Studying Islamic Finance

السلام والازدهار العدالة المجتمعي
You are visiting a blog associated with an online noncredit course studying the topic of Islamic Finance, moderated by John Wiley Spiers. Feel free to participate in our discussion, and if you are interested in taking the course visit http://www.johnspiers.com/Islamic_Finance/Welcome.html

Friday, November 30, 2012

How Mass Transit Imprisons People

It is all about the bonds.  Mass transit is sheer madness.  52% of the state transportation budget serves 3% of the population who use mass transit.

It is one thing to build a bridge over a chasm, a bridge that can pay for itself with tolls rather quickly, or as in ancient Greece and Islamic tradition the wealthy simply build it and pay for it, at a very efficient price.

But when the state steps in, the process becomes political, and the price goes up.  Way up.  In Seattle it is $179 million per mile.  And what gets bought is political.  In this case 1880s technology.  And that is just building cost, not operating and maintenance cost.



To pay for it, the state issues bonds, which pay interest (usury).  Lawyers write up the contracts and bankers handle the sales, for fees and commissions.  That is part of the $179 million per mile.  They make their money up front. Now there is a conflict of interest between the state, the project and the lawyers working on it.  the lawyers are officers of the court, one of the three branches making up the checks and balances in our government.  To have members of the judicial branch serving in the legislative or executive branch, or both, is to have the fox guarding the henhouse.

Now there is simply not enough capacity in the trains to ever recover the sunk cost of $179 million per mile, plus operating costs.  So bonds will be rolled over forever, and 100% of taxpayers will perpetually be paying for the 52% of the transportation budget that serves 3% of the population.

By structuring a deal that cannot ever zero out, taxpayers are trapped forever, like being in hell.  And worse than hell, because the system traps the children and grandchildren, forever.  It is pure evil.

The smartest thing to do is to cease all work on light rail, and tear up and out what has been built.  We'd be on the right track.  Then let private individuals set up transit systems.  Just as we say private companies freely trading in telephony give us the internet, completely unexpected, so freeing transportation from state control would give us unimaginable savings.

When the state chartered bankers to charge usury on fractional reserve credit, vast abusive systems needed to be created to sop up all of the putative credit.  And the powers that be needed huge projects to warrant the flow of "interest (usury)" so they can aggregate all the more power unto themselves.

Light rail is created by credit, but the usury to the powers that be is paid by workers in money.  The trick is to involve the state, because any other entity would just go bankrupt.

There must always be a separation of business and state.

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