Rather than looking at trains and thinking, if we build those we can sell tickets, they looked at shareholders and the government and thought, I bet we could fleece them. We’re seeing the military effects of this, too, with neoliberales looking shocked as to why more and more funding doesn’t automatically equal more and more armaments. Commodity production detached from anything with the use value that makes the commodity a commodity.
I think the practical is the most important factor, here. It’s hard to know how one of the world’s richest billionaires can get so deep into a project that has an exchange value but no use value. This is what happens when imperialists dismiss productive capital, and become parasitic on government grants, defrauded shareholders, and asset stripping. It was the same with crypto and nfts.
it is because as Vijay Prashad said US billionaires hid their monies in illicit tax havens in UK and EU. And there is no state control to put those monies back into infrastructure but Elon musk sure have his pet projects like Mars colonization and Hyperloopy , I mean why not Elon and military industrial complex don’t get why ordinary people need food and stuff.
Musk’s “Mars colonization” project will end up the exact same way as his “hyperloop”. One day it will simply and quietly be declared dead and everyone will forget about it. (Meanwhile China and Russia will be building a moon base together.)
Well, to be fair, the hyperloop was in many respects a fraud used to test out technology intended for Mars (like boring). That said, I think Mars is the pie in the sky that Musk will never abandon while he is still pitching projects to rubes because it is so much easier to “postpone” than civilian infrastructure
