William Arguelles
Spiro Alexandratos
Seminar 3
October 1, 2012
Opinion Paper 4
Sadly, it appears this week that we didn’t have any super villan-esque companies or actions that we talked about. Yes, there was the discussion on the MTA Subway giving off steel particles, but that’s much more a bureaucratic nightmare than a truly evil conspiracy. In fact, I can even sympathize to an extent with the MTA. It would be a nightmare to have to install new train tracks and new trains that broke without fiction. I can’t see the public getting behind these upgrades if it means having no subway access for long enough to install them, let alone a fare hike to pay for them. No, to me, that’s a problem that needs significant political will and funding for infrastructure to ever get implemented. So until Washington decides new less toxic and faster frictionless-subways for NYC is important enough to create some kind of funding bill for, I see little to no change happening. I guess Albany/Bloomberg could do some smaller changes, like installing filters and such, but a true overhaul of the entire subway system seems to be as likely as… you know I can’t honestly think of anything in that class of unlikelihood. I guess flying pigs, cause I assume some company is doing some weird genetic experiments to make chicken-y bacon or something.
But I digress from my point, which is that the MTA is not evil in this. I fully believe that if they could make their trains better, safer, and faster without completely shutting down or going bankrupt, they probably would cause it would mean more money for them. Of course, I’m probably just not jaded enough yet to distrust the MTA or something, but really, from a business standpoint, it would make sense to improve a product that is possibly carcinogenic and millions of people breath in every day. All they need is one guy who claims that the trains gave off steel particles that gave him some kind of cancer and has enough evidence to convince a jury, and the MTA have this gigantic class-action lawsuit on their hands. Maybe I’m being naïve, but I like to think the MTA would prefer to avoid that circumstance.
Of course, I can already see you scribbling in the margins “but Will, The MTA will just bury the study in some journal and hope no one ever finds it, that way they don’t have to pay and don’t need to fix the trains!” to which I answer that you found the study which connects the subway to steel particles in the air. Which means that the MTA knows that the public could know (if someone bothered to read an academic journal that is) that there is a link between steel particles and the subway. So they’d have to be idiots not to know that all it takes is one guy connecting steel to a cancer and tying the whole thing together, and they have a massive tornado of lawsuits coming their way. So hopefully they have enough brainpower to know that they should fix it now, or they’ll be paying for it later and for the lawsuits. Hey, this is starting to sound familiar to GE in the ‘40s…
Oh god, we did learn about a horrible company, only this time, the horrible thing they did hasn’t happened yet! Well, it is happening, but we haven’t conclusively proved it and brought it to the attention of the public yet. Okay, maybe they’ll prove me wrong. Maybe they can overhaul the system. I mean all they’d need is some funding. Of course, we are in such a poor state economically that I can’t see the federal government approving this kind of “pork” for NY when we can barely pay for all the social services and defense spending as is. And I can’t see the NY government being willing to foot this kind of bill by themselves. Well, maybe we can install filters and glass paneling and hope for the best?
