@reverend
consider:
- we don't have a free market here. everything is overregulated. half of income gets extracted and then put into companies who did the best "lobbying" (bribes).
- measuring success by "high speed train exists" is a fallacy. those prestige projects always work in collectivist systems, that's why the pyramids exist. just takes enough resources and people to make the problem go away. keeping the high speed trains going over decades is where it is.
- china isn't successful because of communism, it's successful for allowing just enough capitalist flexibility to sell things to the west and by ignoring effects on people and environment.