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How about an “urban wealth fund”?

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Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#11

Post by nostrademons »

fwn wrote: post #7
jaggederest wrote: post #6

This seems like a really bad idea for all sorts of perverse incentive reasons. Primarily I'd guess related to the fact that the costs of running a city of a given size are basically entirely fixed costs, rather than being marginal. Especially when you add that most of the essential services a metro-area government provides are revenue negative. Trying to make (for example) the health department "pay fair market rents…

If the health department is not paying the actual price, someone else is paying the difference. The department therefore does not get cheaper, it just looks cheaper on paper since the real costs are hidden. The reduced transparency is what stands in the way of creating democratic or market based decisions on the departments funding.

"Democratic" and "market-based" decisions are two different things. You get a democratic decision when a majority of people believe that a good should be available to everyone at a price less than their share of the additional taxes needed. You get a market-based decision when an individual person believes that a good should be available to them, at a price less than the offering price.

Most public goods are public goods precisely because a majority of people will purchase them under the former conditions but not under the latter. There are a wide variety of public services which you personally would not be willing or able to purchase for the total cost of providing the good, but would happily go in on if the rest of a large population could be made to pay their fair share.

A number of die-hard libertarians believe this is theft, which it is in a way, but relatively few of them are willing to move to a remote location and live off the grid to avoid this. Perhaps this is because they know that the alternative is also theft (or worse), because the common defense and the legal system are also public goods, and so you have no way of enforcing your property rights without relying on taxpayer-funded systems.

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#12

Post by josefwasinski »

In London, Transport For London (TFL) is the largest land holder, and operates all public transport (trains, underground, buses, taxis) and only 23% of its funding comes from Government, the rest are from things like tickets, licenses, fees, rents etc. The government is pushing for them to become self-funded by 2018.

So there is an example of how something like this could work - if you have the assets to leverage. I think the obvious risks can be easily mitigated with safe-guards around selling assets and debt limits.

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#13

Post by fwn »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
fwn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the health department is not paying the actual price, someone else is paying the difference. The department therefore does not get cheaper, it just looks cheaper on paper since the real costs are hidden. The reduced transparency is what stands in the way of creating democratic or market based decisions on the departments funding.

"Democratic" and "market-based" decisions are two different things. You get a democratic decision when a majority of people believe that a good should be available to everyone at a price less than their share of the additional taxes needed. You get a market-based decision when an individual person believes that a good should be available to them, at a price less than the offering price. Most public goods are public g…

Thank you for the long response but I think you are beating a straw man here.

Yes, democratic and market-based decisions are two different processes. If you review my comment you'll notice that I did not claim both to be the same.

Both, however, despite their structural difference, depend on the availability of information. As you normally do not want your decision making process to be a gamble you really need to try to know as much as reasonable about the actual costs and benefits of your potential decision.

Your description of what makes a democratic decision is wildly off.

There is a small group of thinkers (mainly highly abstract process based direct democrats) that does agree that the defining factor is about a majority of people agreeing upon something, however, this is far from an usual position. Most add a bunch of constrains (think everything between Aristoteles, Locke and enlightened constitutionalists) some abolish the necessity of an election (like, for example, Rousseau).

This is why a contemporary analytical approaches would probably start off by marking a decision as democratic as soon as it is validated through the available (democratic) institutions. There are of course also purely output based approaches on legitimacy that claim to be justified through democratic theory, but I guess that is less common.

Those decisions can be anything within the scope of the constitutive purpose of the democratic body in question. Other than you suggested this does not have to do anything with redistribution.

Your description of what makes a market-based decision is wildly off as well.

In situations in which market based decision making processes are proposed, they are universally seen as a sum of heterogeneous and fractional individual decisions dependent on their specific market frame.

A public good is a term that describes non-excludable and non-rivalrous goods. Think of it as the oceans, the atmosphere, classically lakes, rivers, etc.

I'll leave out the part on libertarians; political analysis is not a football game, you don't always need to side with or against someone to make an argument.

My claim is purely systematic and in itself does not affect the ability to redistribute.

However, I wonder: If you fear that a specific redistribution might stop as soon as people get aware of it, does this indicates that you believe people would not appreciate the specific redistributional effect if they knew about it?

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#14

Post by kasey_junk »

huac wrote: post #4

> Leasing space in subway stations to shops might detract from the “historic” character of the US’s barbarous public transit systems, but the revenues could fund needed improvements, such as ventilation, without the need for debt or higher passenger fares. All the public transit systems I've rode in Europe and Asia have lots of infrastructure (especially stores) built into their train stations. I found them to be a w…

Are they rare in the US? Every stop I use regularly (in Chicago) has shops in it. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that don't are ones where there isn't space or where businesses have left on their own volition.

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#15

Post by mertd »

kasey_junk wrote: post #14
huac wrote: post #4

> Leasing space in subway stations to shops might detract from the “historic” character of the US’s barbarous public transit systems, but the revenues could fund needed improvements, such as ventilation, without the need for debt or higher passenger fares. All the public transit systems I've rode in Europe and Asia have lots of infrastructure (especially stores) built into their train stations. I found them to be a w…

Are they rare in the US? Every stop I use regularly (in Chicago) has shops in it. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that don't are ones where there isn't space or where businesses have left on their own volition.

Do they really have shops in them or are they accessible through a building that has shops?

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#16

Post by Declanomous »

mertd wrote: post #15
kasey_junk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they rare in the US? Every stop I use regularly (in Chicago) has shops in it. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that don't are ones where there isn't space or where businesses have left on their own volition.

Do they really have shops in them or are they accessible through a building that has shops?

They are in the same building. Generally it's a single dunkin donuts or something similar. The building is generally owned by the CTA however.

I'm from Chicago, and I was a bit surprised when I went to NYC for the first time and saw stores on the opposite side of the turnstile. I know this is quite common throughout the world, but it is relatively uncommon in the United States.

As far as I know there are not any stores in Chicago that can only be accessed by paying a fare.

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#17

Post by michaelt »

fwn wrote: post #7
jaggederest wrote: post #6

This seems like a really bad idea for all sorts of perverse incentive reasons. Primarily I'd guess related to the fact that the costs of running a city of a given size are basically entirely fixed costs, rather than being marginal. Especially when you add that most of the essential services a metro-area government provides are revenue negative. Trying to make (for example) the health department "pay fair market rents…

If the health department is not paying the actual price, someone else is paying the difference. The department therefore does not get cheaper, it just looks cheaper on paper since the real costs are hidden. The reduced transparency is what stands in the way of creating democratic or market based decisions on the departments funding.

  If the health department is not paying the actual
  price, someone else is paying the difference.
If the health department owns a city centre hospital outright (with no mortgage, and paying no rent) whom do you think is paying the difference?

Obviously there's an opportunity cost from not closing the hospital - close the hospital and you could save on the running costs /and/ sell the building! But "Government finances can be improved by cutting public services" isn't a new or surprising idea.

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#18

Post by brightball »

nostrademons wrote: post #11
fwn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the health department is not paying the actual price, someone else is paying the difference. The department therefore does not get cheaper, it just looks cheaper on paper since the real costs are hidden. The reduced transparency is what stands in the way of creating democratic or market based decisions on the departments funding.

"Democratic" and "market-based" decisions are two different things. You get a democratic decision when a majority of people believe that a good should be available to everyone at a price less than their share of the additional taxes needed. You get a market-based decision when an individual person believes that a good should be available to them, at a price less than the offering price. Most public goods are public g…

People often confuse libertarian with anarchist for some reason. Libertarians aren't against public service because of taxes.

They're against public services because once created they never go away, become entrenched, have no incentive to shrink their budgets or run more efficiently and every new one tends to become an immovable leach on society.

Just as an example...think about garbage pickup for a minute. It's a public service that a lot of people would probably pay for (and many do in areas outside of city limits)...but what has it enabled?

If everybody didn't have trash pickup would people be less inclined to throw things out and buy replacements? Would society in general be more inclined to learn to make repairs?If recycling pickup was free because it generated money, but trash pickup was not because it didn't...would society be more sustainable by default?

If a business made investments into equipment to offer trash pickup as a paid service and then a recycling pickup as a free service came along...the trash company would go under. If a city makes investments in trash pickup as a taxed service, would it ever be a big enough line item to even have the conversation?

Just one of many well intentioned public goods.

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#19

Post by conanbatt »

michaelt wrote: post #17
fwn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the health department is not paying the actual price, someone else is paying the difference. The department therefore does not get cheaper, it just looks cheaper on paper since the real costs are hidden. The reduced transparency is what stands in the way of creating democratic or market based decisions on the departments funding.

If the health department is not paying the actual price, someone else is paying the difference. If the health department owns a city centre hospital outright (with no mortgage, and paying no rent) whom do you think is paying the difference? Obviously there's an opportunity cost from not closing the hospital - close the hospital and you could save on the running costs /and/ sell the building! But "Government finances…

> If the health department owns a city centre hospital outright (with no mortgage, and paying no rent) whom do you think is paying the difference?

The tax-payers that invested in real estate in a city centre land x time ago.

Re: How about an “urban wealth fund”?

#20

Post by ebiester »

kasey_junk wrote: post #14
huac wrote: post #4

> Leasing space in subway stations to shops might detract from the “historic” character of the US’s barbarous public transit systems, but the revenues could fund needed improvements, such as ventilation, without the need for debt or higher passenger fares. All the public transit systems I've rode in Europe and Asia have lots of infrastructure (especially stores) built into their train stations. I found them to be a w…

Are they rare in the US? Every stop I use regularly (in Chicago) has shops in it. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that don't are ones where there isn't space or where businesses have left on their own volition.

NYC has them. They're in some stations in Boston, but many just don't have the space for it. IIRC, they're non-existant in the Bay Area.
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