Posted by Dan Ewert : 6/28/2002 12:58:00 AM (Archive Link)
Amtrak has been in the news a great deal recently. The rail entity is threatening to shut down important routes unless the government gives it some money. Basically, Amtrak is doing a shakedown on Congress and the great American taxpayer. Amtrak should absolutely be disbanded and privatized. The passenger railway has been a financial black hole since its inception and it will never be anything else. Several years ago, Congress gave it a fanciful mandate to be a profitable, self-supporting concern by 2002. Obviously, this never happened. Amtrak runs on government money and it is a government entity. Government entities are not designed to make and to run off of profits. They’re made to run on tax money. They don’t know how to generate their own money because the business of government is not business. At this point, there is no way Amtrak can be reformed. Instead, it must be done away with. Break it up and put it in private hands. Within two years, you’ll have rail service that’s more efficient, more streamlined, more customer-friendly, and likely cheaper than Amtrak could ever hope to be in its CEO’s fondest dreams. This is because if it’s not these things, it dies and a better enterprise that can accomplish them will take its place. Such is capitalism.