[mvpel]

... King County Transportation Company, a private concern publicly traded on the NASDAQ.

What makes him think that there will be only one bus company unless the government meddles and tinkers long and hard enough to insure it?

If I wanted to run a van-based jitney service, under a non-governmental system I'd be able to do so without begging the government for permission in the form of licenses and artificially-scarce medallions, and such competition for fares would drive the price down and the level of service and convenience up.

I'll have to read this in more detail to find any other logical fallacies here. It seems he's making the mistake of assuming that the bloated, inefficient transportation systems that governments set up on the basis of rent-seeking and political patronage would continue to exist in the private sector.

[ThanhPhero]

He's making that most basic error- that subsidy money is free, free lunch, as it were.

[ThanhPhero]

He's making that most basic error- that subsidy money is free, free lunch, as it were.

[Publius]

You are correct in assuming that breaking up a government transportation monopoly -- and the unions that act as parasites on it -- will drive costs down. In fact, thanks to the Internet, a bus company will not even need fixed routes but could simply pick people up based on Internet orders like modern airport van services use. Costs would eventually go down as the large network disintegrated into a group of small capitalistic fiefdoms.

But remember what happened in most major cities even before the unions ruined private transit concerns and pushed for the creation of subsidized transportation authorities. The problems of transferring between competing transit systems eventually led to consolidation as the bigger fish swallowed the smaller fish. By 1911 the Mitten interests in Philadelphia had bought out the smaller street railroads and created the great PRT -- Philadelphia Rapid Transit. Consolidation is a natural part of capitalism, and once that begins and competition decreases, costs will go up.

The point the author wished to make was that getting rid of subsidies for highways would not be fair unless one got rid of subsidies for transit systems too. TANSTAAFL applies to everyone.