Posted by Ben @ November 23rd, 2009 10:37 pm. Filed under: Anything I Want Should Be Free,Clearly You've Thought This Through — Tags: NEIL MACKENZIE —
There’s this bizarre self-entitlement that overcomes the public when they learn that the government runs something: they expect to be given it for free. There are times when this justification is well-placed (healthcare, for example), and there are times when… well, read for yourself.
by NEIL MACKENZIEWith the nationalisation of the East Coast Main Line, a huge opportunity to radically change the way people think of and use public transport exists. The cost of running this line as a free to use public service would be more than compensated to the public purse by the increase in spending and earnings that would be generated (and taxed in the normal way). This is, already, the primary source of funding of public transport but the mechanisms of additional transportation allowances to wages and expenses claims for occasional or extraordinary business trips is a horrendously inefficient way to administer it. By abolishing the fare charging system on the East Coast Main Line completely, you free up businesses to include vastly bigger markets the whole length of the country and reap the rewards in the tax that generates.
Don’t be blinded by the scale of the scheme. The East Coast Main Line is no different to escalators in a department store or a lift in a hotel or office building and no-one in their right mind would suggest charging the passengers for using of any of those. Trains serve the same purpose and it should be equally absurd to think of charging the passengers to use them.
Neil reckons that making the East Coast Main Line free would be work financially because suddenly everyone would be using the train and they’d invariable wind up spending their money on… other things? I’m assuming he’s thinking about station platform vending machines or a dining cart or the like. He seems to be forgetting that people who want things for free are seldom willing to part with their money, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve waited for the East Coast Main Line to be free before even considering taking a ride.