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Comment by triceratops

16 days ago

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.

    • > Even to a lefty liberal like me. But I'm open to data that, actually, it'll turn out fine.

      So conclusion before evidence?

      At least the founders had the foresight to codify innocent-until-proven-guilty.

      1 reply →

  • 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.