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Comment by Y_Y | Hacker News Reader

This is shitty equity too though, I can't ride bikes but I still have to look at your ads and make do with worse economies of scale for public transportation that's accesible to the disabled. If bike share is a public good. It should be paid for out of public funds, if the city decides to sell advertising rights in public spaces then it can. Those two ideas need not be linked, money is fungible!

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These are assertions but that's insufficient to make policy. To make policy you often need to tie things together because constituencies will want to keep net costs low as they trial programs.

If public funds pay for it, you personally (assuming you pay taxes) are also paying for the program, but this time with real dollars instead of attention.

> money is fungible

What?

Money can be moved.

From where? You might live in a flush city, with lots of extra discretionary $$ flowing around, but most cities in the US are nearly bankrupt, and leveraged to the hilt on providing basic services. This is the definition of a "luxury belief", thinking the average city can just find money and put it towards removing ads that pay for services.

But I don't want to sell my attention! At least not at the crappy valuation the bike advertisers offer.

Money being fungible means that one dollar is as good as another. It all goes in a big pile for the budget. In other words, you don't have to match up your revenue sources with your costs (like bikes with advertising), though this is frequently used for the purpose of trying to justify one thing or another.

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