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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (150831)	9/3/2002 4:05:28 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586214

The links that both you and I provided clearly state that streetcars had bad economics because cities kept their fares unreasonably restricted. With some cities, GM came in early to buy the streetcars and dismember the systems, with others they did it later. And it others they didn't do it at all, either because they just didn't bother or because the fact that the streetcars had bad economics meant that they had already disappeared before GM got involved. As long as you had the fare restrictions the streetcars where not going to survive, and even without the fair restrictions they would have declined (if not as far) because of their lack of flexibility. As for your notion of finding the higher good or truth, if that were the case why are you so ready to place your faith in some crackpot's letter to the editor rather than official reports. None of the official reports shows through facts and solid argument that the streetcars went away because of GM. The topic has been well researched and whether you choose to believe it or not, GM bought our streetcar systems with malicious intent and had them dissected. Malicious intent is hard to pin down, its a matter of opinion if the intent was malicious. The act wouldn't make them money unless the bus routes made them money. GM thought (perhaps deluding itself) that it could make money on the bus routes. If the trollies did make economic sense then GM buying them to shut them down would have been futile as someone else would have built them back again. To the extent that GM killed them it killed a victim that was already bleeding to death. It has been well documented throughout history how American corps. have screwed the American public. They don't do it half as much as the government, even if you are only considering government attempts to regulate corporations. Tim