Society is cooperation;
it is community in action.

On HS2 as a job creation scheme:

40,000 jobs from a £17 billion project means that each job is costing well over £400,000.  By contrast, in the wider economy the capital stock is about £3.2 trillion and that supports over 30 million jobs; just over £100,000 a job.  In other words, every job created by high speed rail comes at a cost of four jobs in the wider economy.

via ConservativeHome’s Platform: Matthew Sinclair: Beware of multi-billion pound projects bearing jobs.

As I have reported before, there’s much in Ayn Rand’s writing that I do not like:

As an articulation of what goes wrong when government and other coercive institutions intervene in the economy and in society, it is a masterpiece. As an articulation of the timeless morals which have sustained human society, it leaves something to be desired: magnanimity. Ironically, Aristotle, who made magnanimity “the crowning virtue”, was the only philosopher to whom Rand would acknowledge a philosophical debt: it appears she missed that in his writing.

Nevertheless, I just learned that Atlas Shrugged is to appear on the big screen. Here’s the trailer for Part 1:

It is a story which uses intervention in rail to illustrate the collapse of society as government increases its control over industry, with all the inefficiency, corruption and injustice that entails.

The movie is long past overdue. The movie site is here.

I have just finished reading two superb briefings from the House of Commons Library: Price Controls and State Intervention in the Rail Market and Railways: EU Policy. Three points emerge:

• That the Library produces first-class work: readable, clear, appropriately detailed, targeted.
• That the rail market in the UK is far from free.
• That the EU regularly produces reports on revitalising Europe’s railways, notably in 1996, 2001, 2003 and 2008. This regularity perhaps speaks for itself.

More anon, but I am reminded of Atlas Shrugged and its tale of intervention in rail. The IEA’s Living with Leviathan, especially chapter 7 – take a look at the book – is very much to the point, as it explains how the state is strangling social cooperation.

Still, all to the good: my case that high-speed rail and like projects are not susceptible to rational economic calculation in the current environment should be straightforward to make.

From our correspondent and with permission:

Dear All,

Angela and I have just come back from a trip  to Oberammergau. We went via high speed train from St Pancras to Brussels and then again from Cologne to Munich and Munich to Worgle.

The fact of the matter is that “high speed” is a fabrication. Although the trains were seemingly capable of travelling beyond 200 mph NEVER ONCE did they do so, (there is a speedometer in a communal area so you can tell). In fact they never got near it, the fastest was something less than 150 mph and each journey was subject to inexplicable delays when the trains just stopped for twenty to twenty five minutes or so, with the result that at each destination we were late in arrival. The trains themselves were not particularly comfortable, with no air conditioning and insufficient luggage space for anything other than a brief case or small bag. It was actually a joy to get back on the Chiltern Line at Marylebone where the train was on time, clean and with air conditioning.

Quite why the high speed trains never reached their potential I do not know, (economy, noise, safety???) but it would be interesting to find out.

With the best will in the world for the life of us we simply could not see why our existing networks cannot be upgraded (the Chiltern Line is already spending over £250,000,000 doing just that) rather than spending a huge amount of money, which as a country we are told we do not have, and simultaneously destroying a vast amount of our beautiful and irreplaceable countryside for the sake of speed which in so far as France, Belgium, Austria and Germany is concerned is a lie and a fallacy and actually not required.

From this it transpires that not only is the business case a complete nonsense but the reality of High Speed Trains is equally so.

Regards,

Nick.