I was on the train and it was stopped between stations, as the MTA is wont to do, and some guy decides to mock-applaud with a snide aside.
Sure, he has a right to be frustrated, but that expression didn't change anything about the situation, nor did I think really made him feel any better. No one reacted. I marveled at the uselessness of the gesture. And then I started thinking about public or quasi-public services, and how they seem to generate nothing but complaint.
I wondered if it's because public services tend to be for survival, government being the [blank] of last resort in so many cases. And is that what makes people turn ugly? That dependency and the resulting powerlessness? That expectation that everything has to work, because it's needed and can't be otherwise? Meanwhile, in purchasing products from businesses, seemingly imbued with so much choice and free will and the relative luxury of all that - does that elicit a whole different set of behaviors?
In a country where the heady mix of capitalism and individualism is so revered, it seems like the government can do no right. The government, in representing the collective, is always either not doing enough or trying to do too much. Businesses and corporations, by enshrining choice in a market-style setting, are really seen as champions of individual interest - after all, the customer is always right. And so we eschew the former and revere the latter, thinking the latter can always do better by doing less, or do less by doing better. Except corporations choose who they serve, which is not everyone. Their bottom line is profit, not people.
And by buying into (haha) this system we are perpetuating it. We prefer to pay for goods and services instead of being taxed, under the presumption that government doesn't do a good job, and with lower tax revenues and downsized budget, that presumption manifests as true. Public transit, already heavily subsidized, cannot afford the infrastructure upgrades necessary for a system that sustains 7 million rides daily. So trains are delayed and fares are increased and people complain, yet what can we expect for having invested so little?