[tfourb]

It technically is in many places around Germany: The national railway infrastructure is owned by a government-owned entity, as is the main railway company. Many municipal public transport systems are also owned directly by the municipalities themselves, although there are also some semi-privatized systems and the national railway company also owns shares of municipal public transport systems in many major cities.

Still, public ownership itself is not really sufficient to guarantee great public transport. In Germany, prevailing opinion is that public transport should break even or cost the public purse as little as possible. The effect is that many communities especially in rural and urban marginalized places are underserved by public transport and many smaller cities have been disconnected from the railway grid.

In my view public transport should be both owned by the public and viewed as a true public good: similarly to basic education, healthcare, electricity and clean water, every citizen should have access to a decent level of service, no matter how cost efficient it would be.

[wheels]

My inclination to agree that public transit should mostly be a nationalized utility. But some experience in rural areas leads me to a counterargument that I don't have a good answer for:

Should people that live in urban spaces massively subsidize people that choose to live in rural areas for no economically useful reason? Like, some tech bros decide they don't want neighbors and want to live 20 km from everything. Should the city folk subsidize their preferences? Maybe it should be recouped in local taxes? Should that be covered by agricultural tax breaks?

Mostly I think public transit should be a public service. But I don't think it's a given that rich people's preferences should be subsidized just because they want to live in remote or suburban areas.

[golem14]

I think this is a good question, but I'm assuming that this is happening anyways: Few constitutions have provisions forcing tech bros to live in the city. If they move to the burbs without public transit, they are being subsidized via roads and car traffic, which is arguably worse.

[wheels]

I think you're also right. The framing for this is I spend some time in a village that has a part that's now been inaccessible because of a landslide. About 10 people live on the road that's now impassable. Digging a safe tunnel through the mountain would cost millions. Should the state shoulder the cost for the mostly wealthy retirees that live on the other side? I don't have a good answer.

I also have a version of this from a doctor friend that lives on a "farm" that doesn't grow anything. Who should pay for the roads / public transit to their place? Everyone else? Again, I don't have a good answer. But I'm open to the idea that people that simply want to live in rural areas as a personal luxury should shoulder some of the costs to making those places accessible.

[okr]

I agree. And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of their life for public services like that. So it does not look like, that we want public goods, but someone else but not me has to do the work. The tax burden is already so high.

[qwytw]

> The tax burden is already so high

It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of their life for public services'.

[ChuckNorris89]

>It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of their life for public services'.

That's blatantly false. It works in Austria quite well. The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university.

What worker productivity do you think society is loosing out on here? We're talking about 17-19 year olds, not experienced workers who need to be pulled away from their well paying jobs.

The labor they provide and experience they earn in the social system is far more valuable to society than the taxes they would pay doing some minimum wage part time job waiting tables in a restaurant or flipping burgers at McDs instead.

[buran77]

> The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university.

Interesting take. Is there any supporting official position on this or just personal opinion?

If true I find it very scary that a country's health and social services systems would crumble were it not for the 3 months per year the teenagers of the country contribute. How do these systems handle the rest of the 9 months every year when the teenagers are unavailable on account of being in school. Why would a healthy society operate at the very limit of crashing down because the natality dropped or parents/teenagers start refusing to provide this service?

Now I've dealt with a lot of trainees in my life. All university graduates, including with PhDs. They all take weeks to months full time on the job until they're ready to do anything productive in the simplest of jobs. I can't imagine teenagers being or becoming anywhere near productive enough in 3 months per year (with 9 month breaks) to support a country's healthcare system from collapsing. And that's not even touching on the topic that you're forcing children to give up what's probably the last carefree time of their lives to do a job they may not want and are definitely not prepared to do.

[ChuckNorris89]

> Is there any supporting official position on this or just personal opinion?

The government figures and claims are supporting this opinion. In fact, it's been the government's opinion, not mine. I'm just quoting it.

>If true I find it very scary that a country's health and social service systems would crumble were it not for the 3 months per year the teenagers of the country contribut

9 months not 3, and yes, that's socialized care for you and an aging population when you have too many people in need of care, and too little contributions into the system since the economy has stagnated post 2008 and taxes are already high enough and no more money can be obtained this way. And it's not just healthcare work, but all social services like kindergartens, retirement homes, refugees homes, etc. that make use of 9 months of teenage labor.

> I can't imagine teenagers being or becoming anywhere near productive enough in 3 months per year

You don't need too long training to be qualified to drive an ambulance or perform CPR. At least not here. Teenagers are quite smart and quick learners if you treat them well.

>you're forcing children to give up what's probably the last carefree time of their lives to do a job they may not want and are definitely not prepared to do.

The military service is forced nation-wide (a system kept through democratic vote), while doing social public civil work is the alternative choice if you feel the military is not for you.

And the children get paid for it, and for many it's the camaraderie and opportunity to meet other young people from other parts of the country/city and make life long friends or meet future spouses while learning useful social and life skills and feeling a sense of self worth for contributing to society, especially in the context of the west having a loneliness and depression epidemic among teens. It's also an opportunity for silver spoon kids of privilege families to get to interact with the lower classes of society and soo how others live, through this kind of work.

You're making it sounds like they're prisoners for life, but they're still free to go binge drinking and care free sex in the south of Spain after.

[buran77]

> The government figures and claims are supporting this opinion. In fact, it's been the government's opinion, not mine. I'm just quoting it.

I believe you but since you're passing this on then you/they must also have more than some words in support. When critical systems would collapse were it not for teenagers being asked to work a job it calls into question both the competence of the leadership to lead and of the people to choose them. There's a reason most countries don't do this beyond basic apprenticeships on limited scale. What happens if this year teenagers start looking more towards the military following events like the war in Ukraine, do those civil services come tumbling down? You and the government make this sound like a country being driven at the edge of collapse.

> You don't need too long training to be qualified to drive an ambulance or perform CPR.

Right? Who could be more qualified to operate a critical emergency vehicle or bring someone back to life than a person who until yesterday wasn't allowed even to vote. What a thing to say...

> The military service is forced nation-wide

Mandatory military conscription is an act of desperation in the face of potential national annihilation. Most countries abolished it and even the ones who kept it start at 18. Is the Austrian civil service conscription an equally desperate move? Or an attempt to raise a "working generation" from as young an age as possible while giving those kids the alternatives "this or the military"?

> and for many it's the camaraderie and opportunity to meet other young people from other parts of the country/city and make life long friends or meet future spouses.

Sure, except literally not because they'd get the very same by going to school or university. They don't need to be forced into a job they don't want because the country will fail otherwise unless it's the only way they'd do it. The only incontestable reason is because it's mandatory, everything else is rationalizing and looking for a silver lining.

[panick21_]

> You don't need too long training to be qualified to drive an ambulance or perform CPR. At least not here. Teenagers are quite smart and quick learners if you treat them well.

What? I did civil service in Switzerland and while there are some jobs that require CPR courses to be done before hand, in non is it actually expected that you need it regularly. And for absolutely sure will they not let 18 year old drive ambulances, that's utterly insane.

Can you show me prove that in Austria they let 18 year old civil service people drive ambulances? Because I know for a fact this is not happening in Switzerland.

[konschubert]

That's a false dichotomy.

It's not: Do we get a million teenagers or not?

There is a third option:

Let those teenagers join the workforce, use the revenue from the increased societal productivity to hire more professional workers in the health care system.

[ChuckNorris89]

Sure, but if suddenly cut the students loose from their social duties, you need money now to pay for those who will need to be employed to cover in their places, and you can't wait a few years till those students graduate, get jobs and pay taxes to cover those extra jobs. It's a monetary chicken adnd egg problem.

[areyousure]

> It works in Austria quite well. The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university.

In case anyone is curious, this appears to refer to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zivildienst_in_Austria which is an alternative to conscription in the Austrian Armed Forces. Conscription applies to men (but not women), and this alternative civil service option is chosen by ~40% of these young men.

[this_user]

> We're talking about 17-19 year olds, not experienced workers who need to be pulled away from their well paying jobs.

But these people are starting university one year later, which means they graduate a year later, which means these badly needed, highly qualified workers become available to the job market a year later, because they have to spend their time doing some menial job that most of them have no interest in doing. We used to have this nonsense in Germany. Most of the people I know were just goofing off, were drunk or high on the job, or were deliberately destroying equipment, because nobody wanted to be there.

[mharig]

Most of the students do not leave university as high qualified, badly needed workers, but as useless parasites, like lawyers, economists, psychologists, sociologists, ..............

[ChuckNorris89]

Sure, but if you cut everyone loose now, than the whole system becomes understaffed instantly and collapses. You can't wait 10+ years until all those you cut loose have great paying jobs and their taxes pay for the necessary workers.

[panick21_]

I have done social service instead of military in Switzerland where we have the same system. In fact we have to do 1.5 years of before we are 30. I worked in at least 5 (old people homes and hospitals) different positions. In not a single one of them is it true to say the system couldn't function if not for the civil service workers.

Simply paying normal people to do that work would be perfectly reasonable.

> is far more valuable to society than the taxes they would pay doing some minimum wage part time job waiting tables

Yeah but most people don't actually work minimum wage jobs. Me as a Software Developer spend 6 month cleaning windows. While this was reasonable fun and low stress not sure my window cleaning experience has this great benefit for society.

> not experienced workers who need to be pulled away from their well paying jobs

You start your job one year later and therefore spend 1 year less doing it before retirement, not sure how this is difficult to figure out.

[eska]

It seems like you do not realize that the 30 year olds who don’t flip burgers and make more than minimum age were once those 19 year olds whose career you’ve delayed by 1 year.

[ChuckNorris89]

It's the system the democratic voters have voted to keep.

[eska]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Is this even something people voted on directly or is it just one point among many in each party’s total stance to vote for?

[jakub_g]

Do you have some links / google keywords about the teenagers working in healthcare/social services in Austria?

[panick21_]

If you are interested in the Swiss system:

https://www.ch.ch/en/safety-and-justice/military-service-and...

If you want to see open positions for the system you can see here (not in English):

https://www.ezivi.admin.ch/ivy/faces/instances/eZIVI/PublikB...

You can search for different keywords to find open positions. For me personally I worked in:

- Hospital as a Programmer (they made position for me)

- In another hospital as Technician (hanging up stuff, changing light-bulls, assessing damage, configuring doors and so on)

- Old people home, I worked for in technical service, including garden work.

- Old people home, I also worked as a cleaner, mostly windows, floors and so on.

In the hospital you can also work as a bed mover for example. You can work directly in old people care and things.

In general there are 100s of position, some position are even going with international aid organization to other countries. A friend of mine did his in archeology departments digging up old stuff. Another friends simply did farm work with a mountain farmer, that's the easiest to get (he in fact simply was to lazy to get a job so they assigned him to a farmer).

[konschubert]

> everyone should serve a year of their life

Why not just spend a year's worth of taxes on it?

Much more efficient than training a million teenagers to drive the bus every year...

[aleph_minus_one]

> And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of their life for public services like that.

To people who argue like this, I often argued in the past that if I were to contribute on an open source project for one year instead, this would do a lot more good for the public welfare.

[okr]

As far as i can see it, we need muscle power, that is not well paid, as it does not scale well. Less software. Software is just fine.