I wonder how often managers forget that you can often make more money and profit by lowering prices.
In this instance its not about profits, even approaching even would be a huge win to environment, labor market, local industry and infrastructure.
I doubt managers forget this. It's just that you need backers with very deep pockets (the government in this case, VCs in Uber's case) to make it work.
I am super happy about the ticket and think its a good thing. But lets not pretend its financing would be possible without heavy government spending.
[1] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/deutschland... (German)
If your train has 200 seats, it’s better to sell 200 tickets at $65 per ticket than it is to sell 100 at $100 per ticket.
And the article says:
"€49 a month ‘Deutschlandticket’ has led to a 25 per cent rise in passengers on national railway company Deutsche Bahn's regional services"
and a daily (regional) ticket costs about €20-50 depending on area.
I mean obviously it might very well be worth doing this for other reasons but somebody will have to subsidize the lost revenue for various transport companies.
Look up elasticity of demand.
The first 20 minutes of one? i.e. before arriving at concept of 'marginal cost' also I doubt demand for public transport is necessarily that elastic, short term anyway.
As the article says traffic for regional trains only increased by 25% despite the price decreasing much more than that (e.g. a single day ticket previously cost 20-50 euros depending on area).
The only actual claim of losing money was about the 9 euro ticket.("the ultra-cheap pass cost the state too much for it to be extended.".)
The "unsustainable" comment was a theory from May which should be trivial shown (or not) by now but definitely not a claim by the article. ("There’s a question mark over how long this year’s €49 pass will last, with transport bosses warning in May that it may be unsustainable too.")
Not everything has to make money.
> Furthermore, a reduction in car emissions means lower healthcare costs.
Not necessarily - imagine a pandemic where people could only use public transport.
Utilities are called utilities for a reason, and PUBLIC transportation is a utility.
Better mobility means less road congestion, fewer emissions, less energy wasted needlessly, fewer healthcare costs, easier access to jobs and education which implies reduced crime, reduced crime means improved living conditions, more safety, fewer healthcare costs.
The ROI on utilities is in many ways intangible due to the sheer complexity of our society.
Measuring how much utilities make directly and using that to argue that they should be discontinued is naive at best and downright dangerous at worst.
I see this formulation so much. Almost these exact words, although the topic varies. Why is that? Thoughts are not dangerous, yet people keep saying they are.
Incidentally the formulation often has the additional characteristic yours also does, which is assuming I said something I didn't. No one mentioned discontinuing anything.
It trivially follows that if you find a service unsustainable then you must cut it. But this makes sense only when you can show that the secondary effects also don’t cover for the costs, however those are often ignored in such discussions.
Ideas are dangerous when they are dishonest and misrepresent reality or hide the full picture.
People don’t want complicated solutions to things they don’t understand, they want simple solutions to things they believe they understand. This is the basis of populist rhetorics and populist politics.
You seem to be saying that when "certain groups" confront the fact I stated, they respond with a solution you don't like. That doesn't mean the fact is incorrect. That's a logical fallacy: arguing from adverse consequences[0].
> It trivially follows that if you find a service unsustainable then you must cut it. But this makes sense only when you can show that the secondary effects also don’t cover for the costs, however those are often ignored in such discussions.
That doesn't mean they're being ignored here. Mention them to enrich the discussion, rather than suppressing the discussion with fearmongering.
> Ideas are dangerous when they are dishonest and misrepresent reality or hide the full picture.
Who gets to decide the full picture? I tell my kid gravity exists, and in doing so I hide the big picture. Your definition is too vague. The solution is not to squirrel around looking for a definition that is easy to falsify. The solution is to stop calling ideas dangerous and figure out what actually is dangerous.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World#Logica...
This is the point of utilities; to enable people to live and thrive.
Arguing that A should be axed while ignoring, either out of ignorance or malice, that it enables B hides the full picture.
> That doesn't mean they're being ignored here. Mention them to enrich the discussion, rather than suppressing the discussion with fearmongering.
See, that’s the problem with bullshit. It takes substantially more effort to counter and clean up the bullshit than it takes to spread it. This is what is dangerous, making claims or insinuating things out of ignorance or malice.
> Who gets to decide the full picture? I tell my kid gravity exists, and in doing so I hide the big picture. Your definition is too vague.
That’s a strawman.
> The solution is to stop calling ideas dangerous and figure out what actually is dangerous.
Also a strawman as you left the qualifiers out.
Right, ideas are not dangerous, ideas ghat misrepresent reality are dangerous. Populists like to present their ideas as simple solutions and every single time they make things worse. Exhibit A: brexit.
You're spending effort just name calling instead, though. Countering through insinuation (you think that? That's what populists think!) or arguing from adverse consequences are just terrible alternatives. I would spend that effort finding out how to logically counter instead of using these tactics.
> That’s a strawman.
No; I think your definition was just easy to falsify. You need a better definition. If you want to demonstrate why my example was a straw man, feel free to do so, but I don't think the phrase even applies here.
> Arguing that A should be axed while ignoring, either out of ignorance or malice, that it enables B hides the full picture
This is the straw man. You're making up that I argued something should be axed, because that is an easy argument to counter than what I actually said. That is the definition of a straw man argument.
Is that true on a like for like basis? E.g. a car goes to my house. A bus needs the same road that cars do.
but you are right, everything needs money. so it ends up being a political issue where ideally we democratically figure out how much tax money we give to the train operators
Good point. I misread - didn't mean to mischaracterise.