Re: Guardian Money Sat 25 July 2009: Five ways to save on ... rail fare

On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:48:15 -0700 (PDT), EE507 <ee507@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jul 30, 11:09 am, Bruce <docnews2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

You're all for compelling others to accept your lifestyle choices.
Well, I don't go along with compulsion, and it says a lot about the
sheer unattractiveness of your choices that for any more than a tiny
minority of people to follow the same path, compulsion would be
needed.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You said, "We should be encouraging less travel (by all modes) not
more".

Do make up your mind. When you say such things, please do think
through what you are implying. Or is one rule for you, and another one
for everyone else?


You don't seem to know the difference between encouraging, on the one
hand, and compelling, on the other. You would compel people to do
what you freely chose to so, by denying them the freedom of choice
that you were able to exercise. I believe everyone should have
freedom of choice, and that means that different people must have the
freedom to exercise it in different ways.


You also appear to labour under the impression that surface public
transport is somehow capable of being as convenient as the car for
door-to-door journeys


Don't be ridiculous. It can never be capable of the conveinece a car
offers, which is why car is the first choice for the vast majority of
the population. It would be the first choice of an even greater
majority if not for the impracticability of more people going to work
by car in congested cities. They have no option but to use public
transport, but if they had the option to travel in comfort and
privacy, of course they would.


and that cheap air travel is your right.


Freedom of choice is a right. You would take that right away through
compulsion, but you will never get your chance, as any political party
that campaigns on a denial of choice ticket will never be elected,
thank God. Just as any party that gains power then denies choice will
find itself summarily deposed at the next election.

Of course you could suppress democracy ... I don't doubt that is your
option of last resort when you find there is no democratic means of
compelling other people to follow your (freely chosen) lifestyle.


Climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever
seen [1]. I assume you think the market will somehow encourage people
to consume less of something, in this case travel.


No, it will need a complex and imaginative combination of public
investment, fiscal incentives and disincentives that will still give
people the freedom to choose between alternatives, just more likely to
make different choices than they do now.

We don't have a free market now; it won't be free in future either. It
will just be skewed in a different way.

The market is currently skewed by massive subsidies to rail and even
more massive surpluses from over-taxation of road use - a good job,
otherwise how would the huge subsidies to rail be paid for?

At the same time, government and industry are investing in
alternatives which will allow a wider range of choices including such
things as electric cars. Within a decade, they will be as common on
city streets as they are rare now. I will happily buy one for all my
local transport needs, while keeping another, possibly hybrid car for
longer journeys. And yes, I will still fly from time to time.

But if you think you can deny people freedom of choice and compel them
to use public transport, you're even dafter than I thought. And I
already thought you were as daft as a brush. ;-)

.

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