French Entrepreneurs
Today NR's Helen Rittelmeyer points me suitably enough to the LA Times. Paris's fare dodgers, Column One explains, face an existential problem: get caught, and you must pay -- to the tune of $60. The answer?
scofflaw insurance funds, seasoned with a dollop of revolutionary fervor. For about $8.50 a month, those who join one of these raffish-sounding mutuelles des fraudeurs can rest easy knowing that, if they get busted for refusing to be so bourgeois as to pay to use public transit, the fund will cough up the money for the fine. It provides a little peace of mind, however ethically dubious, in a time of economic uncertainty.
So let me get this straight: it's bourgeois to pay for public transit, but not to rely on public fines to set the pricing for a black-market insurance fund? Sounds to me like a cleverly lame way to satisfy three great human urges at once: getting free stuff, getting away with stuff, and -- participating in a free market.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: French Entrepreneurs
Live in France, and get used to the Paris Métro, and you will never think of "rule of law" the same way ever again.
PS: these people are morons, particularly because the rich don't take the Métro.