So a lot of the Midwest is rural and spacey, but I bet it won't be so much the case in 100 years. I guess my question is, what could be done now to encourage the sort of growth that allows for public transit? I think you're right that increased fuel prices are an awfully blunt instrument and green-liberals should be a little more mindful of who's actually going to be hurt when that happens, but it has the advantage of being (a) a vaguely free-market solution and (b) inevitable. (That is, an increase in the price of fuel is inevitable because supply is limited - the taxes people mention are of course not inevitable.) So, uh... any better ideas?
In general I've become pretty distrustful of the free market to tend toward solutions that satisfy me ;). In particular, the costs of supporting a minority position are often very high and I think it artificially depresses the appearance of support. The clearest example of this (in my head) is where you have two mediocre mainstream candidates for office and a bunch of little guys that are more talented, but also weirder and less agreeable. In a winner-take-all system like ours, in order for it to be worthwhile to "vote your conscience" in a tight election, you have to be confident that enough other people will support your guy to make some sort of difference (be it a slight shift in public opinion or whatever). Otherwise the chance of getting stuck with the greater of the two mediocrities is going to be a compelling reason not to. Ditto with boycotts, etc - huge companies like Microsoft are difficult to boycott; you can do it, but it has costs and those costs are only compensated for if enough other people do it to make a dent. In the public transit world, the only way you're going to get more money is increased ridership, but if the service sucks and it takes you 2.5 hours to get to work, that doesn't exactly get balanced by the positive effect of one additional rider. It's only worth the hell if a bunch of other people have got your back.
It's a tough world in which to be an idealist, is I guess what I'm saying. And I hope you know me well enough to know I'm not some foamy jack-booted totalitarian who wants to eat your cat ;) and that I am merely saying that the free market, its solutions to optimization problems do not overwhelmingly impress me, for lo, the local maxima, they are disappointingly sticky.
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Date: 2005-09-11 09:36 pm (UTC)In general I've become pretty distrustful of the free market to tend toward solutions that satisfy me ;). In particular, the costs of supporting a minority position are often very high and I think it artificially depresses the appearance of support. The clearest example of this (in my head) is where you have two mediocre mainstream candidates for office and a bunch of little guys that are more talented, but also weirder and less agreeable. In a winner-take-all system like ours, in order for it to be worthwhile to "vote your conscience" in a tight election, you have to be confident that enough other people will support your guy to make some sort of difference (be it a slight shift in public opinion or whatever). Otherwise the chance of getting stuck with the greater of the two mediocrities is going to be a compelling reason not to. Ditto with boycotts, etc - huge companies like Microsoft are difficult to boycott; you can do it, but it has costs and those costs are only compensated for if enough other people do it to make a dent. In the public transit world, the only way you're going to get more money is increased ridership, but if the service sucks and it takes you 2.5 hours to get to work, that doesn't exactly get balanced by the positive effect of one additional rider. It's only worth the hell if a bunch of other people have got your back.
It's a tough world in which to be an idealist, is I guess what I'm saying. And I hope you know me well enough to know I'm not some foamy jack-booted totalitarian who wants to eat your cat ;) and that I am merely saying that the free market, its solutions to optimization problems do not overwhelmingly impress me, for lo, the local maxima, they are disappointingly sticky.