I like mass transit. When I’m living in or visiting a substantial city, there’s simply no better way to get around than the local bus or (if I’m lucky) train system. Why battle heavy traffic when I can relax, crack a book, and let someone else drive me  to within easy walking distance of almost any local destination … probably for less money and time than I’d waste on gasoline and parking?

That may sound like an odd confession coming from a libertarian. And, these days, it is. “Mass transit” these days usually refers to government-operated enterprises which run at operating losses and tap taxpayers to make up their deficits.

That, however, was not always the case.

New York’s subway system was operated by private companies until 1940. Chicago’s elevated trains were privately owned and operated until 1947. It wasn’t until 1963 that a bi-state compact purchased 15 private transit operators to make “mass transit” in St. Louis area a wholly government-operated enterprise.

The telling of the story of  private mass transit’s death usually starts with Los Angeles, where National City Lines, a company owned by General Motors and other automobile-centric companies, bought up the private streetcar lines, replacing them with buses. At the same time, the same players lobbied heavily for automobile-friendly streets and “freeways,”  making it more convenient for city dwellers to move to the suburbs … if they bought cars.

So, it’s complicated. Yes, mass transit is heavily subsidized. But so is “car culture.” Those interstate highways and wide city boulevards didn’t build themselves.

At its founding, less than 10% of America’s population lived in the urban areas that make mass transit practical.  That number today: 80%.

But according to a 2020 report published by Railway Age, only one in five Americans report “access to” mass transit, and of that 20%, 40% never use it at all, while only about 11% use it daily.

Look, I get it: Owning a car, motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle makes getting around more convenient in that you can travel on your schedule and per your chosen route, not someone else’s.

On the other hand, riding mass transit means no car payments, insurance premiums, parking worries, etc. In or near an urban core, it just makes sense … assuming systems built to serve their markets rather than to tick items off lists of government transportation planners’ priorities.

Re-“privatizing” mass transit might save its life by making it more attractive to its supposed constituency, the public.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

As part of its deal to put together a majority coalition (and therefore a government), The Guardian reports, New Zealand’s National Party has agreed to  a demand from the New Zealand First Party for repeal of the country’s “generational” tobacco ban, due to come into force in 2024.

The ban — a “world first” that’s since been emulated by the United Kingdom and lobbied for in other countries — would have forbidden anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes. Ever. For life.

The excuse offered by the incoming government is that it needs tobacco tax revenues to “pay for” tax cuts elsewhere.

On one hand, I don’t buy that excuse. Tax cuts don’t need to be “paid for.” Even setting aside the standard libertarian objection to taxation (it’s just plain theft/extortion and can never be justified), a decrease in tax revenues can always be “paid for” by cutting spending.

On the other hand, the smoking ban was a no good, very bad, evil, and stupid idea in the first place.

Repeat after me: Prohibition of substances never works, at least if the goal is to decrease or eliminate the sale, purchase, possession, or use of those substances.

By the time the US repealed alcohol prohibition, a higher percentage of Americans were drinking more (and “harder”) booze than before it began.

By the time US states began repealing marijuana prohibition, more Americans were using that particular plant than before it was banned.

You’ve probably been hearing for some years now about an “opiod crisis.” While that alleged problem is tied to legal prescription drugs, the go-to alternative is heroin, and it’s beyond doubt that a higher percentage of Americans use that drug now than used it as of 99 years ago when it became illegal.

Yes, I’m citing the American experience, but Kiwis are presumably no more prone than Americans to obey laws forbidding them to eat, drink, smoke, snort, inject or otherwise ingest the Evil Substance of the Week.

Making it illegal for those born after a certain date to buy or use cigarettes won’t stop those born after a certain date from buying or using cigarettes. In fact, the evidence of history says that smoking rates will likely INCREASE, if for no other reason than that “black market” cigarettes can be profitably sold for less than the currently “legal” ones, given insanely high tax rates on the latter.

Smoking is already dying out on its own, with no need for laws to force the change. Social stigma is certainly part of that. So is the advent of “vaping” and the use of non-tobacco nicotine pouches. They’re cheaper (although government tax farmers are trying to “fix” that),  so far seem to be far less unhealthy, and don’t stink up the places where they’re used like tobacco smoke does.

Heck, I quit smoking six months ago, after 44 years of tobacco use (40 smoking, four “chewing”). I’m still using low-nicotine pouches but may eventually quit those too.

Taxation is terrible, but probably neither as terrible nor as stupid as prohibition.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On November 20, X Corp. — the corporate entity through which Elon Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter — filed suit against Media Matters for America, which styles itself a “progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”

At issue is a Media Matters expose claiming that X, contrary to CEO Linda Yaccarino’s promise that advertisers are “protected from the risk” of having their ads placed next to unsavory content, has been running ads next to “pro-Nazi” posts.

In the wake of the Media Matters piece, a number of big players — including IBM, Apple, and Disney — decided to pull their advertising off the platform.

Musk calls the whole episode a “fraudulent attack” on X.

The ads in question do, in fact, appear next to the content in question in the screenshots that Media Matters published.

But Musk claims Media Matters engineered a highly atypical “user experience” by reloading posts hundreds of times — posts that otherwise had nearly no views or reposts (what used to be called “retweets”) —  until they finally saw the ads they wanted to take those screenshots of.

Is that fraud, or is it just exploiting a convenient algorithmic weakness to produce a technically true/valid result?

I’m personally more interested in the advertiser response than in the answer to that question, because it raises different questions:

What is advertising for? Is the purpose of advertising changing? And if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

At least until recently, the purpose of advertising was to sell the advertisers’ products and services, either directly/one-off (“buy this pair of shoes”) or long-term by inculcating “brand consciousness” in viewers (“when you think of shoes, think of us”).

Now, it seems to have become “avoid, at all costs, having it noticed that our ads appear near content that pisses people off.”

Those purposes seem incompatible to me.

I can’t bring myself to believe that Apple really, truly, deeply cares whether the person who purchases a MacBook Air, or Disney gives a flying flip whether someone who uses that laptop to stream Avengers: Endame, is a Republican, Democrat, Nazi, mail carrier, stamp collector, or Rotarian. Their money all spends the same.

From the consumer point of view, when I check out at the grocery store, I have no idea — and can’t be bothered to care — whether the cashier or assistant manager might be a devil-worshiper, wine aficionado, pedophile, NASCAR fan, or Trump voter. I was there to get my groceries. I got my groceries. End of story. Why would I care one way or another whether the laptop or streaming service I’m seeing advertised is also being advertised to those other people?

Yes, such “brand associations” can be (to use a current buzz word) weaponized to power boycotts/ buycotts among people with too much time on their hands and too few real worries.

But should advertisers play the game of attempting to appease that approach? That seems like poor long-term business decision-making.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY