US cities pay too much for buses

> "A new paper argues that lack of competition, demand for custom features and “Buy America” rules have driven up costs for transit agencies in the US."

If that's not the most NYC finance-centered headline ever, I don't know what is.

"If we just offload our bus-building industry to somewhere else, we could save $x on taxes each year. Yeah, it eliminates jobs and is another blow against strategically-important heavy industry, but please, think of my balance sheet!"

it's not a question of "offloading" it, it's a question of reaping the benefits of global competition

Would you really be better off if you could only buy cars made by US manufacturers? Did americans really lose out when Toyota and co arrived? Would Boeing aircraft really be better if they didn't have to compete with Airbus? Or would the incumbents just get lazy?

There's a difference between private companies and state-run companies / authorities.

When a US airline thinks it's better for them to switch over to Airbus, by all means do so, that's competition.

But taxpayer money should not be used to prop up other countries' economies unless explicitly designated that way (e.g. contributions to international agencies, economic aid), and certainly not if that replaces domestic union labor.

The thing is the public sector does have competition. We have a surplus of houses with XXL master bedroom suites in Arizona and a deficit of high speed rail. If they used union labor to build houses in Arizona and non-union labor to build high speed rail it would be the other way around.

If it costs the public sector 3x as much to do things as the private sector people are going to turn against the public sector. Have crazy people screaming on the street corner in the city and people will retreat to the suburbs and order from Amazon instead of going shopping, order a private taxi for their burrito instead of going to a restaurant. If the public sector were efficient, responsive and pleasant people would be voting for more of it.

> If it costs the public sector 3x as much to do things as the private sector people are going to turn against the public sector. Have crazy people screaming on the street corner in the city and people will retreat to the suburbs and order from Amazon instead of going shopping, order a private taxi for their burrito instead of going to a restaurant. If the public sector were efficient, responsive and pleasant people would be voting for more of it.

Given the encroachment of enshittification on the private sector, I'm not sure it's any more efficient than the public sector on the whole.

And in the cases where it is more efficient, that's because there's either less at stake, or people care less. I don't care what Jim at Jim's Quik Lube does with my money after I pay him for an oil change. I do care what the Feds do with my tax dollars after I file my return, and so does everyone else, so we create regulations and policies to keep government agents from blowing taxpayer dollars. Or, at least, we used to.

Now, we've bought into this "the private sector is always more efficient" BS and put a private sector guy in charge, and it's a disaster. I don't want the mechanisms of the state being treated like a company where the guy in charge has his name on the building and always gets what he wants, because the mechanisms of the state are that of force. People get arrested, assaulted, imprisoned, and killed. It has to be more deliberate and take longer.

Private sector knows how to keep costs down, but that's because the incentive is to enrich the people at the top. This eventually comes at the cost of quality.

Public sector sometimes acts like they have infinite money. They'll just print more and drive up inflation while paying lip service to voters and pretending to care during election season.

There's also the massive corruption in the public sector. All the work is actually done by the private sector, but the contract isn't decided on who will delivery the best quality at the lowest cost, no no no. You'd have to be naive to believe that. The actual decision is based on who will kick back the most money (labeled as "campaign contributions") to the people who are in charge of making the decision.

So really, both suck. Private sector will give you a shitty product at a great price. Public section will give you a terrible price with the quality being a complete gamble.