Rural bus systems that connect villages to towns are relatively commonplace in rural Germany. However, they are not commonplace in the Great Plains. Although it is understandable that urban taxpayers would be reluctant to support mass transit for rural areas, I would argue that mass transit ought to be regarded as a service analogous to the postal system.

I would hardly call the United States Post Office socialism. If it is, then the federal government’s oldest institution must be socialist. Small towns often have post offices even when they are not, strictly speaking, cost effective. (Even the Post Office has standards, though.) If you think about it, it would be more cost effective for the Post Office if it stopped home delivery altogether and went back to the antebellum standard of expecting people to come to the Post Office for their mail. However, people like getting their mail at home. For that matter, one could ask what the point was to settling the interior of the United States considering the expense involved in doing so.

For those who ask whether I’m “rural”, what’s rural? By the standards of most American states, I’m “rural” because I come from a place with fewer than 100,000 people. By the standards of plains states, I am very definitely urban because I come from a town larger than 10,000 people. One should not assume that my desire for rural mass transit comes from living in a place with a subway.