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Your assumption is that we didn't have roads and schools and such before taxing everyone to death (hint: we did)

Your assumption is that we are being taxed to death, yet death is demonstratively not necessarily caused by taxes. Unless you believe entropy is a tax, but in that case, your problem is with the universe at large, not with governments. In the most cases, you will find that people live just fine with the tax burden they have. Perhaps they even live better.

Because no, you can't prove that roads and schools and such existed before taxes, let alone that they would exist without being paid for, as that historical demonstration would require a time machine, which you don't have.

Your assumption that taxes we pay for these things aren't redirected to other things. (The government makes more on Gas than the oil companies)

In the US? Not for motor fuel taxes they aren't. Your assumption is that they are making money on gas and diesel taxes, when the spending on transportation infrastructure is greater, is readily demonstrated as untrue for the US.

You might be able to show a country where the opposite is true, but your assumption would be already shown not to be universally so.

Of course, if you want to see the benefits of a developed transportation network, that can be shown. Has the public been enriched or not?

Your assumption is that government is the only way to have these things (it isn't)

Your counter-assertion is merely a denial, thus you are assuming it isn't, without offering reasoning, let alone proof.

Your assumption is that oh wait, I see your point. You actually agree with me, just that you won't admit it.

Really, you have to have people agree with you by simple assumption? How desperate are you for affirmation that you make it up?

Actually from what I've read and heard lately, driving is far safer now than it used to be. When I was a mere youth, there were an average of 55,000 people killed on the US highways each year, a rate of about 5.25 deaths per 100 million miles. (Stats from 1957-1997 here.) By 1997 the total was down to about 41,000 with many more miles driven, for a rate of about 1.64 deaths per 100 million miles. And according to The NHTSA itself, the death rate is now (2009) about 33,000 for a rate of about 1.14 deaths per 100 million miles.

Of course, there is a valid position that says one is too many, and that is the charter of NHTSA. The rational economic way to view this is to balance the various costs (assuming that one can 'monetize' costs like loss of a loved one), and find the most cost effective balance between deaths due to accidents and the loss of lifetime and value in becoming too safety-conscious. Obviously we could ban automobiles entirely, but the cost in human time that would accrue - wasting an entire day going to the store to buy groceries is a real loss in effective useful lifespan - is patently unreasonable. So all these things can be balanced out. Limiting speeds would make the highways safer, but again how much time do we want to lose? So there are things that can be done, and some of them are a good idea. I've been in one accident in the last year-plus, where the guy who hit me might well have been toast had it not been for his air bag. Both cars were junked but both of us came out well under the circumstances.

I thought I had already responded to this, but apparently it didn't get into Slashdot somehow...

That's been happening to me as well. Sometimes the post shows up just a bit later.

As for the example of public transit, the thing is that its benefits are larger than the mere cost of individual travel.

There's a big and critical difference between public transport and highways. Public transport does not pay for itself, and has no hope of doing so. Ticket sales for public transport are only %20 percent of public transport, while gas taxes pay for pay 80-90 percent of direct construction costs. This pays for the externalities of the automobile, not the externalities of the petrochemical engine, which is shared by both some transport, and most automobiles. You might also be interested in the paradoxes involved in transport efficiency.

I agree with pretty much everything you said up until the stuff about solar.

The problem with this idea is that the power companies and the rooftop solar companies are not the same company. The power companies are utilities. The solar companies are home improvement companies. The issue with solar power is that many people (I know a few) are happy to invest a great deal of money in solar power. The problem is that solar is uneconomical. This is changing, due to the decreasing price of raw materials, the increasing price of fossil fuels, and technical improvements.

Now, the utilities, public/private transport companies, are all special cases. My belief is that when a service requires an infrastructure that goes everywhere, it needs to be a public enterprise. Also, if the government is the sole consumer of a product, it needs to be a public enterprise. This is because in order for the market to do its magic, it needs a lot of buyers and sellers. If there are only a few, there is opportunity for price gouging without bound. This happens in the case of both transit, and blackwater. Both cases were a disaster. Another problem is when businesses successfully stack the government to reduce their liability. This happened in Gulf Spill. Imagine if BP had to pay the whole cost of the spill, instead of the 500 million that they are capped to.

http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-lrt2001.htm

The problem with rail is not their speed. I'd be perfectly happy with rail travel at 60 miles per hour. The true problem with rail is that people prefer to ride cars because they are more convenient. When the time is right this is what may happen:

say 12 years from now when gas becomes $10 a gallon...

This will price a lot of people of of their jobs (no more 60 mile commutes for a $12 an hour job).

Some industrious individuals get together and buy time on heavy rails which web the whole country already. They make train stations combined with communal car rental businesses. The cars they rent out are done so on an hour per hour basis for say $0.70 cents per hour. If you are on an 9 hour shift it will then cost you $6.3 per day to rent your temp car. Ride with a friend to cut it down in half. These cars are cheap little cars with low top speeds and limited range. They might even be electric because you don't need long ranges in a lot of areas. I'm thinking smart cars with wifi network fleet management. If these cars are being used 75% of a full day (from 2-3 shifts of workers) they will gross $10.8 a day. Each year they could bring in $2754 if used 5 days a week on average. If the smartcar cost $10,000 it would take 3.63 years to break even. If each car is driven 10 miles on average per shift per day with 75% utilization it would run about 40 miles per day. At 5 days a week each year the car would be driven 10200 miles. These things when properly taken care of should last then about 13-15 years, plenty long enough to make money on I think.

Say you live in Marion Ohio and want to commute to Powell Ohio (36 miles) for some kind of factory job there. Get in your beater car, drive it to the station get on the train for $4.5 bucks. Rent a car with a pal for $3.25. Your transportation costs will be not much more than $12.25 for the day. You save wear and tear on your beater car and you avoid the worst parts of traffic between home and work. if your beater car gets 26 miles to the gallon like mine then you don't have to spend $26.38 on gas for a savings of $14.13 in fuel alone

Heavy rails are already in place.

This plan wouldn't work with out super high fuel costs. But who knows how much longer our cartopia can last?

No, it educates, and if your read up it does better then a lot of private schools

Really, not according to this: http://www.publicpurpose.com/pp-edpp.htm Additionally, the average private school tuition in the US was $7502 in 2009. In 2005, the U.S. spent on average over $11,000 per student in public schools. According to this source ( http://www.capenet.org/Outlook/Out9-03.html#Story5 ) in 2003, the average public school SAT score was 504 Verbal and 516 Math. The average religious private school SAT score was 535 Verbal and 530 Math. The average independent private school SAT was 550 Verbal and 573 Math.

Foux News sez (and note they are perhaps the most sensational "news" outlet there is) 17,011 deaths from the superbug. Wrong diagnosis dot com says 15,245 Americans died of AIDS in 2000.

Meanwhile, in 1997, 41,967 people died on the American highways. So you SHOULD fear the terrorists; the blonde ones in their SUVs.

Note that I'm tired of googling so find your own link, half a million die from cancer and another half million die from heart disease. The two biggest terrorists aren't germs, Muslims or SUVs, but R. J. Reynolds and Ronald McDonald.

-mcgrew

http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-fy$.htm

Its to the airport so we'll be generous and give it six lanes. 2 lanes for one mile comes to about $540,000 per year (maintenance plus capital costs). Triple that is 1.6 million per year. Times 18 is a hair under $30 million. And we'll give it a useful life of, hmm, call it twenty years before the government decides to vote some lucky contractor more money. Total lifetime cost: $600 million. Double the cost because its Europe and, hey, everyone knows things are more expensive in Europe. $1.2 billion

There, I just saved the German taxpayer $1 billion dollars. The remaining $400 million, my consulting fee, can be sent via the German government's choice of gold bullion or, if about 30 metric tons of gold* seems a little unwieldy, I also take Paypal.

* I'm too lazy to figure out the spot price for gold so I figured on $400 an ounce. So sue me -- I'm a government consultant, you get one Google for your $400 million, the 2nd Google needs a new contract.

Is all this paranoia actually making us safer?

Google is your friend.
871,500 Americans die yearly from heart disease
Over half a million die yearly from cancer
41,000 Americans die yearly in traffic fatalities
Fewer than 3,000 people have died from terrorist attacks on American soil this entire CENTURY.

So I'd say the answer is a resounding "no". I'd personally like to see some of that Homeland Security money go to safer highways, cancer research, etc.

-mcgrew

Sorry, no.

I work for the government. I'm a "civil servant". I make high 5 figures, and I'm not management. I'm a member of a union. I will not be fired / layed off / downsized / whatever.

Close to 100% full? I don't have any figures to dispute this, but somehow I doubt you have any to prove it either. In the example I used above (1 big diesel engine vs lots of little petrol motors), 50% occupation would still have been at least as efficient as having a car for every two passengers

The fact that this example used combustion engines is irrelevant. I could have illistrated the same point with a large electric bus (say, 400kw motor) vs many small electric cars (say, 75kw motors). Energy is energy. The point I'm making as about the economy of scale you get with one big, powerful vehicle that moves many people vs many little vehicles that move a few people each.

Railways are cheaper to build than roads. And they are a more efficient way of making contact with the ground (narrow wheels), which means less drag.

I'll concede that the "on-demand" nature of having pods ready to go when you are ready to go is more convenient and may save passengers the 5 or 10 minutes they would otherwise have to wait for a bus

Typical drek.

Considering that public education already spends twice as much (on the average) per child than private education, and achieves comparatively poor results, yes, I consider it a very bad investment.

This link backs your assertion, but does indicate that the stats are misleading. Also, if you followed my lotto links, you'd see that New Jersey Lottery actually sends money to private schools to the tune of $57 million a year. Another good link.

As to performance, I think you're being tainted by the media. Are there bad public schools? Yes, that's clear. These are the schools covered in the media all the time. Are there good public schools? Yes. This is frequently glossed over.

Another crucial, crucial element that is frequently forgotten in the private v. public school debate is this: Private schools qualify their students. Public schools get the rest. If a private school doesn't want a bad student, they're out. Real easy for them. You can't throw a student who is having problems out of public school, you have to deal with the problem. When you get to pick and choose who you are going to teach, your students are going to be better. Duh.

There are a lot of poor parents who could send their children to a good private school for what they spend on lottery tickets. Instead, they send their children to inner-city slum schools and create another generation of dependency on public assistance programs.

You think there are people spending 5-10 grand a year on lotto? When their annual income, if they're lucky, is 30k? You have a seriously distorted view of how the poor live in this country. Maybe you should try living on some of the public assistance programs and see how much fun it is "freeloading" off of everyone else.

• 
  The World's 50 Largest Metropolitan Areas
  1 Tokyo-Yokohama Japan 33,190,000
  2 New York United States 20,270,000
  4 Mexico City Mexico 19,620,000
  8 Los Angeles United States 16,200,000
  27 Chicago United States 8,960,000
  29 Washington-Baltimore United States 7,430,000
  34 San Francisco United States 6,940,000
  37 Philadelphia United States 6,010,000
  39 Detroit-Windsor United States-Canada 5,810,000
  42 Boston United States 5,690,000
  49 Dallas-Fort Worth United States 5,010,000
  50 Madrid Spain 4,950,000

If you need evidence of breaking up a monopoly failures , look at the baby bells.

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger argued strenuously in 1981 that the Justice Dept. should drop its suit against AT&T because the military needed a single, integrated communications network.

Arno A. Penzias, a Nobel laureate at Bell Laboratories, testified that the world-class labs would become a ''sinking ship'' if AT&T were broken up.

Penzias [now] says the breakup got Bell Labs focused on customers: ''They still create jewels, but more of them are made into jewelry,''

But curiously that article makes no mention of telephone costs. Here's a graph showing that telephone costs have fallen (well, risen quite a bit slower than general inflation). I imagine most of that benefit is in long distance.

Here is a great sight to read with lots of data and studies about why trains usually suck.

http://www.publicpurpose.com/

I will say that in London, trains don't suck. Trains need a certain population density in order to be economicly efficient. London is one of the few cities in the world that has that density. From what I understand, London is an excelent place to do trains. Most cities, especially US cities, don't have that high density that makes rail a good idea. I think there are only about 5 cities in the US that should really have rail.

In both cities, most people still prefer to drive cars. Here's an overview of the London public transit system's ridership over the last 40 years. Right now, public transit has 17% of the market and have lost steadily since the 60's.

New York does better. However, as of '97, at least 50% of commutes were made in cars, 42% on the subway, and 8% on bus, ferry, etc. [pdf] So, even with the horrible state of traffic and parking, 50% of people still prefer to drive point-to-point in New York.

London and New York share some relatively unique properties that make them suited to heavy rail. Most large cities can't expect as good a result if they invest in heavy rail.

More to the point, neither city can expect to get much bang for the buck if they expand their public transit service. Public transit ridership is pretty inflexible with respect to supply for the current modes of public transit. People prefer not to ride these systems, given the choice.

So, we can quibble over whether they "fail" or not. But, we can certainly both agree that neither system is particularly attractive compared to a solution that offers

• Point-to-point travel - no routes to memorize.
• On-demand travel - no schedules to memorize.
• No traffic problems.
• No parking problems.
• 40 mph average speed.

We can build such a system to support the same volume for a much lower cost than an underground heavy rail system.

In both cities, most people still prefer to drive cars. Here's an overview of the London public transit system's ridership over the last 40 years. Right now, public transit has 17% of the market and have lost steadily since the 60's.

New York does better. However, as of '97, at least 50% of commutes were made in cars, 42% on the subway, and 8% on bus, ferry, etc. [pdf] So, even with the horrible state of traffic and parking, 50% of people still prefer to drive point-to-point in New York.

London and New York share some relatively unique properties that make them suited to heavy rail. Most large cities can't expect as good a result if they invest in heavy rail.

More to the point, neither city can expect to get much bang for the buck if they expand their public transit service. Public transit ridership is pretty inflexible with respect to supply for the current modes of public transit. People prefer not to ride these systems, given the choice.

So, we can quibble over whether they "fail" or not. But, we can certainly both agree that neither system is particularly attractive compared to a solution that offers

• Point-to-point travel - no routes to memorize.
• On-demand travel - no schedules to memorize.
• No traffic problems.
• No parking problems.
• 40 mph average speed.

We can build such a system to support the same volume for a much lower cost than an underground heavy rail system.

In both cities, most people still prefer to drive cars. Here's an overview of the London public transit system's ridership over the last 40 years. Right now, public transit has 17% of the market and have lost steadily since the 60's.

New York does better. However, as of '97, at least 50% of commutes were made in cars, 42% on the subway, and 8% on bus, ferry, etc. [pdf] So, even with the horrible state of traffic and parking, 50% of people still prefer to drive point-to-point in New York.

London and New York share some relatively unique properties that make them suited to heavy rail. Most large cities can't expect as good a result if they invest in heavy rail.

More to the point, neither city can expect to get much bang for the buck if they expand their public transit service. Public transit ridership is pretty inflexible with respect to supply for the current modes of public transit. People prefer not to ride these systems, given the choice.

So, we can quibble over whether they "fail" or not. But, we can certainly both agree that neither system is particularly attractive compared to a solution that offers

• Point-to-point travel - no routes to memorize.
• On-demand travel - no schedules to memorize.
• No traffic problems.
• No parking problems.
• 40 mph average speed.

We can build such a system to support the same volume for a much lower cost than an underground heavy rail system.

In both cities, most people still prefer to drive cars. Here's an overview of the London public transit system's ridership over the last 40 years. Right now, public transit has 17% of the market and have lost steadily since the 60's.

New York does better. However, as of '97, at least 50% of commutes were made in cars, 42% on the subway, and 8% on bus, ferry, etc. [pdf] So, even with the horrible state of traffic and parking, 50% of people still prefer to drive point-to-point in New York.

London and New York share some relatively unique properties that make them suited to heavy rail. Most large cities can't expect as good a result if they invest in heavy rail.

More to the point, neither city can expect to get much bang for the buck if they expand their public transit service. Public transit ridership is pretty inflexible with respect to supply for the current modes of public transit. People prefer not to ride these systems, given the choice.

So, we can quibble over whether they "fail" or not. But, we can certainly both agree that neither system is particularly attractive compared to a solution that offers

• Point-to-point travel - no routes to memorize.
• On-demand travel - no schedules to memorize.
• No traffic problems.
• No parking problems.
• 40 mph average speed.

We can build such a system to support the same volume for a much lower cost than an underground heavy rail system.

According to NASA, the shuttle orbits at 17,440 mph miles per hour and all shuttle missions combined have logged 19240 hours, for a total of about 333256040 miles. This works out to one fatality per 23,804,002 miles travelled.

According to The Public Purpose, in 1996 the US had 1.058 traffic fatalities per 100,000,000 passenger miles.

The statistics aren't directly comparable because the auto statistics are per passenger mile and the shuttle statistics are per mile, but if we assume most US vehicles have a single occupant (my observation while driving), being in the shuttle is about 4 times as dangerous per mile as riding in a car.

Hoping to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, US urban areas from Los Angeles to Sioux City (Iowa) are rushing to build new surface light rail systems. But despite claims to the contrary, light rail does not reduce traffic congestion, and is a highly expensive strategy..

US federal research indicates that quality bus systems are one-fifth the cost per passenger mile of light rail per passenger mile, can accommodate the volumes and operate as fast.

...

Advocates also claim that light rail is less costly than new highways, This is alleged by comparing the cost of a light rail line per mile to that of a six or eight lane freeway. This is an invalid, because the freeway carries such an enormously greater number of people. An eight lane freeway carries, on average, 16 times the volume of a new light rail line. In fact, total costs, public and private, per passenger mile of light rail averages seven times that of new urban freeways.