Railroad history warning: almost none of the first railroad companies made money
tszzl · x · 2026-11-11
Noah Ziems shares a oft-cited historical analogy: virtually none of the initial railroad companies profited. They overbuilt, took on excessive debt, ended up in brutal price wars, and nearly all went bankrupt. The tweet was amplified by AI researcher tszzl, implicitly framing today's AI infrastructure boom through the railroad-bubble lens — the infrastructure builders often don't capture the value.
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