begin  quoting John Oliver as of Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 01:37:33PM -0800:
> On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 12:00:35AM -0800, David Brown wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 11:04:27PM -0800, SJS wrote:
> > 
> > >Well, if they prepared the food, they'd be a cafeteria. And I've
> > >paid the flat-rate for minimally-metered access to a cafeteria.
> > >It worked pretty well.  If the cafeteria at work offered a flat-rate
> > >plan, I might well take advantage of it.
> > 
> > A certain famous search engine company is kind of known for having a
> > free-to-employees cafeteria that serves fairly good food.  I know that if I
> > worked at a place like that it would be very hard to not become quite
> > large.
> 
> But that flat-rate cafetria almost certainly is not self-sufficient.
> It's almost certainly subsidized by the company that houses it. 

It's free-to-employees. Duh.

>                                                                  That's
> fine, until we start trying to implement such a scheme everywhere.  Who
> subsidizes the cafeterias then?  The taxpayer.

Yup. That's what happens.

>                                                 We pay the same amount
> for our meals (or, actually, more), we just pay part directly and the
> rest indirectly via taxes.  The "more" is because of the waste caused by
> entropy in the system...

...offset by the economies of scale...

>                          the taxes are collected by people who are paid,
> and that money is handled and disbursed by more people.  All of those
> people have supervisors, and they all need shiny office buildings to
> work in, which needs electricity and water and maintenance and toilet
> paper and more cafeterias.  We pay for all of that on top of the amount
> we'd pay up front.
 
Um, we have all that already. Your money is taken at the register, who
has a supervisor, who has a manager, etc., up the corporate ladder,
where the buildings are REALLY shiny, that have maintenance and toilet
paper and more cafeterias.

It's a wash.

> I'd rather pay $10 for my meal than $2 now and another $11 in taxes.

How about $10 for your meal or $2 now and $6 in taxes?

-- 
Perhaps economies of scale
Can leave you hearty and hale
Stewart Stremler


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