[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.