Let 'em threaten all they want!

They are irrelevant anyway, considering that in the vast regions of the far west where U.P. has an absolute rail monopoly, 90 percent of all domestic product goes by truck.

You want to make people laugh? Just go to almost any company's traffic manager and suggest he ship by U.P., or by rail in general. Even the ATSF owed much of its intermodal success to the likes of Schnieder and J.B. Hunt doing the grass-roots selling for them. And lets not forget the fact that double stack technology had to be literally forced on a stubborn rail industry by the trans-oceanics.

Whole train loads such as unit trains and single-origin double stacks are easy to manage. But because they find it just too damn hard to manage the scheduled loose car services that were once the mainstay of railroading (and essential to our domestic economy); they have willfully abondoned it all. Now even captive commodities such as ethanol and export grain are being refused service in less than trainload lots. If those don't go by rail, they won't go at all!

Loose car railroading was and still is more profitable per unit than intermodal, but each unit is so small that it doesn't dazzle the dollar signs in their eyes. Besides the whimps running the railroads nowadays can't seem do the same job their forebearers once did as a matter of course.

The pain of all this to us railfans - is obvious. But we should also realize that this is really seriously distorting the whole American economy, making it so that only the largest producers of anything can survive in this country - at all.

Now this tired old ex-republican begins to see that the market cannot always regulate itself. In fact, only markets which are balanced are really free markets that can regulate themselves; you know, those where there are many many sellers and many many buyers; and therefore no one is able to distort the market to their own selfish advantage.

But even these cannot regulate themselves except as it pertains monetary values. Social values, such as quality of life, health, safety, equal opportunity for large and small, real human freedoms, the great middle class, The Great American Dream, etc; cannot be self regulated by any market which measures only monetary value.

Now (thanks to the interstate highway subsidy) the trucking industry does have many sellers and many buyers and is a relatively free market; the rail industry has very few sellers and each year fewer and fewer buyers. The trucking industry is thriving despite its limitations and inefficiencies; whereas the rail industry is choking despite its huge natural advantages and emormous efficiencies.

The rail industry is choking on its own monopolies! It once thrived on its own diversity, in a day of heavy regulation too-boot; as both were true in the "Golden Age of Railroading".

The problems immediately prior to the staggers act were brought about not by regulation itself, but by inequity in the rules of the time, and because the regulators did not keep up with changes in the transportation market. These have since been shown to be willful acts of graft and extortion in high places, such as congress and the I.C.C.. Now, the S.T.B. and S.E.C. are nothing but rubber stamps for a seller's monopoly.

Uncle Carter's "Staggers Act" apparently threw the baby out with the bathwater. It is time to restore balance to the rail transport market, which while related, is not the same as the trucking market. There is already by-partisan support for such. But, in my opinion, it won't be enough to save the industry.

What is needed is to set up the rail industry with a public infrastructure similar to the interstate highway system. Then bust up the monopolistic railroad companies into many many private common carrier railroads, all with rights to go from anywhere to anywhere; and even allowing private haulage of your own stuff as well.

I know there will be enormous issues and details to work out, but having permanently done away with the economic distortions of monopoly, private rail industry will thrive far better than ever before; even better than trucks do now because of rails natural advantages. Most important for all, the crippling distortions to the American economy will ease!

If the purpose of "Government" is not to "Promote the general welfare" (preamble of the Constitution) by maintaining balance in free markets, then what is its purpose.

So let 'em threaten. Go ahead - make my day; we should simply call their bluff!

OPB