They were invented decades ago.
They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.
They require less maintenance.
There’s obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?
They were invented decades ago.
They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.
They require less maintenance.
There’s obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?
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Not to defend capitalism in general, but it’s really good at answering these sort of “is it worth the cost?” aquestions. The whole point is to allocate scarce resources efficiently; the problem is that it assumes nobody is a scumbag and all the costs are accounted for.
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You can’t.
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The current, dominant form of capitalism isn’t and doesn’t, though. It maximizes short-term profits and ignores all other medium and long-term costs. The efficient allocation of scarce resources doesn’t happen when inefficient allocation yields greater short-term profit. The stock market ensures that high short-term yields with lower total returns will be favored over the inverse. In particular, it emphasizes competition over cooperation, which is more resource wasteful for the gestalt.
It isn’t. Most decision makers of capitalism are very unaware of science. You’d know this if you work in research. The ideas that see light of day do so not because they’re good in any quantifiable sense. It is because they convince the capitalists. This can be affected by so many things that aren’t merit or even cost based.
Some things make sense from a cost perspective, but not a profitability perspective. Profit isn’t just about cost. There’s margins, competition, longevity, etc. Something can be of moderate costs, but if the margins are too low or it is too long term or a project, it is of low value to capitalists.
I’m really struggling to understand what you’re getting at here.
Whether or not a decision maker is aware of science, their products will still be subject to the laws of physics.
For example?
To simplify it, when capitalism answers “is it worth the cost?”, it is not answering “is the benefit of this thing to society worth the cost?”. They’re answering “are the profits I would get out of this and the risk worth the cost?”. And profits do not always agree with what’s good for society.
One example of moderate-to-low cost investments that are of demand in society but not very profitable and hence does not see focus is low-income housing (at least in the US). Housing developments disproportionally target high income or even luxury housing, as the margins on those are far better (but the costs are also much higher). Even nowadays, that this trend has been going on for a while, and luxury housing has really fallen out of demand (which greatly increases the risk), it continues. Luxury housing still looks a better investment to investors, when society does not need more luxury housing. It needs more moderate and low income housing.
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I think OP is just thinking of “cost” to mean capex. Whereas most real-world cost evaluations consider capex, opex, and opportunity cost, among others. Something having low cost but low margins will usually have a large opportunity cost, which increases the total real cost.
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What kind of benefits are there to maglev trains that are not cost related?
Better acceleration, steeper inclines, tighter curves at same speed, better ride quality and less wear. As someone has mentioned below, normal trains could go a lot faster than they do in practice, because the ride quality, wear and wind resistance get atrocious, and the tracks need to be exceptionally straight. Making a maglev go fast is more feasible, though you still have the wind resistance issue obviously.
Where are all the maglev trains in non-capitalist countries? Sooner or later, in any system, someone has to do a cost benefit analysis and decide whether it’s worth it. It’s not just about profitability. There are plenty of situations in the US where something is unprofitable but still funded because the benefit is worth it.
Dude, without capitalism we’d be living in flying maglev RVs on mars with free robot labour bro
Three of the six currently operating maglevs are in communist china
China is very much capitalist and has been for at least three decades now.
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“MVP” stands for “minimum viable product”.