59
Here’s why some people still evade public transport fares – even when they’re 50 cents
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
59 points (100.0% liked)
Australia
3835 readers
132 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh come on, you know what I mean: completely free as in you're free to dump stuff in public trashcans but someone still has to pay for trash collection, and that someone is the taxpayer.
If a bus fare costs. say, $4, and $3.50 are subsidized so the apparent cost to the bus riders is 50c, someone pays for the $3.50 and that's everybody, including those who don't ride the bus. Just like everybody pays for road maintenance in equal parts, even those who don't drive a lot.
If policymakers decided to make everybody pay for 88% of a few people's bus fare, they might as well make everybody pay 100% and save the cost of printing bus tickets, programming bus cards and paying ticket controllers to catch fare dodgers.
Yeah, I understood your point. I used "free" the same way you did. There was no need to move the goal posts. .
We tend to distrust "free".
How many "free' offers do you have in your inbox right now? How many do you think are scams? We assume there are some sort of hidden costs, or that the service is "worth what you paid". If it is offered "completely free", it will be broadly avoided.
When charged a token amount, we get the impression of value. A bargain.
The "penalty" for fare evasion should be the cop looking the other way, or handing out "$5" passes and asking them to "pay it forward".
I don't think so.
Most people understand that free stuff offered by for-profits is sketchy and deceitful, while free public services is just another way of saying taxpayer-supported.
Everybody knows - or at least should know - that a free Google account means Google is going to invade your privacy, while enrolling for free at the local community college or attending school is their right because they paid for it in their taxes.
At least outside the US, that's the deal most taxpayers understand they have with the state. In the US, people would like free public services but refuse to pay for it because communism or some equally stupid non-sequitur.
No, you clearly don't understand their point. Because everybody (apart from lunatic libertarians) knows that when something is free because taxes pay for it, it's completely different from free-because-they-sell-your-data or "free"-but-it's-a-scam.