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

To: tejek who wrote (150954)	9/6/2002 1:19:31 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586320

However, it was GM's actions that insured there would be no chance of a revival That doesn't make sense to me. GM didn't buy up all the systems that where still active. Also if the streetcars where working so well then someone else could have made a new system when GM shut down the old one. I think the problem was that many "public" transport options have difficulty making a profit if they are not subsidized. GM and its partners tried to run busses in place of the street cars by they also lost money most of the time. I don't know if the bus lines faced similar price restrictions to the street cars but if they did that would explain the problem. Another possible explanation is that both systems where forced to have extensive service to get permission from the cities to operate, in other words they could not just run the routes that where profitable. I would think the economics of the streetcars would be similar to that of buses, the streetcars (if as modern as the buses) would probably be a bit more efficient, but the busses would be a bit more flexible. They were not voluntary workers in many cases and even if they were, voluntary then is not what we consider voluntary now. Back the, there were not as many choices for work and you took what you were given. A lot of them left the farm because they saw factory work as being a better way to live. Many of them moved to find jobs. True the population was less mobile then it is now but there was still choices if people where willing to move. Only during the worst parts of economic downturns (the great depression, and the "panics" of the 19th century) did workers normally face no choices. Also its true that none of their choices may have been good ones but that is a normal characteristic of an developing economy. You can look at poorer developing countries around the world and you see similar poor working conditions. I imagine in a generation or three many of them will see greatly improved conditions. Until your post, I have never heard of the draft referred to as slavery. While you have the right to make that claim, frankly, I think you would be thrown out of court. I think I would be thrown out of court too, but that doesn't make me wrong. If you paid the slaves in the south in 1855 a small but decent cash wage would they be slaves? Prison work is to keep the men busy and most penal institutions pay them for that work. It doesn't matter what the reason is if it is forced. I don't think that forced labor happens much in the US anymore but it used to. Any bad behavior by the gov't pales in comparison to the atrocities perpetrated by corporations. How you can say the gov't has been worse is beyond me. The government is bigger and more powerful and it does more things then any company, so it causes more damage. In terms of per dollar spent or per employee or for the amount of work it does it may pollute less then most companies but it is the biggest polluter. As far as the cigarettes they are a health hazard but I wouldn't call them pollution (ok second hand smoke could be considered a minor pollution problem). The people who smoked did so voluntarily. And the government is all tied in with smoking as well. It gave cigarettes to servicemen in WWII (and I think other wars and possibly during peacetime), it has and I think still does subsidize tobacco farming. It has subsidized tobacco adds overseas (although I doubt it does this any more). Also when the government does something wrong you have less ability to avoid dealing with it. Tim