Chapter 396 The two giants collide hard
What has the most cars on the roads of the Stars and Stripes? It has to be a big truck, running down the street with its own toilet house. The Stars and Stripes are known as the 'Nation on Wheels', where the wheels are the wheels of big trucks. Most of the logistics are counted on it.
All the people who came to China were most shocked by the high-speed rail in China, if nothing else, because most of the people in the Stars and Stripes had never seen the high-speed rail at all, and they didn't know what it was!
Most of the Stars and Stripes are not suitable for high-speed rail, firstly, due to the low overall population density and the fact that intra-city transportation is dominated by private cars and highway networks, while long-distance transportation is dominated by airplanes. So, high-speed rail is not so important to them.
Of course, high-speed rail also has benefits, such as large transportation volume, cheap freight, etc., and many people in the Stars and Stripes country have proposed to build high-speed rail in China, but this is really too difficult for the Stars and Stripes.
You must know that the Stars and Stripes is a federal country, the implementation of decentralization, high-speed rail investment is large, compared with the highway often serves a larger geographical scale, more need for government coordination and unity, but in the Stars and Stripes country, the state government, the federal government, and the local government each have their own powers, not the relationship between the upper and lower levels, so it is difficult to coordinate the high-speed rail construction route.
Moreover, the legal system of the Stars and Stripes attaches great importance to individual interests, and during the construction of the California high-speed rail back then, it was because several farmers in central California sued the California High-Speed Rail Authority to the state court and won the lawsuit, so the California high-speed rail was almost unable to be built at that time!
The most important point is that the Stars and Stripes railway system is quite special, like China, they mainly rely on freight to make profits, and the degree of passenger losses is much greater than that of China, and in order to preserve rail passenger transportation, the Stars and Stripes government established Amtrak, a state-owned enterprise, to operate railway passenger transportation decades ago. However, because the profitability of railway operations depends on freight, the technical specifications such as the Stars and Stripes Nation's railway signaling system and speed limit are all set according to the freight forward, and the trucks always have the right of first passage, so the Amtrak company is more like a beggar, and has no right to adjust the railway specifications and give priority to passenger services, which makes it more difficult for the Stars and Stripes to transform the existing rail routes than any other country. As a result, although the Stars and Stripes railway network is very developed, it is a backward old-fashioned railway, inefficient and expensive, so trucks are still the best choice.
In the Stars and Stripes, truck drivers are a very attractive profession, first of all, they have a high income, and they belong to the group of people with high incomes in the Stars and Stripes. After graduating from college, many young female students in the Stars and Stripes country find a truck driver to be their boyfriend, just to run around the country for free.
Most of the trucks in the Stars and Stripes have housing, and the car behind the front of the car is a small room with bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and everything. In the Stars and Stripes, looking at a beautiful woman sitting next to an old driver, don't be surprised, people are exchanging cannons for travel. There are also many such girls on the Sichuan-Tibet line in China.
In the process of checking the car, Xiao Peng also opened his eyes: the first thing that shocked him was that the truck drivers of the Stars and Stripes Country were really awesome! Even in the face of the police's car inspection and the military's joint car inspection, he dared not hesitate to take out his gun and confront him, prohibiting the police from coming forward to check the car. All unified muzzles!
Xiao Penggang was sighing, this Stars and Stripes country is a dish to cook, this truck driver dared to pull out a gun and point it at the police, a man in a suit gave an order, and all the soldiers were directly loaded with guns, which was the rhythm of direct killing? Sure enough, they were stunned and afraid of being scared, and they were afraid of dying, and a group of soldiers went directly up and disarmed all the truck drivers with weapons and pushed them to the ground, and handed them over to the police to check whether they had dangerous items on them. But they did not open the carriage, but waited on the sidelines. This made Xiao Peng very incomprehensible.
Xiao Peng and the others were blocked behind and couldn't move forward, so the four of them could only get together to smoke and watch the excitement. JT looked bitter: "It's over." β
Xiao Peng was stunned: "Are they here to arrest you?"
JT smiled wryly and shook his head: "I still have a small packet of marijuana in my bag, so I won't get into trouble, right?"
Chris smiled and shook his head: "Don't be nervous, this is Missouri, it's not even to Kansas, and your THC-free medical marijuana here is not illegal." β
This is also a feature of the Stars and Stripes, each state has different laws, take marijuana as an example, there are only nine states in the entire Stars and Stripes that are completely illegal for marijuana, including Indiana, West Virginia, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idava, Utah, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
And now their state of Missouri, where they are located, has legalized the medical use of THC-free marijuana, and there are eleven such states in the Stars and Stripes, which can be understood as a compromise between the local government and marijuana advocates.
There are also states that have a 'turn a blind eye' towards marijuana, and the government's attitude is 'marijuana is not worth the time and resources of the police to catch it', and generally it doesn't matter if it is within a certain amount, and it has to be managed outside a certain amount, just like New York, California, Nevada, and other places.
There are only four states in the entire Stars and Stripes that have fully legalized marijuana, that is, Peanut Stew, Oregon, Colorado and Alaska.
Chris looked ahead: "I really don't think that the DHS people will come to catch drug trafficking, Xiao, I suspect that you are right, someone really smuggled the nuclear bomb to the mainland of the Stars and Stripes, otherwise how could there be such a big battle?"
Xiao Peng heard it: "DHS?
Influenced by foreign film and television movies, when it comes to the intelligence agencies of the Stars and Stripes, the first thing that comes to people's minds is the CIA and the FBI, but in fact, in front of DHS, those two are 'little guys'. DHS is the Department of Homeland Security of the Stars and Stripes, and it is a super department established after 911, which is formed by the merger of 22 federal agencies, including the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Planning Bureau, and the General Customs Administration! It is mainly responsible for counterterrorism, improving the ability to respond to and deal with emergencies, preventing biological, chemical and nuclear terrorist attacks, handling intelligence from the FBI and the CIA, and so on, and so on, and the amount of intelligence they themselves handle is more than ten times that of the CIA! That is the super department. The things they deal with are definitely super important things.
Chris looked left and right: "The problem is that we can't go if we want to. β
Xiao Peng stretched out his head to see, good guy, the traffic jam was blocked for several kilometers, and he couldn't see the edge at a glance, but Xiao Peng found that a large number of police forces were used to control truck drivers, but all the cars were not opened.
"Why don't they open the car door yet? Check how they want, let the road open first!" Xiao Peng said indignantly, these police forces obviously focused on those big trucks, they stopped the big trucks but did not check, so that Xiao Peng and these small car drivers were stuck in place and suffered!
Looking at Xiao Peng's angry look, Chris explained: "If they don't negotiate with the truckers' union, who would dare to touch those trucks without direct evidence?"
After Xiao Peng heard this, he suddenly realized, yes, there is a super behemoth standing behind these truck drivers: the Stars and Stripes Truck Drivers Union!
In the trade unions in China, everyone feels as if the trade union cadres have nothing to do, just organize a movie tour or something like that. But this is not the case in the Stars and Stripes, where the trade unions are one of the most important cornerstones of their society, and if you go to the Stars and Stripes and want to do something, you must first join the union; Without the union, you can't do anything.
And the Truckers' Union is one of the strongest unions in the Stars and Stripes! Now the truck drivers union has almost become the majority shareholder of the three major automobile companies in the Stars and Stripes------ because the three major automobile companies owe too much money to the unions, the benefits that the unions want, the benefits that the unions want, the treatment that the trade unions want, and so on, the three major automobile companies cannot give, because the unions are too strong, those businessmen turn back and owe the unions a lot of debts, you think, the trade unions continue to put forward higher requirements, entrepreneurs have more and more debts, and finally can only take shares to top, according to this development, the three major automobile companies in the Stars and Stripes countries can become enterprises owned by the whole peopleγγγγγγ
Because the Stars and Stripes Union is too strong, so strong that sometimes Xiao Peng feels pitiful for those businessmen, such as NBA labor negotiations, NFL labor negotiations, writers' union negotiations, etc., etc., those team owners can't always say okay, since we can't negotiate, then let's let the NBA go bankrupt? Finally, we have to accept the conditions of the NBA Players' Union.
In Western countries, the biggest headache for bosses is really the trade unions, which are on strike for a variety of reasons: there was a strike by bus drivers in Maple Leaf because the price of oil has risen, and the fare has risen, and passengers are bullied by the driver and conductor because they are not willing to pay more, so they go on strike; there is also a strike by models on the grounds that the heel is too high; and a company worker in Gaul goes on strike on the grounds that the boss can only speak Englishγγγγγ
But when it comes to it, the most popular strike in the world has to be Gaul, and the reasons for this are even more varied: the Stars and Stripes are fighting Iqra, a strike, a building is going to be closed, a strike, a restaurant that workers love to go to is closing, a strike, a strike, and the shadow of the trade unions is behind it. There is also a slip of the tongue in Gaul, which is called: work in the spring, vacation in the summer, strike in the autumn, and celebrate the festival in the winterγγγγγγ
The Stars and Stripes trade unions are not as as those in Gaul, but they are even more terrible here, and the unions have become giant-level existences! Take the truck drivers' union as an example, they eat the east and eat the west, collect membership dues from the truck drivers every year, and earn commissions from the people they serve, and they are rich and flowing! And they still have votes in their hands, and they have money and electoral power, who dares to mess with them?
DHS is fierce, and they don't dare to mess around when they encounter the truck drivers' union, otherwise the party behind them can't afford to carry this big black cauldron!
If the ballot is not given to you, I will ask you if you are afraid?