Re: [NSW] More Complaints on CityRail Southern Highlands

["Bradley Torr" <truenorth@one.net.au.SPAMTRAP>]

Al <alpout@optusnet.com.au> wrote in article
<3b144179$0$25471$7f31c96c@news01.syd.optusnet.com.au>...

> Again, a social problem.  I reckon Australia would be a lot better off
with 10
> cities the size of Newcastle spread out than we are with 1 city the size
of
> Sydney.

Of course it would! It simply does not make sense to have a country of over
7 million square kilometres (and while most of that is arid or semi-arid,
large tracts of it are perfectly inhabitable) with around 60% of its
population of 19 million crushed into 5 coastal cities. Besides which,
having our growing population - both native-born and immigrants - spread
over many cities rather than our largest two would greatly help the urban
environment and infrastructure in those two largest cities cope.

The only people who would benefit are the big end of town, which likes to
have its human capital crowded into cities as it makes it cheaper to sell
goods, create mass markets, organise its labour force, etc. It's all about
economies of scale. It's easier and more profitable for a fast food chain
to set up one restaurant in a city of 100,000 than build ten restaurants in
ten towns of 10,000.

I'm certainly not a communist - nor do I have much time for unproven and
untried Marxist theories - but Marx and Engels were right when they wrote
in "The Communist Manifesto":

"The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of
the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has
agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has
concentrated property in a few hands."

(Of course, one of the first things Communist dictators have liked to do
was to uproot their peasants and yeomen and dump them and their families
into dismal concerte agro-industrial collectives and to concentrate the
population in these artificial urban environments, thus contravening the
Manifesto which supports a "gradual abolition of all the distinction
between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace
over the country." -- but that's probably getting a little too much
off-topic. But at least them commies loved their railways!)

Now you know what's behind the forces which see our major metropolitan
areas get bigger and bigger and bigger while rural and regional areas
either decay or become 'dormitories' for the metropolitan regions, aided
and abetted by governments blinkered by rationalist 'free market' doctrines
which have completely abandoned decentralist policies post-Whitlam. And why
the Endeavour services to the Southern Highlands get so packed, along with
the Hume Highway in peak hours north of Moss Vale.

 Regards
BT