Fastest Train Lines in the World

In the spirit of the previous pro-infrastructure article, lets take a look at the best high speed train systems in the world. We'll go by the widely used definition of high speed as at least 200 kph/125 mph. The "best" is determined here by a combination of:

A) Average speed in between terminating points since the faster the distance covered, the more a train system cuts into air industry's profits. This in turn pushes airplane makers to conceptualize cheap travel by hypersonic passenger aircraft which in turn benefits humanity.

B) The distance that the high speed line covers since the longer the line, the bigger the project in terms of resources and parts and the more economies of scale are utilized. A society's commitment to triggering economies of scale for heavy industry shows its determination to improving the welfare of its citizens. Ultimately, going as big as possible with infrastructure projects (see Erie, Panama, Suez Canals and Transcontinental/Trans-Siberian railroads) is not just cheaper but creates mass employment (during transition to post-scarcity mechanization), rapidly stimulates real physical economy, and gives a super boost in wealth creation.

As such, these 3 lines satisfy the criteria for greatness:

1) Wuhan-Guangzhou High Speed Line (China)
(922 kilometers and longest in the world)

Fastest rail line in the world going an average of 194 miles per hour(313 km/h)! Think of the inefficiency and time spent going to/from airports. The waiting to get on the planes and scanned/handled like cattle or being stuck in car traffic interrupted by a maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour. The Wuhan-Guangzhou line uses two trains: CRH2 and CRH3. It opened for business just a couple months ago so you're looking at the cutting edge conventional non-magnetic land transport in the world.

2) Paris/Lyon-Marselle/St Charles TGV High Speed Line (France)
(750 kilometers long)
(Average speed between end points is 250 km/h or 155 mph!)

France hasn't been idle. They have beat the Chinese in test run speed records (even if now recently second place in average speeds for daily use) and seem determined to become European leader in train infrastructure. They are definitely in a good geographically central position to link up Spain's and Germany's growing networks. All their investment in nuclear power (close to 80% of France is nuclear powered) only helped with these energy intensive projects.

3) Shin-Osaka - Hakata Line (Japan)
(554 kilometers long)
(Average speed between end points: 242 kph/150 mph!)

Japan's Nozomi Shinkansen continues to deliver with a respectable third place. Japan was one of the world's earliest innovators in high speed train technology and is now in the process of moving on to large scale MagLev. This society's territory is one of the best networked in the world and yes, the are heavy into nuclear power as only fission today can deliver the power for true citizen comfort and land travel affordability.

Most of the world's homo sapiens have seen trains like these in science fiction movies and it is hard to wrap one's head around the sheer speeds these land rockets bring. It was really mind blowing to find out that some Chinese airlines cut their fares up to 80% to compete with the newest lines. Looking at these heavy industry marvels (operating on just standard rail gauge!) gladdens the heart and shows that macro scale technological and social progress continues at least in some regions of the planet. Japanese and the French are edged out of the top rank for now since Chinese started building their networks later and thus had newer tech in mind and on hand. We can ignore the magnetic levitation trains at the moment because they are still used on relatively short routes from airports and such.

China now has the world's longest high speed train network at 3,300 kilometers of high speed track as a sum of a number of prominent lines. Japan (2,459 km), France (1,700 km), Germany (1,290 km ) and Spain (1,270 km) follow behind. If one looks at populations of these countries however, France dominates with about 38,000 citizens per kilometer of high speed line while China lags far behind with 400,000 citizens per kilometer. France if of course helped in this since it has the highest % of its energy derived from a modern indigenous nuclear power plant system (it is no wonder why neutral Switzerland and France's neighbor was chosen as the site for the world's biggest and most energy intensive supercollider). Nuclear power infrastructure always goes hand in hand with next generation transport systems.

Shockingly, India, Russia, Brazil, and United States do not have any high speed lines at all as one would expect from countries of such geographic and economic size. We can expect a massive wealth outflow from them in the near future as they try to catch up by buying foreign technical help and/or fleets of trains. Of course it is still rather silly to see engineering marvels on dingy normal rail.

It makes a lot more sense for societies that lag in high speed networks to go straight into MagLev and go into it big. Here is a glimpse of the future spanning entire continents (and yes freight train MagLev will make deliveries of heavy industry parts more efficient than ever):

France's Sarkozy is in the Same Political Situation as George Bush

Considering the atypical polarization of French politics since the last election, Sarkozy's road to being elected again is the same as the one George Bush took. Mobilizing conservatives and defending an abstract French way of life



Jean-Marie Le Pen is very old. How old you say? He is older than even John McCain and might not live to see the next election to make opinions about it. Le Pen's participation during the 2007 French elections allowed Sarkozy to capitalize in the second round on some anti-immigrant National Front single issue voters. It wasn't the deciding factor in his victory but gave a taste of a demographic that can be courted in the future. Sarkozy realizes that he won due to greater infighting within the center left opposition and his Rudy Giuliani-esque law and order posturing. He knows the center left will reorganize a bit further to the right to undermine his support in the center and make a sustained coordinated effort to dislodge him in 2012. Five year terms allow plenty of space and breathing room to lick the wounds and make new alliances.

French center-left has more than enough tools and time to capitalize on the economic downturn, prevent Sarkozy's various short and long term economic stimulus measures from being successful, and exploit the potential rift between Paris and the new American administration (with Obama trying to make inroads with Muslims, Sarkozy finds himself in a difficult position). Sarkozy sees that the only way to solve the issue of illegal residents is to socially integrate them by legalizing their status. That of course would add to the numerical strength of voting blocks for candidates like Royale. The process of recognition and proper assimilation itself is political suicide for coalition building with conservative factions in society. Since the political hyperpolarization of 2007 election, it is very difficult for the president to peal away those who voted for Royale from the center-left. People's hatred of him is not waning.

As such, Sarkozy's only real options are:

1) to move further to the socially conservative right by getting the disgruntled La Pen voters to the polls in larger numbers than in 2007

2) to tap into the potential conservative factions of those who don't vote (even for Le Pen) because they know their guy wont win. This can even include those in France who still engage in Christian mythology but never bothered to really participate in the strictly secular French politics

3) to split the youth vote by polarizing the youth along nationalist militarist lines and using his own youthful energies to that end

4) utilizing increased support of the wealthy for media manipulation and social relations cover to achieve the above 3.

Sounds familiar? Yes. The president of France is George Bush in 2002. The economic crisis and gains by nationalist anti-immigrant parties in European Parliament allows Sarkozy a cover of international fiscal emergency and worry to mobilize new supporters. This would include the elderly and disgruntled underemployed young whites and involve constant play on their insecurities and passions. Such a road to 2012 reelections would have to be walked right away to build cultural momentum through media repetition.

The statement concerning Burqas not being welcome in France appears to be the first salvo in that direction. Since Obama criticized France in his Cairo speech by making a point to describe how America does not push secularism on its Muslims, Sarkozy can now begin to move away from public perception that he is more pro-American candidate than Royale by distancing himself from Washington's policies. Surrounding European countries are too preoccupied (with making their annual GDP reversals smaller than projected) to expand too much energy on lifting an eyebrow towards harder nationalist secularist tone coming from Paris. Sarkozy might not have EU's rotating presidency anymore but 2009 allows his country to be in the driver's seat of EU policy more than ever. Germany's focus on the upcoming elections takes Berlin out of the international picture briefly. Angela Merkel will not side her center-right Christian Democrats with Muslim immigrants abroad as she runs for re-election amidst a deep recession.

We can expect President's Union for a Popular Movement to gradually increase the use of social wedge issues like the Burqa ban and even a possible outreach to France's remaining Christian communities. He has already shown a willingness to appeal to militarists by advocating a stronger EU defense force and intervening to broker peace between Russia and Georgia last summer. As former minister of the interior and manager of police structures, Sarkozy is comfortable with rigid hierarchical organizations as well as interdepartmental cooperation between such structures. He really is well positioned to pick up the torch of the war on terror by stressing continental security and defense.

Using Turkey and Iran as geopolitical threats to European way of life plays well to demographics in key EU member states. Unlike Bush, Sarkozy has more skill and intelligence to create a domestic impression that he is a popular, competent, and moderate internationally. Currently, Paris is capitalizing on Washington's strategic public non-commitment to ongoing protests in Iran. Sarkozy's statement on defending women from disrespect (by not welcoming the fundamentalist Muslim requirement of a face cover) comes at a strategically appropriate time. The issue of speaking out against fundamentalist modes of life is bound to grow with the background of Iranian unrest and generate even more debate than before. The elevation of dialogue itself allows the president to show both the leftist anti-American youth and the anti-immigrant conservatives that he is serious about defending the French way of life autonomously.

The wild card is the international crisis itself and the depths to which United States' retracting economic bubble will pull Western Europe after it. As things stand now, continuous recession without further deterioration allows Sarkozy to claim he stabilized the country, to increase scapegoating, and to try to get re-elected on notion that you can't change horses in midstream when restructuring the economy. Conditions paralleling America's current slide into a deep depression are historically unpredictable however.

Future of NATO: Europe's Security Requires That Germany and France Take Charge

US style minimal state capitalism has proven to be structurally unstable and ideologically bankrupt. As Obama tries a domestic top down restructuring to save remnants of capitalism before the dollar defaults, central European region is left destabilized.




The process of wrestling NATO's control away from the Anglo-American partnership should start immediately while the international recession is relatively young. American economic collapse is forcing US leadership to copy its former ideological colonies of Germany and Japan when it comes to implementing state capitalism. That in turn will result in a power vacuum created in central Europe and major risk involving NATO's structure the way it is led presently.

US always had elements of state capitalism although private sector was far less regulated compared to US's more state centered ideological colonies in Western Europe. However, decades of de-industrialization, social/structural decay, and military build up brought the need to accelerate ideological compromise. We now see an American president insist on the need for state champions in energy and car production as well as utilization of state organs to shape private sector development. US still has what it takes to pull that off peacefully. If De Gaulle's France and Putin's Russia managed to create successful state backed champions under conditions bordering on civil war then Obama's America can do the same.

There is sufficient amounts of managerial experience and efficiency enforcement talent to be found domestically. Subsidizing cars and green energy will do for those industries what subsidies for agriculture did. That is, create industrial base for mass cheap exports abroad after years of hard work and political coalition pressure. That will take time however and in the meantime it makes strategic sense to extend state capitalism to biomedical, natural resource extraction, electronics, and agriculture sectors. These three fields, have the most potential for economic stimulation since they are one of the few things US still has an edge on internationally. American oligarchic demands and semi-privatized medical system have created the most advanced pharmaceutical and bioengineering research and development in the world. Bioengineering, organ growing, genetic modification, and resulting transhuman augmentation and life extension, are the best potential kernels of a new American economy. As such, if US government wants to take serious stabilizing steps to save bits of the old capitalist system, it needs to nurture, subsidize, and promote the biomedical sector the way it wants to with the car industry. Biomedical product exports are potentially worth trillions of dollars long term, especially if Koreans and Japanese can be brought aboard as collaborative partners.

If Obama administration is smart and wants to really make US economic decline gradual (rather than sharp and potentially violent), it will also use increasing state capitalism to try to catch up or collaborate with Japan in robotics. A friendly US-Japanese competition in robotic exports, to aging Europe, will bring additional stream of steady revenue to claw out of future dollar default. State control of agriculture and resource extraction is self explanatory when it comes to additional money for disgruntled desperate population. Global warming will allow more land cultivation for crops and the land is rich in coal, uranium, and gas (especially if Canada is brought on board to collaborate in Arctic exploration/extraction). Obama has taken the first steps of taking control of strategic sectors and the pace of state acquisition will accelerate. Proper state subsidies and investments must be made immediately so the lifeline industries are nurtured before the default on the dollar occurs.

How does this relate to central Europe? Central European states have embraced American style free market capitalism with open arms. Legions of US capitalist commisars have flown to educate the fresh faced leaderships of Baltic states and dissolved Warsaw pact members. The Soviet collapse has been so rapid and demoralizing that the ideology of minimal state capitalism has taken root deeply and broadly as far as the core states of the former Soviet Union itself. In many ways, central Europeans even outdid their American teacher (and new NATO master) in terms of lack of regulation, taxation, and lack of investment in real industry. The supposed success stories, of minimal state capitalism, have been shown in nearly double digit growth rates throughout the former socialist space. The small Baltic countries have shown their proud ability to stand tall next to other speculative paper tigers of Ireland and Iceland. Even the normally cautious American satellite of Germany got into the housing bubble creating action in the 1990s. Supposed post-industrial financial wizardry was so visible, that in 2003 Donald Rumsfeld even proposed to make central Europe the new ideological arm of American power projection.

Germany and France were no longer seen as reliable footholds to violently spread capitalism throughout the world. Franco-German leadership of Chirac and Shroeder were fine with the split between US and Western Europe since it allowed them to pursue their own independent state capitalism with European characteristics. They decided that US lacks the industrial production to continuously exert influence in central Europe. Leading Western European leadership decided to gradually play Americans and Russians against each other while competing with US and Russians in central Europe when it comes to financial investment. With no massive global ideological alternative to warn of the risks, even the neutral well managed Swedish banks poured money into"New Europe" states like Hungary and Latvia.

When the underutilized communist built infrastructure once again reached full capacity (and when a run on the banks collapsed structural pillars of American union's capitalism), central Europe went into an even deeper tailspin than United States. Not only did the ideology preached to them by America failed but now America itself is heading into the state capitalist direction of Germany, France, and Russia. We saw what happens when the core of an ideology promoting empire changes direction. The power elites of peripheral colonies (even those within the empire sponsored military alliance) often become disillusioned, demoralized, and run into increasing conflict with their own population. Khrushchev's thaw caused social unrest and colonial rebellion. Then of course Gorbachev's top down restructuring and liberalization didn't just pressure ideological satellites to split and pursue their own political development. It didn't just result in development of cultural/ideological differences so great that a common military alliance was deemed undesirable. It actually caused backward conservative regions of the federal union itself to secede so they can be free from the betrayal and influence of the liberalizing "capitalist" center.

Now it's unlikely that Obama's move towards restructuring of the state capitalist economy to make it more efficient will cause anything as drastic as any American region wanting to secede. After all, the great American melting pot and intermingling of ethnic groups produced a much more durable artificial nationality compared to the violence born Soviet one. Surely American evangelicals, blacks, northeastern secular liberals, and Hispanics can work out a way to peacefully decline and restructure without resorting to Yugoslav style nastiness. The last statements are not meant as sarcastic or alarmist. US state capitalist political system allowed some social popular pressure to be released continuously at the polls without being angrily pressurized for decades.

However, the demoralizing effect and demonstration of the minimal state capitalist failure will mean another economic/ideological collapse in the heart of Europe. We are seeing industrial drop offs in Hungary, Ukraine, and the Baltic states that resemble the early 90s and American reversals in the early 1930s. US never even had a large enough financial presence in their new ideological colonies since most of the housing bubble money came from EU heavy weights. That means that central Europe will drag economies of Western Europe down with them to an undetermined degree as German and Scandinavian Banks find themselves in a Baltic sub-prime mess of their own. With decrease of EU's economic support, American ideological betrayal, and Obama administration's lowered priorities for NATO expansion, regional vacuum can only be filled rapidly by Russia. Kremlin has tangible natural resource and energy exports as well as over 200 billion dollars in saved wealth. China's 500 billion bailout to create internal demand for its products is beginning to push oil price up again. This means that the oil based ruble is strengthening and can be used to rapidly exert political pressure in the region filled with devaluing currencies.

This is why the need for joint French/German take over of NATO is required. Rapid expansion of Russian influence, into a collapsing and socially unstable region (that is still overseen by American puppets like Yuschenko with approval rating of 4%), can result in a potentially violent confrontation with Anglo-American led NATO. US and England still have disproportionate influence within NATO's structure. Many within the Anglo-American leadership are ideological capitalist internationalists who might not want an American regional rollback. We have already seen how even the puppet leadership of the NATO aspiring country of Georgia can create a hysterical American led reaction. We cannot rely on Anglo-American internationalists within NATO, to properly handle the situation of minimal state capitalist collapse under the direct NATO umbrella itself. Potential for escalation and violence, would be much greater than during the daring NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999. The world cannot rely on military leadership of an ideologically bankrupt and collapsing society to do the right thing and retreat when the dollar is devalued, social tensions are up, and elections are coming up.

French and Germans should begin efforts to become the new negotiating power center of NATO. If US decides to dissolve the alliance in retaliation, that is fine. Europeans already have protocols to make use of NATO facilities for a new European alliance. If US decides to stay (and still provide a nuclear umbrella to augment those of France and England), then that is the perfect outcome for the continent. It'll show American people that they are still relevant and soothe England's fears of being marginalizing completely. Berlin, Paris, and Rome can then pragmatically negotiate with Moscow on security arrangements for the continent. Only negotiation untainted by reactionary ideology can bring results. This solution allows coordinated preservation of North-Hemispheric stability in a time when state capitalism faces serious challenges from economic and social stagnation. Situation that leads to serious Western infighting, further deterioration of investor confidence, and potential escalating violence must not be allowed to happen. That would allow only China to remain the biggest planetary center of influence with 1 trillion dollars of saved wealth and the only major growing economy. Even briefly, that risks giving an opening that might prove difficult to close.