The entirety of Europe had the industrial capacity and know-how to transition towards both High Speed Rail and entire light rail system in the 80's and 90's, even after the chaos of the collapse of the USSR. It's honestly shocking that they didn't given the seriousness that the 80's oil crisis caused, but I have to assume at this point they were banking on the balkanization of Russia and were basically doing a test run in the former Yugoslavia.
The problem is that the whole of elite European liberal intellectualism is completely wound up in essentially emulating what they perceive to be "American freedom", you'll still run into this with exchange students all the time. The problem is that 'American freedom' will ultimately completely destroy your infrastructural integrity and thus degrade your industrial capacity.
What you are seeing is the value of social ideology rationally taking precedence over material considerations. It doesn't matter what makes the most sense in terms of actual efficiency, it is about what makes sense to appeal to your elite social peers, who don't have to make decisions based on material considerations.
I think the 'objective' methodology for figuring that out would be either a marketing study, ethnography or something else. My rule of thumb is to see where the majority of advertising money is going. The rich and elite are usually more susceptible to advertising schemes because they have the ability to replicate the lives that marketing portrays. That is the beauty of owning massive amounts of private capital, while it is selling an unattainable material lie to us proles, it is only selling an unattainable spiritual lie (that if you are unhappy despite money and success, consumption will solve that unhappiness) to the wealthy and elite. They can actually attain the material reality portrayed in advertising, so it is just a matter of getting their eyeballs on it.
Also, within capitalism, isolation is usually the rule of thumb. The elite of capitalism wish to stand apart from the mass of humanity, as titans and utilitarian betters.
I honestly think that the significance difference would be related more to the individual temperament than the perceived v.s. actual material value. The problem is that both of those things influence each other, so the randomness.
The statement (in words) would be like this, the weighted significance between perceived v.s. actual material value is a variable that is tied towards the individual's temperament, up to a point where actual material value reaches some arbitrary threshold of say 100 million dollars, where it then becomes negligible, but then it is entirely a factor of the individual's temperament. However, I also believe that one's temperament is also affected as a variable of one's actual wealth, however this is then a classic nature v.s. nurture problem, and while we can get it into set theory, we cannot solve which comes first, we just have to start taking data and testing our weighted categories against actual material results.
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I went to Germany in '96, and was amazed how on time the trains were. If the schedule said "7:52 arrival" then set your watch by it.
Now? Not so much.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-rail-operator-deutsche-bahn-admits-major-drop-in-punctuality/a-60338352
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/2023-deutsche-bahn-delays-already-worse-expected
At this point, it's startlingly clear that de-industrialization is wide scale corporate raiding.
Can anyone point to a country that de-industrialized and maintained infrastructure?
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The entirety of Europe had the industrial capacity and know-how to transition towards both High Speed Rail and entire light rail system in the 80's and 90's, even after the chaos of the collapse of the USSR. It's honestly shocking that they didn't given the seriousness that the 80's oil crisis caused, but I have to assume at this point they were banking on the balkanization of Russia and were basically doing a test run in the former Yugoslavia.
The problem is that the whole of elite European liberal intellectualism is completely wound up in essentially emulating what they perceive to be "American freedom", you'll still run into this with exchange students all the time. The problem is that 'American freedom' will ultimately completely destroy your infrastructural integrity and thus degrade your industrial capacity.
deleted by creator
What you are seeing is the value of social ideology rationally taking precedence over material considerations. It doesn't matter what makes the most sense in terms of actual efficiency, it is about what makes sense to appeal to your elite social peers, who don't have to make decisions based on material considerations.
deleted by creator
I think the 'objective' methodology for figuring that out would be either a marketing study, ethnography or something else. My rule of thumb is to see where the majority of advertising money is going. The rich and elite are usually more susceptible to advertising schemes because they have the ability to replicate the lives that marketing portrays. That is the beauty of owning massive amounts of private capital, while it is selling an unattainable material lie to us proles, it is only selling an unattainable spiritual lie (that if you are unhappy despite money and success, consumption will solve that unhappiness) to the wealthy and elite. They can actually attain the material reality portrayed in advertising, so it is just a matter of getting their eyeballs on it.
Also, within capitalism, isolation is usually the rule of thumb. The elite of capitalism wish to stand apart from the mass of humanity, as titans and utilitarian betters.
deleted by creator
I honestly think that the significance difference would be related more to the individual temperament than the perceived v.s. actual material value. The problem is that both of those things influence each other, so the randomness.
The statement (in words) would be like this, the weighted significance between perceived v.s. actual material value is a variable that is tied towards the individual's temperament, up to a point where actual material value reaches some arbitrary threshold of say 100 million dollars, where it then becomes negligible, but then it is entirely a factor of the individual's temperament. However, I also believe that one's temperament is also affected as a variable of one's actual wealth, however this is then a classic nature v.s. nurture problem, and while we can get it into set theory, we cannot solve which comes first, we just have to start taking data and testing our weighted categories against actual material results.
deleted by creator