Say what?! anniemal may have picked it up and quoted it, but I indisputably wrote it. I'm sorry, but I was there at the time.
The context was my entry on Progress Rail (a rail salvage company) and how the destruction of streetcar and interurban rail rolling stock and equipment between 1930 and 1960 was an incredible waste of wealth in classical economics terms. It's hard to justify rational markets when, on the one hand, you have an enormous demand for rebuilt and second-hand rail equipment, and on the other hand, you have transit companies burning, shredding, dumping, and dropping in the ocean perfectly serviceable equipment that was often in its first decade or so of a thirty- to forty-plus-year operational lifespan.
(no subject)
The context was my entry on Progress Rail (a rail salvage company) and how the destruction of streetcar and interurban rail rolling stock and equipment between 1930 and 1960 was an incredible waste of wealth in classical economics terms. It's hard to justify rational markets when, on the one hand, you have an enormous demand for rebuilt and second-hand rail equipment, and on the other hand, you have transit companies burning, shredding, dumping, and dropping in the ocean perfectly serviceable equipment that was often in its first decade or so of a thirty- to forty-plus-year operational lifespan.
(no subject)