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Varying profit margins by customer and line of business, volume discounts, and preferred customers have been a part of business ever since there was business. Saying business shouldn't or doesn't cross subsidize is like saying Toyota shouldn't use profits from it's Lexus division to pay for a new plant to produce Camrys. During incentive programs, Detroit regularly sells product at a loss, sometimes for sound business reasons. These captive shipper discussions often fall into comparing agricultural rates with intermodal, which are really two different lines of business. There's also an implicit assumption that capital investment is going only to intermodal on the SF transcon i.e. there's no agricultural traffic on the ex-SF and no intermodal on the northern transcon? Economists have long known that monopolies will occur as part of the normal business cycle. Breakup or regulation as public utilities are two ways to deal with that. Regulation of other business practices has also been well established as a legitimate need. It's also not uncommon for some lines of business to be regulated, while others are not. Certain segments of the banking industry are still highly regulated while others are not. The current trend of deregulating certain industries has been a mixed bag, working well in some cases but not as well in others. In many cases the problem is with the regulators rather than the companies. I don't see Montana farmers selling wheat at lower than market prices, regarless of any social need, nor would I expect railroads not to want to charge as much as they can. Few businesses that did so would remain in business very long. FM and some others seem to come up with some rather non free-market ideas in order to avoid blaming the regulators, perhaps because his favored party are the regulators and he's unwilling to ask 'Where's the Beef?'. Is BNSF really the villain here or is it the STB? I'd suggest that just because the regulators have done a poor job or perhaps gone too far in one direction instead of another, there's no need to scrap the system. Perfect competition and completely open markets rarely exist under any economic system and there will always be a need for regulation. Likewise there will also be debate over how much, who's paying too much, who's paying too little and so on according to the self-interest of the respective parties.
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