Quality and Quantity; Two Metrics, Equal Weight, Universal Value

I recently read an article in which was stated, "In the end, it's always about the money." Got me to thinking about sunk cost, WACC, return horizons, the thousands of qualitative metrics I have amassed over my first trimester of life, and the ways I have learned to quantify those metrics. The author was not necessarily pivoting back to ask for money in the typical sales pitch as this inherently corporeal and material world would have me believe off the top of my head. He was highlighting an "awareness" of money always being a necessary gear in the construct of stable growth and prosperity. Something he left out was the empirical data concerning the titans of industry with a vision of a better world. Titans like Andrew Carnegie who saw in a large sandbar created from the Gulf Stream the potential for a huge semi-tropical home and territory which ended up becoming the Cultural Center of not just the #unitedstates, #northamerica, or #latinamerica, but the entire #westernhemisphere. He saw the sunk cost (foundational cost) of building an entire railroad to Key West, FL. He saw the qualitative return in creating an entire civilization and thus was able to undertake the alchemy attempts of old and transmuted that monetary investment into BILLIONS of people's lives created, improved, and sustained already over a century and with an outlook stretching millennia. If you ask me in my humble, educated, and experienced opinion, connecting people physically has always been a requirement of #integration, #teamwork, #nationbuilding, #family, and #community #strengthening. We see the virtual world as a way to connect but must also realize that somethings like steel, iron, and magnets need to be used to bring us closer to one another as individuals. It is the physical proximity to another that makes us human and forces us to reconnect with the human in each of us. These foundational costs may be extensive, but the #legacy of laying the #foundation for a reinvigoration of the literal #heartland of the #unitedstatesofamerica for many #millennia to come should be comfortingly and positively exorbitant in assured growth and prosperity. From all walks of life: the highest pinnacle of wealth overlooking a new Mighty Amero River cutting through the #heartland from a 4th floor personal balcony to the lowest basement of a soup kitchen in a rebuilding #tornado ravaged town. The economic benefits of creating the infrastructure to transport ALL of our citizens, staples, engineering products, and luxury goods to one another will fill the civic lauders, increase our people's intelligence, and create a foundation on a bedrock stretching back millennia across the largest ocean ever seen in recorded history and influxed with long-lost siblings from a parting of ways back in the days of our prehistoric ancestors in Mesopotamia. When you think on rail realize that an i-beam and t-beam (types of steel used in rail but really we need maglev or hyperloop) can be purchased by an individual, civic organization, or billionaire and transversed across a distance to connect all of us. I see the Union Station of a hundred years ago sitting in disrepair from my windows every day and envision a tech promenade with a Microsoft Store, Apple Store, open-air botanical gardens, and citizen-engagement classrooms sponsored by the behemoths of the modern globalized world and connected by billionaires based right inside this same town investing in a new passenger high-speed rail network linking it to another northward city with an already rich history of cooperatively sheltering those who the world has ravaged, and extending the influence of that culture to allow for the prosperous liberty of all. I am also submitting that the singular event which allowed China to grow and prosper to such an extent was the creation of the Unesco World Heritage Site, The Grand Canal. The entirety of #northamerica can be reborn democratically and be the preeminent nation of the globe in another century by the creation of a similar canal built through the #heartland of our #unitedstatesofamerica.