Thank you Kelvin

[Mich the Tester]

It's slightly pathetic that now, instead of raising any intelligent points. You are cutting up my sentences in half and saying i'm contradicting myself.

Do you know how to stop him doing that?

Stop contradicting yourself.

[Mich the Tester]

So you are claiming supply and demand is now bunk?

Stand back everyone, years of well founded economic theory has been proven bunk because SAS has a hunch.

[sasguru]

You should have found a larger one.
The thing with morons is that they usually get hang with their own petard, because they can't stop digging.

[Robinho]

Firstly, you can only measure negative and positive externalities with any real accuracy AFTER the investment has been made; any forecast is basically speculative; there might be a business case to build something, like a railway, but any business case is flawed, sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot. Private sector investors can only take so much risk; the government's capacity to cover the risk of a flopped investment is generally much greater than private businesses, and that's one reason why most major infrastructure projects are carried out by governments.

Incredible how you have managed to spell out the inherant problem with government spending, but have failed to see the problem.

The government's capacity to cover flopped investment is exactly why government shouldn't be choosing the projects. Someone who can just steal from the tax payer if it goes wrong is not going to care as much how well they invest.

Secondly, you are viewing positive and negative externalities in a purely financial sense. Governments have the tricky job of considering other matters as well.

Such as? Pollution in the case of crossrail perhaps. But that is it and that is marginal.

Thirdly, you are assuming almost infinite wisdom and unlimited access to correct information on the part of the private sector. That's a completely wrong assumption. You need to consider that any business decision takes place with bounded rationality. The government doesn't have infinite wisdom either.

Both private sector and public sector basically muddle along with some successes and failures as they go; the thing is, the government can take a bit more risk and allow itself more failures than private companies. Up to a point, of course, and perhaps the UK's last government passed that point at some stage.

YES!! you said it!

[sasguru]

So you are claiming supply and demand is now bunk?

Stand back everyone, years of well founded economic theory has been proven bunk because SAS has a hunch.

Thanks for proving my point that you are indeed both simplistic and moronic.

[Bunk]

So you are claiming supply and demand is now bunk?

[SupremeSpod]

You should have found a larger one.
The thing with morons is that they usually get hang with their own petard, because they can't stop digging.

To mix a metaphor or three