From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Subject: Re: Transport subsidies - Was: Car Parking
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:16:31 GMT

In article <VFsywB32w165w@mantis.co.uk> mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk> writes:
>OK.  So let's compromise.  Have government decide how much people are going to
>donate, and let the people decide which charities to donate it to.

	How?  Can you put more flesh on this, please?  OK, so the government
says "We have #X billion to spend", how do we, the people, decide how much
goes to the NHS?  And does it go to the NHS to spend as the NHS sees fit,
or do we get to spend some on GPs, some on teaching hospitals, etc., and
who decides on the split?  Annual referendums ["Allocate percentages to
the following areas -- Defence, Education, Health, ....	  Indicate how you
want your Defence expenditure to be allocated between (a) Army, (b) Navy,
(c) Air Force.  How much of (a) should be spent on (i) Northern Ireland,
(ii) ....  How much of (ai) should go on paying informers ...."]?

	(I know you were talking specifically about charities in the first
instance, but later you seem to be thinking rather of general expenditures,
and in any case the same problems of detail versus broad sweep arise with
charities.)

>For instance, I don't think the general public would choose to close the coal
>mines.  I don't think they'd choose to spend money on nuclear power.

	In what circumstances?  *If* the electricity suppliers decided not
to buy any more coal, then how and why do we *not* close the coal mines?
To keep the coal mines open, you have to force the hand of coal *buyers*.
This may or may not be a Good Thing, but it doesn't seem quite to square
with the rest of your argument.

>								       I do
>think they'd spend money on the NHS, and not on the Channel Tunnel.

	Yes, but how much?  There seems to be general agreement that the
NHS (a) is underfunded, and (b) is out of managerial control.  Solving
(b) might well solve a large part of (a);  how do we, the public, go
about using our hold on the pursestrings to encourage this?  As regards
the Channel Tunnel, why do you think we wouldn't spend money on it?  We
already have, as private investors.  How do we co-ordinate the spending
into a strategy -- it's silly to spend money on the Channel Tunnel without
also spending money on high-speed rail links to our end of it, and vice
versa, but how do you tie these expenditures together?

>Also, you wouldn't get special interest groups -- like homeowners -- voting
>themselves more money.  They would have to convince the rest of us that they
>deserved it.

	I don't think that's the problem.  The real problem is that *nothing*
would get money until it became evident that there was a crisis.  Why should
universities ["idle layabouts"], sewers, prisons, mental patients, etc., get
any public subsidy?  Well, eventually, lots of sewers would collapse, lots
of prisoners would escape, and we would suddenly vote in large increases to
these areas -- but we would be lurching from crisis to crisis, and we would
be being perpetually lobbied by those trying to warn us of impending doom
in Cinderella areas.  We pay governments to look after these things for us;
we are all ready to criticise when they get it wrong, but I don't see any
real evidence that we want the responsibility ourselves.

>I'm not quite sure what will replace the stock market, but I really can't see
>that the present setup can continue for more than a decade or two.

	I think the maxim applied to the House of Lords applies here as
well -- it's the worst possible system, until you think of any other.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk