Toronto transit projects

[Osiris]

That’s competition. In order for capitalism to work, there has to be a real fear of failure (customers fleeing to a competitor) on the part of the supposed capitalists. Otherwise it’s fake capitalism.

This is correct, in general, but this is why capitalism breaks down in some cases, telecom is one example, because the cost overhead of running wires to everyone's home doesn't allow multiple competitors, we have a world where you have Bell as your only provider for local land line service (VoIP is now a reasonable option, but that's a recent development).  And here, there's very few train manufacturers because its such a large custom product, the risk is enormous, so it's difficult for capitalism to function.  I think capitalism is "fake" as you put it far more often than people think, but this is a rather large philosophical digression.

I can't imagine the cost overhead is significantly greater than 130 years ago that it couldn't be done if the true desire was there.



Although in a way you've proven the success of fake capitalism - few people rarely take exception when a company says "can't do it, too costly".