Re: People Without Meaningful Lives Seek Power Over Others

On 1/23/2025 7:42 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 1/23/2025 7:33 PM, John B. wrote:

>
And who pays the road tax if you call the police? Or the water works,
or the fire department, all of which need to use the roads to aid you
the caller?

 I'm not saying non-drivers should pay zero for the roads. But they do pay, as Andrew said, in property taxes, sales taxes, and even the price of goods, since companies build transport costs into that price.
 I'm simply saying more of the burden should be on those who make more use of the roads.
 I think railroads are a close parallel to highways. Andrew says, in essence, we should all pay for roads because we all use goods delivered by roads. I can agree with that concept. But it also applies to railroads. We all use commodities delivered by rail.
 Our difference is that the car fans here want no further expenses on those who use cars on those same roads. In practice, they want to drive with no fares, to have their driving subsidized. But they don't want to subsidize train fares, even though that's a perfectly parallel situation. And they don't want to pay congestion charges in super- crowded cities. They just want the city residents to deal with their presence, their contribution to congestion, pollution, etc.
 

Some important differences there.
Governments do not own or maintain track (outside of local urban systems such as MTA or CTA or BART).
The only intercity passenger rail is Amtrak, which is an entertainment/display system, not a functional transportation system. It's not anywhere near competitive on travel times, reliability or price. And Amtrak does not own or maintain railbed AFAIK.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971