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Comment by _0ffh | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure the private bus operators, who usually are the only cheap option to travel in Germany, are just thrilled by this additional market distortion.

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There’s only one left, all the others went bankrupt, and that one (FlixBus) only offers long-distance journeys, while this ticket only applies to regional trains.

You might be confusing regional bus with long distance bus travel or ride for hire bus companies which will also be impacted.

Which private regional bus companies or ride for hire bus companies are supposed to exist in Germany? I’m 26, but I’ve never heard or seen of any such company besides the long-distance travel with FlixBus (and formerly PostBus, InterCityBus, etc)

The bus companies which operate official lines for Verkehrsverbünde will get paid the same as always, they’re not affected by the 9-Euro-Ticket.

Did you really never go somewhere on a rented bus when you were in school? You can rent a bus with driver eg. for the company picnic or other touristic activities.

However, I fail to see how that business, which usually involves a time constraint and direct point-to-point travels, would be impacted by this kind of ticket.

Not really, we always used the city busses. I know that business exists, but I don’t know any private bus business that’d be affected by this ticket (except, as mentioned, FlixBus)

Firstly, long distance is misleading, I do not need to travel the whole length of a route. I can hop into a bus and hop out again at any of the next few bigger cities along the route. In my experience, that's what most people seem to do.

Secondly, the 9€-Ticket is valid in all of Germany, so you could travel the length and width of the country if you wanted to. You'd just have to change trains a lot.

Both of those are true, but that market distortion isn’t nearly as large as you made it sound, and considering the upsides for society even the absolute worst case of driving one company into bankruptcy would definitely be worth it.

That would mean for a short term advantage I'd loose my ability to travel cheaply in the future. I don't think that it's worth the price.

Apart from the fact that I'm opposed for principled reasons. If we want to make people's life easier, we should cut down on taxes, not engage in more deficit spending. Especially as the economy is headed for hard times anyway, for exactly that kind of reasons.

> additional market distortion

Are they also thrilled by "additional market distortions" like subsidized oil import and processing and road infrastructure?

Or should we remove all tax-funded infrastructure investment and go back to the middle ages?

With more than 50% of gas prices going into taxes, are you seriously suggesting oil is a subsidised commodity in Germany?

They are. If you can squeeze an english translation out of this somehow, the article considers some potential problems:

https://www.spiegel.de/auto/neun-euro-ticket-verkehrsbetrieb...

For Automatic translations involving German it usualy is a good idea to check https://www.deepl.com/

Private long distance bus operators are complaining, indeed. They were looking forward to this summer to finally make some revenue after two years of reduced demand due to the pandemic, and then this measure torpedoes their business.

See for example this [in German]

https://www.busnetz.de/9-euro-ticket-bdo-warnt-vor-negativen...

on one hand, free travel for millions of citizens, on the other, higher profitability for a handful private bus operators.

Its surprising to me that someone would even consider bringing this up as a valid counter argument. Interesting to see how deeply Neoliberalism has seeped into western culture.

What does a temporary reprieve help if it threatens to destroy the outlook in long term? That strikes me as a uniquely short sighted pov. I am not surprised though, given your usage of the word "neoliberal" in that way. I am certainly not a "neoliberal", because that's just a soft form of socialism. I am a laissez faire capitalist.

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