Eric Cope wrote:

However, if the government were to steal money for other purposes, that don't benefit you, then it would be a completely different situation.

That's what elections are for.  If you don't like what your taxes are
being spent for, elect someone else.  If you want to have no taxes and no services, fair 'nuff.  I wouldn't vote for that, but I can cope with people disagreeing.

'Stealing' is an inaccurate term in my view.  I don't personally benefit
from food stamps, unemployment insurance, homeless shelters, or a
million other programs, but I am happy to contribute to them.  I think
the real measure of a society's greatness is the way it treats its most
vulnerable members.  We hear a lot of pandering to the 'middle class',
and not nearly enough about helping the poor.  To tell me I only support
things out of selfishness just means you don't know me at all.

You're taking some suggestions I had about concrete,
tangible ideas (get a quote for solar hot water, check the bus
schedules), and turning this into a thread about ideology, about the
illegitimacy of government.  It's not very convincing, and seems likely
to spark a 'my politics is better than your politics' argument.  'Ideas' and 'ideology' have a common root, but in practice they rarely interact.  If we can stick to specific points, I'm with you.  If we're going up in the clouds, I quit.

Additionally, when you see how much
money the city governments subsidize your bus system, and now light rail system, your $/mile or $/day is very high.

How much do we spend on road maintenance?  How much land do we loose to
huge superhighways to accommodate all those cars?  What price do we all
pay breathing the smog produced by large numbers of cars with only 1
occupant?  How much time do we lose sitting in traffic jams?

If you don't live near a convenient bus route, don't use the bus.  My point was you'd be surprised how often you can get where you're going, and in about the same amount of time, and without having to look for a parking space at the end of your ride.  If you want to drive, by all means.  I use my car often enough, and I'm not trying to tell you cars are bad.

> Additionally, while city

governments subsidize  bus systems, they also prevent other systems from entering the market through licensing and lack of subsidies. The end result is a very poor system that has no market forces forcing it to be 2 of the 3, better, faster, or cheaper.

Multiple transit companies competing can also be a huge waste of
resources.  Lots of duplicated effort.  Lots of redundant service in high-population areas and a lack of service elsewhere.  A transit system works best when it's comprehensive, when you can get EVERYWHERE.  Maybe some private contracts would improve things in some areas, but I'd be really leery of turning the whole thing over to the lowest bidder.

For example, I wanted to take a
bus from i-10 and Elliot to ASU. The bus route would take just over an hour. I rode my bike the seven miles in 30 minutes.

No doubt routes could be improved.  My observation has been that if you
live near a route that works, the system is pretty good.  But too often,
you don't.  The system is not nearly as comprehensive is it ought to be, and I'd support ideas to make it more so.

About the bike : Folks who are blind, elderly, or in a wheelchair aren't
going to be riding a bike.  I think providing basic transportation
options to everyone is a legitimate service a local government ought to
provide.  It's not stealing, and I don't know why you'd call it that.

Your favored
subsidies, your pooled resources, create (financially, timely, and environmentally) extremely inefficient mechanisms, in this case a crappy, smelly, rude, late, slow, bus system.

I dismiss this as unsupported assertion, not real argument.  With this
kind of hyperbole, I'm rapidly losing interesting in continuing the
discussion.  You're coming off as a zealot.  You continue to imply that there's no legitimate role for government in providing public transit, and I think you're flat wrong about that, but if you're going to make your point with talk-radio style I'll just let this drop.  A civil debate with actual information I'm interested in, a shouting match I'm not.  I like to have my thinking challenged, but I don't like to be berated.

The core of what I'm trying to say is simple.  Just this : There are lots of good ideas for lessening our energy consumption.  Cars with better MPG are only 1 of them.  The bus system works quite well in many circumstances.  I benefit, and so do many others.  You might be pleasantly surprised if you try it.  That's it.  Not much more to it.

I appreciate your last statement about having a good debate, and no I
don't take it personally.  But if you want to turn this into a tirade
about the tyranny of the nanny state, you're going much further afield
than I have interest in following.

kind regards,
alex

ps - Maybe I can make this point a different way : 'pooling resources'
is exactly what makes open source work.  If everybody insisted on doing everything for themselves, we'd all be re-implementing a merge sort in
assembly language every time we wanted to put up a web page.  It might be fun, but it certainly isn't productive.  If you're so libertarian that any cooperation seems like socialism, I think we aren't going to find much common ground.


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