[moron4hire]

Why should people pay any tax for any public good that they don't use personally? Schools, healthcare, parks & rec, homeless shelters, space exploration, national defense, fire fighters, vaccine development.

Because we live in a society.

[luckylion]

Personal transportation isn't like the things you mentioned. It has -by itself- value to the individual, but not to society. Having no fire fighters quickly becomes an obvious problem. Not having people drive their personal cars all over the city does not.

[moron4hire]

"Value to society" is the summation of "value to individuals". Arguing that people should not have personal transportation is arguing that "we" have the right to dictate people's lifestyles to them.

[luckylion]

> "Value to society" is the summation of "value to individuals".

I disagree, not necessarily, and probably not in the case of unnecessary personal transportation (which is most of it). Everyone in society profits from fire fighters or hospitals, even when they don't need either just this instance. That's not the same for some luxury that some/most people enjoy and want everyone to fund.

> Arguing that people should not have personal transportation is arguing that "we" have the right to dictate people's lifestyles to them.

And we do, and we don't consider that an issue. People shouldn't have personal nuclear bombs, even though some would like to. Also, few people are arguing that personal transportation shouldn't exist, just that the required infrastructure should be funded differently.

[chriswarbo]

Yes, in principle. Frustratingly, for a goal like 'moving around cheaply, conveniently and safely, with minimal environmental impact', then subsidising driving is a worse investment than public transport.

[moron4hire]

The person I was replying to was not complaining about how revenue is distributed, they were complaining about revenue being spent at all on a public good that they don't use.

I agree that there is a lot of work to be done to rebalance the equations on how we spend money on roads, public transit, and various forms of energy subsidies. But all else being equal, getting that balance "right" is not going to make personal transit just go away. Some will shift to public transit, but you will always have a case of "your tax money" going to pay for roads used by private transit.

[pbhjpbhj]

Agreed. But if you analyse things then it's likely people use those facilities at a secondary level - eg you get something done for you by people who used schools to enable them, someone who provides value to your life used the healthcare services.

[moron4hire]

Yes, that was my point.