Should Infrastructure be Politically Controlled?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

It basically takes politics out of the equation

No, it takes government out of the equation. The proposed corporate entity, its board, its shareholders and its activities would still be subject to politics.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

In this case, so long as the infrastructure is maintained by government, voters have to consider the overall performance of government, and be forced to accept conditions according to what they view to be a better-than-other scenario.

In the case of private ownership, however, the incentives for proper maintenance exist on the individual level. People don't want to use shitty roads, and the better their condition the greater flow of commerce and the greater the amount of surplus. Since there's no other way to appropriate the funds, the shareholders do not have to negotiate maintenance with other issues.

Problems begin to arise when you remember that the voters in the first model are the same people as the shareholders in the second. In neither model does an individual level of responsibility exist for road maintainence; in the former, the government retains responsibility, while in the latter, the proposed corporation does.

People who feel no particular need to vote in local elections won't feel any to vote for board members of this new corporation, either.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

the point is that Federal money for the new bridge implies that the state of Minnesota is incapable of maintaining or creating new infrastructure.

The bridge in question was part of the Interstate Highway System, which recieves federal money.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

These are notable problems, but I would still say that the corporation has an incentive for income. If a bridge collapses or a road becomes unusable, then the corporation and its shareholders stop collecting income from the damaged infrastructure. Governments do not have this incentive, because government income is acquired through taxation.

It doesn't matter if repairing a bridge is cheaper than constructing a new one, since governments do not have to produce wealth.

By specifically setting up this corporation as a non-profit, you've removed the income motive. Any profits the corporation are subsequently redistributed to the "shareholders" based on their usage of the roads. This means that people who use the roads less get less money back than those who use it more, if they are able to get anything back at all, since it would stand to reason that those who use it more would get first priority on refunds. But, however money you get back, since you're paying the money in in the first place, your net income would still be a negative.

The negative would only grow if the corporation determined that it needed to retain some of those profits for expansion of the system, as the construction costs for building the expansions are factored in, as are the maintainence costs afterward. If the amount you drive doesn't increase, you end up getting less money back.

All of this is, however, based on the assumption that the corporation actually generates any profits to be redistributed in the first place. If it operates at a loss, the amount the users paid becomes loss, and would only increase as tolls go up to make up for corporate loss. During that time, the system couldn't expand if it needed to, since it wouldn't have the money on hand and wouldn't for some time.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

Taxation is theft, and whether or not you believe it is so depends on how much stock you put into the Social Contract.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Paying taxes to government is no more theft than paying tolls to this corporate public works department of yours.

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What alternative transit? Your proposition involves taking public works away from government and turning it over to a non-profit corporation, which would handle it instead. There was only one of these in the original proposal, which would handle everything the government did. There wasn't any competition. The financial incentives you talked about would be about the corporation not being able to make money off damaged infrastructure, not that they might lose customers to competition.

This idea was pretty fucking stupid to start with; it just gets ever more so as this discussion goes on.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Air

Unless you're rich and own a helicopter, air travel is a pretty impractical way to get around town. It's also impractical for fairly short distances, like, say, from Houston to Galveston.

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rail... mass transit

I'm including these together since, except for the Northeast, long-distance passenger rail is essentially dead, and that light rail systems in cities are frequently offered by mass transit companies.

However, in your case, you still couldn't escape the Coropration if you used them. The government is responsible for building the infrastructure they use; this duty would be turned over to the Corporation in your model, and the fares you pay to use them would be in part payed to the Corporation to make use of their services.

The fares would also probably rise considerably since tax money wouldn't be made available to keep them low (since taxes are bad), and since they would be competing with the Corporation, the Corporation has no incentive to do anything to help anybody out there.

Which is meaningless if the Corporation owns the mass transit system as well as the roads.

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cycling

Like air travel isn't practical for short distances, cycling isn't practical for long distances. It would break someone to ride a bike from their home in the suburbs to work in the city, put in their 8 hours a day, and then ride back home five days a week.

And it doesn't escape the Corporation, either; the man in question would be riding his bike on their road, and would concievably be required to pay for the use like a driver would.

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You're not addressing what we're arguing, either, that tax is a form of theft and that there's a difference between collecting a toll and extracting a tax.

Taxes are just as much a payment for services rendered as a toll is. Local taxes, for instance, pay for such things as the police and fire departments. They also pay for keeping my bus fares low.

And, to top it all off, the pay for things like public sanitation and the water system, which are useful for disposing of various forms of waste.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by BlueMikey

Your idea wouldn't even work here because you can't toll Arizona residents. They would just stop using the pay roads and all the traffic would funnel through city streets, making things even worse.

The way I'm reading his idea, they wouldn't have an alternative. Governments are to be relieved of their road infrastructure, which would then be turned over to this corporation; since cities have governments, too, their roads would likely be privatized along with state and county roads. If there's a road, the Corporation owns it and charges you for its use.

Which reminds me; how much would it cost for the Corporation to buy these roads from their respective governments in the first place?

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Originally Posted by Guru

Which is why, obviously, that I think it's OK that if people want to live extravagant, impractical lives (by living in big houses 50 miles away from work), that they shouldn't gripe about being taxed on infrastructure. (To keep with the context of the thread, at least).

Maybe I missed someone, but I only saw one person here who was griping about being taxed for infrastructure. The people who would be biking in from the suburbs are just those who would be told to suck it up so he doesn't have to pay those taxes.

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I've expressly stated that taxes shouldn't be abolished.

But you say that taxes are theft. Theft, by definition, is wrongful. If taxes shouldn't be abolished, they must not be overly wrongful in your eyes.

Given that, why are you insisting that they're theft?

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