Willms wrote:
Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 20:39:37 UTC, schrieb Mizter T
auf uk.railway :

If someone offered you an extra 2 hours (approx?) every day to spend
with your kids or playing 5-a-side or lying in bed in the morning (or
whatever the hell you do with your spare time....), and all it cost
you was £8 (approx?) a day, you'd do it, right? Who wouldn't?

Just £4.40 for an extra hour in bed every day? Priceless.
Agreed - but it's worth bearing in mind that the HS1 line cost
something like £5 billion, which was basically covered by government
loan guarantees to the company that built it, L&CR

I don't quite think the market is prepared to pay the true costs of
such a development

hey, man! Do you really suggest that 2 hours extra time for a family
man should be subject to "market forces"?

Depends how many hours extra work the workers-n-peasants have to put in
to subsidise the railway which gives the capitalist extra time with his
family.

And what, if the "market forces" decide that the re-introduction of
slavery would help to increase the profits of the big banks, what
then?

There is a theory that abolition was about perceived inefficiencies and
redeploying the ships on more profitable ventures.


Should "the market" prevail over human beings?

Is this the dragon which ruled over the town and who asked a virgin
sacrified to it every year in order not to destroy town and castle?

But the Virgin was replaced by a bus at weekends.


--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK