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Re: Is RR antitrust exemption near the end of the line?
Author: Hipshot
Date: 05-08-2008 - 21:22
In charm school they teach you to say, “balderdash” in lieu of the more colloquial Anglo-Saxon alternative expression.
Railroads have not had a monopoly in any sense of the term – “natural” or otherwise – since the public built the interstate highway system in the 1960s and 70s. Railroads remain public utilities only by survival of last-century legislative fiat. Simply because one mode makes more efficient use of an “input,” i.e., fuel, than another is of no relevance when in comes to determining either the full economic cost of an action or the lawful and/or moral implications of expropriation of private property. If you want open access, fine! Pay for it. Cost plus ten percent is prejudicial, discriminatory and confiscatory. There are no data to support a thesis that "renters" would make money "hand over fist." If they do not recover their full economic costs, then investors withdraw their capital and they are condemned to collapse.
Railroads have not had a monopoly in any sense of the term – “natural” or otherwise – since the public built the interstate highway system in the 1960s and 70s. Railroads remain public utilities only by survival of last-century legislative fiat. Simply because one mode makes more efficient use of an “input,” i.e., fuel, than another is of no relevance when in comes to determining either the full economic cost of an action or the lawful and/or moral implications of expropriation of private property. If you want open access, fine! Pay for it. Cost plus ten percent is prejudicial, discriminatory and confiscatory. There are no data to support a thesis that "renters" would make money "hand over fist." If they do not recover their full economic costs, then investors withdraw their capital and they are condemned to collapse.
