The Perverse Incentives of Public Transportation
|

The Perverse Incentives of Public Transportation

Originally published on andrewsmith.medium.com Wednesday morning, a computer glitch in the Federal Aviation Authority’s system ground commercial air travel to a halt in the United States for several hours. Meanwhile, an Amtrak train had been stranded for 29 hours in rural South Carolina. The FAA’s computer glitch shut down its Notice to Air Missions System, which relays important…

A Perfect Storm for Maritime Policy: The Jones Act Five Years after Hurricane Maria

A Perfect Storm for Maritime Policy: The Jones Act Five Years after Hurricane Maria

Atmospheric pressure readings plummeted. At 5:00 AM, the National Hurricane Center issued a bulletin: Hurricane Maria, transformed from a Saharan dust storm into a major Category 4 hurricane careening across the Caribbean Sea, would make landfall in Puerto Rico within the hour. It was September 20th, 2017. Separated by nearly a thousand miles of blue…

Why democracy is good for liberty

Why democracy is good for liberty

There is a growing tendency among libertarians to attack the concept of democracy, and blame it for America’s problems. But this is reckless: we need to address the issues within our system and provide alternatives instead of burning the entire thing down. Democracy is defined as “a government in which the supreme power is vested…

Why pro-liberty solutions must apply to the real world

Why pro-liberty solutions must apply to the real world

For a policy proposal to be deemed pro-liberty, it must meet a simple requirement: to increase liberty, not decrease it. Policies are not implemented in a sterile lab environment, they are implemented in the world as it exists now. If a policy increases liberty in some theoretical world, but decreases liberty in the present world,…