There is a point where technology becomes foundational for participating in society. And then it needs to be regulated to be available to everyone.
We don’t see this in practice to though. Three examples:
1. In the airline industry big airlines don’t go everywhere for this reasons but small local airlines fill the gap due to market opportunity.
2. Changes in technology enable big companies to operate more efficiently. See starlink.
3. Big companies know that ubiquity is important for their brand. In practice Amazon will deliver packages across the US.
Also it's not just Wales where Beeching carried out intense vandalism of public infrastructure, the South West was severely affected too. Basically anywhere that wasn't London-centric suffered, which is the British government to a T regardless of the party in power. The general assumption was that private cars would replace the local trains, which as someone who currently doesn't drive for medical reasons really makes my blood boil. While perhaps not in intent, in effect the Beeching Axe was a profound kick in the teeth for the disabled.
I've heard that if you remove London from statistics, the UK has the economy of an Eastern European country after the fall of the USSR.
Did nobody ever operate rail to those cities again due to them being rural?
Oh I see (thanks to that edit). I mean, I agree with you. This is just the additional amusing detail that government-run services are still subject to a sort of dulled and homogenous version of market forces, which can be worse for small local concerns because it's less responsive. Though, admittedly, a giant corporation can simulate government very well, and can be just as crap.
> A few of these routes have since reopened. Some short sections have been preserved as heritage railways, while others have been incorporated into the National Cycle Network or used for road schemes
> Some, such as the bulk of the Midland Metro network around Birmingham and Wolverhampton, have since been incorporated into light rail lines.
Furthermore, the transformation to other transportation forms suggests this event also coincides with changing technology.
You’re not wrong, but small and rural airports would not be able to maintain even these routes without EAS (essential air services) subsidies
Amazon delivers everywhere because USPS subsidizes package delivery to unprofitable areas. You don’t get next day prime except in a relatively small proportion of the country (by area).
I agree that the cost or level of service differs (it literally costs more to serve you).
Beyond the very real closures of unprofitable rail lines that is always happening or threatening (including in state owned rail companies) your examples don't really measure up either:
Local airports are typically subsidized. So the infrastructure aspect is not market driven.
Eventually getting starlink means it was fine to not have fast internet for a couple of decades? We still don't have good mobile internet on many train lines in Germany. In Poland it's fine. The difference? Poland mandated that companies bidding for 4G meet certain coverage goals. Market forces have absolutely failed to actually get reasonable mobile internet to everyone.
"In practice Amazon will deliver packages across the US." You know they use the Postal Service for last miles often? And the Postal Service is required by law to service far-flung places. So Amazon is only, in practice, delivering packages to those places due to USPS.
Did you miss the part where the conversation was about Ticketmaster and rails were used as an analogy for understanding the problem?
> So Amazon is only, in practice, delivering packages to those places due to USPS.
I don’t think that’s true as I can buy many things on Amazon which cannot be shipped via USPS.
Some people argue even that behavior ends up producing the most good, but I cannot accept that level of mental gymnastics.
These are attitudes come from the privilege of never having been in that 2% of users, and I think we have them until that one day we end up being in that 2% and can't use the system ourselves.
When I wrote iOS apps, I was constantly infuriated by the tech lead's and product management's insistence to only support the current major OS version and the previous one. Engineers would take time out of their day to rip out support for iOS X-2 (rather than fixing bugs, working on performance or features)! Code that wasn't in the way of refactors, wasn't really buggy, wasn't harming anything architecturally. To me, it just looked like Griefing The User. I didn't get it and I still don't. Now, I have a 8 year old phone, and lo and behold, half of the apps in the AppStore don't even work on it anymore because of this attitude, so I guess I'm firmly in the 2%.