Comment by tomrod
16 days ago
Or make the transportation free, then you don't have to worry about policing infractions and instead spend the low effort policing money on cleaning, security, and improvement.
16 days ago
Or make the transportation free, then you don't have to worry about policing infractions and instead spend the low effort policing money on cleaning, security, and improvement.
There's an argument that making people pay a fare improves cleanliness and security to an extent. I don't know if there are studies about it. But it's a persuasive argument.
I don’t find this claim persuasive in the least. I could just as easily assert without evidence that fees reduce cleanliness because patrons feel they’ve prepaid for their messes to be cleaned up, and security because resources that could be applied to safety and reducing crimes against patrons are used to enforce fare collection and secure methods of payment instead.
For a first order argument, yes, because people won't use free very often.
But if the collected fares are paying for enhanced police brutality or other deleterious second-order system behavior, it's not so cut and dry.
> But it's a persuasive argument.
Persuasive to what type of people?
Even to a lefty liberal like me. But I'm open to data that, actually, it'll turn out fine.
What doesn't work is laws that aren't enforced. Either enforce them or repeal them.
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People who understand budget constraints. Economics applies even outside of capitalism and democratic states.
At that point just make separate no fee, low fee, and high fee train cars with varying levels of poor people and/or cleanliness.
The class system… such a classic!
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A fellow aficionado of German trains, I see.
Ah yes, a caste system on tracks. That will surely work
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This is a great way to destroy public transit!
The plan is to let anyone on the subway, with no fares. It turns out that the violent, unstable people who make public spaces unwelcoming are disproportionately represented among those who cannot pay $2.50 for a fare. So they scare off regular transit riders who mode shift to something else. It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare, so it's financially and logistically impossible to actually keep it safe. Then your transit ridership tanks and people who hate funding transit can declare the whole thing a giant waste of money and any new funding dies politically because now there's no public ridership constituency left.
Nobody cares about the revenue gained from $2.50 fares. What matters is the tiny amount of resistance that offers to the small number of people who are largely responsible for making public transit unwelcoming.
> It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare
Are you making a case that a violent person, who ignores the stringent laws of society against violence, will diligently follow the laws of society requiring $2.50 prior to riding public transport?
LOL
It means you can kick out an unstable person who has not paid $2.50 before they become violent.
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Your argument is like saying I won't put a basic privacy lock on my gym locker because, you know, a creep wanting to sift through my things is going to do it anyway.
There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim. If a transit system insists on fares, it is likely they are watching out for fare dodgers which increases the risk of getting caught even before the offender gets a chance to offend.
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Ah, yes, the cost of the price is rarely considered. Think of the money society would save just in not having to pay up for the payment system!
There is too much communism in this sentence.
I take your comment in the sardonic humor it conveys, hopefully it matches your intent.
The robber barons built libraries. Yes, it took some heat off of their reputation, but, they weren't idiots and neither were the people for whom they were driving wages down or driving prices up. They and municipal orgs of the time and other civic minded groups built libraries and schools because society is better off have more education. Capitalism, done right, actually can have good outcomes.
In a similar vein, healthcare makes people healthier as a general outcome. "Socialized medicine" (more properly understand of as healthcare as a publicly-provided good) enables a more healthy population -- business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
Public transportation in dense areas should be seen similarly. More efficient, lower pollution when expanded and widely available, easier to police, less of the nasties like PM2.5 from tires and asphalt, less road deaths, and so forth.
> Capitalism, done right, actually can have good outcomes
Elon Musk and the whole capital serving US government is not a good outcome.
There was a fun take on it on r/comics recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1x4toay/the_day_all...
> business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
As we can see now - capitalism would prefer "stupid", way productive robots running 24/7 in a dark warehouses to a healthier, more productive population. Lighting savings are already cover most of difference (/s but only so slightly).
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Or fund it fully through taxes, like roads, schools, etc...
I thought we were making it free? Are you paying for this idea since it is going to be free to me? Where and when do you sign up to pay for it so it can be free to me?
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A lot of roads have tolls. Don’t forget more specific taxes like gas taxes or vehicle registration and sales taxes.
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Or you know run it as a public service like the roads. We are able to do that without enslaving road maintenance employees.