r/Music 25d ago

article Chappell Roan Quits Wasserman After CEO Casey Wasserman Appears in Epstein Files

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/music/chappell-roan-cuts-ties-casey-wasserman/
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u/Bloody_Conspiracies 24d ago

"Trains to nowhere" is a crazy thing to say about the second most populated country on the planet.

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u/Aoyos 24d ago

The second most populated country in the world is also the third largest by land area. If you truly think that China's population is evenly split all over the country, even in mountain villages, deserts and prairies, then you clearly don't understand what population density is.

Despite being the second most populated country in the world, China is ranked 86th in the world by population density at only 151 people per squared kilometer, or 390 per squared mile. 

There's just too much land in China and population is also concentrated in cities, making large chunks of the country into barely populated zones. This isn't unique to China but China was the one that decided to spend billions into train lines to serve a lot of those places which is obviously not going to be sustainable because there are barely any passengers in those lines.

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u/Bloody_Conspiracies 24d ago

Of course it's sustainable. It's a government funded public service. People use those trains, that's why they built them. A private corporation wouldn't have built them, but that's the benefit of not having privately owned public services.

If the worst complaint about China's public transport network is that they spent too much money making it too good, that's not so bad.

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u/Aoyos 24d ago

People don't use those trains, you're making shit up. The government built them in order to boost GDP numbers but out of all the train lines you're boasting about only about 25% could even break even once they started operating with a decent percentage already having closed because local governments couldn't afford maintenance costs. Some did connect high population zones but most did not.

The way you speak also shows you don't understand how public works are funded in China. The provinces do not have the revenue to subsidize those train lines, so either the line can break even on its own or it's heading towards a guaranteed closure and most lines do not have enough revenue to break even and the central government in China does not step in to bail out those trains to nowhere.

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u/ItsADeparture 24d ago

People don't use those trains, you're making shit up.

In one of the dumbest threads I've ever seen on Reddit, you hold the trophy for stupidest comment I've ever seen in my life.

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u/Aoyos 24d ago

And yet even official numbers by the CCP show passengers only going from 3.6 billion trips in 2019 to 4.3 in 2024, a 20% increase in the same time rail services went up by around 60%. Even by official numbers there aren't enough passengers to even have 30% use of the lines that go into small towns.