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This is just the usual "haha we've made it impossible to enforce the law, better give up and let us do whatever we want forever."
The same argument could be (and is) made for bike theft: the value of the bikes stolen in a 6 month period is far less than the cost of catching and prosecuting the bike thieves. Better just to give up and let it happen, right?
This argument is of course only deployed by people who approve of the criminal element in question. Even if the math wasn't incorrect, it should be rejected as a bad faith manipulation attempt. There should be a sudden brutal crackdown on both the criminals and the anarcho-tyrants supporting them, and when we are finished with them the problem will be solved. The long term reduction of bike theft by obliterating the theft rings, fences, and their leftist enablers is worth far more than the few months of stolen bikes the criminal accomplices would prefer to compare the enforcement cost to.
The cost of fare enforcement will decrease as over time, so why not use the cost of fare enforcement in Tokyo as a baseline for our cost comparison? But the value of enforcing law on the lawless (and their supporters) is what really matters.
Because New York isn't full of Japanese people.
Fun fact: Subway gates don't even have turnstiles in Japan. You can just walk right through without paying. I think they beep or something if you don't pay, but I've never seen anyone just keep on walking, so I don't know if they keep beeping.
The gates slam shut if they detect you trying to walk through without paying. I've occasionally been in a rush and slapped down my card without checking if there was money on it - having the gates knock you back in an instant is a pretty big shock.
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