7/26/2007 2:04:12 AM

hooksaw = that wlfkpck4life bitch or whatever that guys name was?

That guy was as intellectually void as hooksaw is. I bet they are the same person.

7/26/2007 7:46:17 AM

Doesn't he still post?

It's probably Wlfpack2k or whatever. The lawyer with the colossal ego and the imaginary friends.

[Edited on July 26, 2007 at 8:41 AM. Reason : .]

7/26/2007 8:40:58 AM

^ I thought that was Oeuvre or however you spell it?

[Edited on July 26, 2007 at 10:04 AM. Reason : fucking French with their vowell movements!]

7/26/2007 10:03:26 AM

FYI, Bald Hate:

hooksaw = hooksaw

I have one username and this is it, get it?

7/27/2007 8:05:21 PM

A golden oldie.

8/23/2007 7:28:35 AM

8/23/2007 12:46:05 PM

bump by request

8/20/2010 1:20:14 AM

Quote :

" Boy, 10, accused in botched Metro robbery remains in custody A 10-year-old boy accused of shooting himself in the arm during a botched Metro bus robbery will remain in custody, a court commissioner ordered Thursday. By Jennifer Sullivan, Seattle Times staff reporter Wide-eyed, chubby-faced and standing just 4 feet 1, the 10-year-old boy walked into a crowded juvenile courtroom Thursday nursing a bullet wound and facing criminal charges that seemed to belie his young age. But King County Deputy Prosecutor Julie Kline described the boy as a "danger to the community and a danger to himself," someone who is no stranger to Seattle police. Since July 2008, when he was 8, the boy has been investigated 13 times for crimes that include theft, robbery with assault and robberies with a weapon, Detective Benjamin Hughey told Superior Court Commissioner Julia Garratt. He has never been charged, according to court records. Now the boy and his two half- brothers — ages 12 and 14 — were in juvenile court, accused of participating in a botched armed robbery Tuesday night aboard a Metro Transit bus that ended with the 10-year-old accidentally shooting himself in his right arm. According to Seattle police, the three confronted a 17-year-old boy on Metro's Route 7 bus shortly before 8 p.m. The 10-year-old ordered the older boy to empty his pockets while his half-brothers surrounded the victim, police said. The 17-year-old told police that the 10-year-old unzipped the older boy's backpack and reached inside. The 17-year-old had a .22-caliber semi-automatic handgun in the backpack and he was afraid the younger boy was reaching for the gun. The older boy grabbed the 10-year-old in a bear hug and during the struggle a gunshot went off inside the backpack, wounding the younger boy, police said. Initially, it was unclear whom the backpack belonged to. Fearing that the other boys would reach for the gun, the 17-year-old grabbed the backpack and ran out of the bus, police said. He was assaulted by the other boys, police said. Police found the 17-year-old at a nearby shoe store and recovered the handgun, with the serial number scratched off, in his backpack. Police said there were three bullet holes in the bag. When police questioned the 10-year-old, he told officers that he knew the older boy was carrying a handgun and identified the weapon as a .22-caliber handgun, police said. The Times isn't naming the 10-year-old and his half-brothers because they're being prosecuted as juveniles. During Thursday's juvenile-court detention hearing the 10-year-old and his half-brothers were called into court one by one as their mother, Monisha Ford, sat on the end of the defense table consulting with each child's lawyer. Ford grew increasingly angry at police, Garratt and Kline and accused them of "railroading" her sons. Ford had agreed that the two older boys could remain in juvenile detention but asked that her youngest son be released to stay at her aunt's house, said Elinor Cromwell, the youngest boy's lawyer. "I just want him to come home so I can take care of him," Ford told Garratt. The boy's father also offered to care for the child if he was released to his custody. But Kline opposed the release of any of the boys. She criticized Ford's parenting skills and said that the mother has told police that she cannot control her 10-year-old son. Prosecutors said the three are also suspects in a string of recent South Seattle robberies. Police said that the three boys belong to Rainier Valley's Down With The Crew gang. Garratt ordered that all three boys remain at the King County Youth Service Center until court hearings next week. The boys were ordered held for charges that include investigation of attempted robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm. Kline said charges against the three will be filed on Friday After the hearing, Ford and her family yelled and cursed at reporters, demanding they "tell the truth" about the incident and questioned why the 17-year-old victim has not been prosecuted. The 17-year-old was not arrested, and it's unclear whether he will be charged for having the handgun. Because of his age, a special hearing will be held to determine whether the 10-year-old will stand trial. According to state law, children between the ages of 9 and 11 "are presumed to be incapable of committing crime" unless a judge determines that the youth has the "sufficient capacity to understand the act or neglect, and to know that it was wrong." "We have to show that he should have known it was wrong," said Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff for King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012673873_boyshot20m.html "

i still ride buses around seattle, most every day. i take my kid on the bus too. but i wouldn't ride the #7 after working hours. its just like anything else. some parts of town you dont go after dark.

i rode that #7 once, during the day. there was some nasty junkie, a white dude, in the next seat over who apparently had shit himself. everyone was making faces, and some well-dressed black woman sprayed him with cologne as she was getting off the bus. lets just say the #7 route is "colorful". it's far-and-away the highest crime route, second only to the #192 express from Federal Way to Seattle. again, it's the location: Federal Way is Washington's version of Fayetteville without all the good parts.






[Edited on August 20, 2010 at 1:44 AM. Reason : ]

8/20/2010 1:30:46 AM

I told a New Yorker that where I'm from, taking the bus is looked down upon. People see it as something that only poor people do. It's definitely like that in Charleston, a bit less in Raleigh because of the Wolfline.

He was baffled by that statement and said he'd never heard of that before. Even Bloomberg takes the subway to work.

8/20/2010 7:32:06 AM

MBTA crimes rising
June 28, 2010

Quote :

"You might want to hide your iPhone on public transit. MBTA officials say crime is on the rise on the transit system – and it's fueled by the latest generation of smart phones. Thefts especially are more common, up more than 40 percent since last year. Officials say smart phones are attractive to thieves because their SIM cards are replaceable and they fetch a high price at pawn shops or on the black market."

http://news.wbru.com/2010/06/mbta-crimes-rising/

Could a Public-Transit Boom Result in a Crime Boom?
October 23, 2008

Quote :

"A new light rail that links East St. Louis to the nearby suburbs is being blamed for bringing urban crime to the suburban shopping malls."

Quote :

"Ask virtually any store manager at the Saint Louis Galleria about shoplifting, and you'll invariably get two responses: One, it's out of control; and two, it's gotten exceedingly worse since August 2006, when MetroLink opened a stop just 500 yards from the high-end shopping center. In the first six months of this year, Richmond Heights police made 345 arrests at the mall. That's nearly double the number of arrests made in all of 2005, before MetroLink opened its Shrewsbury line."

Quote :

"There are obvious gains: environmental, less road congestion, fewer accidents, etc. But if St. Louis's experience is at all indicative, there might also be at least one unintended consequence worth thinking about."

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/could-a-public-transit-boom-result-in-a-crime-boom/

8/20/2010 7:35:41 AM

you

Quote :

"never"

fail to deliver

do ya?

8/20/2010 8:10:40 PM

Quote :

"I told a New Yorker that where I'm from, taking the bus is looked down upon ... something that only poor people do. He was baffled by that statement and said he'd never heard of that before. "

yeah, people dont understand that sentiment in large cities that actually have things to offer.

the buses are full of professionals and students here.

our metro moves over 100 Million riders per year. in 2007, there were precisely 28 citations for robberies or thefts. infintessimal.

for the sake of argument, lets say that number was grossly underreported, and there were 1000 that didnt get counted. even at that overinflated jacked up number, that would mean you'd have a 0.0001% chance of getting fucked with.

i have more of a chance of being assaulted by some batshit guntoting bible thumping Fox News watching methhead.

8/20/2010 8:31:41 PM

only poor ppl in Charlotte take the bus, but the lightrail is full of yuppies during the weekdays, party bros at night, and families on the weekend

8/20/2010 8:49:24 PM

True. The only problem with buses seems to be poor people. Maybe this is another reason we need to privatize the bus system. If we had special buses with Wifi and higher fares, yuppies might ride the bus and we wouldn't need to bankrupt the city building metro lines.

8/22/2010 11:54:30 AM

They're a problem to me, but you're only looking at half the equation. In all likelyhood the poor would be underserviced by public transportation if you privatized it.

Quote :

"If we had special buses with Wifi and higher fares, yuppies might ride the bus and we wouldn't need to bankrupt the city building metro lines."

It's doubtful, that's probably the reason that private companies don't start making metro lines here in Charlotte. Of course I'm sure you'll argue that there's unfair competition rather than a market that just doesn't exist. Hell even if I did ride the bus, I wouldn't save that much more money over driving my own car, you wouldn't really be able to raise rates that much.

8/22/2010 1:46:43 PM

Private investors don't build metro lines for the same reason the Government should stop building them: they are an inefficient form of mass transit.

8/22/2010 5:22:02 PM

Well they don't do it with buses either, so my point still stands. And there was an article in the NY times several months back applauding how effective the Charlotte metro line was, but I'm sure you disagree.

8/22/2010 6:58:56 PM

Private Transportation Riddled with Crime:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/autos/1008/gallery.most_stolen_cars/index.html
Look at all the cars being stolen!

http://blog.motorists.org/traffic-tickets-are-big-business/
"Not including parking tickets, we can estimate that somewhere between 25 and 50 million traffic tickets are issued each year."
Criminals!

And don't even get me started on the road rage incidents. When will all these private transit woes be stopped?

8/22/2010 8:55:44 PM

^^ But they do. In fact, the private market even managed to offer mass transit when doing so is illegal. Just a few weeks ago I pointed out right here on this board what was happening with illegal microbus service in New York City. Just last week we hear about the operator of a bus line in Illinois being arrested for the privilege.

Here in America, the government is the only entity offering mass transit options because any attempt to compete against them is often illegal and always suppressed. If you hop a plane to Europe, however, you will find lots of private mass transit options, usually buses, but even some private passenger railroads. Go to Hong Kong and they are all private.

[Edited on August 23, 2010 at 12:55 PM. Reason : .,.]

8/23/2010 12:52:17 PM

Quote :

"If you hop a plane to Europe, however, you will find lots of private mass transit options, usually buses, but even some private passenger railroads. Go to Hong Kong and they are all private."

lower car ownership, difference in city structure and difference in overall culture probably have nothing to do with that, yep it's all big bad government

8/24/2010 12:03:40 AM

Kris, are you suggesting they don't have government in Europe? I sure didn't. At no point did I make any suggestion as to why different governments treat mass transit differently. My guess is that in Europe lower car ownership gives voters an incentive to care about the quality and efficiency of mass transit, which only private industry is capable of providing. Meanwhile, in America where only the poor ride mass transit but don't vote, mass transit is treated not as a means of transporting citizens, but as a public works project.

Such begs the question of why New Yorkers, which own fewer cars than even Europeans, so poorly manage their mass transit. I suspect it may be the same reason New York so poorly manages everything. Not all forms of government are effective, particularly for a region dominated by an electorate eager to serve perverse entrenched interests (Democrats).

[Edited on August 24, 2010 at 1:18 AM. Reason : .,.]

8/24/2010 1:08:57 AM

could be the other two things

8/24/2010 1:14:33 AM

I was going to say culture, but I couldn't figure out how to phrase it. Europeans just accept private ownership of things and place that Americans would never understand. Privatization of the airwaves, the post office, rivers and lakes, mass transit. Europe is just more culturally accepting of capitalism than America. I guess it is a product of their history, as public ownership has historically killed far more people in Europe than in America.

8/24/2010 1:22:54 AM

The fact that they live closer to where they work, the fact that their cities are geared towards public transportation, the fact that more live in the metro area, nothing obvious has any bearing when it comes to your supercapitalist rhetoric.

If you're so sure it will be successful, why hasn't anyone started a private bus company here in charlotte? We don't have one, and you seem certain it can provide a better and cheaper service.

8/24/2010 1:30:36 AM

Hahahaha this thread is perfect

Really illustrates the "thought process" of a fucking prison guard

8/24/2010 1:47:17 AM

Quote :

"why hasn't anyone started a private bus company here in charlotte"

"any attempt to compete against them is often illegal and always suppressed"

A Google search implies that any private citizen picking up passengers at a city bus stop faces a fine of $130 per offense.

The question is, why is it illegal in America and not elsewhere. I gave you my suggestions. What are yours?

[Edited on August 24, 2010 at 8:10 AM. Reason : .,.]

8/24/2010 7:57:48 AM

Quote :

" Even Bloomberg takes the subway to work. "

lol, what Bloomberg does is almost entirely symbolic, and hardly constitutes "taking the subway to work". Don't be fooled

8/24/2010 8:46:54 AM

Quote :

"any attempt to compete against them is often illegal and always suppressed"

There are private bus lines here, they just only carry college kids to downtown, because that's the only place that's profitable.

Quote :

"A Google search implies that any private citizen picking up passengers at a city bus stop faces a fine of $130 per offense. "

Why would a private bus line pick up at a city bus stop? Fedex can't use UPS dropboxes for thier packages, and they can't use US mailboxes either. That's stupid.
If you're going to start a private bus line, you'll have to pay for all associated costs, not just buy busses. Obviously the city isn't going to let you privately profit from city bus stops paid for by public tax dollars.

Quote :

"The question is, why is it illegal in America and not elsewhere."

Perhaps it's not as illegal as you think and it's just more unprofitable.

8/24/2010 9:17:20 AM

Quote :

"Why would a private bus line pick up at a city bus stop? Fedex can't use UPS dropboxes for thier [sic] packages, and they can't use US mailboxes either. That's stupid."

Because UPS and FedEx boxes are private property and city bus stops are and are on public property? Your analogy is imperfect, to say the least.

8/24/2010 2:29:38 PM

there are laws against stopping in a bus zone. it's not exactly top enforcement priority, but legally speaking you can not even stop your car at a bus stop and let someone in or out. much less have a for profit bus service and plan on using city stops.

I'm in a vanpool, operated by the same county metro authority that runs the buses. the van has the county metro symbol painted on it. Vanpool drivers are not even allowed to use the bus stops.

you people in Raleigh with your little CAT bus don't think much about it, but just try driving your car in a bus lane in a dense urban setting. you will get the beat down.

8/24/2010 2:52:56 PM

^ It's a good point but it's one that had occurred to me. Public-private partnerships are worked out all the time. Use of the public stops could be coordinated between public and private entities if those entities were motivated to do so.

[Edited on August 24, 2010 at 3:01 PM. Reason : See the NCLTG, which is public money that incentivizes students to attend private colleges. ]

8/24/2010 2:58:57 PM

Quote :

"If you're going to start a private bus line, you'll have to pay for all associated costs, not just buy busses. Obviously the city isn't going to let you privately profit from city bus stops paid for by public tax dollars."

You asked, then answered your own question. It is illegal to block traffic to load passengers, it is illegal to use designated bus stops, and the city owns the rest of the space as metered street parking, so it is not possible to reliably park there. So, as I said, the city has made it illegal to operate a private bus system. As such, that they don't exist here in Raleigh or Charlotte is not evidence. That they do exist in rare instances where the potential revenue manages to exceed the costs of operating illegally, such as New York, screams evidence to me.

Regions where legal private bus services exist, have governments that have made space for them, either by renting their bus stops out (Hong Kong), renting curb space for them to build their own bus stops (Britain), or privatized curb space for the store-front property owner to decide between parking or renting [often donating] for bus stops (Chile).

If you are interested in how these countries manage their private bus systems, everything I know came from the book Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit from the NCState Library.

[Edited on August 24, 2010 at 3:24 PM. Reason : .,.]

8/24/2010 3:04:58 PM

Quote :

"Because UPS and FedEx boxes are private property and city bus stops are and are on public property? Your analogy is imperfect, to say the least."

I can't set up a private business on public property.

Quote :

"Public-private partnerships are worked out all the time. Use of the public stops could be coordinated between public and private entities if those entities were motivated to do so."

Sure, and there could be now as well, but there isn't because there's just not a big enough market there.

Quote :

"Regions where legal private bus services exist, have governments that have made space for them, either by renting their bus stops out (Hong Kong), renting curb space for them to build their own bus stops (Britain), or privatized curb space for the store-front property owner to decide between parking or renting [often donating] for bus stops (Chile)."

So then we need to subsidize them? The roads they use are already subsidized. Why do I need to pay money to bus company owners just to make them a profit?

[Edited on August 24, 2010 at 6:19 PM. Reason : ]

8/24/2010 6:19:27 PM

^ Sweet Jesus. Have you ever heard of Centennial Campus at North Carolina State University?

[Edited on August 24, 2010 at 6:40 PM. Reason : Hell, even hot dog vendors often operate on public property. ]

8/24/2010 6:32:04 PM

Quote :

"So then we need to subsidize them? The roads they use are already subsidized. Why do I need to pay money to bus company owners just to make them a profit?"

C'mon Kris.... think

8/24/2010 6:35:00 PM

Quote :

"Hell, even hot dog vendors often operate on public property."

With permission.

[Edited on August 24, 2010 at 7:05 PM. Reason : ]

8/24/2010 7:05:46 PM

Quote :

"So then we need to subsidize them? The roads they use are already subsidized. Why do I need to pay money to bus company owners just to make them a profit?"

What subsidy? Prior to privatization, British bus lines, like the vast majority of government run transit, always ran at a loss. Now, they have more lines running denser schedules and the government reaps a profit from renting out curb space for bus-stops. Also, the roads are not subsidized at all, as if you'd never heard of fuel taxes, which almost always collect more revenue than is spent on the road network. Unlike city government run bus lines, private bus lines pay these taxes.

What gets me is that you knew most of this, yet you said it anyway. I can only conclude you are grasping for anything, in hopes no one will bother pointing out the obvious.

8/25/2010 1:16:45 AM

^^ So, this. . .

Quote :

"I can't set up a private business on public property."

Kris

. . .was wrong. QED. And it took you nearly an hour to come up with that trinket.

8/25/2010 1:31:52 AM

Quote :

"if you'd never heard of fuel taxes, which almost always collect more revenue than is spent on the road network"

That's just flat out wrong. Where did you get that information?

Quote :

"What gets me is that you knew most of this, yet you said it anyway."

I'm kind of upset you've just made something up. I knew that construction of roads didn't come from gas taxes alone.

Quote :

"was wrong."

More that it was obviously implied.

Quote :

"QED."

An english teacher took his first logic class eh? You can use that term when you stop using the false choice fallacy.

Quote :

"And it took you nearly an hour to come up with that trinket."

Reading your crap isn't really the first priority in my life. I thought that pointing out spelling errors was the doucheist thing you did, but no, calling me stupid for not being on TWW to immediately reply to your stupid crap takes the cake.

[Edited on August 25, 2010 at 10:06 AM. Reason : ]

8/25/2010 10:05:46 AM

Quote :

"That's just flat out wrong. Where did you get that information?"

Google "highway fund raid". It happens all the time. Gasoline tax revenues are often diverted to not build roads. True, it is perhaps just as common for general funds to be diverted to road construction, so without a deep analysis it isn't obvious whether on average fuel tax revenues cover all local, state, and federal road construction. So I exceeded my grasp for North America, where fuel taxes are abnormally low. But in Europe, there is no question that fuel taxes raise far more revenue than is spent on road construction. But whatever it is, private buses would actual reduce road subsidization, because they would actually pay the tax on diesel. As for subsidizing mass transit, subsidy is what we have now, where city and state governments funnel large sums of tax dollars to cover the massive losses of public bus companies which don't pay fuel taxes. Better to have a privatized system, as in Britain, where the bus industry pays for both fuel taxes and curb rights, getting rid of much of the subsidy.

[Edited on August 25, 2010 at 12:03 PM. Reason : .,.]

8/25/2010 11:56:51 AM

but again, you're not looking at the service they provide, we're back at square 1

you're only looking at half the equation. In all likelyhood the poor would be underserviced by public transportation if you privatized it.

also you cant assume things in europe will apply here

[Edited on August 25, 2010 at 1:20 PM. Reason : ]

8/25/2010 1:20:13 PM

And you can't assume they won't work here. Also, the evidence is against you. The poor want expanded bus service. When Britain privatized its bus system, the number of routes and frequency of service increased. Can you really suggest the poor would be unhappy if bus service went more places more frequently?

By my reasoning, the poor are most likely to be served in a private system, because while the poor lack political influence, and thus consideration in a public bus system, they do tend to both live in denser areas and are less likely to drive, making them far cheaper to service, causing competition between bus lines to focus in these areas.

This is why we have illegal minibus service in New York. The government refuses to offer bus service to an area because it is populated by poor immigrants with insufficient political power to lobby for service. As such, even under threat of arrest, private minibus service is fulfilling the poor's need for transportation. Political allocation of service allocates service to those with political power, which the poor do not have. Do you dispute this?

[Edited on August 25, 2010 at 2:50 PM. Reason : .,.]

8/25/2010 2:45:04 PM

Quote :

"Can you really suggest the poor would be unhappy if bus service went more places more frequently?"

The price could become prohibitive for them.

Quote :

"Do you dispute this? "

I dispute your attempt to apply small pieces of these larger and much different examples and the assumption that they would work in anywhere else they could be used.

8/25/2010 4:13:00 PM

Quote :

"The price could become prohibitive for them."

So you believe it is far better for them to not have service at all, due to a lack of political influence, than suffer high prices?

More to the point, why would prices be any higher under a private system than the public system? Yes, the public subsidies would go away, but provision of service gets substantially cheaper once the workforce becomes non-union and cheaper to maintain more efficient buses are imported. And wasteful routes that only existed for political reasons are scrapped and replaced with those that actually fulfill customer demands. Again, as occurred when Britain privatized. Fares did not change much, but ridership exploded once buses went where customers wanted to go.

Quote :

"I dispute your attempt to apply small pieces of these larger and much different examples and the assumption that they would work in anywhere else they could be used."

And I dispute your attempt to make assertions with no basis in either theory or reality to back them up. Why would the price become prohibitive? It has never occurred before, and no theory suggests why it would, but Kris wants us to take his word on it!

8/25/2010 4:31:45 PM

Quote :

"More to the point, why would prices be any higher under a private system than the public system?"

Private industry wouldn't be willing to suffer the losses that could come from providing affordable bus service. This is completely a possibility and you're acting like it isn't.

Quote :

"And I dispute your attempt to make assertions"

I've only asserted possibilities, you are trying your best to ignore reality and pick and choose from examples to sculpt what you want reality to be.

Quote :

"It has never occurred before"

You're making things up again.

8/25/2010 5:08:29 PM

Quote :

"Fares did not change much, but ridership exploded once buses went where customers wanted to go. "

do you have any links? I'm genuinely curious about this.

I've only looked a little so far. In London it seems the city government maintained some control over rates and routes:

Quote :

"In London, the only large city where passenger numbers are rising, services are controlled by the Mayor, Ken Livingstone. He sets fare levels and determines the frequency and quality of the service under contracts with bus companies. Passenger numbers are up 50 per cent in London since 2000. The average fare is the same in real terms as a decade ago. The capital’s bus service received £480 million in public subsidies last year. "

which is good but the rest of the UK where the industry was fully deregulated they didn't do quite as well?:

Quote :

"Since then fares have risen by 86 per cent above inflation, but the cost of motoring has remained stable. The total distance travelled by car in Britain since 1986 has increased by 50 per cent. "

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article752606.ece

8/25/2010 5:21:20 PM

Quote :

"Private industry wouldn't be willing to suffer the losses that could come from providing affordable bus service. This is completely a possibility and you're acting like it isn't."

But you are not giving any reasons for your assertions. Lots of private industries operate at losses, check out the airlines. Why would providing affordable bus service automatically mean fares are too low to cover costs? Why can't they just offer cheaper minibus service? I can't read your mind, so your single sentence assertions need at least another sentence defending it.

Quote :

"do you have any links? I'm genuinely curious about this."

I was introduced to such discussions by a talk given by Mike Munger from Duke University here on campus. For a summary, he suggested an econtalk podcast he gave specifically on this subject, where mention was made of several books on the subject, one I found in the campus library. It looked into various arrangements the world over, noting the fundamental problem of public monopolies (tends to ignore customers, plan routes and equipment along political expedience, tends to over staff, tends to overpay said staff, tend to operate deep public losses, etc) and the problems of privatized markets (potentially violent conflicts over curb-rights, a tendency to over-supply service, a tendency to suffer private losses, etc) and looked into various mechanisms to minimize their ill-effects.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/07/munger_on_the_p.html
Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit

[Edited on August 25, 2010 at 6:28 PM. Reason : .,.]

8/25/2010 6:23:02 PM

Well I just got done listening to the podcast.

He keeps asking "why don't they want to go back to the private system??"

I think Munger might be being a little disingenuous on how great the private system was:

[link]http://intrahttp://www.ing.puc.cl/siding/datos/public_files/profes/jcm_BCPZSCNSWHHCCXZ/Fare-Det-JEF-JCM-JTEP-REVISED-ENERO-06.pdf[/link]

Quote :

"2.2 Santiago, Chile In Santiago the market structure has evolved in a completely different manner (Fernández and De Cea, 1985; Fernández, 1994; Estache and Gómez-Lobo, 2005). Before transit was deregulated in 1979 the Chilean government had for decades operated a state-owned monopoly, described in Fernández and De Cea (1985) as a “public transport system with overcrowding problems and a low diversity of services, though spatial coverage and accessibility were reasonably good”. The main objective of deregulation was to ensure competition in the market and thereby encourage lower fares and higher quality of service with more diversity of offerings better adapted to demand. Public authorities believed that free entry and the consequent competition would be an incentive to production efficiency and cost reductions and would therefore lead to fare reductions, with only the most efficient operators able to survive. Such a scenario would also help in reducing pollution and congestion, both major problems in Santiago, as people shifted modes from cars to buses. With these logic in mind, the bus sector was liberalized in 1979 to allow free entry and the establishment by operators of new routes; freedom to set fares was added in 1983. Santiago bus companies have tended to be very small since then, with average firm size varying between 1.4 and 1.5 vehicles.1 A decade later almost none of the goals pursued by authorities had been achieved. According to Fernández (1994), “in 1989, after 11 years of applying the deregulation policy, the fleet of transport vehicles in Santiago had doubled (at the same time that transport capacity had been reduced) the fare had more than doubled in real terms negative externalities had significantly increased (traffic congestion, pollution and accidents) the cartel of operators had been strengthened, and the public had developed a totally negative opinion of the public transport system.” In the light of such poor results, it was decided to terminate the original liberalization experiment in 1991 and replace it with a concession system in which the transit authority imposed certain regulations regarding routes and frequencies, while tariffs would be determined by competitive tendering."

To be clear, I'm not saying that there aren't problems with the newer public system.

Both Munger and the host's biases are pretty clear when they start discussing how there should be a market for human organs. wow.

8/25/2010 8:08:01 PM

yeah, I don't this.

a similar thread would be something like, "Birds like shiny shit. . more at 11!"

usually, I at least expect ol' hooksaw to post something at least temporally relevant or current.

Not your best work, fella.

8/25/2010 10:38:56 PM