Decades of socialist rule haven’t helped. From Stephen Soukup at amgreatness.com:
California can’t build housing or railroads on time or on budget—and thanks to a bloated, value-driven bureaucracy, neither can the rest of America.
Just over two months ago, the Rand Corporation released a study on the cost of producing multi-family housing in three states: California, Colorado, and Texas. The results were paradoxically shocking, yet utterly predictable. California, it turns out, is a ridiculous place, run by ridiculous people, with ridiculous regulations. Or, as the folks at Rand put it, “The average market-rate apartment in California is roughly two and a half times the cost of a similar apartment constructed in Texas on a square-foot basis—and regional differences within California, where costs in the San Francisco Bay Area are roughly 50 percent higher than costs in San Diego.” Additionally, “[t]he time to bring a project to completion in California is more than 22 months longer than the average time required in Texas.” According to Rand, the culprit for these grotesque disparities is, to no one’s surprise, the differences in regulatory burdens between Texas and California and between various jurisdictions within the (allegedly) Golden State.
Earlier this month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was forced to issue a threat to the government of California, warning the state that the federal government was considering rescinding future funding for its high-speed rail boondoggle. According to a department report, the federal government had released more than $7 billion to California for the project over the last several years, and it had, unsurprisingly, spent all of the money, yet somehow managed not to lay even a single foot of track. As The New York Post noted at the time, “the 800-mile rail line was supposed to be completed in two phases on a $33 billion budget by 2020.” Nevertheless, the proposed line has now been abbreviated to a mere 119 miles. Its budget has ballooned to nearly $130 billion, and it appears highly unlikely that it will be completed by its new 2033 deadline.
Meanwhile, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail project—in India, for crying out loud—began planning in 2014 and is moving along quite nicely. According to Newsweek, India Railways “reported that as of June 2025, more than 300 kilometers of elevated viaduct structures had been completed….Fourteen river bridges, seven steel bridges, and five prestressed concrete bridges are now finished.” More to the point, the project, which will span nearly 600 km, is expected to be fully completed by 2030 at the cost of a mere $15 billion.
The theme of Idiocracy is nothing ever gets done.
Its got electrolytes, diversity is our strength.
The glorious Fundamental Transformation into West South Africa… si se puede!
Hey comrade Gavin, got High Speed Rail? (honk, honk)
Mr. Soukup,
Your article “New York, the Bezoses, and the Purpose of Society” was masterful. I am not a student of history but do enjoy it when someone like you takes the time to provide historical context with regard to the struggles of freedom and legislative morality. I do not quite understand how people can turn a blind eye to the tragedy of those who they strive to recruit into their voting pens. I say pens because they treat these people as animals only useful for mowing grass, picking vegetables and voting. Imagine if the time spent picking vegetables was spent reading and listening to people like you. I have a feeling there would be a wind of relief blowing over America.
How do we do that? Automation of farm work. It can be done now.
Note: From the 1970s through the early 2000s, U.S. federal and land grant institutions deliberately deprioritized funding for research into automation of hand-harvested crops—especially fruits and vegetables that depend heavily on migrant labor.
This was not an outright ban, but rather a strategic omission in grant priorities by agencies like:
• USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
• National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)
• State Agricultural Experiment Stations (SAES)
• University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR)
💡 Why Was It Defunded or Deprioritized?
• After public backlash to the mechanized tomato harvester in the 1960s (which wiped out thousands of jobs), universities like UC Davis faced mounting criticism.
• Advocates for farmworkers—including César Chávez and the UFW—lobbied against funding machinery that would replace human pickers.
• Congressional appropriators and USDA leaders were reluctant to fund automation out of fear of appearing anti-worker.
• There was a quiet understanding that increased mechanization meant job loss, especially for vulnerable migrant communities.
• Many growers preferred to continue using low-cost, flexible migrant labor.
• They did not pressure universities or government to innovate in this space, further reducing the funding incentive.
🧾 Evidence of Defunding in Action
• UC Davis strawberry automation program in the 1980s–1990s reportedly lacked continuous funding, despite technical feasibility, due to opposition from labor groups.
• USDA research priorities emphasized crop science, conservation, and pest control—but harvest automation consistently received a tiny share of discretionary R&D budgets. • CRIS (Current Research Information System) reports from the 1990s rarely list harvesting automation for hand-picked crops as a funded research area