tumblr @lemmy.world

1y ago

They could deport them to Rwanda. That might work

139 comments

I took economics in my college days and this is a very stark example of people who are bad at economics.
Everything costs money. You can relate everything to a dollar amount in business. From labor, to time spent, to equipment and it's use, the cost of fuel for transportation etc. Knowing the full cost of selling an item including the time spent making it, the supplies used, the failure rate where you need to replace it at no cost to the customer, everything should be able to be factored in. From there you can set the cost of something, taking the overall price for all involved aspects of creating the thing, and adding some profit margin.
Spending a dollar to make a dime is adequate. If your economic costs are a dollar and you sell the thing for $1.10 then you make money. Sell enough and that's business.
With all that being said, the cost of transit fares should be set with the expectation that there will be unavoidable times where people will ride for free. Whether that's because of gate jumping, or other fare avoidance, or that someone simply entered into the system in an unexpected way that bypassed the fare system, or if it's simply that a fare was given out as courtesy, it's all baked into the fares that everyone pays.
The only time chasing down the people intentionally skipping their fare, makes any sense is if that amount of loss because of fare skipping is significantly above the expected losses from fare skipping. Googling it, the NYC transit system has a gross revenue around 5.8 billion dollars. Which means the amount of revenue to be gained by chasing down ~$100k in losses is around 0.0017%
If, the process of chasing down the fares costs over 1000% more than the fares are worth to do it, then the simple answer is: don't do it. That's basic economics.
In addition, they garner so much negative publicity in that process that they damage their reputation needlessly, which may lead to additional spending to improve their public image.
Finally, if you don't have more than 0.002% of your earnings set aside for losses like this, then you shouldn't be running the business. In reality, that number should be much, much higher than 0.002%.
To conclude: the whole thing is stupid from the outset. Tracking the losses makes sense, so you know what the figures are. Once you know the figures, crunching the numbers to see if pursuing action against the perpetrators is trivial, and should show a very clear picture of whether to take action or not.
In this case, no action was appropriate. Instead, they spent $150 million to get their public image ruined chasing after a bit more than $100k, and they will likely spend $100M more to try to repair their public image.
The losers in this situation? The people.
- They're not bad at economics, they're simply lying about what their goal was. That $150mil didn't just blip out of existence like in a video game, it ended up in people's pockets.
  I would bet good money that many of those pockets belonged to friends and family members. Neoliberals have been using this tactic for decades as a way to turn public funds into private profits.
  
  Or it just went into overtime for enforcers to sit around a train station watching a monitor.
- Something I read in discussions about San Francisco Bay Area transit which I did not see in your comment: perception of fare jumpers being responsible for an outsize proportion of antisocial behavior lead to commuters feeling unsafe.
  
  For the record, I support UBI and like the sound of free transit.
  
  That's more of a social issue than anything.
  It may be the case that those who are unable to pay fares, are also those that are likely to have no income or homeless or something. The "dregs" of society if you will.
  I don't want to dive into this too deeply, because homelessness and poverty are another issue than what I was driving at, but it is something that we're not doing well with and it's something that needs to be addressed. I also support UBI and free transit would be nice but I don't think that's going to happen unless things change significantly. Even UBI is a long shot as is. Giving away services for free to everyone like transit access is basically anti-capitalist and a difficult thing to persuade others (especially conservative leaning individuals - specifically the capitalists) to agree to.
  Regardless, there may be some association between the so-called "dregs" of society and criminal and antisocial behaviour. I understand drug addiction and how it starts well enough to know that people who are in -for all intents and purposes- "hopeless" situations, are at high risk of drug seeking behavior and looking to drugs to relieve their mental suffering. Of course this can lead to a whole slew of other issues, but it can be caused by social factors including unemployment, job loss, and homelessness. It can go the other way, that drugs lead to homelessness, job loss and unemployment (among other things), but that's neither here nor there. The fact is, antisocial, criminal and addict behaviors are often correlated to the poor, destitute, homeless, etc. Whether that correlation is accurate or not is up for debate, since it is difficult to keep any records for those that are displaced, nevermind records that are good enough to really say such correlations are fact. Nevertheless, the general viewpoint of the average person is that the homeless/drug addicted/criminals are going to more often be the ones doing bad things, such as dodging fares. Again, that may or may not be true, but it is the perception that matters in this case.
  In the absence of any evidence, it is hard to say that the antisocial types are the majority of fare dodgers. The intent that I derived from the limited information provided by the op, was that they were seeking to end fare dodging. There was no other significant stated purpose for the investigation. In that context, pushing forward with the investigation, given the economics of the situation, the decision was ill conceived, and should have died in the meeting where it was proposed. If the intent was to "clean up" the transit from undesirables doing antisocial things like the example you posted, then that should have been clear in the statements of intent by the NYPD and NY transit authority folks.
  I don't have the context for it to say that was one of their stated intents, as I'm not a person living in New York State, nevermind NYC, and I have no reason to, nor desire to follow the happenings in New York. So if the understanding I have is wrong, I would invite someone to please correct me.
  The perspective I was seeking to explain in my previous post was that of an economist (in a very general sense - I have economic background and understanding, though my understanding would be massively overshadowed by anyone with a major in economics), and explain not only that their reasoning was flawed, but that the idea was faulty from the outset.
  Unless there was an alterior motive that I'm not aware of, the people running the show over there, and anyone responsible for making this happen, should be fired, since they basically just took $150M and set it on fire for no reason whatsoever.
- You also neglected to factor in the economic benefit of people taking a trip they don't pay for vs not taking that trip at all because they can't pay. Those people might be taking the train to work, which increases economic activity and value of the entire system, or to school, which is an investment into the future of the system, or to do shopping or eating at restaurants, both of which add value to the system. But I'm also one of those people that think public transit should be free since giving people the ability to freely move around an area can only have net positive outcomes.
- Subway fare dodgers steal $285 million per year, so spending $150 million to try to stop or prevent that in the future isn't that unreasonable. It turns out to have not paid off because they only caught people who owe an equivalent to $100k.
  I imagine that they assumed the increased surveillance would prevent some unknown amount of future fare dodging which can't be quantified because the overall trend seems to be increasing.
- Getting back into economics in a few weeks, sounds like a great starting point to review and get my head back into it. Disclaimer- I am half asleep.
  You are discussing MR vs R, but wording is confusing. You are saying spend a dollar to get 0.10, not spend a dollar to make 1.10. Spend a dollar and profit $0.1 - good. Spend a dollar and get a dime - no.
  A common mistake for those who learn econ - especially first year - is that it is taught in isolation. Set price for profit max, trade increases productivity and makes the average better - loss>profit shut something down. But it doesn't teach the wider considerations - people who are affected, long term run v short term.etc.
  In this example, and I don't have the numbers:
  what is the profit, and what are the fixed costs?
  what long term revenue is being lost, what else will be lost when it isn't prosecuted?
  what message does doing nothing send to those paying. What other behaviors are these non payers displaying?
  what is the cost of a lawful and ordered society?
  does it need to be profitable, does police action only matter if it makes money, or is it a cost to service?
  what equipment, training and experience did law get to do this, and can it be used elsewhere? What systems were put in place (security.etc) that supports other practices.
  Make no mistake - seems well excessive. But there is a wider consideration.
  
  does it need to be profitable, does police action only matter if it makes money, or is it a cost to service?
  this same question can be asked of the MTA itself.
  
  I am by far, not an economics major. I took a few courses, that's all. I know more about it than the average, but not nearly enough to make a career from it.
  Regardless, I appreciate the comment. I'm not sure what else to say besides thank you.
- The struggle here is that you're talking about money earned after the fact and not including game theory. It would be a tough experiment to conduct, but say you spent $150 million to save $104. What if you didn't spend that $150M? Would you have an extra $40k in the bank? Or would the $104M in losses actually end up more like $1.2B because, slowly, everyone realised there was no reason to pay a fare?
  I don't know what the case is here, but I imagine some economists have determined that $150M is enough to balance between actually getting people to ride the subway (increasing fare will eventually drive down revenue) and a substantial enough threat to prevent jumpers (no cops in the way means tons more jumpers).
  
  104k loss, not 104m. It would take 150 years of no change to be worth the tax money wasted.
  
  The fact you didn't even realize the difference factor of 1000x between the two values is enough to show your argumentation is worthless :D
- This is so serendipitous, but the same day this post hit Lemmy, a Hidden Brain podcast episode titled "Broken Windows" started playing. The topic of this podcast hits home pretty hard with regards to how the NYPD managed transit fares in this story.
  Broken Windows refers to a theory proposed in 1982 following the eponymously titled experiment. In this experiment, researchers placed 2 cars near the same area in Palo Alto, California and watched to see what happened. One of the cars was new, while the other was poorly maintained and old. Both were left unlocked.
  The public started interacting with the old car, opening it, stealing from it, and eventually trashing it. The new car was left intact.
  That was until the experiment's author broke the window of the new car. People started noticing that this car wasn't so new or maintained, and they started to steal from and vandalize it too.
  This Broken Windows theory led to a lot of police reform in the ensuing 80s and 90s, to the point where Rudy Giuliani picked up the theory so his NYPD could follow it.
  The idea is that where disorder lies in society, those bad actors who seed more disorder tend to go. Ironically this Hidden Brain episode also talks about rider fares like this article.
  So, even though disadvantaged people may skip the fare for a public good out of dire need or poor life circumstances, the thinking is that intentionally chaotic people definitely skip the fare and seek it out. The idea is to catch bad actors who have other, larger crimes registered on their profile by focusing on the smaller ones.
  I'm wondering if, in your calculus here, if you might include the offset damage done to society if more bad actors are caught in initiatives like this. Food for thought.
- it's a nicely written post and although I do believe the costs made to reduce the faire skippers is out of proportion I also believe you should mention another important fact.
  That is that the more money that is being put in to prevent it the lower the damage will be. A good example is tax evasion. The bigger the chance of getting caught is, the less people who will attempt it. Thus if you reduce the preventive measures this will automatically go up. But yea again I do not believe 150m weighs up to 100k.
  Actually I might've forgotten another factor. I believe and please do correct me if I'm wrong. Is that a lot of misbehaving people on the trains also skip the train fair. So it be 2 birds in one stone, safety and revenue.
  
  Alienated take typical of 'muricans – you do know that there are other countries in the world, right? Loads of places have "free" turnslides that you can take if you can't afford the fare, and yet not everyone goes through them.
  
  In society, those people are called capitalists.
  Capitalists want to take whatever is available and make it so that it is theirs. More for them, less for everyone else.
  They will take whatever the "market will bear" and hide behind caveat emptor when people cry foul.

Many economists already argue that the war on poverty is more like war on poor, and that giving housing to the homeless and unconditional income to the poor actually saves a lot more than putting them on welfare with a view to eventually getting them into workforce. Because of extenuating circumstances too complex to be simply explained succinctly, many people could not find jobs as easily and going on the job market for so long and while under welfare puts more financial and mental strain on those individuals. It costs more to put people on welfare, as you have bureaucracies to pay as well, than to simply give the poor unconditional cash transfers and housing. We're also in an increasingly automated world where jobs are becoming less common so universal basic income is a must.
- I'm convinced that UBI would make the world significantly better for everyone. I'm sure it wouldn't outright solve problems like homelessness or poverty - financial literacy is still a thing, and people still fuck up or end up in bad situations that they can't control - but al of these problems would be made significantly less impactful.
  I also understand why the ruling classes of the world will never allow it to happen without a fight. If you aren't dependent on your job... Then why stay in a job with poor conditions? Why stay working for a company that doesn't care about you? Why tolerate poor pay? Suddenly workers have 1000x more bargaining power in every discussion with their employer... And frankly a lot of people would want to work part time, which is going through start to impact on company's ability to employ enough staff at all.
  Obviously they have a way out - providing employees with a better quality of life, benefits, good pay, work life balance, etc.... but all that costs money and they hate that.
  
  I wish !ubi@leminal.space were more active. I'd be interested to follow any UBI pilot projects or related news.
- But my Victorian value system!
- Can't get beef if the cows gotta pay up front for grass.
- The one thing that makes this difficult is that if you give someone money unconditionally, it has to go to everyone universally. You can't just give it to people below a certain income level.
  If you have an income level limit to determine who will get it, people will decide against working if it puts them over the limit where they lose the provided income, and people working and getting just above that limit will resent having to work 40 hours a week to make just a little bit more than people who don't work at all.
  But then if you provide everyone with money universally, how will that affect inflation? If everyone gets $1000 every month, stores know they can increase prices, corporate landlords know they can increase rents and get a piece of the pie, and eventually that $1000 is basically useless.
  
  Milton Friedman, a conservative economist from the 20th century, advocated for a negative income tax that worked similarly to a normal income tax. If you made $0 a year and filed a tax return, the government would give you let's say the standard deduction (currently ~13k). As you increased your income, for every two dollars (could make this 3 or 4 too), you'd lose $1 of that negative income tax, so it would never be bad to make more money.
  For a 2:1 ratio you'd have to make 26k+ to get no money. Some number examples:
  Normal income + negative income tax = total income
  $0 + $13,000 = $13,000
  $6,500 + $9,750 = $16,250
  $13,000 + $6,500 = $19,500
  $19,500 + $3,250 = $22,750
  $26,000 + $0 = $26,000
  Making more money is never bad, and it still gets money to people who need it most with essentially no bureaucratic overhead.
  I'm a socialist who disagrees with the vast majority of the shit Milton Friedman spewed, but negative income tax wasn't a terrible idea, I might even go as far to say it's good (as long as the amount is high enough).
  
  To be fair, some people argue instead of universal basic utility. Having free housing and basic utilities to mitigate concerns of increasing inflation and rent. Many experts already advocate to treat housing as basic rights like education and food.
  I don't see either UBI or UBU being implemented in the near to medium term. It would only be practical in the further future when AI becomes advanced enough that many jobs have been taken over by it, displacing many human workers.

Some politician should be in prison for this
- Despite the recent uptick in fascist sympathy wanting you to think otherwise, politicians making political decisions you disagree with is not actually a jailable offense.
  Some politician should lose re-election for this.
  
  Grossly mismanaging public funds should at least involve some kind of disciplinary action.
  I think jail is a little extreme unless the funds went directly into the politician’s pocket. But some kind of heavy fine, or removal from office for egregious or repeat offenses seems entirely reasonable. Do we really want to encourage politicians to waste millions in tax payer money hunting down a fraction of that in fines.
  They must have known who had outstanding fines and how much it would total to be. Did no one bother to open excel for this whole fiasco?

Good news! We’ve found the missing $104,000! It only took us $150,000,000 to do so! The remaining -$149,869,000 is left for you and your future children to pay! Remember, vote Republican so we can continue to fleece you for all that you’re worth!
GOP backs the blue, they support NYPD and wholly endorse thier actions.
- vote Republican so we can continue to fleece you for all that you’re worth
  Oh buddy, I've got bad news for you, NYC is democrats all the way down.
  Democrats run on being better than republicans, that doesn't mean they are good...
  
  I doubt that the cops are generally democrats.
  
  Democrats aren’t republicans.
  I don’t like salad but I dislike turd salad even more.
  (Don’t actually vote republican unless you enjoy paying more for big government). Democrats actually care about balancing the budget. Republicans are the party of fiscal irresponsibility.
  The problem is, not many people grow out of their right-wing childhoods. As the saying goes, once you start earning a paycheck, you start voting democrat!

442 years of overtime. Very bigly. However, this story came from the New York post and I trust no part of it for that reason alone.
- The New York Post being the first result when you search doesn’t mean it’s their story. Gothamist covered it first and is even directly cited by the NYP article.

TIL that a yearly Ticket for NY costs over 1500$ whereas a yearly Ticket for the whole of Germany costs 588€... Seems legit...
- I don't know about NYC or Germany, but a yearly ticket that covers the Helsinki metropolitan is 993.70€.
- $1500 is about 1398.30 euros
- I thought paying $900 a year for my transit pass was ludicrous, and mine at least comes out of my income pre-tax thanks to an agreement with the city. $1500 a year is almost silly, no wonder people are dodging fare.
- That's not true
  
  The "Deutschland-Ticket" costs 49€ a month and you can use any train, Subway or Bus in Germany (except High Speed trains)... Source: i have one

Can anyone explain to me what the consequence for fare jumping is if they don't do this enforcement? Can an economist explain what the expected value lost from additional jumping is without enforcement?
When I lived in NYC, I began getting monthly passes through work. I did this for 3 years, paying $100/mo or $1,200 a year. I was getting paid pennies to make a big company bigger, so I stopped paying and started jumping. I jumped for around 2 years on my commute and for any other transit. I had a pay per ride card if I was on a date or if I needed the bus transfer. I figured out which cars to hide in to avoid paying for LIRR or the Metro North tickets (hint: at rush hour, no one can walk through the cars).
I was caught one time, I jumped the turnstiles into the 6 train at 68th/Hunter College. Right in front of 3 cops looking for jumpers (of course they were trying to ticket poor college kids). Got a ticket for $85. Still less than my monthly card would have cost. I was gonna argue it with some lame ass excuse but ended up paying it just so I wouldn't have to take a day off work. I still saved over $2300 by jumping.
So, not to say that this program is effective, but how many people were in a similar circumstance as me but decided not to jump because of deterrence policing?
- I would guess the argument is that the enforcement reduces the number of jumpers. So despite them running a negative on cost to catch. If the enforcement wasn't there the number of jumpers would be high enough to justify the cost of enforcement. Having said that I don't know if that is a knowable number.
  
  They are spending 150million that is 1442x what they are losing, even if their enforcement is reducing the number of fare jumpers it would take basically everyone jumping the line to make up the difference.
  They'd save money just by eating the cost...
  I cannot see how this ever economically works out.
  
  Got some more numbers, this meme (surprise) isn't telling the whole story. I'm still not saying it works out, but it's not this simple.
  Okay so the MTA has a budget of 19billion, of which $6.870 billion comes from fares, in 2022 they lost $285million in subway fares, and the police caught 105,000 people in 2023.
  I cannot find where the $104k number is coming from, I assume that's the total amount owed by those they caught, but if they caught 105k people that's only a dollar a person so I don't know if it's that low or I'm misunderstanding the $104k number.
  Again not saying it works out, but I'm not smart enough to do that math...
- Can anyone explain to me what the consequence is for fare jumping if they don’t do this?
  Number one reason is that it pisses people off as it is unfair
  Humans, like monkeys, are allergic to unfairness and more people will just jump because they also want free shit
  These policing efforts are just there to keep the number of free riders to the expected parameter and placate the paying users
  Capturing back lost fares is inconsequential
  
  Public transit should be free.
  
  Humans, like monkeys, are allergic to unfairness
  Hahahahahaha this is so patently false it makes me question your concept of reality.
  Edit: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Sorry I had to get that out.
- Cut back on enforcement, not removal of it completely. They wasted 149,900k chasing 100k. That money was still spent, and it likely wasnt preventing that amount of lost revenue
- It should be free, most Metro systems turn a profit not a loss.
  
  Not sure where you get that from. Most systems operate at a major loss and are propped up by grants/government funding. Typical targets for operating are ~1/3 of costs are covered by rider fares with the rest coming from grants or government funding.
  Since the thread talks about NYC, I pulled this - MTA Budget. In it they state:
  In a normal year, farebox revenue constitutes approximately 40 percent of the MTA’s annual budget, or $6.5 billion

The L.A. train system (at least when I lived there) had no turnstiles. It was mostly on the honor system. They did have transit cops that would randomly check to see if you had a ticket, but there weren't hundreds of them or anything. You'd see one on occasion.
Somehow the trains are still running.
- That's how it works in Europe, at least in cities I've visited (mostly Germany).
  If we'd see public transit as a public good, rather than something that's supposed to be a profit center, maybe we could be a little smarter about it...
  
  Yes! In Luxembourg it's just free. All busses, trains, funicular, trams, in the whole country, for everyone. Great way to encourage less car use, more active lifestyles, and improve quality of life while also helping the economy.

But if this simply deters fare jumpers for the next fourteen hundred years, then it will have nearly paid for itself!
- Nobody really considers the long game on these things.

babyslime reblogged snussyeating
- What an exciting time to be alive 😄

Is that a sum of the salaries of police officers stationed in subways? I don't see how else they could spend that much
Edit: I now see that it says extra, so how?
- I could easily see them spending 150 million to create a “task force”
  just speculation
  
  Consultants to make the plan, contractors to do the preliminary work. Throw in a reorg and/or change in scope and you’re there
- It's probably the overtime they paid officers to stand there and play Candy Crush. They will literally stand near the door, without helping, while someone is struggling with a stroller or shopping bags.
  
  You'd trust a pig to touch your stroller or shopping bags?

Huh, I was just watching a Cash Jordan YT Video last night about the NYC Subway system and in it he said that the MTA estimates its losing 690 Million dollars per year because of people dodging fares.
That's a staggeringly high number but based on volume of people fare dodging in the background of the video I can almost believe it.
- The way the original post was written it could be they spent $150 million and the people they caught owed $100k. So they didn’t catch everyone and both statistics can be right.
- The MTA lost $690 million due to ALL dodgers, including tolls and railroad fares.
  $315 million lost in bus fares
  $285 million lost in subway fares
  $46 million lost in bridge and tunnel tolls
  $44 million lost in railroad fares
  source
  So yeah, I'm guessing the 104k is the ones they caught, which makes the narrative that the police aren't unnecessary they are just bad at their jobs...

I saw that the NY transit system made 5.8 billion last year. The 150 million has nothing to do with fare jumpers and everything to do with forcing most people to pay. If it was well known that there is no punishment for not paying, why would anyone pay?
- There's lots of little stuff I could "get away with" but font because I feel like it would harm others. I donate, I return carts, I try to clean up, I'm happy to pay taxes that help people who need it, and just hate how it gets misappropriated for war and the rich. I give tips, I try to be polite and helpful in games, with people online, with people in person, etc.
  Not everyone wants to get away with something. Lots of us understand we're part of a community and if we all slack off completely it'll fail. So I do what I can, I purchase works I already read but enjoy and want author to make money off of, etc, as long as I can afford it.
  Do I still pirate stuff? Of fucking course I do. However, if it's within my means and I enjoy the product, I feel like I should give back. He'll, it's hard for me to use restrooms in restaurants without at least buying something from the dollar menu or something.

Can someone please post the source of this statement?
- They can't. The headline is misleading if not completely invented. The city lost $690 million to fair evasion in 2022 and likely a similiar number in 2023. Source https://www.transittalent.com/articles/index.cfm?story=New_York_MTA_Fare_Evasion_5-17-2023
- The key word is caught.
  They are comparing the ENTIRE COST of fare enforcement to the individuals actually caught and fined for fare evasion (and even then only for individual trips when they likely were evading fares for some time). It ignores the massive amount lost to fare evasion, and all the people that paid because they wished not to be caught.

And don't think you didn't contribute to that $150 mil just because you don't live in New York. NYPD received $500 mil from the federal ARP Act.
- I want my two dollars!

RuLe oF LaW must be enforced, peasants be damned

WAIT, I MISREAD THAT. I INITIALLY READ IT AS THEY WASTED 50K PUNISHING 100K, NOT 149,900K
- $150,000,000

The cruelty is the point.

My issue is with incompetent government misusing tax income, demonstrating they don't deserve to collect it in the first place.

uk government: this feels like a personal attack
- There might be a reason for that

What does your caption mean, OP?
- It's a reference to the British Conservative party's plan to send immigrants seeking asylum who come to the UK to Rwanda. It's hopefully not going to pass through parliament because it's a horrible idea.
  
  What do you mean it's a horrible idea? It's perfectly safe. I know it's safe because Rwanda signed a treaty saying it's perfectly safe.
  I feel safer just mentioning it tbh.
  
  They have also spent hundreds of millions of pounds on a plan that is never going to work when the money could have been spent on improving the existing system, finding legal routes for immigrants and other ways that are not designed to pander to racist fucks.
- My interpretation was that OP was trying to come up with an even bigger way of wasting money the cops could use to "fix" the problem.

They could deport them to Rwanda. That might work.
I agree, do we begin with the cops or the people who would rather use their taxes to hurt people? I'm good either way.

Death penalty then processed into animal feed. No exceptions. Merica

deport who
- The 95,000 poor people I presume

Are people really so dumb they believe that's a decision directly form the police department? No wonder you suck at elections...

This whole post is dumb as hell. If $100,000 is all the money they collected, in a year, in NYC, that tells me the cops are ignoring the issue. If the city was collecting millions and millions, then it would be an ACAB story.
I'm reading the penalty is typically $100, let's roll with that. Reading they system just passed 1-billion riders for the first time in 2022. (Wow.)
$104,000/$100=1,040 people busted (assuming once charge each). 1040/1B= 0.00000104 of the total riders incurred a ticket.
Not seeing the percent of those riders that were jumpers, but it's going to be a few orders of magnitude larger than 0.00000104. LOL, the street cops are utterly ignoring this thing.
- You didn't read it right, the amount of missing fare is $100k from people not paying, not that the subway system only makes $100k in total.

The assumption that people don't pay the fare because they can't pay the fare is a flimsy one.
Catching a relatively small number of people who didn't pay the fare keeps many more people honest. The main purpose of the police is deterrence.
Police on the subway also deter other sorts of crime with their presence.
- Except all your assumptions are wrong.
  Vicarious punishment is the worst method of behavior deterrence. People won't stop fare dodging out of a small amount, not even a huge amount, or even if almost all of fare dodgers were caught. They will just become selective and apply different strategies to dodge the fare. It's a fallacy to think that the existence of a punishment for a crime automatically decreases said crime incidence in the whole population. We know this to not be true (looking at abortion statistics over here).
  Police presence is a deterrence, only and exclusively in those areas and time frames when they are present, and even then only partially (people still commit crimes, even when the police is present). We know that there's no magical patrol coverage that deters crime completely. People will just do the crime, when and where the police isn't looking and get creative about it. Not even permanent surveillance deters crime completely or permanently (UK's mass surveillance didn't even put a dent on their crime rates).
  It might be true that some people who dodge fares can pay them. But to assume that it is not an undue financial pressure on some individuals is misguided and cruel. We already know what it needs to be done to reduce fare dodging, increase the service quality. When the value of the public transport is regarded as better than what's charged, people are less likely to try to dodge the fare. But if the service is de-funded, installations dirty and derelict, slow, infrequent and on top of all of that the police is there to fuck you for fare dodging instead of making it safe for all users. Then people will consider it not worth their money. Adjacent to this, student, commuters, elder, children, job-seekers and disability subsidies on transport also increase people's perception of the quality of the service. This all together reduces fare dodging way, way more than any punishment.
  The NY Metro actually did it once, they cleaned the graffiti, repaired stations, fixed lightning and subsidized certain groups. It dropped not just the fare dodging but all crime inside the metro, faster than the state's crime rate drop overall. But Giuliani shelved the project eventually because subway is for poor people and poor people don't deserve quality services, apparently. Again, the cruelty seems to be the point.
- It's a pretty solid assumption that may not apply to every single person that dodges fares
  Police don't deter shit, this isn't a contentious point of debate. They just don't
  See above
- Bro, I just spent the past two weeks in Vienna Austria and Budapest Hungary.
  Vienna especially has a very good subway system that can get you nearly anywhere in the city.
  There are ticket kiosks everywhere.
  There are no turnstiles.
  You just purchase a ticket and go on. You can get anything from a 1 ride pass to a monthly pass.
  Nobody checks tickets.
  There are also trams that run above ground all over the city. Same thing.
  There are kiosks on the tram, but nobody checks your ticket. And you can get 1 ride or 1 month tickets and anything in-between.
  Budapest is "eastern Europe" where people are definitely poorer in general, but even there, there was nothing like what I am used to seeing in NYC. No police everywhere, no crime, and also, they don't check your transit tickets.
  Generally, the issue of not being able to afford a ticket is an American phenomenon. Actual developed countries don't have the problems with homelessness or poverty that we have in the US.
  Generally, dishonesty is a cultural issue. I had a German guy stay with us in the US for a few months. One time we were discussing what would happen if - for example - one were to pass a car on the right in Germany, what would the fine be? He didn't know, but not for the reason you'd expect. His reply was basically, "No, you must not do this, the car will move to the right to let you pass!". He simply could not fathom someone cruising in the left lane in Germany. And after visiting Austria, I cannot either. Cars DO actually move over to the right the instant they have passed a car. The left lane is kept open, even in heavy traffic. Full stop. Same with paying subway fares. They pay the fares. It is not even comprehensible to NOT pay the fares. They give you every opportunity to do the proper thing. They trust that you will do the right thing since that is so engrained into the cultural identity. Also, only a very small percentage of crime that is committed is not out of a place of desperation. If you have a well paying job, a strong government safety net, and a culture of following laws, people just generally behave. There is no need to have police standing around "deterring" people from commiting crimes.
  see above.
  
  This doesn't work if you have a clash of cultures, though. How do you enforce that on people with a different culture and is that even okay?
  For example, I read books to and with young kids in the local library once a month to help them learn the language (German). I have a hard time explaining to some of them and their parents(!) that it's not okay to just take the books and, for example, sell them online.
  I had a discussion with a woman who took an entire stack of identical books and she thought, since no one is checking her bags and she can easily take them, why shouldn't she?
  The same with rules for walking over a red light or driving your bike like a crazy person. There is no police in sight, why shouldn't you walk over a red light or speed through the shopping street?
  Cultural rules seem to be good on a first glance. But they are a fickle thing. And people who aren't used to them are confronted with potential pitfalls.
  You need police and fines because at one point just relying on cultural norms won't work anymore. Police can be done much better, though. And instead of fines people should use community service more.
- Police only deter crime in their immediate area. I'm talking a radius of feet, not miles. Crime just moves to a different area. They are a less effective deterrent and more expensive than than a good camera system.
  Police react to crime afterwards. The main things that prevent crime are money, respect, a sense of purpose, education, etc. A church, a basketball court, or an office building do more to deter crime than a police officer, and are much cheaper.
- Wow, you're white as hell
  
  Wow, you’re making an argument ad hominem.

U dont get it do you? What makes you think other people have to pay and you dont?

So we know someone's okay with laws being broken, but we're just not sure how much crime this person's cool with. If you want more crime than I do, and you're thus wanting reduced safety for everyone, are you then really different from 'muh raghts' anti-vax weenies who want to carry Whooping Mumps at will and kill my grandma?
- and you're thus
  Lol alright bud

139 comments