5 ms·

It technically is in many places around Germany: The national railway infrastructure is owned by a government-owned entity, as is the main railway company. Many

by tfourb 3y ago

It technically is in many places around Germany: The national railway infrastructure is owned by a government-owned entity, as is the main railway company. Many municipal public transport systems are also owned directly by the municipalities themselves, although there are also some semi-privatized systems and the national railway company also owns shares of municipal public transport systems in many major cities. Still, public ownership itself is not really sufficient to guarantee great public transport. In Germany, prevailing opinion is that public transport should break even or cost the public purse as little as possible. The effect is that many communities especially in rural and urban marginalized places are underserved by public transport and many smaller cities have been disconnected from the railway grid. In my view public transport should be both owned by the public and viewed as a true public good: similarly to basic education, healthcare, electricity and clean water, every citizen should have access to a decent level of service, no matter how cost efficient it would be.

okr 3y ago
I agree. And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of their life for public services like that. So it does not look like, that we want public goods, but someone else but not me has to do the work. The tax burden is already so high.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > The tax burden is already so high It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of their life for public services'.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    >It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of their life for public services'. That's blatantly false. It works in Austria quite well. The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university. What worker productivity do you think society is loosing out on here? We're talking about 17-19 year olds, not experienced workers who need to be pulled away from their well paying jobs. The labor they provide and experience they earn in the social system is far more valuable to society than the taxes they would pay doing some minimum wage part time job waiting tables in a restaurant or flipping burgers at McDs instead.
    - eska 3y ago
      It seems like you do not realize that the 30 year olds who don’t flip burgers and make more than minimum age were once those 19 year olds whose career you’ve delayed by 1 year.
      - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
        It's the system the democratic voters have voted to keep.
        eska 3y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum Is this even something people voted on directly or is it just one point among many in each party’s total stance to vote for?
    - buran77 3y ago
      > The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university. Interesting take. Is there any supporting official position on this or just personal opinion? If true I find it very scary that a country's health and social services systems would crumble were it not for the 3 months per year the teenagers of the country contribute. How do these systems handle the rest of the 9 months every year when the teenagers are unavailable on account of being in school. Why would a healthy society operate at the very limit of crashing down because the natality dropped or parents/teenagers start refusing to provide this service? Now I've dealt with a lot of trainees in my life. All university graduates, including with PhDs. They all take weeks to months full time on the job until they're ready to do anything productive in the simplest of jobs. I can't imagine teenagers being or becoming anywhere near productive enough in 3 months per year (with 9 month breaks) to support a country's healthcare system from collapsing. And that's not even touching on the topic that you're forcing children to give up what's probably the last carefree time of their lives to do a job they may not want and are definitely not prepared to do.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of their life for public services like that. To people who argue like this, I often argued in the past that if I were to contribute on an open source project for one year instead, this would do a lot more good for the public welfare.
  - okr 3y ago
    As far as i can see it, we need muscle power, that is not well paid, as it does not scale well. Less software. Software is just fine.
    - throwaway60607 3y ago
      [flagged]
- konschubert 3y ago
  > everyone should serve a year of their life Why not just spend a year's worth of taxes on it? Much more efficient than training a million teenagers to drive the bus every year...
wheels 3y ago
My inclination to agree that public transit should mostly be a nationalized utility. But some experience in rural areas leads me to a counterargument that I don't have a good answer for: Should people that live in urban spaces massively subsidize people that choose to live in rural areas for no economically useful reason? Like, some tech bros decide they don't want neighbors and want to live 20 km from everything. Should the city folk subsidize their preferences? Maybe it should be recouped in local taxes? Should that be covered by agricultural tax breaks? Mostly I think public transit should be a public service. But I don't think it's a given that rich people's preferences should be subsidized just because they want to live in remote or suburban areas.
- golem14 3y ago
  I think this is a good question, but I'm assuming that this is happening anyways: Few constitutions have provisions forcing tech bros to live in the city. If they move to the burbs without public transit, they are being subsidized via roads and car traffic, which is arguably worse.
  - wheels 3y ago
    I think you're also right. The framing for this is I spend some time in a village that has a part that's now been inaccessible because of a landslide. About 10 people live on the road that's now impassable. Digging a safe tunnel through the mountain would cost millions. Should the state shoulder the cost for the mostly wealthy retirees that live on the other side? I don't have a good answer. I also have a version of this from a doctor friend that lives on a "farm" that doesn't grow anything. Who should pay for the roads / public transit to their place? Everyone else? Again, I don't have a good answer. But I'm open to the idea that people that simply want to live in rural areas as a personal luxury should shoulder some of the costs to making those places accessible.

by tfourb 3y ago

okr 3y ago

I agree. And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of their life for public services like that. So it does not look like, that we want public goods, but someone else but not me has to do the work. The tax burden is already so high.

qwytw 3y ago
> The tax burden is already so high It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of their life for public services'.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  >It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of their life for public services'. That's blatantly false. It works in Austria quite well. The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university. What worker productivity do you think society is loosing out on here? We're talking about 17-19 year olds, not experienced workers who need to be pulled away from their well paying jobs. The labor they provide and experience they earn in the social system is far more valuable to society than the taxes they would pay doing some minimum wage part time job waiting tables in a restaurant or flipping burgers at McDs instead.
  - eska 3y ago
    It seems like you do not realize that the 30 year olds who don’t flip burgers and make more than minimum age were once those 19 year olds whose career you’ve delayed by 1 year.
    - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      It's the system the democratic voters have voted to keep.
      - eska 3y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum Is this even something people voted on directly or is it just one point among many in each party’s total stance to vote for?
  - buran77 3y ago
    > The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university. Interesting take. Is there any supporting official position on this or just personal opinion? If true I find it very scary that a country's health and social services systems would crumble were it not for the 3 months per year the teenagers of the country contribute. How do these systems handle the rest of the 9 months every year when the teenagers are unavailable on account of being in school. Why would a healthy society operate at the very limit of crashing down because the natality dropped or parents/teenagers start refusing to provide this service? Now I've dealt with a lot of trainees in my life. All university graduates, including with PhDs. They all take weeks to months full time on the job until they're ready to do anything productive in the simplest of jobs. I can't imagine teenagers being or becoming anywhere near productive enough in 3 months per year (with 9 month breaks) to support a country's healthcare system from collapsing. And that's not even touching on the topic that you're forcing children to give up what's probably the last carefree time of their lives to do a job they may not want and are definitely not prepared to do.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of their life for public services like that. To people who argue like this, I often argued in the past that if I were to contribute on an open source project for one year instead, this would do a lot more good for the public welfare.
- okr 3y ago
  As far as i can see it, we need muscle power, that is not well paid, as it does not scale well. Less software. Software is just fine.
  - throwaway60607 3y ago
    [flagged]
konschubert 3y ago
> everyone should serve a year of their life Why not just spend a year's worth of taxes on it? Much more efficient than training a million teenagers to drive the bus every year...

wheels 3y ago

My inclination to agree that public transit should mostly be a nationalized utility. But some experience in rural areas leads me to a counterargument that I don't have a good answer for: Should people that live in urban spaces massively subsidize people that choose to live in rural areas for no economically useful reason? Like, some tech bros decide they don't want neighbors and want to live 20 km from everything. Should the city folk subsidize their preferences? Maybe it should be recouped in local taxes? Should that be covered by agricultural tax breaks? Mostly I think public transit should be a public service. But I don't think it's a given that rich people's preferences should be subsidized just because they want to live in remote or suburban areas.

golem14 3y ago
I think this is a good question, but I'm assuming that this is happening anyways: Few constitutions have provisions forcing tech bros to live in the city. If they move to the burbs without public transit, they are being subsidized via roads and car traffic, which is arguably worse.
- wheels 3y ago
  I think you're also right. The framing for this is I spend some time in a village that has a part that's now been inaccessible because of a landslide. About 10 people live on the road that's now impassable. Digging a safe tunnel through the mountain would cost millions. Should the state shoulder the cost for the mostly wealthy retirees that live on the other side? I don't have a good answer. I also have a version of this from a doctor friend that lives on a "farm" that doesn't grow anything. Who should pay for the roads / public transit to their place? Everyone else? Again, I don't have a good answer. But I'm open to the idea that people that simply want to live in rural areas as a personal luxury should shoulder some of the costs to making those places accessible.