I am certain that there is extraterrestrial life out there and I am pretty sure some of it is intelligent. The universe is so vast and the number of planets so enormous that anything else strains credulity. But the distances are so vast and the number of dead planets so enormous that the chances of us discovering them or them discovering us is so small that the possibility of that happening also seems pretty small. The distances are enormous. Most of the stars we see are hundreds of light years away and those are our nearby neighbors. Our galaxy is over 100,000 light years across. The nearest big galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away. The laws of physics that we know preclude travel faster than the speed of light. To send a fleet of a million probes, to visit every star in our galaxy, traveling at light speed, would take half a million years.
But, you ask, isn't it possible that there's a way to travel faster than light? You'd have to do this by warping space through a higher dimension, most likely time. We know a little about this: Galaxy-sized masses warp space enough that light is curved a few micro-seconds of arc. Enough to detect with powerful instruments, but the space-warp available from this is not actually any faster than the speed of light. I remain hopeful that some unknown technology allows us to do this but we are very far from any plausible breakthrough. Let's say that such a breakthrough occurs--we can go 1000 times faster than light--our million probes would still take at least 500 years to visit every star. Even at 1000 times light speed, our nearest star is a day and a half away.
What if some other intelligent species is out there, looking for us? If they already have 1000x light speed travel and did a search using a million probes to find us, they are at least a few hundred years more technically advanced. Could we, using the highest technology available to us, successfully hide from the best technology the 18th century had to look for us? Of course we could. We could paint an orbiting telescope flat black and spy on them from space. We could find places where they aren't and send a lander--appearing at worst to be a meteorite. We could send out drones from that lander to watch from a distance. We'd design the drones so they'd easily be mistaken for a bird or some other creature.
Or you point out that we're sending out massive quantities of radio
waves. That's true, but each of these signals, on an interstellar
scale, is pretty weak, and while individually coherent, from 100 light
years away it's likely just a bunch of incoherent noise, and compared to what the sun generates, pretty weak at that. It may be
enough to help them find us--but the waves only travel at light speed,
which means the probe that detects them must be within a sphere about
100 light years in radius of us. It shortens the search, but only a
decade or so.
The bottom line is that an intelligent extraterrestrial that wants to hide from us, will successfully hide from us. If they want us to see them, we will. Searching for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence is basically a fool's errand at this point in human development. Once we have the technology to actually embark on the faster than light search, this may change. But for now, if they're looking, they're gonna find us, whether we're helping or not.
That said, I certainly don't object to privately funded SETI projects. There's lots of peripheral research being done, some of which may prove useful regardless of whether there are extraterrestrials involved or not. The SETI Institute in California does lots of space-related research, lots of it interesting and potentially useful, and as far as I can tell, only a small fraction is actually in pursuit of aliens. It's just that I think there are better things to spend my tax money on. On the other hand, I think the search for extraterrestrial life in the solar system is a worthwhile goal. We're still in the early days of exploring the solar system and it's entirely possible that there's life on one of the moons of the gas giants, or much less likely, on Mars in the dim past. Odds are very unlikely that it's even multicellular life but whatever it is, we'd like to know about it. (life has existed on earth for well over 3B years. Multicellular life for less than 1B)
addenda 18Dec2017
Over the weekend, the pentagon's own UFO research organization came to light. There are lots and lots of UFO sightings, many of them by completely credible people. I've seen two myself. One turned out to be a rocket launch from nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base in unusual atmospheric conditions, which left a long glowing trail. The other was almost certainly a meteor falling close enough that I could see it tumble and burn, but it might have been falling space debris. Strictly speaking, there was a time when, for me at least, they were unidentified. I know someone who managed to get a flying saucer photo published: it was a lid from a cooking pan, tossed in the air and spinning fast, and in poor focus. An at least superficial investigation should be easily available. A central clearing house can quickly dismiss the vast majority for what they are. Occasionally something mysterious does turn up, and these should be investigated. Yes, there are plenty of cranks in the world
16 December 2017
11 December 2017
We Need A Better Word for Democratic Socialist
First the spectrum, as I see it. At one extreme is communism, where the means of production and all control of it are by "the workers". The reality of this is that it is impossible. If the group is too large, decisionmaking becomes dangerously unweildy and in too many cases (the presidential election of 2016 is illustrative) easily subverted by shortsighted manipulations. Attempts to implement this have invariably led to brutal dictatorships. At the other end is laissez faire capitalism. This too is impossible. If cheating is tolerated, cheaters will win, which rarely works out for the rest of us. All attempts at being too capitalist have also ended in dictatorship (e.g. mid-70s Chile).
The right answer, therefor, lies somewhere in the middle. Enough free enterprise to foster innovation, but enough regulation to inhibit market failures, such as monopoly or inadequate service, and to take over industries when market failure has occurred.
There are plainly some industries which cannot be left to the free market. National defense is an example. Private armies are either too powerful to be allowed to serve their own selfish purposes, or too weak to be useful in a real crisis. A good case can be made that Rome fell and ended western civilization for a millennium because it had private armies. Fire safety has a similar problem. Many people go through life without ever needing the services of the fire department. But when they do, they need them in a hurry and they need a lot of expensive service. Lots of people, if allowed to make the choice, would choose to not pay for a private fire department and most of them would get away with it. But because fires tend to spread, we cannot allow this. At the same time, there are lots of industries that do perfectly well in a competitive free market, including ones that provide services and equipment to the nationalized industries. Think of companies that build fire trucks and military transports.
This middle ground does not really have a good name. The best is "Democratic Socialist", or sometimes "Social Democrat", but that's both too long and misses the target. True Socialism would have public ownership of too much of business. Democracy too is impossible for groups larger than a few hundred: we need to have a representative democracy, also known as a Republic.
I don't have a good suggestion for a better name: for now Democratic Socialist will have to do. It's important to recognize that as a Democratic Socialist I'm advocating the least amount of national ownership of the means of production as possible while preventing market failure. Capitalism, within limits, is a very good thing. But only through active, competent regulation can market failures be minimized, and only through active, competent management can those failures be corrected.
--------
The list of industries which have had market failures is extremely long. Here are a few:
The military, Police and Fire departments. Thomas Jefferson and others thought these functions could be served by a militia. It didn't work. The civil war was the crisis that ended the illusion.
Highways. Without government highways, we'd have very few of them. They help the economy enormously, but few would pay for them.
Transit. There are no urban transit systems which pay for themselves, but a large fraction of people are dependent upon them.
Railroads are so amazingly efficient that they can almost make it on their own, even competing with government funded highways. US railroads have had numerous market failures over the years which have required government intervention.
Telecommunications is most efficient as a monopoly, but this leads to gouging and other problems. Regulation worked brilliantly in the middle part of the 20th century, but we're back to monopolies again.
Medical insurance. Attempting to leave it to private insurance has doubled the cost and left about around 1/3rd of the population under or un insured. Nearly all insurance is in market failure, but medical is the worst.
The right answer, therefor, lies somewhere in the middle. Enough free enterprise to foster innovation, but enough regulation to inhibit market failures, such as monopoly or inadequate service, and to take over industries when market failure has occurred.
There are plainly some industries which cannot be left to the free market. National defense is an example. Private armies are either too powerful to be allowed to serve their own selfish purposes, or too weak to be useful in a real crisis. A good case can be made that Rome fell and ended western civilization for a millennium because it had private armies. Fire safety has a similar problem. Many people go through life without ever needing the services of the fire department. But when they do, they need them in a hurry and they need a lot of expensive service. Lots of people, if allowed to make the choice, would choose to not pay for a private fire department and most of them would get away with it. But because fires tend to spread, we cannot allow this. At the same time, there are lots of industries that do perfectly well in a competitive free market, including ones that provide services and equipment to the nationalized industries. Think of companies that build fire trucks and military transports.
This middle ground does not really have a good name. The best is "Democratic Socialist", or sometimes "Social Democrat", but that's both too long and misses the target. True Socialism would have public ownership of too much of business. Democracy too is impossible for groups larger than a few hundred: we need to have a representative democracy, also known as a Republic.
I don't have a good suggestion for a better name: for now Democratic Socialist will have to do. It's important to recognize that as a Democratic Socialist I'm advocating the least amount of national ownership of the means of production as possible while preventing market failure. Capitalism, within limits, is a very good thing. But only through active, competent regulation can market failures be minimized, and only through active, competent management can those failures be corrected.
--------
The list of industries which have had market failures is extremely long. Here are a few:
The military, Police and Fire departments. Thomas Jefferson and others thought these functions could be served by a militia. It didn't work. The civil war was the crisis that ended the illusion.
Highways. Without government highways, we'd have very few of them. They help the economy enormously, but few would pay for them.
Transit. There are no urban transit systems which pay for themselves, but a large fraction of people are dependent upon them.
Railroads are so amazingly efficient that they can almost make it on their own, even competing with government funded highways. US railroads have had numerous market failures over the years which have required government intervention.
Telecommunications is most efficient as a monopoly, but this leads to gouging and other problems. Regulation worked brilliantly in the middle part of the 20th century, but we're back to monopolies again.
Medical insurance. Attempting to leave it to private insurance has doubled the cost and left about around 1/3rd of the population under or un insured. Nearly all insurance is in market failure, but medical is the worst.
10 December 2017
EVSEs for Beginners
About 25 years ago, the first modern electric cars began to appear. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) realized with alarm that ordinary consumers would soon be attempting to charge cars from household circuits, the first time in history that people with limited electrical competence would be making and breaking connections drawing more than 15 amps. They knew that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to charge a car at 40 amps using an 18 gauge lamp cord and start a fire. Previously, anyone making these sorts of more powerful connections--household ovens and the like--would either be an electrician, or someone with enough competence to not make such a mistake. E.g. a welder.
The approach they came up with was called J1772. Basically, they mandated that all electric car chargers would require a standard plug which would inform the car of what it was connected to, so the car wouldn't draw too much current. The way this worked was a control wire, called the "pilot", which implements a square wave where the duty cycle says what the maximum current can be. The pilot signal would be generated by a device called an EVSE: Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. An EVSE contains a circuit which generates the specific square wave, and some number of "contactors", which are big relays that can tolerate make/break of the full current. Whether the contactor is open or closed depends upon whether the charge circumstances the EVSE sees are deemed safe. The EVSE does no power conversion--it's just passing whatever power it receives on to the car. The car must contain a battery charger appropriate to the battery in the car, and reciprocal electronics to behave correctly according to the signal it's receiving from the EVSE.
Part of this design is that the plug on the EVSE is specific to the power limits of whatever it's plugged into: a NEMA 5-15 can draw no more than 80% of 15 amps. A NEMA 14-50 no more than 80% of 50 amps, and so forth. Replacing the plug on an EVSE or plugging it into an extension cord foils the safeguards that are the whole point of the EVSE's existence. Therefor, most EVSEs are intended for a single voltage/current application. A few of them have a couple of modes, which are typically controlled by switches, to adapt to different power sources.
There's a second factor too. J1772 defines two levels: Level 1 and Level 2. In the North America, this is the distinction between 120 and 240 volt power, sometimes incorrectly called one phase and two phase. 120 is wired with Hot, Neutral and Ground, where 240 is wired with Hot1, Hot2 and either Neutral or Ground or both. (connectors without a ground have been disparaged since the 1960s and became illegal for new construction in the '90s). Typically, EVSEs are configured for either L1 or L2.
Tesla came up with something clever: Their portable EVSE (which they call a UMC: Universal Mobile Connector) comes with a connector that allows different adapters to be plugged in. Thus, if it's got a 14-50 adapter, on it, it tells the UMC to send the signal for 40 amps. if it's a 5-15, it says 12 amps. (this is simply a resistor that's tuned to the particular R/C circuit in the EVSE). The UMC also detects whether the source power is 120 or 240 and modifies its behavior. They have a half dozen adapters for this. Interestingly, the adapter does not care if 240V power is plugged into an adapter intended for 120V. As long as the wires are correct, it simply passes the power along. If you're careful to make sure everything upstream is safe for the volts and amps, it all goes smoothly. If it's not wired correctly, the car gives you an error message, and you can fix your adapter. Obviously this is dangerous to play with if you don't understand what I mean by all of this.
Tesla is doing a separate thing, which they call "supercharging", which requires much bigger conductors in their charging system. Their approach was to have their own, incompatible connector, so people don't naively plug non-compatible cars into their super high powered charge stations. They provide a small adapter so people can charge Teslas with standard J1772 connectors--all the electrical stuff is identical between J1772 and Tesla connectors.
I've studied quite a few EVSEs and I'm pretty convinced the Tesla UMC is the best on the market. It's well designed and built--even though there's a pretty exterior, the whole thing is basically potted in a huge block of rubber, and it would take pretty extreme treatment to break it. It's also priced pretty reasonably: $550. You can buy a version with the tesla plug replaced with a standard J1772 plug here. Quickcharge also has their own 16 amp J1772 adapter for quite a bit less money. QCP is run by a guy named Tony Williams who is both knowledgeable and reputable. There are a bunch of others. Probably the most complete line is Clipper Creek.
The approach they came up with was called J1772. Basically, they mandated that all electric car chargers would require a standard plug which would inform the car of what it was connected to, so the car wouldn't draw too much current. The way this worked was a control wire, called the "pilot", which implements a square wave where the duty cycle says what the maximum current can be. The pilot signal would be generated by a device called an EVSE: Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. An EVSE contains a circuit which generates the specific square wave, and some number of "contactors", which are big relays that can tolerate make/break of the full current. Whether the contactor is open or closed depends upon whether the charge circumstances the EVSE sees are deemed safe. The EVSE does no power conversion--it's just passing whatever power it receives on to the car. The car must contain a battery charger appropriate to the battery in the car, and reciprocal electronics to behave correctly according to the signal it's receiving from the EVSE.
Part of this design is that the plug on the EVSE is specific to the power limits of whatever it's plugged into: a NEMA 5-15 can draw no more than 80% of 15 amps. A NEMA 14-50 no more than 80% of 50 amps, and so forth. Replacing the plug on an EVSE or plugging it into an extension cord foils the safeguards that are the whole point of the EVSE's existence. Therefor, most EVSEs are intended for a single voltage/current application. A few of them have a couple of modes, which are typically controlled by switches, to adapt to different power sources.
There's a second factor too. J1772 defines two levels: Level 1 and Level 2. In the North America, this is the distinction between 120 and 240 volt power, sometimes incorrectly called one phase and two phase. 120 is wired with Hot, Neutral and Ground, where 240 is wired with Hot1, Hot2 and either Neutral or Ground or both. (connectors without a ground have been disparaged since the 1960s and became illegal for new construction in the '90s). Typically, EVSEs are configured for either L1 or L2.
Tesla came up with something clever: Their portable EVSE (which they call a UMC: Universal Mobile Connector) comes with a connector that allows different adapters to be plugged in. Thus, if it's got a 14-50 adapter, on it, it tells the UMC to send the signal for 40 amps. if it's a 5-15, it says 12 amps. (this is simply a resistor that's tuned to the particular R/C circuit in the EVSE). The UMC also detects whether the source power is 120 or 240 and modifies its behavior. They have a half dozen adapters for this. Interestingly, the adapter does not care if 240V power is plugged into an adapter intended for 120V. As long as the wires are correct, it simply passes the power along. If you're careful to make sure everything upstream is safe for the volts and amps, it all goes smoothly. If it's not wired correctly, the car gives you an error message, and you can fix your adapter. Obviously this is dangerous to play with if you don't understand what I mean by all of this.
Tesla is doing a separate thing, which they call "supercharging", which requires much bigger conductors in their charging system. Their approach was to have their own, incompatible connector, so people don't naively plug non-compatible cars into their super high powered charge stations. They provide a small adapter so people can charge Teslas with standard J1772 connectors--all the electrical stuff is identical between J1772 and Tesla connectors.
I've studied quite a few EVSEs and I'm pretty convinced the Tesla UMC is the best on the market. It's well designed and built--even though there's a pretty exterior, the whole thing is basically potted in a huge block of rubber, and it would take pretty extreme treatment to break it. It's also priced pretty reasonably: $550. You can buy a version with the tesla plug replaced with a standard J1772 plug here. Quickcharge also has their own 16 amp J1772 adapter for quite a bit less money. QCP is run by a guy named Tony Williams who is both knowledgeable and reputable. There are a bunch of others. Probably the most complete line is Clipper Creek.
07 December 2017
Ice
My dad grew up on the North Shore of the Boston area, and when he was a child, there were still ice houses in operation. They would cut up the ice in the from frozen ponds there, transporting it on big sleds into bigger buildings where it would be stored, packed in sawdust, until it could be shipped all around the world.
Frederic Tudor (1783-1864) dreamt up the scheme when he was 22, thinking to sell ice to rich plantation owners in the American south and the Caribbean. Ships would come to Boston and the North Shore with cotton and other raw materials for New England manufacturing, and return with finished goods, which occupied less space and weighed much less. So he could buy space on those return trips for very little. It took him several attempts to overcome skepticism, and figure out how to keep the ice from melting, losing thousands of dollars at each attempt, until he figured it out. But eventually he did figure it out, and ponds all over the north shore were used, and New England ice was shipped as far away as India. Tudor became known as "The Ice King". Walden Pond was one of the sources of ice they used and Henry David Thoreau wrote admiringly about the ice harvest in Walden.
When it was discovered that food packed in ice would stay fresh a lot longer, other businesses copied the practice, and in the 1850s, ice houses began to be built around the country, especially along railroad tracks. Special cars, called Refrigerator Cars, were built insulated sides and ice bunkers on their ends, and filled with meat and other perishables. The ice would melt and drain out, so they needed to be refilled every few hundred miles along their trip. In addition, most homes had an "Icebox", which was just an insulated box into which ice and food was placed. Although invented much earlier, mechanical refrigeration finally became practical in the 1920s with the widespread adoption of electricity, but it took a long time for it to be accepted. My grandfather was a relatively early adopter, buying a mechanical refrigerator in the 1930s, despite living in the home of worldwide ice, and my father barely remembers a time when they didn't have a mechanical refrigerator. Yet my grandfather continued to call the refrigerator an "Icebox" until he died in the late 1970s.
The ice business illustrates several interesting things about economics. The first is about entrepreneurship. Tudor was born into a family that was already very wealthy. Each of his early failed attempts to ship ice cost thousands of dollars, in a time when $500 a year was a 90th percentile income. In today's money, he lost half a million dollars each time he failed, and he failed a lot. He spent time as late as 1813 in debtors prison, until his family bailed him out and he tried again. Finally, by 1816 it was a going concern, and by 1825 he was a very wealthy man. Something similar is true today: there are very few successful entrepreneurs who are making bets that would result in their families going hungry. They may have a bankroll earned in a previous job, a rich relative, outside investors. But if they lose, they lose only what they put in. Their families don't starve to death. This safety net is critically important.
Secondly, several times in the 150 year timeline of natural ice refrigeration, big businesses continued to do things in the old fashioned, labor intensive, much more expensive way despite the obvious superiority of the new way. I'll mention two: prior to 1850, food needed to be used very close to where it was harvested. In the case of meat, this meant shipping the animals alive to a slaughterhouse near where it would be eaten. This was very hard on the animals and unless they gave them rest, food and exercise, a lot would die in route, spoiling a lot of the rest. This was time consuming and expensive. The ice refrigerator became practical in the late 1850s and the basic design was in place by 1880 and would last into the 1970s. Yet shipments of livestock continued until well into the 1930s. The railroads had a monopoly though. (part of this was that they'd centralized meatpacking in Chicago: live animals would be shipped to Chicago. Meat would be distributed on ice from Chicago to the rest of the country)
In 1940, a man named Fred Jones received a patent for for a portable mechanical refrigeration unit that would eventually be the basis for what railroads and trucks would use to this day. He and a businessman friend (Joe Numero) founded a company called ThermoKing. In the late 1940s, the fleet of ice refrigerator railroad cars was pretty much worn out, their usual cycle of replacement being interrupted by the war. Pacific Fruit Express, which owned the largest number of those cars, decided to replace them with updated ice refrigerator cars, requiring the physical plant and labor to be continued, even though ThermoKing's product was obviously completely viable and a lot cheaper, and PFE's near monopoly meant that ice refrigerators continued to be used on American railroads into the 1970s. (That Jones was an African American may have contributed to this, although most likely it's just ordinary conservatism). There was no such monopoly on the highways however, and many trucking companies installed ThermoKing refrigerators on their trucks. Despite the gigantic advantages of the railroads in driving costs, fuel and more, this was sufficient to move the refrigerated transport business almost entirely to the roads, where it persists to this day.
At the same time, passenger service was also moving from rail to highway, and also to air, and the interstate highway system made shipping of unrefrigerated freight by road closer to cost and time competitive with rail. Together, this came very close to killing the railroads despite their gigantic inherent advantages. Through consolidation and government subsidy, they've survived, but it was a near thing.
Frederic Tudor (1783-1864) dreamt up the scheme when he was 22, thinking to sell ice to rich plantation owners in the American south and the Caribbean. Ships would come to Boston and the North Shore with cotton and other raw materials for New England manufacturing, and return with finished goods, which occupied less space and weighed much less. So he could buy space on those return trips for very little. It took him several attempts to overcome skepticism, and figure out how to keep the ice from melting, losing thousands of dollars at each attempt, until he figured it out. But eventually he did figure it out, and ponds all over the north shore were used, and New England ice was shipped as far away as India. Tudor became known as "The Ice King". Walden Pond was one of the sources of ice they used and Henry David Thoreau wrote admiringly about the ice harvest in Walden.
When it was discovered that food packed in ice would stay fresh a lot longer, other businesses copied the practice, and in the 1850s, ice houses began to be built around the country, especially along railroad tracks. Special cars, called Refrigerator Cars, were built insulated sides and ice bunkers on their ends, and filled with meat and other perishables. The ice would melt and drain out, so they needed to be refilled every few hundred miles along their trip. In addition, most homes had an "Icebox", which was just an insulated box into which ice and food was placed. Although invented much earlier, mechanical refrigeration finally became practical in the 1920s with the widespread adoption of electricity, but it took a long time for it to be accepted. My grandfather was a relatively early adopter, buying a mechanical refrigerator in the 1930s, despite living in the home of worldwide ice, and my father barely remembers a time when they didn't have a mechanical refrigerator. Yet my grandfather continued to call the refrigerator an "Icebox" until he died in the late 1970s.
The ice business illustrates several interesting things about economics. The first is about entrepreneurship. Tudor was born into a family that was already very wealthy. Each of his early failed attempts to ship ice cost thousands of dollars, in a time when $500 a year was a 90th percentile income. In today's money, he lost half a million dollars each time he failed, and he failed a lot. He spent time as late as 1813 in debtors prison, until his family bailed him out and he tried again. Finally, by 1816 it was a going concern, and by 1825 he was a very wealthy man. Something similar is true today: there are very few successful entrepreneurs who are making bets that would result in their families going hungry. They may have a bankroll earned in a previous job, a rich relative, outside investors. But if they lose, they lose only what they put in. Their families don't starve to death. This safety net is critically important.
Secondly, several times in the 150 year timeline of natural ice refrigeration, big businesses continued to do things in the old fashioned, labor intensive, much more expensive way despite the obvious superiority of the new way. I'll mention two: prior to 1850, food needed to be used very close to where it was harvested. In the case of meat, this meant shipping the animals alive to a slaughterhouse near where it would be eaten. This was very hard on the animals and unless they gave them rest, food and exercise, a lot would die in route, spoiling a lot of the rest. This was time consuming and expensive. The ice refrigerator became practical in the late 1850s and the basic design was in place by 1880 and would last into the 1970s. Yet shipments of livestock continued until well into the 1930s. The railroads had a monopoly though. (part of this was that they'd centralized meatpacking in Chicago: live animals would be shipped to Chicago. Meat would be distributed on ice from Chicago to the rest of the country)
In 1940, a man named Fred Jones received a patent for for a portable mechanical refrigeration unit that would eventually be the basis for what railroads and trucks would use to this day. He and a businessman friend (Joe Numero) founded a company called ThermoKing. In the late 1940s, the fleet of ice refrigerator railroad cars was pretty much worn out, their usual cycle of replacement being interrupted by the war. Pacific Fruit Express, which owned the largest number of those cars, decided to replace them with updated ice refrigerator cars, requiring the physical plant and labor to be continued, even though ThermoKing's product was obviously completely viable and a lot cheaper, and PFE's near monopoly meant that ice refrigerators continued to be used on American railroads into the 1970s. (That Jones was an African American may have contributed to this, although most likely it's just ordinary conservatism). There was no such monopoly on the highways however, and many trucking companies installed ThermoKing refrigerators on their trucks. Despite the gigantic advantages of the railroads in driving costs, fuel and more, this was sufficient to move the refrigerated transport business almost entirely to the roads, where it persists to this day.
At the same time, passenger service was also moving from rail to highway, and also to air, and the interstate highway system made shipping of unrefrigerated freight by road closer to cost and time competitive with rail. Together, this came very close to killing the railroads despite their gigantic inherent advantages. Through consolidation and government subsidy, they've survived, but it was a near thing.
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