LETTERS

...Editors: Will Joseph Blasi's glorification of shareholding as a solution for Amtrak's problems ("Saving Amtrak," Fall 1996) make its service available to those who need it at a price they can afford...

...The public will be expected to support this humongous array of managers, consultants, technicians, and the necessary rolling stock, and on top of that, the shareholders, by fares paid at the ticket office, and set by whatever a "for-profit" passenger rail service will demand...

...Let me be more blunt than in the original article...

...It is precisely the lack of owners with large economic and social incentives that are independent of the state that holds back this current collection of people from solving Amtrak's problems...

...So if you want to write about something that you like, or dislike, in or about Dissent, please do it quickly...

...Amtrak today increases prices and victimizes people who are unable to pay or who are cut off when it continually cuts back services in all areas except where there is heavy travel, such as the Northeast Corridor...

...I doubt it...

...I am not sure where that gets us...

...The motive to shareholding is acquisitiveness—in plain English, greed, an insatiable addiction that, given its head, will leave the interest of the consuming public at the bottom of the market's agenda...

...And he is romanticizing an anti-corporate, anticapitalist sensibility...

...One need not look only at future issues of Dissent to find evidence on this debate...

...The writer is creating a litany of complaints of which today's situation is the true cause...

...To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...

...We do have evidence that states can run efficient railroads if they have the political will, but the United States does not have that...

...The proposal to privatize Amtrak is surely not perfect...

...We need practical solutions to ongoing failures...

...WINTER • 1997 • 143...

...But because we have a long "lead time for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...

...We have decades of evidence that state-owned enterprises in scores of countries were inefficient...

...Amtrak is not equitable today, nor efficient...

...But how do his ideas help us resolve the practical problem that the government refuses to subsidize or run Amtrak the way that the Swiss or the Dutch do and that Amtrak lacks the incentives to expand passenger rail service like a hungry privatized company...

...If the best available service can be provided at an affordable price and still prove profitable, well and good, and a maximum profitability should be sought so long as the need is served equitably...

...Amtrak is today a humongous array of managers, consultants, technicians, and the resulting rolling stock that is going in the wrong direction...

...but where there's a need, provision should be made to satisfy it, profitable or not...

...The last time I looked, neither Amtrak nor state-owned and subsidized enterprises under communist systems were democratic and attentive to consumer needs...

...Those unable to afford the fare will be excluded from the service, though their need may be as great as that of those who can afford it...

...On the contrary, its subsidies misuse taxpayer money in order to accomplish a dedining service...

...Will Athearn wake up from his sleep...

...As a nonprofit entity, it gets to lean on the state for its incompetence, and as a forprofit entity, it gets to cut service and increase fares but without the competition that would respond to the desire of many citizens for more rather than less rail service...

...Accountability for the provision of the service will be in the hands of the shareholders, not those whose need of it should be the primary consideration...

...I really believe that a state-owned Amtrak under the current regimes will be worse than a privatized Amtrak...

...Think about what has happened in the socialistic economic world since the late eighties...

...The company has the worst elements of a nonprofit and a for-profit corporation...

...However, it tries to take into account the realities that we confront...

...This is an argument that the entire country can resolve by watching the evidence roll by or not roll by as the years pass...

...Some of Amtrak's managers and employees are trying to do many things right under its current structure, but the company cannot shake the fundamental similarity to a state-owned enterprise in a communist system...

...I share both the writer's general distaste for greed and his concern that the public must have its needs taken into consideration...

...A genuinely democratic, which is to say, a non-coercive, economic system will put need before greed R. A . ATHEARN Friday Harbor, Wash...

...Too many people have a short-term interest in avoiding this discussion...