good idea, but there's a problem. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, hitching was illegal in most places in the US but people did it anyway. Then there were scares (including a movie about a hitch-hiker/killer), so people stopped picking up hitchers and people stopped hitching. It became a vicious circle. Nowadays, there's a reason why most people won't pick up riders: a larger percentage are actual thugs than in the 1960s. Similarly, there's a larger percentage of bad 'uns picking up hitchers. I guess it's an example of adverse selection.
Maybe if we have a depression, hitching (and giving rides to strangers) will become popular again. On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Robert Naiman <[email protected]> wrote: > > Wouldn't it be a Pareto improvement if hitchhiking were made safe, legal, > and reliable in America? > > Every day, all across America, vehicles are traveling from point A to point > B with unused passenger capacity. > > At any point in time, if you, as a potential passenger, want to go from one > city in the continental United States to another, it is very likely that a > path between the two cities exists that is going to be traversed by vehicles > with unused passenger capacity. > > Suppose that an effective market existed for matching passengers to drivers, > with the feature that it gave reasonable assurance to both sides about the > safety and reliability of the other party. > > Wouldn't it be cheaper to move around? > > Mightn't it be a source of revenue for drivers? > > Wouldn't it conserve natural resources and reduce pollution? > > Wouldn't this be easier to organize today than at any time in history > because of the Internet? > > -- > Robert Naiman > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Jim Devine / "Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business." -- Tom Robbins _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
