And even in Japan, isn’t it a bunch of conglomerate companies fighting each other and most of them not actually making and profit from passenger rail?

For sure. Know how much a cup of coffee was inflation adjusted? Roughly $10-15. On top of that those ‘coffee houses’ weren’t remotely close to what you have today. They were bulk brewed diluted black coffee with no sugar or other condiments because those too were expensive. A cup of coffee for the common man in 1700 was roughly 10% of his daily wage. Not exactly sure what point you are even trying to make here though, especially considering the highest cost for getting coffee in the 1700s up to the invention of the car was you guessed it, transportation costs. Invention of the car and transportation networks, why look at that, the price of coffee and other non-local agriculture products plummeted.

So they simply didn’t exist. That’s how that worked.

Ahh yes, the classic ‘I live in a city, so obviously everything can be dense and done by human power alone’. Except for the massive amount of people who don’t. I have incredibly few areas in the US or even Europe where no cars or no roads are needed. Can you reduce your reliance on them with a lot of changes? Sure. Can you eliminate them? No.

I mean so to trains or any other transportation system. And without those transportation systems, you wouldn’t be able to live the life you currently have. Are vehicles the best way to do it? Probably not. Are trains the best way to do it? nope. The best would be to have a blend of all things, and one that works for the majority rather than the minority, but thats difficult especially when one form gains traction over others.

You as missing the scale problem, here. A data center, hell 1000 massive data centers still aren’t going to take up the land that rail does. Its why you lay down rail first, then build around it, rather than destroying things to put rail in after. So yes, if you are going to magically put all this high speed rail in places people don’t live directly on with trains that don’t go places people want to be, then it’s a great comparison.