Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car • Hacker News Board

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#341

Post by verbify » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #295

verbify wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can already make these tradeoffs for yourself by moving to SF or Manhattan, which is generally ill-advised unless you make so much that the astronomical housing costs don't hurt too badly. The shoe is on the other foot. The reason why rent is so high in these places is because there's a lot of demand to live there - people do find it desirable. If more cities were built like SF or Manhattan (i.e. there was more…

SF isn't particularly dense, is it?

21st, although it's not a like-and-like comparison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#342

Post by OldSchoolJohnny » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:35 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #116

JDDunn9 wrote: post #98

This topic is discussed at length in the book, "Green Metropolis". It's part of a bigger issue of always putting cars first. You can't build a large building without first doing a traffic study. If you bring too much traffic, you can't build it. Never mind that traffic is about the only cost in America that you can increase to make public transportation more appealing. Generally U.S. building codes include a maximum…

I don't think that many people actually want higher population densities.

I do. If that were the case here we would have a much nicer town to live in.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#343

Post by snrplfth » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:35 PM UTC

overcyn wrote: post #244

TulliusCicero wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what compelling public interest is there in forcing subsidized parking? Other countries get by just fine with far less parking.

They aren't forcing subsidized parking. They're forcing the construction of parking lots and structures. As for public interest. The idea is that without regulation, new apartments and condos would choose not build parking pushing their residents to park on the street. This causes congestion (cars circling trying to find parking) and makes going to these areas less pleasant. And I'm sure some would say these regulati…

Then just enforce the existing rules against parking on the street! This is not difficult. Indeed, it's easier than trying to centrally plan out exactly how much parking each house and business needs.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#344

Post by andy_ppp » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

The canonical opposite example of this is a nationalised healthcare system. Rich people pay for a healthcare system that they don't use.

Due to economies of scale the NHS in the UK costs less than half the money the American systems costs and has better outcomes. The government in the UK being very right wing are slowly trying to destroy the service. Numerous mostly Tory MPs are paid cash by private healthcare providers!

[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/selling-nhs-profit-full...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/03/healthcare-...

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#345

Post by snrplfth » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

ww520 wrote: post #42

Fire code make everything more expensive. Why have them?

Because if your building catches on fire, the people inside could die and it could spread to other buildings. Classic externality problem. Nobody is going to die because the owners of buildings get to choose how much parking their building needs, any more than they will if they get to decide how many bathrooms their house has.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#346

Post by VLM » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:40 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #212

yason wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also roads are built for the peak consumption. Outside the peak, there's generally excess capacity quietly eating away space from pedestrians and human beings.

Roads are built for average consumption. If they were built for peak consumption there'd be no such thing as rush hour or traffic jams. You could make the same argument about sidewalks -- at 4am, sidewalks have excess capacity eating away space that could be instead planted with foliage and serve as a habitat for animals. Unless there's 24/7 equal use of everything, there's always going to be excess capacity at some…

I sleep less than 12 hours per day... I only type on my keyboard maybe half the day, so I could share a keyboard at work to save huge amounts of capital on a world wide basis.

The dystopian world of the future looks like life on board a nuclear attack submarine, where no one owns a car, everyone works at home, two people have to share a bed (involuntarily, mostly), no one is allowed to cook their own food, only a tiny percentage of the population have the intelligence and social skills to survive it but everyone is united that everyone should be forced at the point of a gun to live exactly this way, all your time and your entire life is planned out by big brother with little to no care about your own personal concerns, living density is extremely high, no one can have kids, the whole lifestyle is financed by hand waving and ridiculous unsustainable and unscalable financial scams, constant uncontrollable interruptions, energy all comes from green (ish) sources which are ecologically harmless unless some pipe springs a leak and then an entire village dies horribly, apparently people do nothing when off duty and have no personal hobbies other than getting drunk in cheap dive bars as often as possible, your life depends on a minimum of 500 CPUs all programmed by the lowest bidder with a literal army of people trying to crack security which would result fairly inevitably in your rapid and painful death. But other than that, its pretty awesome.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#347

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

mantas wrote: post #143

CydeWeys wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still assuming that everyone owns their own self-driving car, though. Given that the average person only uses a car for one hour per day it's silly that you'd keep idle a car that can drive itself for those other 23 hours. It makes sense to share the entire fleet. So after you get dropped off at the mall, the car is off to pick up its next passenger, and you get whatever self-driving car happens to be closest…

One of the reasons I love having a car is storage. I can go chain-shopping and store items I bought in the car. Getting a random self-driving car would make me carry all the stuff I bought with me. Kinda sucks. Same with commuting or going to mass events. I keep some drinking water (fuck stadium/concerts pricing) in my car. I keep some gloves in case weather is colder than expected and to make sure I didn't accidenta…

You would still be able to go chain-hopping with a self-driving car, you would just be paying to keep it engaged the entire time, rather than getting a separate car for each hop and only paying while you're actually in it.

As for everything else, I totally get that not being able to keep stuff in your car is inconvenient. But there are billions of people out there who don't own cars who already deal with these issues every day, and they can be overcome. For instance, I live in NYC and I don't own a car. When I'm out of the apartment for longer periods of time I bring a backpack with me, packed with water, a Kindle (for amusing myself on subway rides), additional clothing suitable for the day's weather, an Anker battery pack to recharge my phone, and other stuff.

The big advantage is that you are no longer paying the substantial costs of car ownership, which should more than make up for the slight decrease in convenience. If it doesn't for you, you could always buy your own self-driving car.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#348

Post by naasking » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #302

tjic wrote: post #245

Meh. You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them. You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. etc. Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. ...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single b…

Just in case someone wants to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe that, in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what it…

> Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. There's a ton of flaws with this philosophy once you start thinking about it and following certain aspects to their logical conclusion.

Blackwater contractors don't actually have to live in these places, they're just there for a short time to get paid, and then they get out. Arguably the incentives are different if you're an actual member of this society. I recommend Friedman's book if you want a proper introduction to anarcho-capitalism, instead of forming an overly simplistic view based on Wikipedia's introduction. His book addresses many of the naive counterarguments most people consider to be 'devastating' to anarcho-capitalism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#349

Post by hx87 » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

tjic wrote: post #245

Meh. You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them. You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. etc. Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. ...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single b…

> To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading.

If everyone is pleading in this manner, then it isn't so special.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#350

Post by snrplfth » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #302

tjic wrote: post #245

Meh. You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them. You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. etc. Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. ...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single b…

Just in case someone wants to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe that, in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what it…

>Sooooooooo private security firms for law enforcement? Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you.

A firm hired by the government, using taxpayer dollars, to carry out government orders, is not a good example of anything an anarchocapitalist is proposing.

> So you only use 2.5 miles of a highway to get to and back from work - right? Should you pay for the entire highway or just the parts you use?

It would be bundled together the same way other goods are, determined by the balance between ease of charging and the scale of the good. Maybe a road company would charge a flat fee, or maybe a per-mile fee, or maybe a fee varying by congestion. All these things can be and are done now with toll roads. Road companies would have to determine the optimal scale, just like any other company.