Brazen Bureaucracy

I just got home from NYC, glad to be here. It was a productive trip, though. The public subway system was incredibly entertaining, because not only did this government-owned entity advertise itself on its cars more than private entities, its own advertisements sought to convince riders to be thankful for the subway system.

One advertisement proclaimed the long, overdue need for line additions due to overcrowding on a particular line. That same advertisement lauded the city's efforts to complete a new line by 2015, and even stated that 'yes, it's overdue, but still excellent news.' Talk about tooting your own horn! May I ask, excellent news to whom? Personally, I think more excellent news would be to turn the entire operation over to private entrepreneurs. Maybe the guy sitting next to me thought there isn't any need for another line; but who's to know, when the government runs the show? This is a prime example of what happens when the government is in charge: Instead of letting a price system most efficiently ration a good, we have overcrowding and shortages of service. And when the government does decide to do something, it's extolled as 'excellent news.' It doesn't matter if the new line is economically efficient, because the government doesn't have to earn its own resources, outside of taking it from the taxpayers of Manhattan.

Another advertisement commended and affirmed its services by comparing the price of the subway 20 years ago to now (one-ride 20 years ago cost $1.86 in 2008 dollars). The only problem with the comparison was that the 1986 fare was standard, that is, nobody had to buy an unlimited fare for a period of time, like a 7-day unlimited ride card or 30-day unlimited ride card, so nobody had to oblige themselves to more expensive cards. Today in NYC, you have several choices. If you compare apples to apples, and buy a one-ride fare, it's going to cost you $2.00. Of course, you can buy unlimited ride cards at higher prices, and depending on how often you ride the subway, the per fare price will likely fall below $1.86. But you see, in the city government's upside-down world, they can arbitrarily average rides anyway they want. Hell, they could feasibly say that, per ride, fares for 30 day cards are close to $.05, if they decide that New Yorkers ride the subway that much. Also, they forget to point out that the difference between then and now is that you have less frequent riders subsidizing more frequent riders. That's exactly what this is. Indeed, the NYC subway system seeks to compare apples to oranges, and add numbers with unlike denominators. Their comparisons are crap, and yet, because they have a monopoly privilege over the entire underground transportation system, they get away with it and all the other spewed propaganda.

And they actually had the chutzpah to play a recording thanking us for riding the metro system on the way out.