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0 pointsdatsci_est_20151mo ago0 comments

It’s definitely a result of the money at play, which is unprecedented in scale and (imo) speculation.

But this is, in theory, why we have laws: to fight power imbalances, and money is of course power.

Tough for me to be optimistic about law and order right now though, especially when it comes to the president’s biggest donors and the vice president’s handlers.

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mistrial91mo ago

the building of the American Railroads were the largest capital endeavor in known history IIR. .. and Stanford was in the center of that, too

datsci_est_2015OP1mo ago

Ah my bad. But also, if we’re comparing buildout of infrastructure to the construction of the American Railroad system, especially in the context of lawbreaking and general immoral and unethical behavior…

Point kind of proven, yeah? One more argument for the “return to the gilded age” debates.

Edit: you’re speaking kind of authoritatively on the subject though. Care to share some figures? The AI bubble is definitely measured in trillions in 2026 USD. Was the railroad buildout trillions of dollars?

hobs1mo ago

Depends on when you stop calculating, and how you exactly value the work

By 1900 the united states had 215 thousand miles of railroads https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-histor...

Depend on you value land mileage and work this could easily be north of 1T modern dollars.

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tmp104232884421mo ago

As a percentage of GDP investments in the railroad buildout in the US was comparable or slightly higher than AI-related investments. But they are on the same order of magnitude, which says a lot about the scale of AI.

> AI infrastructure has risen by $400 billion since 2022. A notable chunk of this spending has been focused on information processing equipment, which spiked at a 39% annualized rate in the first half of 2025. Harvard economist Jason Furman commented that investment in information processing equipment & software is equivalent to only 4% of US GDP, but was responsible for 92% of GDP growth in the first half of 2025. If you exclude these categories, the US economy grew at only a 0.1% annual rate in the first half.

https://www.cadtm.org/The-AI-bubble-and-the-US-economy?utm_s...

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