7 ms·

All the goods and people transported won't mind that a few shareholders were unhappy.

lesuorac 4y ago
They might be unhappy when the profitable business are all ran out of town and the unprofitable ones collapse leaving neither behind.
- dnissley 4y ago
  Do you think this will happen to the airline industry? Happily willing to take the other side of that bet.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  Why do things that serve the public need to be profitable? Are roads profitable? Is sewage treatment profitable? Do you maintain that they should be?
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    If it's privately ran it needs to be profitable otherwise it will no longer be ran (at some point). Of course the privately ran business could change course at some time and become profitable (i.e. raise prices or discontinue unprofitable business lines / areas of service). But if that's the only X store left in town and they discontinue service, you're kinda screwed. The same ends up being true for publicly ran things as well. Flint is a great example of a town that was not profitable and so Michigan stepped in and changed their water supply to decrease the towns cost (a scenario that would've been avoided if Flint wasn't broke, amongst other ways it could've been avoided). It's just that at the government level you can have many services that cost more than they take in (often because you just don't charge people for the service; which is fine) which get balanced out (eventually) by other "services" (often more general taxes) that take in more money than they cost. If you live in a town and continuously it spends $X a year and takes in $<X a year, that difference is going to eventually cause a problem. Perhaps it means that roads will stop being repaired. Perhaps it means you'll have boil water notices all the time.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    If they're not minimally profitable in some general sense, such that the benefits of building and maintaining them are not at least paid by the benefit of using them then no, they shouldn't be built. Unfortunately, when you factor in the externalities of carbon emissions, loss of habitat, and other biosphere stressors (the biosphere being the life support system for all life, including humans, and which we do not have the means to replace), then most human activity in living memory cannot pay for itself. This is sad, but we can't fix it until we acknowledge it. We're using up our life support system when we build a highway or airliner, not investing in anything.

They might be unhappy when the profitable business are all ran out of town and the unprofitable ones collapse leaving neither behind.

dnissley 4y ago
Do you think this will happen to the airline industry? Happily willing to take the other side of that bet.
Eisenstein 4y ago
Why do things that serve the public need to be profitable? Are roads profitable? Is sewage treatment profitable? Do you maintain that they should be?
- lesuorac 4y ago
  If it's privately ran it needs to be profitable otherwise it will no longer be ran (at some point). Of course the privately ran business could change course at some time and become profitable (i.e. raise prices or discontinue unprofitable business lines / areas of service). But if that's the only X store left in town and they discontinue service, you're kinda screwed. The same ends up being true for publicly ran things as well. Flint is a great example of a town that was not profitable and so Michigan stepped in and changed their water supply to decrease the towns cost (a scenario that would've been avoided if Flint wasn't broke, amongst other ways it could've been avoided). It's just that at the government level you can have many services that cost more than they take in (often because you just don't charge people for the service; which is fine) which get balanced out (eventually) by other "services" (often more general taxes) that take in more money than they cost. If you live in a town and continuously it spends $X a year and takes in $<X a year, that difference is going to eventually cause a problem. Perhaps it means that roads will stop being repaired. Perhaps it means you'll have boil water notices all the time.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  If they're not minimally profitable in some general sense, such that the benefits of building and maintaining them are not at least paid by the benefit of using them then no, they shouldn't be built. Unfortunately, when you factor in the externalities of carbon emissions, loss of habitat, and other biosphere stressors (the biosphere being the life support system for all life, including humans, and which we do not have the means to replace), then most human activity in living memory cannot pay for itself. This is sad, but we can't fix it until we acknowledge it. We're using up our life support system when we build a highway or airliner, not investing in anything.