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Brian Ambrose
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| So how do we end up with traffic lights in the first place? |
Occasionally there are good reasons (as you suggested). But 80% of the time it's just someone's job to make sure the lights go in.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| In fact, this report is not mere anecdotal evidence |
Oh dear, an anecdote here and a request for a fact there!
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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Well the Bristol Lodekker was the result of both local municipialism and central govt. direction: The result was a very good post war public transport double decker, replicated under licence by Dennis and AEC, (on which half cab I took my test), althoiugh a litle noisy.
The conventional position is that Govt. intervention results in poor investment decisions.
Yet during the 50's and 60's engineering companies and their public transport companies customers enjoyed a stable relationship that produced innovative designs.
Why are you so anatgonistic to the likelihood of future govt. investement?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | Why are you so anatgonistic to the likelihood of future govt. investment? |
There is no such thing as government investment. There is only my forced investment at the point of a gun by you and your gang of thugs.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | Yet during the 50's and 60's engineering companies and their public transport companies customers enjoyed a stable relationship that produced innovative designs. |
As compared to what?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Isamael, I know it's hard for you to appreciate the point but these things go in cycles. In Britain, during the first half of the twentieth century a lot of talent went into the public sector (it was in the first glow of socialist idealism). They did quite a lot of good things. Unfortunately these things go in cycles so we spent the second half of the twentieth century having to get rid of a lot of it (and them).
Alas, most people (eg you and Groucho) are stuck forever in one or other half of the twentieth century. If the two of you privately comunicate you will eventually discover what tiny butterfly wings in your respective adolescences took you in one direction or the other. And Ishmael I pay full tribute to your ability to go Left and then Right in later life. It shows a greater maturity than Groucho obviously, but still not maturity.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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Instability.
It is a piece of conventional wisdom among 'small statists' that private investment by profit seeking private firms produces the best results.
Yet in unregulated markets fashions change rapidly, (and let's leave aside 'worthless investment' in trying to manipulate tastes and preferences), and they are subject to disruption by the business cycle, which can lead to over investment during periods of irrational exuberance followed by premature liquidation of assets before they have exhausted their productive potential.
The state can intervene in a number of ways to create a stable and investment-benign environment, which avoids the disruption to capital goods producers, (explained uncontroversially by the accelerator theory), and which can lead to sustained and uninterrupted R+D.
Furthermore in the case of direct organisation of productive activity by the state efficiencies arise due to avoidance of duplication, economies of scale and unnecessary expenditure on advertising.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| you and your gang of thugs |
Where did this come from?
Did you have a particularly nasty experience as a child on a bus?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Isamael, I know it's hard for you to appreciate the point but these things go in cycles. In Britain, during the first half of the twentieth century a lot of talent went into the public sector (it was in the first glow of socialist idealism). They did quite a lot of good things. Unfortunately these things go in cycles so we spent the second half of the twentieth century having to get rid of a lot of it (and them). |
And in America, the government invented the Internet at the tail end of that period, but this does not establish that the government was necessary to the creation of the Internet -- or double-decker buses for that matter.
All we know is that the State confiscated a lot of wealth then used that wealth to suck up talent that otherwise would have been purchased by the original owners of the confiscated capital. That State-purchased talent was then harnessed by the State to create the Internet -- and get us to the moon or to the local mall etc.
But might private enterprise have invented the Internet -- perhaps even a better one -- absent the confiscation of its wealth? Might indeed it have gotten us to the Moon? The safe answer -- agnostic answer -- is to say, "We don't know."
Well I'm afraid I'm an atheist on this one.
Not only will I put the onus on the thieves to prove the necessity of their crimes but I will insist that the evidence is presently against them. Since its privatization, the quality of the Internet has improved at a pace far in excess of anything seen while it remained under government control. As for the space race, that too is going gang-busters, after 40 years of stagnation.
I've little to say about buses. Personally, I doubt their economic viability.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | ....which can lead to over investment... |
You sir. Are a nincompoop.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | Did you have a particularly nasty experience... |
Yes. Income tax.
Jackass.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I've little to say about buses. Personally, I doubt their economic viability. |
You wouldn't say this if you lived in London. However you have made an interesting category error here. Your distrust of buses is because they feel to you like a statist solution. But in fact they are not, they are a collective solution. London followed Paris (hence the name omnibus) in providing them and they were a wholly private profit-making solution. They were not even very regulated. I would listen entranced to my dad's stories of late night buses racing each other down Sangley Road in order to pick up the cinema crowd in Catford.
The tubes were a similar story. Entirely private. However, you are correct in one thing: neither buses nor tubes turned out to be 'viable'. But it hasn't proved very difficult to work out that we (Londoners plus out-of-town commuters) are prepared to pay a relatively small sum collectively to retain 'public' transport. There are of course the usual argy-bargy between Groucho and Grouchette about whether this or that should be in the public sector or merely subsidised by the public sector. Why you have this weird prejudice in favour of paying one way rather than another is beyond me. It's AE policy to suck-it-and-see.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | You wouldn't say this if you lived in London. |
Quite possibly.
| Your distrust of buses is because they feel to you like a statist solution. But in fact they are not, they are a collective solution. |
I have long been an advocate of the privatization and deregulation of busing. I believe in some circumstances, it could work.
My distrust is not instinctive. It comes from research I have read on the subject because I was interested in how private bussing might be made feasible. That research indicates that deregulated taxi services might ultimately prove more economically feasible. Unlike buses, Taxis only move when there is a fare to collect. Buses often troll around half-empty (though privatization would minimize this waste).
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Why you have this weird prejudice in favour of paying one way rather than another is beyond me. |
I pay for what I use. I do not pay for what you use. If I pay for what you use, you are a goddamned robber and belong behind bars with your pal Grouchymarxist.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Yes, this is the bit you never seem to twig. I have to pay to go on the bus either through fares or through taxes. Even if I don't use the buses I am prepared to pay for them via taxes because they 'pay for themselves' in preventing congestion or assisting labour mobility or whatever. I can vote on this issue along with my fellow-Londoners.
If I lived in the nineteenth century I would have been outraged at being asked to help defray the cost of buses because they were highly profitable. In the twenty-first century one or other of your suggestions might turn out to be feasible and I will support you once more.
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