Ugly Ignorance

Can you imagine how awesome it would be if the company you work for started a commuter bus service? You could join your colleagues for a ride right to and from your place of work.

The government does it — sort of. They're called park-and-rides, and people are encouraged to use them to ease congestion on the roads.

Now imagine if someone said, "Hey, there's too many people using park-and-rides; they're clogging up the roads!" You'd likely think to yourself, What planet is this person living on?

Now imagine someone saying, "Park-and-rides mean people are using less fuel in their cars, and take paying customers away from gas stations." You'd think, Who cares?

Well protesters in San Francisco (of course) blocked a private commuter bus run by Google for half an hour the other day because "critics say they clog municipal bus stops and take paying customers away from public transit systems," according to this story.

Google isn't alone in providing this service. Apple and Facebook offer the perk to their employees as well.

But apparently trying to ease congestion by expanding the supply of mass transit is a bad thing because they "clog municipal bus stops". Have you ever noticed that too many customers is only a problem for government?

The crux of the matter, however, lies in that second claim: private commuter buses "take paying customers away from public transit systems."

Mass transit is not an end in itself. That may be difficult for some folks out in San Francisco to understand, but it's true.

Usually we think of a service as something provided to address some real or perceived problem, need, or desire. In cities like San Francisco congestion is most certainly a real problem.

So if someone offers to provide a solution you'd think it would be met with open arms. For example, government provides police, but in high-crime areas companies regularly hire additional private security when they think it's necessary. Isn't that great?

Normally, yes. But when the service in question actually competes with government — oh no, no, no. Because people have some control over whether or not they use, and pay for, public transit — as opposed to having their entire "contribution" extracted by force, as is the case with police — it is somewhat dependent on satisfied customers. And satisfying customers isn't exactly the government's forte.

Bureaucracies — and their fan clubs — don't like it when people can choose something different. They especially don't like it when a competitor shows how to really do something — typically at half the cost and twice the level of service. Can't have that!

To these protesters, people who are taking their Google, Facebook or Apple bus to work are causing the government-run "service" to suffer, and therefore believe they can legitimately use force to prevent consumers from choosing an alternative. Such behavior, if pursued on behalf of a private entity, would be met with universal condemnation. Apparently greed is transformed into a virtue when it's government collecting the money.