Erik Carlin

Co-Founder & CPO @ ProsperOps. Former VP @ Rackspace. Building and managing clouds since 2008. Father of 6. Christian. Time-starved outdoorsman.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Director of Strategic Planning at the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

I have held this position for seventeen years. In that time I have written four business plans, overseen six revisions, and authored eleven methodology updates. The train has not moved.

There is a hard hat on the shelf behind my desk. It was given to me at the Fresno groundbreaking ceremony in 2015. It is still in the cellophane. I use it as a bookend for the business plan binders. There are four binders. They are substantial. The hat holds them upright.

In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A. San Francisco to Los Angeles. Two hours and forty minutes. Fifty-five dollars per ticket. Ninety-five million annual riders by 2030. Total cost: $33.5 billion. Fifty-three percent said yes.

The current cost estimate is $231 billion.

I am sometimes asked to provide context for that figure. The state housing shortage is 2.5 million units. At the California median home price, $231 billion would produce 577,000 of them. The average public school teacher in California earns $95,000. $231 billion is every one of their salaries for eight years. The state has a documented wildfire suppression staffing gap. $231 billion would fund 6,400 additional fire crews for a century. I include these comparisons for context. They are not relevant to my work.

We have built 119 miles of infrastructure. Columns. Viaducts. Grade separations. You can see them from Highway 99 between Madera and Bakersfield. They stand in rows across land that used to grow things. No track runs on them. No train has touched them. Some of them have graffiti now. I have seen the photographs in the quarterly progress reports. I have not visited.

There was an almond grower outside Hanford. She is in our files as Parcel 417, Hanford East. The Authority acquired twelve acres of her property through eminent domain in 2016 for right-of-way clearance. The trees were removed. The soil was graded flat. The right-of-way has been clear for nine years. Nothing has been built on Parcel 417. Her file notes that she attended three public comment hearings between 2014 and 2016. I do not know what she said at those hearings. I know what we said. We called the acquisition "a critical milestone in the project's advancement." I wrote those words for the 2016 Annual Report. They were well-received. Her contact information has been flagged in the Phase 2 preliminary assessment, in case additional right-of-way is required. Phase 2 does not yet exist. Her contact information does.

The original completion date was 2020. The current target is 2032. The route has been revised from San Francisco-to-Los Angeles to Merced-to-Bakersfield. One hundred seventy-one miles. I refer to this as Phase 1.

The French national rail company, SNCF, joined the project as a consulting partner in 2010. They left in 2011. They used the phrase "political dysfunction," which is diplomatic language for a country that built the Eiffel Tower in two years telling you it cannot build your train. SNCF then went to Morocco and built a high-speed rail line from Tangier to Casablanca. Two hundred miles. Operational by 2018. Seven years.

We are in year eighteen. I included the SNCF departure in the 2022 business plan as a "comparative international case study." The lesson I drew was that Morocco has simpler permitting requirements. This is accurate. I did not draw other lessons.

The $9.95 billion bond that voters approved costs the state $647 million per year for thirty years. Roughly $20 billion in total repayment. The bond is being serviced on schedule. $647 million leaves the state treasury every year and arrives in accounts associated with a train that does not carry passengers. It has done this since 2010. The bond repayment is the most functional transit system we have built. It moves $647 million a year. On time. Every time.

In 2019, Governor Newsom said the project "would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long." He then continued funding it. I appreciated the word "respectfully." It acknowledged the problem without producing an obligation to solve it. My team delivered the 2020 business plan revision the following quarter. It was well-received.

The Governor also supported legislation to shield certain cost details from public disclosure. That same year, thousands of pages were removed from the Authority's website. I was not involved in that decision. I was involved in the pages.

Last Friday, a television host told the Governor on camera that the project now costs $231 billion. The Governor said, "No, it's not. It's not." The $231 billion figure is from the 2026 draft business plan. Page 47. I wrote page 47. The Governor then said we had gotten the project "back on track." I noted the phrasing. A rail project that has not yet laid operational track is not, in a strict sense, on one. I did not raise this.

The ridership projection has been revised from 95 million annual riders by 2030 to 36 million by 2060. I updated that figure personally during the 2024 planning cycle. The ticket price has been revised from $55 to $105. Both figures describe a service that does not yet exist.

The State Auditor published a report. The title is: "Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays in the System's Construction." That is twenty words. We have 119 miles of columns that carry nothing. I read the report carefully. It was thorough. We incorporated its findings into the next business plan revision.

The board was scheduled to vote on the latest business plan on April 29th. The vote was delayed. Additional review was requested. I support additional review.

My pension vests in 2034. The project's current completion target is 2032. If the train is finished on schedule, my position becomes unnecessary two years before my pension matures. The completion date is determined by the business plan. I write the business plan.

The plan says the project should continue. It has always said this. I have never written one that recommended otherwise.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Spirit Airlines died tonight at the hands of the socialist crusader, Elizabeth Warren

She must be so proud to add another casket to her achievements.

Tonight at 3am, Spirit turns off the lights. 14,000 jobs gone. 30+ smaller airports lose service.

JetBlue offered $3.8 BILLION in cash to buy Spirit in 2022. Shareholders, flight attendants union, literally everyone voted yes.

The combined company would have held 9% of the US market against a Big 4 that already owned 80%.

For anyone who understands numbers: 9% isn’t a monopoly against 80%.

Warren said no.

She wrote letters. She pressured Buttigieg. Biden’s DOJ sued. A federal judge killed the deal in January 2024.

Her argument: the merger would cost consumers $1 billion a year.

Now look at her collateral damage she dusts under the rug.

510 pilots gone in the months after. 1,800 flight attendants furloughed in December.

14,000 jobs in 2023. 7,500 last week. Zero tonight.

And that’s just the people in Spirit uniforms.

Catering goes. Fuel guys go. Baggage crews, gate agents, airport coffee shops, hotels and rental cars in 70 cities Spirit flew to. Every airline job carries 3 more on its back.

40,000 people out of work because of one woman’s moronic crusade against the market.

And the math ain’t mathing.

Spirit abandoned 90 routes during the death spiral. Fares on those routes are up 14% on average. Oakland to Newark: $135 to $288. Fort Myers to San Juan: $92 to $219. Kansas City to Newark up 66%.

That’s reality. Not some BS number from a “study.”

So @SenWarren tell me how this saves the consumer money?

Cheap carriers in a market drop fares 21% across the board. Southwest did this in the 90s and saved Americans $68 BILLION over 20 years.

Warren killed it. That’s what moronic politicians led by socialism do.

Then with her own blind arrogance, she tweeted Spirit’s collapse is “a Biden win for flyers.”

A win.

14,000 people are reading termination letters tonight.

And she’s taking credit.

This is socialism in 2026.

A senator who’s never made payroll thinks she knows how to run a market better than the people who own and work in the company.

She saved you a billion on imaginary paper.

She cost you ten times that in real life.

She didn’t protect consumers from anything.

14,000+ will go from working to welfare.

She will make sure to blame billionaires, hardworking tax payers, AI, capitalism and whatever monster they will make up tomorrow hiding under your bed.

Higher taxes. Fewer jobs. More expensive everything.

She called it a win. I hope you enjoy winning.

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

🎯

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.

Cette phrase change tout.

L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?

Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.

Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.

Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.

Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.

L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.

Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.

Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.

Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.

Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.

La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.

Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.

Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.

La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

If you're under 53 years old, you have never once been alive while a human was farther than 250 miles from Earth. Tonight, four astronauts are heading 252,000 miles out. That's a thousand times farther than any person has gone in your lifetime.

The 250-mile ceiling is where the International Space Station floats. Every astronaut since December 1972 has been stuck in that zone. Spacewalks, science experiments, cool photos from orbit, sure. But nobody left the neighborhood.

The last crew to go farther was Apollo 17. December 1972. Nixon was president. The internet didn't exist. Cell phones were 11 years away. The youngest member of that crew is now 90 years old.

The farthest any human has ever been from Earth is 248,655 miles. The Apollo 13 crew set that number in 1970, and they didn't mean to. Their oxygen tank blew up, and the emergency route home took them farther out than anyone before or since. Tonight's crew will break that record on purpose.

And the crew itself. Victor Glover becomes the first Black astronaut to leave Earth's neighborhood. Christina Koch becomes the first woman. Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian fighter pilot, becomes the first non-American to do so. When they come home, they'll slam into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, faster than any human has ever traveled.

The Moon's south pole has ice. Water ice, sitting in craters so deep that sunlight hasn't hit them in billions of years. A 2024 NASA study found way more of it than anyone expected. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which gives you rocket fuel, breathable air, and drinking water, all made on the Moon instead of hauled up from Earth. George Sowers at Colorado School of Mines calculated that Moon-made fuel could shave $12 billion off a single trip to Mars. The Moon is a gas station on the road to Mars.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week a $20 billion plan to build a permanent base at the South Pole over the next seven years, with landings every six months. China is developing its own lunar lander and spacesuit, aiming for a crewed landing by 2030. The Artemis program has burned through $93 billion so far, and the first actual surface landing is penciled in for 2028. There's a real question of who gets there first this time around.

Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 as part of Apollo 17. He's 90. Asked about it this week, he sounded pretty relaxed. "Mars is attainable," he said. "We're humans. That's what we've always done."

[Alex Banks @thealexbanks]

For context, the entire U.S. venture capital industry invested $170 billion into startups in all of 2023.

OpenAI just raised 65% of that in one round.

[Tony Fadell @tfadell]

PMs don’t just ship features. They kill them. Shipping isn’t the job. Shipping the right product is. A great PM doesn’t fall in love with the roadmap. They fall in love with the problem and have the guts to say: This isn’t solving it. This adds complexity. This doesn’t matter. Every feature, setting, UI, element should fight to exist.

At Nest, we had one rule:
If you can’t explain why it matters, it doesn’t ship.

You had to tell us the why.
The reason a real person would care.
That one rule killed dozens of features.

[Simon Willison @simonw]

I had some fun pulling OpenAI's mission statement out of their IRS tax filings from 2016 to 2024, loading them into a git repo with fake commit dates and then taking a look at the diffs https://t.co/szaVcl1K15

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

when you realize that matrix called the bad guys "agents"

and 25 years later we literally invented them

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

This isn’t understood by enough people

Try to be useful to your fellow man, by creating some product or service, and we all win.

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

@brianhartsock thanks @brianhartsock!! so thankful for you letting us serve you in the early days. we learned a ton about data edge cases and improved our algos substantially. very grateful. 🙏

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

Headed to San Francisco on United. 😍 Starlink!! Ty @elonmusk!

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

AWS us-east-1 outage RCA… TL;DR a distributed DNS automation race condition occurred and the net result was an empty DynamoDB record https://t.co/W7jacs3qIf

[FBI Salt Lake City @FBISaltLakeCity]

We are asking for the public's help identifying this person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University.
1-800-CALL-FBI
Digital media tips: https://t.co/K7maX81TjJ

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

https://t.co/olAIWXnVCJ

[Paul Graham @paulg]

A study of 1452 undergrads at Northwestern and Michigan between 2023 and 2025 found that 88% pretended to hold more left wing views than they actually had in order to succeed socially or academically.

[benahorowitz.eth @bhorowitz]

We are outta Delaware and now in Nevada https://t.co/iY9PCA06hY We’re Leaving Delaware, And We Think You Should Consider Leaving Too | Andreessen Horowitz @JoeLombardoNV

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

@dvassallo roger. congrats!!!

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

The road ends here. Let’s go!! 🏀

[Erik Carlin @ecarlin]

It is so insightful to see the quality of the people behind DOGE and the real problems they are solving. A MUST watch.

[Bret Baier @BretBaier]

My interview with the @elonmusk and the @DOGE team tonight on #SpecialReport