The answer is that we have to rebuild those public goods on which we all depend: health, education, housing, and infrastructure.
Health, beyond pandemics, is not a public good. Education, beyond the societal effects of basic literacy, is not a public good. Housing, beyond dead bodies stinking up the streets, is not a public good. Infrastucture might, sometimes, be a public good.
Public goods are things that are non-excudable and non-rivalrous. Can the NHS not treat something? Yep, so it’s excludable. A university can exclude – not a public good. We actually put locks on houoses to make them excludable.
They’re not public goods.
On health care I’m inclined to the view that A&E and measures to tackle communicable diseases are public goods. If my neighbours have sanitation and immunity to viruses, then I gain those things when moving into that neighbourhood. I suppose you could charge a fee for moving in to a parish, but that would be more like a tax, not a fee you can opt out of.
But if a lorry jumps the reservation of the M4 bringing all 6 lanes to a standstill then you want a system that takes the injured to hospital, the organs of the dead can be paid for by the beneficiaries but you’d still want that to happen, and you want the road to be cleared after the police analysis is over. Can that be done by a system of toll roads, I’m not sure.
Common goods are great too. But they are different. For they lose the justification for government having to be involved in their provision. Which is why Spud – and so many others. Mazzo sy – continually elide the difference between them.
Public goods – govt has a role, deffo.
Common goods – not so much.
“Infrastucture might, sometimes, be a public good.”
But what “public good” infrastructure can you think of that would be a good idea? I think we had our infrastructure era, and we built most of it. It also probably made sense having owned infrastructure when communications were poor and transaction costs were high.
For example: when I worked at the Anglia Building Society in the late 80s, they printed their own stationery. They ran their own fleet of cars. Within a decade, that was outsourced. People would think you were bonkers if you did that today, but it probably made sense then.
A simple thing: around 1987, we got DDI numbers. For the first time, someone could call direct to our desks. Didn’t have to go through the switchboard. That opens up the thing of suppliers dealing with you as no-one had to piss about with the switchboard.
And you know, that was the world of council-run buses. Quite possibly made sense when comms were that bad, moving money around was slow. You had the transport department in the same building. It doesn’t today. And you can still make sure that Mrs Miggins can go to town, you just pay a subsidy to the bus company to keep it running. You tap into the market, into specialists that know how to run buses well, because they’re running in lots of places.
Whether you believe in more or less state, the sensible thing is privatisation, outsourcing. Government just hands over money to people and gets things back based on a contract.
“I think we had our infrastructure era, and we built most of it.”
There’s ongoing maintenance, that thing which is utterly necessary but gets no votes so is neglected by most politicians.
As for the bus companies, for a lot of towns it would frankly make more sense to make a contract with Uber. There’d be much better service, much less paid out overall, and less disruption due to strikes. And you wouldn’t have most of the buses running with one passenger.
London is probably too big for that; they likely have routes that actually make money.
Yes. I’m not saying knock certain things down. They still need maintenance. But what is there that needs doing now, that the market can’t?
Transport is all about density. Trains work for London, Birmingham a few bits of Bristol and Manchester and not much else. Buses work down to places like Cheltenham. The only rural buses that work are those that serve people going to work in towns and kids going to school. The bus from Calne to Marlborough is popular. Kids in Avebury and Lockeridge going to school or maybe people going to work in the town.
The best solutions in rural areas are people sharing cabs, or scheduled cars. Sharing cabs: you request an hour in advance and if someone else also does for around the same time, it figures out a shared route and you agree to it. Elsie in Fairford wants to go to Cirencester. Sissy in Poulton also does. As long as they don’t mind being a little flexible on time you can put both in a taxi and split the cost. Scheduled cars are where a car runs a rough route all day, and has some wiggle room, can deviate off the route. Like maybe a Bath to Chippenham car, but someone wants dropping off at Peter Gabriel’s studios in Box. It’s only a 2 minute diversion for the car. All very possible with today’s technology.
When I served in Cyprus they used to run a service called flying taxis. You went to the local taxi office and said where you want to go and when the taxi was full or you all agreed to cover the fair off you went. It could be as flexible as those travelling wanted.
in France they do a lot of ride sharing and there’s loads of free designated paring on the edge of big towns at major intersections. No doubt here they’d want to charge if they could get plans past the local NIMBYs and professional objectors.
Yeah. So, why not do that with an app? There’s some geniuses around this stuff, but roughly speaking you go down your list of requests, and you pair based on the differences in crow-flies of departure and arrival. Someone in Poulton and Fairford? Close enough. One wants to go to Waitrose in Cirencester, the other to Tesco? Close enough.
You set a max time. I want to go to Cirencester by 2pm. If no-one else wants to join you, you go at 2, alone.
It does require flexibility of course, but people often have that, or accept it. You want to go to Waitrose, you might not care when you do it in the day. Anytime from 9 to 4. Or if the shared taxi gets you to your hair appointment an hour earlier, you just have a cup of tea and wait.
The match part isn’t that tricky. Do a select within a range, then filter that down by haversine formula, filter to max range, then prioritise some sort of scoring on time matches and distances. You could even do this without Uber. Just, two people do it and sort out costs between them. There’s still value that you can find a match. It’s not that far off what Liftshare do. Only one or both of you is driving.
I’m looking for a system to practice some react/firebase coding on. I just need to do it and get some villagers…. 😉
Barbados has something like scheduled cars. Someone has a van and runs a route. Anyone who wants flags them down and pays a dollar.
The vans are extremely crowded, but it works out. They don’t go very fast, and it’s island time anyway.
Whether or not the service would be better depends on the guys who run the local bus compant and the guys who run the local uber. When I was young my local council ran a decent bus service and “United” which had been nationalised by Attlee but leaving the management in place when they booted out the owners ran a better one. London buses were poor. Ten years later Oxford ran a decent bus service and London buses were rubbish. Half-a-dozen years later I wanted racial discrimination in favour of West Indian train drivers because the tubes were good and ASLEF driver on British Fail left me standing on platforms for hours (on a few occasions literally hours) – so did London buses. Even before National Express was privatised it was better than British Fail had become.
As for London Transport there seems to be no-one who cares which routes make money.
FYI very few buses run with one passenger – I think that you should say “with one far-paying passenger” (and the cap on bus fares should increase the load numbers) – it is ridiculous that it costs more to travel by public transport than by car (unless one has to pay to park)
The Mrs Miggins thing is more that if you only have a few passengers it’s not viable. But maybe we accept that we want little old ladies to travel.
And public transport can be cheaper but what comparison are you making? Total cost of ownership and travel or just petrol? I don’t run a car. I rarely need one. About 1000 miles a year. When you’re down to that number and live in a town, buses, trains, taxis and the odd hire care are cheaper than forking out £2-3000 a year running a car.
I was under the impression that if a bus is scheduled to run a route it goes, regardless of the number of passengers.
I do wonder where the break-even point for a bus is. How many passengers does it have to have for how much of the route before it actually is more efficient at using the road than the cars those passengers would otherwise use?
There are a few people wibbling about how mass transit is so much more efficient at moving people, but that really does depend on the traffic pattern. If you have rush hour when the road is rammed, but the rest of the time there’s no traffic, then I don’t think running a train track, or even a bus route does anything.
Spud makes the mistake that all socialists make. He believes that something that is in itself a good idea has to be imposed from above by the State.
As for infrastructure : good sanitation is all that is really required from the government.
Roads and the things that run on them can be provided by private finance.
“Health, beyond pandemics, is not a public good.”
In the pandemic “public health” was a public bad – incompetent, hysterical, corrupt, downright wicked. Hangings are in order.
Spud is a public bad.
We have to tax excess, whether that be wealth or inheritance or speculative finance
Says someone with zero wealth, minimal investments and no prospect of an inheritance. No envy involved of course…
And we have to redefine prosperity. We must measure success not by the amount of wealth that any one individual has, but by the strength of the commons, and that is the cultural and natural resources that are accessible to everyone, including the natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth, all of which are now challenged in the UK and elsewhere.
‘The ascendancy of the common man’ – what an utter blowhard. Also illustrates the insight of Peter Bauer – the politicisation of economic life….
Rebuild? WTF does that mean?