Comments by "Bushrod Rust Johnson" (@MilwaukeeF40C) on "Let's Make Mass Transit Free*" video.

  1. "Homelessness is whole separate issue that the us (preety much alone) has to deal with." Wrong.
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  2. South America has a different kind of homelessness. Historically bad property rights enforcement, so they lived like next to homeless nomads getting chased to a different temporary claim all the time. This has gotten better in the past couple decades in some states and has contributed to less rainforest destruction.
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  3. "More broadly there are other considerations, movement of people has a societal benefit (it's the reason we subsidize roads, cars, and transit in the first place) of enabling economic activity." Social engineering economic activity is where the state went wrong. Why videos like this are getting made- trying to get the state to artificially reimplement what the state artificially destroyed decades ago.
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  4. "Whether a seat is filled or not makes no difference to the cost of the system." Unless they throw up or some shit.
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  5. "It's directly tied to the pre-existing culture of valuing personal space, mobility, and control that has dominated since the colonial era." "In most cities it just doesn't serve most people well enough to justify making them pay for it" This and this. Rational individuals don't care for involuntary central control and being forced to participate in what someone else justified.
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  6. "Take Finland, for example. If you make 47k pounds. You're taxed 60%. That's ridiculous." Fuuuuuuuuuck.
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  7. "microtransit (essentially large vans/20-foot buses that adjust their fixed routes to pick you up on demand, thereby solving the last mile problem)" The private sector is taking care of it. The way transit agencies have run things like that has been terrible, but were the only option for some handicappers. I'm not sure what cripple would put up with that these days.
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  8. "Name a good privately owned public transport system" Interborough Rapid Transit, Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, and numerous surface companies before government policies and subsidized competition forced them out of business.
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  9. "Capitalism is perfectly compatible with the existence of social programs." With an asterisk.
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  10. Your stop was the massage place?
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  11. Most modern "light rail" and streetcar projects tend to be done more for vanity than practical economics. They require extremely expensive infrastructure but they usually commingle with other traffic so much that it really isn't worth duplicating/overlapping the existing streets like they do for a slightly higher capacity. Light rail equipment is not large and maximum train lengths tend to be about three articulated units, with two being more common. But that much capacity is rarely needed outside of peak times so they lug around a lot of dead weight. Signals, overhead, and track especially if it is buried in pavement is very labor intensive too. Cities don't really need rail transit until the point where heavy rail rapid transit or mainline commuter rail makes sense. Denver built a heavy rail line with giant FRA spec cars so I guess they think they need that to get to the airport. A lot of commuter rail, along with Amtrak, have really poor energy efficiency just of operational sacrifices they make to keep labor costs low. Also, passenger railcars are damned heavy for the lightest cargo there is.
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  12. "Giving important and beneficial services to the community in order to benefit the community = LITERALLY GOMMUNISM" Kinda, yeah. "Tax funded transit doesn't mean communism. Just like the roads you likely use, or the school you likely attended or the water you drink or shit, the phone network you use. All funded by taxes at some point and *wouldn't exist otherwise*." Bullshit. "Belgium is communist because we have to pay the most taxes of the world to help poor and sick people and to build infrastructure?" Yes.
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  13. The "honor system" with those goons that go around checking cards is the stupidest shit I've ever seen. Yerkes "the straphangers pay the dividends" would have a heart attack.
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  14. "why I, a person who doesn't own a vehicle in my city and walks or bikes most places, should pay taxes to support the free ride for cars on roads." Roads should not even be subsidized. Landowners used to take care of them. It is still somewhat common in U.S. cities for sidewalks to be maintained by landowners. Frankly, nobody is entitled to roads being convenient or in any particular condition. "If you don't like the idea of taxes paying to ensure everyone can get around, then I guess you should be happy to fork over a bit of coin every time you pull you car out of your driveway" This is kind of stupid. The concept of a public right of way comes from Lockean common law. Typical roads were already dedicated by past landowners for the primary purpose of direct access to the adjacent property, or became prescriptive easements held by the public similar to adverse possession, so access can not be restricted. This should prevent congestion fees as well.
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  15. "Except roads are paid for by gas taxes and you also use them to get any of the goods you utilize" Ordinary streets are actually mostly paid for with property taxes (and debt). Some fuel tax money gets distributed too, but there isn't really even enough of it to pay for Interstate and U.S. highway routes. Initial construction costs are usually paid by land developers, who decide how the streets get laid out too.
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  16. "I think it goes back to the 1950's when America was covered in mass transit lines, interurbans, and intercity rail all built mostly by private investment with some land grants. When the US government decided to get involved building transportation, they only focused on highways and highways only. This government backed program put everything else out of business." It was in the 1930s. Most city transit companies were bankrupt by 1920 after the U.S. government switched to inflationary monetary policy, and forced companies to bargain with unions, and utility companies were prohibited from owning transit companies. Then the socialists got heavy with road subsidies in the 1930s.
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  17. "Huh?" Read the fucking comment thread.
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  18. "So much money is wasted paying administrators to fight one another over whether or not a procedure is covered by an individual's healthcare insurance." I'd rather have that, and keep the option to pay for stuff that I can afford that might not even be allowed at all in an entirely socialist system.
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  19. This is true. Desubsidize everything.
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  20. U.K. rail was never really privatized. It is "public-private" bullshit where the government selects a few concession companies and imposes tons of restrictions on how they run. Those setups almost always suck. Forcing the track and train operating divisions to be separate companies was stupid. Real railroad privatization is done the way Canadian National and railroads in Mexico, Brazil, Australia for a few examples were privatized. They are among the most efficient and profitable in the world.
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  21. You can't fucking read. They forced the track ownership to be held separately from the train operating companies. That is not real privatization. Privatization means the government sells and then stays out. All of the truly privatized railroads in the world own the track that their trains run on, and they are much better than nationalized systems for it. MEXICO has a better rail system than the U.K.
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  22. Like the U.S. used to be until the early 1900s. Landowners technically do own half of the adjacent street along their parcel. In certain cities like New York, many sidewalks are the responsibility of landowners and the city does not fix them unless some utility work does the damage.
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  23. "Putting tolls on highways encourages people to bypass the tolls by going onto local roads causing congestion." I am fine with this. Nobody is entitled to roads being convenient.
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  24. "Private road ownership can never work. As soon as roads are privatized I'm going to buy the roads in your neighborhood and charge you a thousand bucks to come or go, just to show you how silly private roads are." Access to ordinary neighborhood streets can NOT be restricted to anyone under our common law precedent. The only way that they can be "privatized" is that landowners take care of them rather than tax subsidies, which is how they used to exist, but access by others still can not be prevented in any way. Private ownership of limited access highways as toll roads can work.
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  25. "then you just increase tolls until peopole have to stop" Exactly. Under tolled or untolled highways result in the road equivalent of soviet union bakery waiting lines.
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  26. "Higher toll price could mean higher goods and services cost." The costs of goods and services might better reflect the direct costs of the resources they require, and people might have to adjust their behavior? That's horrible.
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  27. "if they can be literally FORCED to pay for highways if they don't even own a car" This is one of the biggest mistakes in U.S. economic policy.
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  28. That is not justification for the state to interfere in economics by subsidizing roads. It has had terrible consequences against private, self sufficient alternatives as well as land use behaviors. Access for trucking is underpriced by far. Direct users should pay the direct costs of access to roads, i.e. tolls, not have it laundered through taxes. All limited access highways should be privatized or turned back in to full access public rights of way, and all public rights of way should be funded at the most local level if not maintained directly by adjacent property owners like they used to be.
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  29.  @r.d.9399  The federally funded highways have never been used for emergency military mobilization. Training convoys you see sometimes don't count. Personnel are transported by air and equipment is transported by rail and sea because these are the cheapest way. Almost all by private contractors. The actual "national security" reason for building the interstates was Eisenhower's nuclear paranoia. They thought that highways would make it easier for surviving populations to resettle.
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  30.  @mouthpiece200  Nobody is entitled to anything being made to exist at the forceful expense of others.
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  31.  @mouthpiece200  Maybe it's a bit pedantic but there is a difference between using force to suppress the initiation of force and coercing money from someone because you want a stupid ass train. What are you NOT okay with being put up for a vote?
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  32. "It's easier to picture a 100% driverless car future" Wet dream for "progressives".
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  33. I am a right of way originalist. Like the amish, I will never cede my full access to roads with valid forms of travel for any "greater good" expedience. I will always retain the option to drive a muscle car that is not autonomous traffic friendly, and if it screws up the super efficient technocratic future that's not my problem.
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  34. "And if you think private ownership is more efficient for societies, explain why 63% of people in the richest country can't afford a $500 emergency and 40 million live in absolute poverty." Because of socialist and corporatist economic policies. Why are the barriers to self employment so high? YOU statists have to answer for that. "If you think Marxism is the enemy, know thy enemy." We have all the Cliff's Notes from guys like you.
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  35. Good socialists like Sanders justify corporatism all the time when they call for crap like ATM fee caps and government deciding how many kinds of deodorant there should be. When you are okay with "society" being able to vote in favor of shit like that, money in politics is what you will get. All you are doing is voting for what should be taken from who. People SHOULD be lobbying as long as shit like the FTC exists.
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  36. Planners really have very little control over that. Land developers want lot values as high as possible, and they get to lay out the new streets, being that they own the land.
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  37. That is correct. Statism in the U.S. can be traced as far back as Hamiltonians who favored big government, while people like Jefferson and Monroe deemed public expenditures on "internal improvements" to be outside the role of the state. But shit really got out of control with Roosevelt. Lincoln was pretty bad with economics too.
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  38. "Trimet has looked into installing gates for the MAX and similar measures, and have found that it's much more expensive than the potential ticket loss due to the honor system." That's because fare control wasn't conceived from the start. They screwed up.
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  39. "this case, government is noth the problem that got us into a high traffic mess, with 70 years of policy favoring suburban living, car ownership, single-use zoning, and anti-pedestrian design." Actually, government was exactly the problem with that. All of this new love of social engineering is just to undo in the hard way what social engineering did before, but not get rid of the source of the problem which is too much government interference in markets. The progressive "transit paradise" is a statist top-down controlled attempted recreation of how things were before there was so much interference.
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  40. "I live in a suburb of Utrecht, but we get plenty of criminals from the city looking for targets. They simply travel around looking for opportunities." This shit doesn't happen in the U.S. Gang crime stays in the shitholes, targeting non-poor businesses and people outside of them is rare. Non gang knockoffs for everyone else is also rare, leaving petty crime as the biggest problem. Go guns!
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  41. The funny thing is that all the planned transportation and land use outcomes that "progressives" tend to claim to want these days, most closely resembles an idealized version of how things were before the government was very involved in it at all. We had private, profitable transit companies and densely built mixed use communities before the state subsidized the shit out of roads. Even roads used to be maintained privately. The first cross country "motor highways" were built by non profit auto clubs on existing dirt roads that were put there by landowners.
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  42. Definitely fire services. They started out as private companies that were part of insurance or hired on an as needed basis. More and more public fire departments are billing for responses, so what's the point of keeping those? Police are a "necessary" pain in the ass to have around, but for the most part the vast majority of petty crime is deterred by precautionary behavior, and what the police do is also well supplemented by private services.
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  43. "Providing the facilities to enable to economic activity is not "social engineering economic activity". " When the state does it, that is all it is. I DO object to state water utilities. In the western U.S., they are pretty much a giant subsidy to artificially encourage more people to live in water scarce areas than probably should. Nobody wants to accept that it was their choice to live out there when there when there is shortages, nor do they want to accept higher prices. It is always other taxpayers' responsibility to enable the state to find more water somewhere.
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  44. Free markets are not meant to be perfect. They are meant to be voluntary and non aggressive. Nobody is entitled to any outcome by others being forced to do or give up something.
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  45. The costs of non road uses of motor fuel taxed fuels ARE completely tangential to driving and not insignificant. YOU never see people filling up gascans so it never happens? If your managed property dwelling ass had to fill up a lawnmower, how do you think you would do it? Where do the gardeners do it?
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  46. "Agreed though my point was mostly just pointing out that what would really help would be to come up with some standardised criteria for evaluating the costs and benefits of transportation projects that could be applied to all transportation projects on a mode agnostic equal footing." That would be privatization.
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  47. "I agree the taxes on the roads should be primarily paid for through vehicle registration and fuel tax. That would be the most fair since it is paid for only by those who use it and you still pay your share for freight and such because the fuel cost of trucking will be applied to the products." No. Direct tolls for restricted highways, and either property taxes or direct responsibility of road maintenance by property owners. Bring on the dirt roads! Fuel taxes are inefficient. Their distribution is subject to bureaucracy- which roads get it, and bullshit like landscaping and bike paths. So much taxed fuel doesn't even get used on public roads- cars idling in driveways or going through private parking lots. Outdoor power equipment. It is theoretically legal to use untaxed fuel in a lawn mower, but good luck finding it.
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  48. Advertising covers what, maybe car cleaning? High tax Illinois is going to lose AT LEAST one congressional seat in 2020. California has a problem on the horizon.
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  49. "Seriously, talk to any conservative. After they're done calling you a snow-flake, bring up replacing car lanes with protected bike lanes and requiring a max amount of parking space for a business, then you'll see the real snowflake emerge." Most "conservatives" are actually just entitled mercantilists. But real capitalists should desire for absolutely nothing to be subsidized or required at all. "private vehicle storage on a public way is seen as a god given right" A good argument for this is that the street is there primarily to serve the adjacent property, and the landowner does retain certain rights to the land. Saying parking shouldn't be allowed is somewhat valid but then that also brings up the question of whether non-travel uses of the street like parades and protests should be allowed.
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  50. The thing is, under our common law, land owners DO own the land underlying the adjacent right of way. They get certain privileges including access, and the ability to make modifications that facilitate access such as driveways. If the street is ever vacated (abandoned), they get full use of the land back. The primary reason why a street exists is so that the land owners right next to it can use it for their own capital. It was put there by some past private land developer specifically for that reason.
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  51. I hate public transportation and subsidized roads. I love the historical origin of U.S. roads without government involvement, and private transit companies.
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  52. "Research what GM did to streetcars in the 1950's." That's a complete myth. Stop with that crap.
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  53. Craig F. Thompson  Los Angeles did cut back a lot of bus transit coverage and frequency because of the financial toll of its new rail services. The same thing happens in pretty much every city that jumps on the light rail fad. Look what's happening with that piece of shit in Cincinnati. If people prefer personal cars over buses, they aren't going to prefer light rail either because of its marginal distinction from the functionality of buses in intra city transit.
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  54. The mistake was using the word beautiful. Too hard to spell for marketing purposes for something that people might have to type. He should shorten it to something non sensical but hip sounding like CityB.
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  55. ASCE is a rent-seeking lobbying group. Very few civil engineers are members, better to pay hundreds of dollars a year for something practice specific than that crap.
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  56. Bridges are generally fine, the problems that ASCE cites are mostly with design standards that are different from when the bridges were built. Not having enough lanes or the correct curb or some shit. Too bad. The Flint government fucked up its own water system by jumping on a giant pork project and then switching to dirty river water when that failed. Lead pipes are fine when clean water is used. All the crap you are talking about is stuff that could be "better" if more money is thrown at it, and might help ASCE members. So fucking what. Nobody is entitled to anything being made better.
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  57. Let's not expand the fucking welfare state. Limited access highways should be tolled as well, and preferably privatized. "The streets in front of our house" exist for the primary purpose of direct access to property, to create PROFITABLE sellable lots. They could be taken care of by landowners, like they used to be.
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  58. "try getting a house. In many places you have to be on the waiting list for years before you even have a slight chance of getting one" Waiting list? Your state needs to stop the public housing crap and shitcan building restrictions.
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  59. And take out the windows, lights, and climate control so they use less resources. Put down some hay so they never really have to be cleaned. A company called Gunderson makes an off the shelf product.
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  60. No, we'll just counter it with logic. We've seen all these arguments before. I don't think Gillette approves of state transit bureaucracies.
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