A while back, I posted about how our basic infrastructure should be provided collectively. I was speaking about trains, but could’ve just as easily been talking about overnight bus service in Winnepeg, or community wireless internet. We don’t expect our police department to cover 50% of it’s budget by writing tickets (in Chicago the tickets are mostly written by the Department of Revenue anyway), nor do we expect the Fire Department to cover it’s own budget. Streetlights don’t pay for themselves? Why do we require Amtrak to cover it’s own bills? Highways certainly don’t pay for themselves. We subsidize the heck out of both roads and fuel. Anyway, just ranting again. Public service means by and for the public.
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Very true — it’s interesting what our elected officials deem to be true public (and thus completely subsidized) versus semi-public (and thus with a fare or other restrictions attached) services.
Thanks for the link.
Have been thinking that we need Hooze/NICK equivalents to follow the subsidy of different practices in our society. http://www.hooze.org (as ted knows) is a project using GrassCommons.org’s wiki-database tool WagN
Hooze – for who’s behind a product… how about who’s behind an industry?