Comment on Here’s why some people still evade public transport fares – even when they’re 50 cents

• Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  A more crucial question is: if public transport is nearly free but still generates overhead to manage and enforce fares, why not make it completely free and eliminate the overhead entirely?

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  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Oh come on, you know what I mean: completely free as in you’re free to dump stuff in public trashcans but someone still has to pay for trash collection, and that someone is the taxpayer.

    If a bus fare costs. say, $4, and $3.50 are subsidized so the apparent cost to the bus riders is 50c, someone pays for the $3.50 and that’s everybody, including those who don’t ride the bus. Just like everybody pays for road maintenance in equal parts even if they don’t drive a lot.

    If policymakers decided to make everybody pay for 88% of a few people’s bus fare, they might as well make everybody pay 100% and safe the cost of printing bus tickets, programming bus cards and paying ticket controllers to catch fare dodgers.

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    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yeah, I understood your point. I used “free” the same way you did. There was no need to move the goal posts. .

      We tend to distrust “free”.

      How many "free’ offers do you have in your inbox right now? How many do you think are scams? We assume there are some sort of hidden costs, or that the service is “worth what you paid”. If it is offered “completely free”, it will be broadly avoided.

      When charged a token amount, we get the impression of value. A bargain.

      The “penalty” for fare evasion should be the cop looking the other way, or handing out “$5” passes and asking them to “pay it forward”.

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      • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        We tend to distrust “free”.

        I don’t think so. Most people understand that free stuff offered by for-profits is sketchy and deceitful, while free public services are just another way of saying taxpayer-supported.

        Everybody knows - or at least should know - that a free Google account means Google is going to invade your privacy, while enrolling for free at the local community college or attending school is their right because they paid for it with the taxes.

        At least outside the US, that’s the deal most taxpayers understand they have with the state. In the US, people would like free public services but refuse to pay for it because communism or some equally stupid non-sequitur.

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      • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        No, you clearly don’t understand their point. Because everybody (apart from lunatic libertarians) knows that when something is free because taxes pay for it, it’s completely different from free-because-they-sell-your-data or “free”-but-it’s-a-scam.

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