Comments on: Be a train, not a bus

By: Joseph Fouche

Joseph Fouche — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:59:30 +0000

The traditional American response would have been to pull the bus over and let the passengers collectively beat the troublemaker severely. Traditional Americans were a meddlesome people who made other people’s business their own. One definition of American Progressivism since the 1890s is “The attempt to outsource American meddling to professional meddlers. Badly.”

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:21:44 +0000

Quite right, David, but I don’t think a modern American bus driver would even pull over the bus and ask an obvious trouble-maker to leave.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:14:24 +0000

“Why doesn’t a bus driver have the same capacity to kick people out and command authority?” Practical problem is that he’s busy driving the bus: it seems it takes a minimum of 2 employees to maintain decorum. Since the multi-car train carries more passengers, the extra labor cost of employee #2 is less as a % of fares. (And with self-driving trains, only the roaming employee would be needed.)