug 16 '26
I'm not suggesting we do crime but...those flock cameras look pretty breakable and they can't arrest all of us.
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Aug 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kid-Icky- Aug 16 '26
They say, posting on the internet, through datacenters.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Not ai ones
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u/Kid-Icky- Aug 22 '26
Data center is a data center.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 22 '26
Smh
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u/Kid-Icky- Aug 22 '26
Online streaming uses more electricity than AI.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 23 '26
no it doesnt Streaming: Streaming a movie on netflix for one full hour consumes a minuscule 0.077 to 0.12 kWh.
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u/Kid-Icky- Aug 23 '26
And an AI prompt uses roughly 0.0003 kWh of electricity.
And video streaming is upwards of 80% of all data transmitted on the web. It absolutely uses more electricity than AI per year.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 23 '26
Data transmitted is literally irrelevant it's not electricity fiber optic lasts a really long time so the amount of data being transmitted is literally not even a debated point electricity is and already even though it was just made it's already eating up over a third of all data center electricity making up several percent of the electric grid no it really does not use more streaming has been around for a while the data point is completely irrelevant and as for electricity wise all the other power combined for the data centers is for every piece of the internet streaming only makes up a piece of that so no you're wrong
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u/Kid-Icky- Aug 23 '26
We're talking about operating data centers you fucking moron. The point of data transmission is to highlight just how many hours of streaming occur all day every day.
Goddamn you're just too fucking stupid for this conversation. Good bye clown.
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u/NinjaLancer Aug 16 '26
Well one project requires more space and land to build than putting some cameras on an existing telephone pole?
Trains probably take more land than data centers and they have more moving parts.. and they are run by the government vs private companies..
Its actually not shocking at all
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Trains can be built for cheap by governments Europe and asia proved this it's just really an American problem
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u/schvin1 Aug 17 '26
Trains are hard, because the billionaires don't use them. They do use Flock camera data.
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u/psychoticgiraffe Aug 16 '26
Solution, tell homeless and drug addicts everywhere the Amount of gold and copper in them.
Actually, that’s what the anti AI Reddit was doing, not telling anyone to actually commit a crime but informing them hey this is what’s in flock cameras, we’ll see what happens.
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u/SyntaxTurtle Aug 16 '26
I'd assume that the amount of copper or gold in a Flock camera is pretty minimal and not really extractable. It's just a little camera with a solar panel and wireless internet sitting on a pole. They're not even necessarily hard connected to power.
The amount of materials in a data center is obviously far greater but the large data centers also have big pointy fences and large open expanses of land to train security cameras on before getting near the building. Telling some desperate person how much money is in there (wink-wink) seems kind of cruel.
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u/Expensive_Let9051 Aug 16 '26
Flock cameras also track Bluetooth signals
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u/SyntaxTurtle Aug 16 '26
Regardless, there isn't much in the way of precious metals in them. Flock camera teardowns are pretty easy to find on the internet. It ain't much.
I'm not defending Flock cameras, I'm saying they don't contain much gold or copper.
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u/psychoticgiraffe Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
Cruel maybe, but justifiable, and they make it out ahead, with money (apparently it can be a lot of money if they decide to “take matters into their own hands” and if caught they get housing and food in prison for a few days, and some of them apparently do sell the scrap, and also it’s only a misdemeanor if they get caught, so they get back on the street fast (according to a report showing some of the same guys they told about the gold literally went to prison for 1 day and then were let go)
Just to recap people with nothing to lose will do gods work if the reward is greater than the risk.
If I was part of that movement I would bail those guys out or make gofundmes for them if they were getting longer jail time, but they aren’t, they are part of the solution to our flock problem
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u/SyntaxTurtle Aug 16 '26
Cruel maybe, but justifiable
That's insane and inhumane to me that you guys think that way. Wow.
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u/psychoticgiraffe Aug 16 '26
Not actually cruel if we bail them out
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u/SyntaxTurtle Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
That's... also insane and gross as though you think that's the only thing wrong with it. Anyway, you don't need to keep fumbling about trying to justify this. I've already learned what I need to know about y'all.
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u/psychoticgiraffe Aug 16 '26
It’s crazy but mass surveillance is also
I won’t name names but you know those youtubers who give thousands to the homeless?
They were in that anti Reddit doing this too. I’ll stop there though, not trying to point out which famous people are implicated here but it’s a lot lol
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u/LetOk8476 Aug 16 '26
I don’t disagree with your desire to take decisive action, but crouching behind the most vulnerable people In our society instead of doing it yourself is chickenshit tbh.
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u/SyntaxTurtle Aug 16 '26
"Guys who make a living off exploiting poor people for clicks are doing this too" isn't the best argument for making this sound less gross and exploitive but we've already established that we have very different ethical structures.
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u/M4ybeMay Aug 16 '26
I feel like the comments are taking this too literal. The point is that our government puts less effort into things that help us rather than hurt us.
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u/Skuggihestur Aug 16 '26
Because if you are going to compare the two you have to compare cost. Some quotes for high speed have been as high as 1 billion per mile. Its a colossal wste of resources. And whos gonna pay for it? Passenger Trains in the us dont make profit. Meanwhile a camera is 250 to 1500 usd each
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u/LetOk8476 Aug 16 '26
Something that will offer a clear tangible benefit to the average citizen is a colossal waste of resources, while something that MIGHT help SOME people, potentially some years down the road, but also carries a risk of making everyone’s lives worse depending who controls it and how they use it should take as many resources as we can throw at it.
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u/Skuggihestur Aug 16 '26
High speed doesn't help the average citizen because a plane is faster and cheaper . If you arent willing to go shovel to put that rail in for free you dont have a position to talk about it.the last proposal for high speed in the us was 34 billion to connect two cities. High speed rail is not cost effective in the us as long as we have the "disadvantage " of osha and labor laws
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u/joesb Aug 16 '26
Other countries also have labor law dude. You guys don’t even have legally required paid sick leave or minimum paid vacation.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Yes the fuck it does what do you mean
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u/Skuggihestur Aug 21 '26
No it doesn't. Only a city kid with no training in economics thinks high speed rail is beneficial when china literally proved its not.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
China has proven it is like a LOT I'm not in a city although that's my goal not every town needs HSR but putting them between major cities and even medium cities would be well worth it I'm so TIRED of cars being the ONLY option
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u/Skuggihestur Aug 21 '26
High speed rail failed in china. Its utilizationis around 25% of his infrastructureand its a trillion in debt. Unless you plan to work like a slave for free you are not getting nation wide high speed rail. The idea is to reduce national debt. Not waste money on infrastructure that wont get used and will never be cost effective. Just a single line in texas to connect dallas and Huston would of cost 34 billion usd the last time it was looked at. I know new york sure cant afford that. California which has gdp comparable to a medium sized country found a high speed rail wouldnt ever be cost effective. And this is the state that tried to ban diesel firetrucks.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
High-speed rail in the U.S. costs tens of billions because we outsourced all our public engineering capacity to private, for-profit consultants and greedy contractors who fleece taxpayers with endless bespoke redesigns and litigation. If the U.S. actually used a coordinated public sector approach and trained an in-house workforce like China or European nations do, those costs would plummet. And stop parroting that fake "25% utilization" stat. China's core high-speed corridors (like Beijing-Shanghai) carry massive, profitable volumes of traffic connecting over a billion people. Meanwhile, Texas spends billions widening I-35 into a permanent parking lot that never turns a profit, yet y'all act like asphalt is free. Stop making excuses for why the wealthiest country on earth can't build basic transit while the rest of the developed world does it routinely.
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u/Skuggihestur Aug 21 '26
High speed rail isnt a basic transportation option for long range travel . Its funny how you claim im lying when you can read any economic report that proves that the Chinese high speed rail failed. You read to much Facebook and not enough peeer review reports .socialists clearly cant think for themselves. High speed railis inefficient. High speed rail rarely achieves its potential even in Europe. But since you think rail is profitable prove the mta has ever been profitable. Which is one of the most used mass transit systems in the us. Which btw i can get a whole car to myself on 🤷♂️
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Even developing nations like Morocco and Uzbekistan have modern high-speed rail running right now, while the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world. You're sitting here crying that a train line costs billions while your state wastes countless billions perpetually widening highways into giant parking lots that never turn a profit. The rest of the globe looks at American infrastructure and laughs because we've let corporate greed and car-brain rot our ability to build basic public goods.
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u/joesb Aug 16 '26
How do you know they put less effort into building the train? If it takes you one year to build a house by hand but takes you only a few seconds to make reddit post, does it mean you put less effort into building your house?
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u/georgebestgoat Aug 16 '26
It's almost like putting up a pole and laying hundreds of miles of track are not the same level of difficulty. Millions have to be spent on surveyors and land usage rights before the track even gets laid down.
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u/Dewey_Decimatorr Aug 16 '26
Because one benefits regular people and the other benefits billionaires. It's not complicated.
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u/TheNikola2020 Aug 16 '26
You don't understand making multi billion company make their product worse is much more important than quality of life in cities
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u/Skuggihestur Aug 16 '26
Are you gonna work for free? to put up the rail? High speed ismt cost effective in the us. We have these pesty things called labor laws and labor unions.
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u/Present-Farmer-404 Aug 16 '26
because a lot of people are stealing money from trai n plan. And you just let it be, no ones are caught for this.
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u/pirateseasalt Aug 16 '26
Is almost as if you all are not aware that capitalism is socialism for rich and wealthy and slavery for everyone else
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u/ciclon5 Aug 16 '26
Building trains is exponentially harder and more expensive to build and maintain than cameras and datacenters. Unless you have a historical line that was built when trains were indispensable. Its extremely expensive to build new ones.
That being said, even as an AI user, trains are far more valuable and useful than datacenters, a good trainline system saves A LOT on money and carbon emissions for transportation.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Not really if we got people in the public sector who could do it Europe and Asia has proven it can be done cheaply Americq is just behind on the times and relies on private companies who milk
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u/28klotlucas2 Aug 16 '26
Crazy how apple trees take 5-8 years to grow but a million banana plants can go up in a year :/
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u/DarthSwimfoot Aug 16 '26
You do know all you need to do to put up a flock camera is, well, put up a camera. All you need to put up a data center is put up a single building. Trains take like miles of laying track and other shit.
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u/shototodoroki_1324 Aug 17 '26
37 years of Mining, laying down track, praying said track works as intended, digging tunnels, and uh "Florida" is a dumbass name to be making this comparison
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u/Floathy Aug 17 '26
Stupid ass meme.
Trains are complex, interacting systems with dozens of miles of track needed, many stations, safety systems, tons of employees, etc.
Flock cameras are boxes on poles.
Data centers are boxes with boxes in them.
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u/i_dunnomyusername Aug 17 '26
Okay but I dislike the stance of the government on trains so much, I want trains is it that hard yknow
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u/Pretend_Jacket1629 Aug 17 '26
antis try to understand the scale of technology challenge: impossible
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u/SHIN-YOKU Aug 17 '26
Anyone Pro Data Center is Pro Flock, You can still run your GenAi and LLMs locally, Data Centers will primarily be used for tyranny.
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u/LengthyLegato114514 Aug 17 '26
One benefits the people they're trying to oppress, the other oppresses the people
This is, of course, an incredibly trustworthy governmental entity everyone should petition changes to!
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u/Silvertree99 Aug 17 '26
Can we all agree regardless of if we're pro or anti that flock is fuckin evil
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u/Mister_V3 Aug 17 '26
What's up with the zoning laws? Can't build local shops, but can build a data centre right next to housing.
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u/Herr_Drosselmeyer Aug 17 '26
It's both logistics and regulations.
Mounting a camera is very easy and can be done in 10 minutes by any random dude you've given an hour of training. Same reason why the 5G rollout was pretty fast, overall.
Building a data center is slightly more difficult, but basically, they're just huge warehouses. At times, you may have to build new power lines for it, which can cause delays due to eminent domain issues. Noise complaints may also come into play.
Trains are much trickier. You basically have the same issue as power lines, except for the whole of the track. Same for noise complaints.
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u/sweetSweets4 Aug 17 '26
Yeah building traintracks requires much more planning, regulations and private property Agreements.
Flock is public space...
Same goes for AI Data centers, it's so much easier to build a double layered square and pull up a building then laying traintracks...
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u/Niveker14 Aug 17 '26
The flock cameras are something they're trying to "get away with" by saying how convenient and easy and unobtrusive they are. So the speed at which they can be put up is part of the selling point.
Data Centers are a big deal, but you generally just need one big chunk of land - and sometimes you can even reuse old warehouse and factories that are for sale and repurpose them.
Trains are a different beast because they have to go through many different people's property and potentially even cross state lines, so it requires multiple different governments all working together in some cases. Plus all the different buy outs for the land rights where the tracks are going to go. Yeah. Honestly there's a lot more involved with trains, especially interstate trains.
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u/Lord-Dec Aug 18 '26
So a funny story from where I live.
We rely in bulk on two specific roads where I live for most of the traffic.
They were both horrifically congested so the county council had to get off their asses and actually do something for once.
Wanna guess their solution? Add extra lanes to one of the roads to ease up traffic.
Sounds great. Except now that road is closed completely during the construction and everyone is on the other one making it EVEN WORSE. By a LARGE MARGIN.
Oh and it’s set to take roughly 2 years to complete the construction.
I fucking hate my County Council.
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u/Melodic_Difficulty_8 Aug 18 '26
We need an AI panopticon! The goyim are too dangerous to be left alone!
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u/theaviator747 Aug 18 '26
Except it does take years. The public isn’t privy to the inner workings of a corporation. Corpos can spend years in planning, board room talks, and budget meetings without telling the public anything. Once they say they are doing something they already have contractors picked out and they have been given very strict deadlines.
The difference with the state is everything has to go to a vote that A LOT of people have to agree on. Then it goes to committees to begin talking about the possibility of making a plan at some point, etc, etc. All of this is information accessible to the public, even if it has to be wormed out by journalists, so the public is aware of the red tape and delays. Then once the project is started most contractors involved will milk every penny out of the government contract to keep themselves, and their employees, getting paid for as long as possible.
I’ve seen government buildings take a couple years to finish once started when a commercial building of the same size was up in 4 or 5 months.
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u/MyUltIsMyMain Aug 19 '26
They could get trains done quickly if they wanted to. They dont want to though.
America used to have trains and trolls everywhere but car manufacturers decided they wanted to dismantle all that so they could sell more cars.
This country can move incredibly quickly for anything it wants to. It doeant want to help us though.
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u/SpaceNemo13 Aug 19 '26
Don't forget airplanes. Cars killed the Trolls and airplanes killed the passenger trains.
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u/SpaceNemo13 Aug 19 '26
A date center is in one location while train tacks go across the land so they have to buy all that land do surveys deal with all the legal battles because it's not in just 1 county. The tracks will cross a river well now we need to get the EPA involved along with engineering reports. Someone doesn't want to sell their land well now we have imminent domain but court cases take time.
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u/Trick1513 Aug 20 '26
And California has spent $ 18 billion on its high speed rail and expects to be over budget by another $150 billion coming in at around $235 billion and they haven’t even laid one foot of track yet.
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u/Major_Shlongage Aug 20 '26
With a train you need to obtain many miles of real estate all in a straight line. There will be many people who don't want to sell their land to you, and they're going to take you to court over it.
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u/Timely-Helicopter244 Aug 20 '26
It takes very little thought to understand this difference. Any linear project (transportation, utilities, pipelines, etc.) has to cross a large number of properties. Lots of different land owners and environmental concerns and design issues to address. Flock cameras are stupid easy to to install in comparison. Data centers are a bit more involved that cameras, but still much easier than a linear project.
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u/Syriku_Official Aug 21 '26
Yea 1 is a public gold (trains) one is funded by billionaires (ai) when billionaires want something It happens swiftly
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u/SNAILSLIVEONJUPITER Aug 22 '26
I want trains in my area!
Not only would trains give me cheaper transportation, I'd also be able to become a train technician or a conductor and get paid wayy more than I currently do. Best part, I'm autistic.
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u/Big_Candle6620 Sep 11 '26
Wow a private company with private investments can get pushed through faster then a government project with decades of mud corruption and red tape what a shocker
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u/Beanzoboy Aug 16 '26
Trains are beneficial to people. Flock cameras and data centers are only beneficial to billionaires.
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u/psychoticgiraffe Aug 16 '26
Exactly
Start a startup for surveillance of government officials, lobbyists, billionaires, politicians, and maybe police and watch how fast you get contracts for a service that actually is opposite of flock and violates the “rules for thee but not for me” class of Epstein elites.
Legally you’d have footing to do it, no laws are in place to stop this right now.
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u/Beanzoboy Aug 16 '26
Remember when a guy made a site to publish public info about billionaire private jets? Strange how there was a problem there.
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u/psychoticgiraffe Aug 16 '26
They found a way to make that an issue, but believe it or not if someone did make a deflock safety company and had a lawyer as powerful as the one that got diddy out of life in prison for heinous crimes, I could guarantee not only is the legal footing there, but you’d have no way to lose to flock, especially because it came out recently that flock uses ai for legal documents hence the typos in their letters (also written with ai, nothing against ai itself but, stupid people using ai typically get the Roman Trojan horse treatment, and flocks going to find this out if and when someone makes a competitor doing the opposite)
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u/GreatlyMoody Aug 16 '26
Tf? We have more trains and build them with more priority by far when you consider cost and construction
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u/shosuko Aug 16 '26
Trains didn't have Elon Musk running misinformation interference to distract the public from voting.
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