H-Resin t1_ix71yco wrote on November 21, 2022 at 6:01 AM

Reply to comment by SaidTheTurkey in I've ridden the bus 3 times and I'm already pissed by _RetroBear

Ah you’re right. Ok I see where I misunderstood - GRTC is managed by a private entity. So their staff is run by a private company essentially. Seems like a strange relationship but I don’t know much about mass transit

anonymousart3 t1_ix8blln wrote on November 21, 2022 at 3:02 PM

That's not really odd, at least not for the US. Conservatives HATE the idea of government programs, and love to privatize. So a compromise that the liberals have come up with is public-private partnerships. Government gives some money to a private company to do the service. It causes so many problems compared to if government just did it itself, but this is what we are stuck with until people stop voting conservative.

Of course,I don't know the specifics of Richmond's politics, so I could be wrong. This idea has pervaded almost every aspect of American politics, so it seems very likely to me that's what's going on.

whw53 t1_ix8e7rt wrote on November 21, 2022 at 3:21 PM

I'm not sure why you think that is odd - this is the prevailing model throughout most of Europe as well. Often times, private involvement is even more embedded in operations there.

For instance, unlike the U.S., private actors have a substantial stake in European airports ( over 40% have private shareholders) while in the US they are all government-owned,

SaidTheTurkey t1_ix9h92q wrote on November 21, 2022 at 7:43 PM

Dog there’s been like one Republican mayor in Richmond since the Civil war lol. Y’all just going to keep guessing in this thread or what

anonymousart3 t1_ix9hse1 wrote on November 21, 2022 at 7:47 PM

Technically that doesn't matter really. You can be a liberal who takes on a lot of conservative viewpoints. The overtone windows is really skewed to the right in america, so MANY liberals are more centrist than in other counties.

Democrats in america is just slightly moderate right wing people in the rest of the world. Bernie Sanders is even a centrist in the rest of the world. But in america he is considered a lefist. So...yeah, your point isn't as valid as you seem to think. Still a point to keep in mind, but...yeah

SaidTheTurkey t1_ix9j9hi wrote on November 21, 2022 at 7:56 PM

I don’t need to preface my comment to remind people of generalities of world politics in a Richmond Virginia subreddit. Especially when someone else just educated you that this is just as common if not standard around the world.

Maybe you just made assumptions about something you don’t know as much about as you thought you did?

anonymousart3 t1_ix9jz5u wrote on November 21, 2022 at 8:01 PM

And often the places that do have that public-private thing, even if common around the world, is a LOT more deeper than at first seems.

In Europe there is a LOT more regulations and things that they put on those partnerships than they do in america. As a result they run better. In america, we seem to be very adverse to the idea of regulations. And even that ignores the fact that no matter if its common in europe or not, when the government does it by itself without the partnership, it often does BETTEr and costs the people less in taxes.

So my point still stands. The democrats in america don't like to do things as well as they do in europe.

There is a really good video that discuesses this exact problem. Search up "how privatisation fails railways" on youtube. A channel by the name of Shaun discusses the issues with privitization and how it just doesn't work as well even with the partnerships.