[CPLX]

Why should New Yorkers subsidize ethanol production in Iowa?

Why should anyone in the society give a fuck about anyone else in society? Maybe the answer is because people think it's better for the society, as a whole, when various things are supported by all.

[rayiner]

They shouldn’t!

I’m not advocating “everyone for themselves.” But I don’t see why the national government needs to subsidize a service that overwhelmingly benefits just a single region. It’s not like Medicare or social security that can be used by anyone. Trains only go to a well defined set of places. We could have an interstate compact approach instead, like we do for things like WMATA.

[arkades]

Because the eastern corridor drives a huge chunk of the wealth and innovation of the entire country...

It’s not like we are federally funding a rail between Nowhere and Whocares. It’s the business and academic districts of Boston, NYC, Philly, DC.

And those gains are ultimately, you know ... taxed.

Considering net tax spending heavily goes from the eastern corridor to places like Iowa, though, they’re welcome to cut off their contributions as soon as they cut off their acceptances as well.

[CPLX]

OK why should I subsidize the Federal court system? I don't use it.

I also don't have kids so let's get rid of all the schools.

[yathern]

I side with you, but your last two comments are basically the same "but what about this?!"

Rayiner clarified and meant there should be geographical considerations to some subsidies:

> "It’s not like Medicare or social security that can be used by anyone"

Schools and federal court would fall under that categories of medicare and social security.

[CPLX]

He edited his original two word comment after I posted mine.

I think my basic point stands up pretty well though.

The entire class of arguments along the lines of “why should we do X when only some of the people need/want X” just has no value at all.

There’s no coast guard in Iowa either. Or avalanche prevention.

Why is geography the privileged metric here? It only matters if things are segregated by location, but not if they are segregated by age? Medicare is a subset of Americans too. So are people of school age.

You can argue the programs on the merits of course, and say that it’s too niche, or panders to special interests in a way that’s harmful.

But to just make the facile point that a government program contains an element of some people subsidizing something that benefits other people adds literally zero to any discussion. That’s a characteristic of literally all government actions.

[rayiner]

> Why is geography the privileged metric here?

Because there are 50 different sovereign states cooperating within a federation. Also, because we shouldn’t let the NYC-DC corridor become Trantor.

[CPLX]

Yeah and those states created a federal government.

We’re talking about interstate transportation here. If you envision even the absolutely shortest list of things for a federal government to be involved in that’s going to be on it.

[apatters]

This is a reductio ad absurdum. The meaningful issue is the essentiality of the service and government's involvement in it. Do we really need the service? Do we need it enough to force everyone to pay for it at gunpoint? (That is what taxes are, if you don't pay, you eventually get arrested by armed civil servants and go to jail, and if that's the only way you can get people to pay for your idea, we should at least be questioning the validity of the idea.)

Almost everybody agrees in funding the court system because it's an essential function of government that's required for society to function, even if you're not using it now, you want it to be there for you if you're assaulted, defrauded, your kid gets kidnapped, your spouse gets murdered, etc.

The same cannot be said about having a good train system. That's surely nice to have but society can get along fine without it (as it does today). Thus it's not obvious that the government and its monopoly on violence need to get involved at all. Opinions other than yours are perfectly legitimate on this issue.

[CPLX]

My point is that subsidizing a train system should be argued on the merits.

The question we ask should be something like “should we subsidize these trains” or similar. You’re making merits based arguments in your reply. I strongly disagree with you, as interstate transportation is a core government function in my opinion, but those are differing opinions.

The commenter I’m replying to says the question we should ask is “why should people in Iowa pay for this”

I think that question is meaningless, because literally all government functions involve all people paying for something that only benefits some of the people.

As such, pointing out that fact adds nothing to the conversation, because it fails to distinguish between valid and invalid ideas for government programs.

[calvinmorrison]

"reducto absurd" isn't true if you are a millennial without kids in a good career. We subsidize schools and aren't planning on kids.

[apatters]

It's reductio ad absurdum, not reducto absurd.

Less than half of college students say they want kids, and yet something like 80% of Americans end up reproducing at some point in their lives.

Personally I try to assume that I'm not magic and different because of my generation. It's lazy thinking. Yes, Millennials might be unicorns. But it's also possible that humans just find kids more attractive as they get older.

Since the latter seems to have been the case in American society up until now, I think the policy of making people fund schools even when they claim they're not interested in kids is reasonable.

Thanks for the downvote and the one liner though, I didn't feel like I was getting enough Twitter in my diet today.