Ed Hudgins: Derail Amtrak

On March 1, Ed Hudgins, the Objectivist Center's Washington director, spoke at a Cato Institute briefing that he helped organize on "What Should We Do About Amtrak?" Hudgins had co-authored two papers for Cato on the 31-year-old, federally owned passenger railroad. The event was held in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. The first speaker, Wendell Cox, a member of the Amtrak Reform Council established by Congress to monitor the money-losing company, reviewed Amtrak's inefficiencies.

Then Hudgins referred the audience of mostly congressional staffers to Ayn Rand's "Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which shows that those railroads in the nineteenth century that received government assistance or favors were the most prone to failure and corruption. Hudgins explained that adding more taxpayer handouts to the $25 billion that Amtrak has collected over three decades would be throwing good money after bad. He said Amtrak should be liquidated, with the potentially profitable parts purchased by private companies eager for profits.