[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.