If You Build It, They Will Come • Hacker News Board

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#111

Post by hduto » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:04 AM UTC

pclowes wrote: post #98

greekrich92 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subway should be free, and continuous fare hikes when you're already double paying with your eyes because of all the advertising they shove in front of you is more incentive to turnstile jump. Overpaid do-nothing senior adminstrators and lawmakers who are in the pocket of privatization are the problem, not that 17 year old.

Enforcing fares massively decreases vandalism, and antisocial behavior on public transportation. If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.

Genuinely curious here: is this born out across all geographies? Japan's fare enforcement for instance vs western Europe and resultant behavior?

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#112

Post by colinsane » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:04 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #105

colinsane wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the turnstile thing is more complex than you perceive because almost every transit system relies on public funding. here (Seattle) those fares only fund about 10% of the _operating cost_ of the transit per Sound Transit's own reports. not to derail the point, but please do go read your transit system's quarterly reports instead of taking the conclusion of fare dodging for granted. just about every city has public bud…

Not quite sure what you mean. Is it that fare dodging is fine because the taxpayers at large already pick up most of the tab? Or that fare dodging is worse than you’d think because it makes an already quite expensive thing for the public budget, even more expensive? I’m thinking about BART right now, which really might simply go away altogether due in part to the collapse in fare revenue that remote work triggered. B…

i hadn't considered that Seattle might be an outlier; the numbers vary by city more than i knew.

https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2...

page 11 has the $ figures. "link" is the commuter rail system: $408M operating expenses but only $51M revenue from fares, i.e. fares cover 12% of op ex.

the "average fare per boarding" is $1.34 (page 3; this is ticket price multiplied by the proportion of trips where the rider pays that ticket). throw that together: even with 100% payment compliance the average ticket price would be $11 per boarding for that to be a complete funding source. $11 would force more riders onto the subsidized fare programs, plus other knock-on effects from raising fares (e.g. reduced ridership in general) means the sticker price would have to be higher yet.

the commuter rail here was never designed for ridership fares to cover its operating costs. it just wasn't. the recent focus on fares in the face of all this is misinformed, that's the kindest way i can phrase that.

(apologies to hijack much of this with what turns out to be more of a Seattle-specific issue).

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#113

Post by MikeynJerry » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:05 AM UTC

Dig1t wrote: post #52

I think this is a little bit oversimplified and I don't know that it's even true at all. It's basically the opposite story of what's told by "Bowling Alone". That book was written in the year 2000, when the author observed that institutions that previously provided social fabric were all dying. The United States used to have a robust web of institutions that provided social fabric and they have mostly all gone away,…

Created an account just to echo this. I don't agree with the author at all.

I moved to Seattle about a year ago and it's taken just as long to build something that vaguely resembles a small board game community, and I still have issues with people ghosting or refusing to play anything other than what they brought.

And despite having multiple regulars, none of them have ever invited me to anything. Not even other game nights. Multiple times I have heard something akin to "Oh yeah I invited X and Y (other regulars) to Z event" and it hurts every single time.

Two days ago, as the last two people were leaving, one asked the other if they wanted to join them for an improv festival that happened today. I love improv. They declined, so I was awkwardly like: "hey, I would love to go with you, can you send me the details when you get home?" and all I got was radio silence.

The frustrating part is that the person I asked had just gone through a rough breakup, so for the past few weeks I'd been inviting him to a bunch of stuff, even going out of my way to organize stuff just for him to get out of the house, because I thought we were good friends.

Sorry for the rant.

TL;DR: I agree that it's really hard to get people to show up and I don't know what it will take to change that, but if you figure it out, please let me know.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#114

Post by cassonmars » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:15 AM UTC

rapind wrote: post #78

appplication wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re describing is essentially the concept of civic duty and, at least in America, it’s unfortunately become deconstructed and politicized to the point where it’s impossible to exist as a meaningful cultural phenomenon. It also relies on people putting effort towards often intangible, uncapitalized, and unextractable shared value. So perhaps it makes sense that this is being diminished over time, as the grip o…

> it’s unfortunately become deconstructed and politicized to the point where it’s impossible to exist as a meaningful cultural phenomenon. I think greed and corruption (cheating) by politicians and government employees has an outsized effect on this. Whenever you hear about it you lose trust and may even feel justified to cheat the system in turn. Basically they got there's, so I'll get mine. IMO the penalties for co…

> IMO the penalties for corruption in public service jobs (all the way to the top!) should also be outsized to match the damage it does to society.

Tough to do when those who write the laws are a part of the problem. What do you suggest to make this so?

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#115

Post by aleen_oye » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #32

// Lots of people have a sort of consumer attitude towards their communities, where they take everything for granted. I saw things this way when I was young. A social scene is an automatic feature of the world that appears on its own, like a wild blueberry bush. It starts sprouting parties and dinners and conferences and reading groups as naturally as the bush sprouts berries True in general. As a kid you think of th…

[flagged]

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#116

Post by MoltenMan » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:18 AM UTC

hahahaa wrote: post #103

pclowes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enforcing fares massively decreases vandalism, and antisocial behavior on public transportation. If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.

Right maybe we can make them free and safe? Not sure why that is not possible. Walking on the street is free. In many places it is safe too.

Safe is a tougher problem, and especially when you consider that in most American cities with subways, the exact cities we're talking about right now, generally NO, there are many areas where it is not safe to walk! While I agree public transportation safety and public safety in general are incredibly important, they're also (clearly, given how we're failing at them) also difficult endeavors.

I also think this is relatively orthogonal to cost; cost is nice because it helps keep the people you don't want in the train (crazy people with knives, people smoking weed in the train, people who yell at everyone on the train and make them feel unsafe, etc.), but it's also important to create at least a small barrier so that people don't 'waste' the transit system! In general, when things are completely free, they will be taken advantage of; even a very small tax / friction helps stop this. If the subway is completely free, there's no reason to not just sit on it all day (taking up space and making it worse for everyone). I think subsidizing the subway is net beneficial given that we subsidize cars and things already with road upkeep and such, but free is not what you want.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#117

Post by grahar64 » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:20 AM UTC

I volunteer at a weekly event where we consistently have over 400 people show up, and every week it is a struggle to get 20 necessary volunteers to run it.

When you ask, you do get volunteers, but there are a few awesome people who volunteer every week and love it. The event would absolutely be impossible without them.

Thank you to every person who volunteers, especially if you do it without asking.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#118

Post by jrajav » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

cassonmars wrote: post #114

rapind wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s unfortunately become deconstructed and politicized to the point where it’s impossible to exist as a meaningful cultural phenomenon. I think greed and corruption (cheating) by politicians and government employees has an outsized effect on this. Whenever you hear about it you lose trust and may even feel justified to cheat the system in turn. Basically they got there's, so I'll get mine. IMO the penalties for co…

> IMO the penalties for corruption in public service jobs (all the way to the top!) should also be outsized to match the damage it does to society. Tough to do when those who write the laws are a part of the problem. What do you suggest to make this so?

Grassroots campaigning and hardline support for candidates running on rule of law and overturning Citizens United. Overturning any status quo is possible in a functioning democracy - it just takes a lot of unskippable effort.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#119

Post by joveian » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #41

qurren wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my grad school years, back when the world was less competitive, I organized a LOT of events. I liked giving to the community, I had space to do it, and my needs were taken care of. Nowadays I feel like anything I do either needs to be either (a) getting me closer to opportunities to build a living or wealth OR (b) individual recharging time. When my poke bowl costs $24 (yes, it actually did), and my job applic…

I think this is why all the community events and social things in my neighborhood are organized by a few wealthy retirees. The rest of us are too busy spending all our time breaking our backs trying to survive another week so that maybe when we are 80 we’ll be able to get involved with something.

A quick look at your comments history suggests you are in the US. Of course individual circumstances can vary but overall looking at median disposable income adjusted for purchasing power parity (median equivalised household disposable income), the US is the wealthiest non-tiny country in the world (tecnically this data only covers the OECD and Luxembourg, a country smaller than many US cities, is the wealthiest).

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2024/06/society-at-a-gl...

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#120

Post by xp84 » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:25 AM UTC

Exoristos wrote: post #39

America used to be awash with grassroots social institutions. I know an elderly gent who belonged to the Lions _and_ two similar organizations. When my mother was young, there were dances and dinners multiple nights a week. Which, for me, raises the question why weren't these things passed down? Why weren't the young a kind of apprentices to the old? That seems like the natural progression. But we see this generation…

I really feel this comment. The most tragic part to me is that these older type of organizations, I’d actually argue would be great for what people like me would benefit from. People are so isolated and lonely and “third places” are known to be a good thing for basically everyone. And it’s not like I couldn’t, with some effort, attend a few events and probably make a few acquaintances to get sponsored to join one. But the age chasm that’s already happened means most of the people down there are in their 60s at the youngest which makes me as a younger (than that) person feel nervous that these guys might not feel they have a lot to talk about with me (or even that I don’t belong). And with membership being so static, a new member would find themselves the only ones who hasn’t known everyone in the room for 30 years. Of note, a similar phenomenon can be seen in early Internet communities: a coupon years ago I paid to join The WELL just to see what it was like. It was interesting from an Internet Archaeology point of view, but most of the people there are older Gen Xers or boomers. Basically no millennial ever joined The WELL, because the Internet had moved on before we got online. The community has only shrunk from attrition, so everyone there has known the other members since the 90s.