From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: uk.misc
Subject: Re: Transport subsidies - Was: Car Parking
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 93 16:46:18 GMT
Distribution: uk
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

snail@lsl.co.uk writes:
> In article <2T6uwB14w165w@mantis.co.uk>, mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
> > in the real world there are vanishingly few people who have *no* money,
> > and those were the people you were arguing would be out of luck in the free
> > market.  It's also the case that those few who have *no* money are just as
> > stiffed by the current subsidised road setup.
>    
> Obviously you live in a different world than I. *no* money maybe, but so
> little money as to be equivalent. I think most people would rate the growing
> numbers of homeless people as having very little or no money, interms of the
> fact they are trapped in their situation.

So if you were a homeless person with very little money, which do you think
you would have more chance of affording: an unsubsidised free-market bus
fare, or a Ford Fiesta and petrol to use on the "free" road?

> > In spite of the arguing which has gone on, I have yet to see much concrete
> > evidence that transport will be more expensive (in terms of how much time
> > you'll have to work to be able to afford to travel a distance x) under a fr
> > market. 
> 
> Lets take a simple case. It's been said before, by some on the net, that sinc
> most of us are in favour of paying taxes, then surely we'd give this money to
> charity out of the goodness of our hearts if we weren't taxed, and that also
> since we would, we must be a good example of what the rest of the country wou
> do.
> 
> Neither is true, not even the first part of that, it is against human
> nature to disadvantage yourself. People might not like admitting that fact, b
> I'm just being a realist.

Er, what does this have to do with subsidised road travel?

> The second point that just because we'd do it means the rest of the country
> would do it, is sorely missing the point. The fact that we are on the net
> (not to be elitist) says something about the type of people we are and the
> educational and intellectual backgrounds we have and why we might choose to
> donate money to various organisations. Regrettably most of society in this
> country doesn't have this background and would disagree strongly (the fact
> that the various bi/trans/gay sexual groups exist on the net is good proof of
> this, I suspect the various insults these people get would go up enormously
> if everyone had access). I'm not trying to be elitist, and if the wording I'v
> used comes out that way it accidental. I'm not very good at writing things
> like this. I think you'd find the average person in the street may think it's
> a good idea to donate to charities, but when it comes to parting with the
> cash, it isn't so easy.

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.

It then comes down to who you trust more -- a bunch of politicians who may
(as you point out) have been "bought", or the general public.  I trust the
general public more.

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

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.

But again, what does this have to do with subsidised roads?
 
> As a counterpoint: I've yet to see any argument to say that transport costs
>                    would stay the same or decrease as a result of a free
>                    market. Markets charge *what they think they can get away
>                    with*, not a price which represents the cost of production
>                    plus a reasonable profit.

Right.  But in markets where there is free competition, the profit margins
are small.  Markets charge too much when there are cartels and other
non-free-market elements.

For example, look at the IBM PC compatible market (free) and compare it with
the Apple Macintosh market (restricted).

The problem is that there are very few truly free markets around.

>                                           In the case of roads, the profit
>                    should simply be to keep the roads going, ie: NO
>                    SHAREHOLDERS, infrastructure is important, too important t
>                    let a few companies bugger it up.

Surely if it's too important to let a few companies bugger it up, it's even
more dangerous to let a single government bugger it up?  So you're actually
arguing in favour of having lots of companies, so no single entity or cartel
can ruin the entire network.

Whilst the utopian ideal may be to have a government which operates the rail
network at cost price, I see no evidence to suggest that any country has ever
achieved this ideal -- and plenty have tried.

Perhaps what you haven't realized is that I have no objection to the *ideals*
of socialism; I just don't believe it can ever work.  If I did, I'd be a
socialist.  Centralizing things has historically always been a recipe for
disaster.  I'm in favour of decentralizing, encouraging free markets,
breaking cartels, removing subsidies, and reducing the amount of government.

Increasingly, I find myself concluding that this country is rather larger
than can reasonably be run by a single government.  *Any* single government. 
That government just has to be too big in order to function, and is hence be
too inefficient and unresponsive.  The fact that the governments of the USSR
and USA ever achieved anything is little short of a miracle.

> I can just see the followups coming in with <<define reasonable>>. Well for
> starters, the City doesn't make reasonable profits, usually.

I take it you refer to those who buy and sell shares, currencies and the
like.  You needn't worry, their days are numbered.  There exists software
which can perform better than any human at predicting stock market
fluctuations; it isn't in widespread use, as people don't trust it yet. But
inevitably, human speculators will be replaced by computers. Once they're all
replaced, people will observe that there are still regular stock market
crashes, as that's the way chaotic systems work.  Sooner or later, they'll
work out that it's stupid to have a bunch of computers (or humans) randomly
ruining millions of people and enriching their owners in the process.

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.


mathew

Newsgroups: uk.misc