Why would they be? I can see the political argument for the position.
Free public transports just mean that you pay it through another way, and most likely mean that you remove the "use tax", thus increasing the contribution from people who don't actually use public transports.
In other words, free PT could save taxpayers money.
Absolutely, and that is in fact their political stance. They believe that there should be no use tax on public transport and that people who don't use it should still be responsible for financing it. Their reasoning is probably based on the assertion that public transport causes positive externalities even for non-users, and that the resulting benefit to society as a whole outweighs the purported unfairness against individuals. You may or may not agree, it may or may not be a good policy, but it is a legitimate political stance.
A separate issue is whether guerrilla tactics/direct actions such as these can be justified to attain a political goal in a liberal democracy, and yet another debate is whether these methods are even tactically useful in getting closer to their stated goal.
> they believe that there should be no use tax on public transport and that people who don't use it should still be responsible for financing it
I don't know for Manchester specifically but any public transport I'm familiar with is payed in huge part with tax money, so people who don't use public transports are already paying for it. But not the 100%, instead it's balanced with the use tax. So, is that the contention point, that it should be paid only by tax money? I don't understand what benefits that would bring. With this system, people using public transports the most (thus get the most value) would pay the less (if averaged per trip), how do you balance such a system?
Concerning their action, what's the idea behind sharing their exploit other than simplifying the work of free-rider? That it is too expensive to design a use-tax system that works, thus make the 100% government funded solution more attractive?
On the whole, this is probably one of the least harmful things they could have released publicly.
Depends the actions you’re thinking about, but I would guess that’s likely to be the case, yes.
> On the whole, this is probably one of the least harmful things they could have released publicly.
Could you elaborate?
Because their position is naive and lacks any serious economic or political justification. Even assuming that their beliefs are sincerely held, this would not be the correct course of action to go about inciting change.
When was the last time that stopped anybody from taking a political stance?
this would not be the correct course of action to go about inciting change
See question above.
It may bring them more publicity though by the media that will talk about them, but they are also labeling this cause as being the criminal side.... which isn't really good (that's actually the strategy that multiple government use to push their agenda, making the opposite side seems like they are infringing the law).