While Alexander Conant made a good point about taxicab prices in this city, did he have to couch his rhetoric in his characteristic free-market ranting?

I’d like to point out that the very industries Conant pointed to as outposts of wonderful deregulation are marked by problems: What would he consider secure about the airline industry, their reluctance to hire reputable security officers (pre Sept. 11) or their insistence on the comfort of the customer over their safety? As for the telecommunications industry, I truly wonder if Conant thinks that less than 10 companies owning all the media outlets in the United States is really an “unimaginable improvement in service.”

And does he remember the little power crisis that California had last year with the magic of deregulation, a crisis that was only fixed through government intervention and consumer bonding against the companies? And I don’t even need to mention, I hope, the billions of dollars in bailout aids the airline industries received last year, from — god forbid — the government. . .

The issue at stake here is whether or not to lift the 24-hour mandate on taxicabs, an issue, which I believe, Conant rightly tackled. But to use that argument to extol the supposed virtues of free-market economies? Let’s be wary of doing this before looking at the facts.

Yonatan Reinberg

Senior, graduating Jewish Studies and Hebrew