Given the MTA's budget woes, I'm not suggesting this thought experiment should be implemented. But I've had this thought in my head for a few years. Not sure why it's there and not sure why it won't go away, but maybe writing about it will purge it from my head. It has to do with the New York City subway system, a way to save people lots of money, if only they are willing to trust each other and be willing to absorb some costs when it comes to that.
I was reading Delete by Victor Mayer-Schonberger when I recalled a movie with Robin Williams called The Final Cut, a forgettable pseudo-scifi movie about cameras being implanted in people that records everything they see, which Williams has to edit in order to cut out all the bad parts after people die so that they could preserve all their nice memories for those in mourning; this movie, which I had forgotten about until I read Mayer-Schonberger's book on the difficulties (and virtues) of forgetting in a digital age.
Ben Goldacre's energetically scathing book Bad Science highlights a series of problems underlying scientific work, such as bad studies, bad experiments, bad analysis, and bad reporting. Goldacre is himself a medical scientist from the UK so much of his criticism is leveled against the British media and medical establishment, although it still applies to other fields of study. His key targets are alternative medical practitioners, especially homeopathics and nutritionists, as well as other fads that celebrities and their favorite doctors pedal in the mass media.