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A rant on bus stops

walkingtheworld.substack.com

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Re: A rant on bus stops

#111

Post by api »

ryandrake wrote: post #98
api wrote: post #8

Something I’ve always noticed across the US political landscape: people really don’t like spending money to directly help people (mental health care, institutions, public housing, addiction recovery programs) but are fine with wasting money in weird ways like having this non profit travel the world to learn how to put up a sun shade. It’s like the thing Americans dislike isn’t spending the money but the idea of helpi…

Somehow, we Americans always prefer our government pay some entity to indirectly work towards a goal, than to simply use that money to directly achieve the goal. Direct action is so much more efficient, but we insist on doing it the worse way. Paying some non-profit, with executives, and PR people, and lobbyists, and administrators, and administrators-to-administrators, all soaking up the money that could have been a…

I think that may be a legacy of the Reagan era when the horrible inefficiency of government was roundly panned and there was a huge push to outsource everything to contractors and non-profits for the sake of “efficiency.”

Re: A rant on bus stops

#112

Post by the_third_wave »

rippercushions wrote: post #25
PaulHoule wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense U.S. regulation is the best in the world in that we’ve led on many health and safety issues such as suppressing tobacco smoking, nutritional labeling, airbags in cars, airplanes, etc.

This statement contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.

[flagged]

Re: A rant on bus stops

#113

Post by theGnuMe »

neilk wrote: post #54
xyzzyz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to have vagrancy laws too, and jailed hobos for being a nuisance.

Vagrancy laws in the United States were dramatically expanded after the Civil War, to restrict and control the recently freed slaves. In some cases, the penalty for vagrancy was to be forced to work for someone for free. (Imagine if you were a recently freed slave, trying to escape the place where you were enslaved, traveling around looking for separated family members, and then that happened to you.) The unique appe…

I mean half the US denies systemic racism exists even when the actual laws that codified it are easily researched.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#114

Post by kika »

nine_zeros wrote: post #93
kika wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Line 5 and 6 seem to contradict each other. From 5 it looks like you want to more "gun licensing" and in line 6 you want not to "deny rights". Whereas gun licensing (any licensing, technically speaking) is the denial of right. And any argument (of which there are many valid ones) for gun licensing is precisely what you're arguing against: "Everyone gotta have The Gun License because think of the children" ... even if…

I think you missed the part where I say: "The only place this "Everyone gotta do XYZ" trope doesn't apply" This means that the only place where the denial of rights is not applied systematically is in gun rights. Another way to read it is: Every other right is treated worse than gun rights. And that is unfair to any unbiased observer.

No, gun rights are violated much more and more deeply than for example 1A rights. Convicted felon who paid their debts to society can absolutely post on Quora and be a recognized popular author there and become a radio or TV host, etc. And felony absolutely doesn't mean violence. Driving 50mph above speed limit in Florida could be a felony. Buy a Ferrari, lose your gun rights!

Re: A rant on bus stops

#115

Post by tmnvix »

wilg wrote: post #17

The TL;DR here is that California has a housing crisis, which caused homelessness, which caused people to look into a bus stop design which doesn’t serve as a proper shelter. Here’s a data-driven argument that homelessness is a problem with lack of homes, more so than mental health or drugs or whatever else: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-... Fixing housing will have a lot of great downst…

I'm not going to argue that building more housing will not help the situation, but I think it would also be worth looking at some of the underlying reasons for the lack of available housing.

I would bet my bottom dollar that the proportion of residences that are not used as a primary residence is higher today than it was 30 years ago.

A few reasons that this would be the case in my opinion:

- A second home (holiday home, pied-à-terre, land-banked, etc) used to cost you money, but with capital gains as they have been for the past few decades now makes you money - so naturally more people will take advantage if they have the means to.

- Investing in housing has advantages that other types of investments don't (residential mortgage rates are lower than rates for business loans, leveraging, tax advantages, etc).

- Short term renting is now incredibly convenient and lucrative.

I think any government that is seriously interested in addressing the housing crisis should start by determining how much of the housing stock is not used as a primary residence.

Sure, build more housing, but there are some simple regulatory changes that could improve the situation with little effort in my opinion.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#116

Post by BaseballPhysics »

BMc2020 wrote: post #5

We used to have rent subsidies, mental hospitals, all night movie theaters. All gone.

Mental hospitals were their own kind of horror. The current complete lack of mental health supports is bad, but don't let those rose coloured glasses fool you, 70s style institutionalization is not the answer either.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#117

Post by kika »

Clubber wrote: post #105
nine_zeros wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are attacked because people can see that guns are given more rights than humans.

>They are attacked because people can see that guns are given more rights than humans. What nonsense. The right to own guns by citizens is what is being attacked.

law abiding citizens. for criminals it's usually other way around ("progressive" DA drops the gun charge and the rest becomes misdemeanor, etc).

Re: A rant on bus stops

#118

Post by jaredklewis »

Nevermark wrote: post #67
fortran77 wrote: post #39

It's infuriating to learn that LA spends taxpayer money to send bus stop designers on overseas junkets.

I disagree. The US could be importing a lot more ideas than it does. When living in other countries than the US, it has always been notable to me how often conversations about almost anything involved considering how other countries did things. But after drawing on the world for better ideas, you would expect better results.

Maybe if they had a little more to show for it I could be more understanding. Money has a lot of good uses; I feel certain the $300k spent on this POS design could have a far greater impact elsewhere.

Travel is great, but in a pinch you can find most of the world’s great ideas are written down in books or on the internet. The difference in cost is quite substantial.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#119

Post by Pigalowda »

Avshalom wrote: post #89
Pigalowda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s with these “data-driven” nonsense posts? You live in a west coast city? Go outside! Use your eyeballs! You think the naked guy who’s floridly psychotic and taking a dump on the sidewalk would be A OK with a cheap dwelling? The people smoking fentanyl at the train station and on the buses? They just need a little house and they’ll be fine? Such utter neoliberal nonsense.

Well if they had houses they'd be naked and shitting in their house, if they had housing they'd be smoking fentanyl in their house. So at least y'all'd stop going on and fucking on about "open air drug markets" and "the city looks like something out of mad max". It might not solve their problems, but it would solve yours .

No - it doesn’t solve anything. Some cheap crappy collection of houses that are “maintained” by whom? The psychotics and fentanyl users? The “solution” creates a ghetto that has to be maintained by city expenditure. And after that dumb expensive mess fails, then what?

Maybe that’s your neolib solution this entire time - ghettos. Typical.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#120

Post by em-bee »

nine_zeros wrote: post #104
em-bee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everyone gotta have ID because what if there is voter fraud"...even if it eliminates the right to vote for some people. how does having an ID eliminate the right to vote? "Everyone gotta carry REAL ID because what if some people are illegal"...even if the delay in getting REAL ID causes legal people to lose their jobs. how about fixing the delay then? these seem non-problems to me. at least they are non-problems her…

Of course, fix the delay. Do it. Show me the will to address these problems.

that's the real issue.
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