Dilemma

From the perspective of company "MAX-PROFIT", it is certain that providing service to where most present&potential customers are is the golden rule.

And this is where the dilemma comes from.

Places with better network coverage, better transportation, better restaurants attract more people. More people seduce companies to provide better service in those places. And then these places attract more people.

Okay, now let's replace the string "better" to "worse", "more" to "less" of the paragraph above, it also works.

Places with worse network coverage, worse transportation, worse restaurants attract less people. Less people seduce companies to provide worse service in those places. And then these places attract less people.

If you get rid of every other aspects of Los Angeles except for TRANSPORTATION, what LA is going to look like is depicting in the above graph. The cycle of Los Angeles is "worse public transportation -> more car -> worse public transportation".

If you happen to jump into the better-more-better cycle, lucky you. However, if you fall into the worse-less-worse cycle, oops, sorry.

Someone told me LA was trying to jump out of the worse-less-worse cycle, however, GM pushed it back. That's something I found evil about totally-free market (or super small government). This kind of thing is going to be easily solved in super big government, like China in the past.

This is the trade off of relying on the decision made by the majority and a small group of elites.