> 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?
I don't believe it either. This advice has probably never been less true. Perhaps there is just a certain kind of Substack journalist who chooses some dubious piece of conventional wisdom every Sunday to sermonize about.
I don't know that I would characterize the typical Substack writer as a "journalist." It's just opinion blogging.
They get paid.
That's why they write it on Substack not Blogger or Wix.
". . . but our social scripts telling people to produce social fabric . . ." The author of the article may benefit from reading "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam. Although it's now in a class of books on American history, it explores this topic in depth. afaik, a society needs to face a potential collective crisis to "produce its own fabric." Of course, the Internet (or technology), by its nature, is actually collatin…
"a society needs to face a potential collective crisis to "produce its own fabric."" Good point - the linked article, and the article it itself links to, essentially, but without realizing it, indicates the American experience of WWII. The entire country suddenly and powerfully altered to support total war. Every fit man under 40, pretty much, shipped off to be in the military (you can see hints of this in late-war f…
That's an interesting take - although there was literally a global pandemic just a few years ago.
Granted, the nature of surviving that pandemic involved reinforcing several isolating habits on a societal scale.
I'm curious as to what situations would actually result in more fabric produced on a large scale.
You really have to do it for the love of the game. It can be surprisingly vulnerable to be the social fabric, and it’s super easy to fall into various toxic inner dialogs when you’re busy and others don’t pick up the slack, or if others don’t reciprocate the effort, or worst of all when others don’t include you for whatever reason.
Another thing that makes this hard for me is I’m usually down for whatever. Some people I notice have strong opinions about activities, like (making up examples) thinking bowling is cringe or something in that vein. I don't really have anything I'm that against that I would kill everyones vibe for. I mostly just want to see people, so it feels weird becoming the project manager for a plan I’m completely flexible abou…
One could argue that it is quite the opposite. Someone potentially complaining about various activities does not make them better suited to organize events. Having strong feelings about an activity simply means they can choose not to join, not that nobody should ever go bowling again. Your flexibility and willingness to do almost anything actually make you very well suited to organizing group events.
// 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…
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.
Public transit should be worth the (inexpensive) cost of a ticket. The money used to make fares free should instead be spent on improving the quality of service. Better service attracts more riders, bringing in more ticket revenue, enabling further service improvements, and so on. It produces a positive flywheel effect that benefits current passengers, new passengers, and even drivers!
Free transit is a downward cycle, where increased ridership just increases costs, creating a negative flywheel.
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 rel…
There are other things to consider. Free public transit would make it more desirable to not use cars as much reducing congestion, accidents, pollution, energy usage. The need to build less high traffic roads may be a money saver to offset. Also it will get more people to exercise by walking to bus stops. You'd need disencentive for abuse but you can personally only add 16 person hours of usage per day so it is not like say free unlimited money or electricity where a single user can add a lot of strain. And spending all that time on transit is a cost. For homeless people yeah you may need to solve that problem! Build more housing for sale and rent driving down prices and reducing the number of homeless yet productive people (with jobs but can't afford rent). Build shelter for homeless with problems they can't hold down a job.
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 rel…
There are other things to consider. Free public transit would make it more desirable to not use cars as much reducing congestion, accidents, pollution, energy usage. The need to build less high traffic roads may be a money saver to offset. Also it will get more people to exercise by walking to bus stops. You'd need disencentive for abuse but you can personally only add 16 person hours of usage per day so it is not li…
Why do you need free public transit for this? Why not just cheap public transit? Cars certainly aren't free, but people drive them because cars are just far better in most ways; you get to listen to your own music, they can be fun to drive, are incredibly flexible (can go anywhere), don't have the last mile problem, take like half the time unless it's rush hour, etc. Cost just isn't the reason people aren't using public transit. People buy cars because you NEED cars for many other reasons (most of them mentioned), and then once you have a car and pay for insurance and everything it's simply nicer and faster than public transit (rarely cheaper, even only factoring in gas and per mile depreciation, although the BART is so expensive it comes close). (FTR: I'm not sure where I stand on public transit subsidization; I think some is definitely good, but not sure how much I think is optimal).
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.
> 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.
What an escalation. If I don’t feel safe having a 10 year old drive a car is that just a drug addict shelter on wheels?
"a society needs to face a potential collective crisis to "produce its own fabric."" Good point - the linked article, and the article it itself links to, essentially, but without realizing it, indicates the American experience of WWII. The entire country suddenly and powerfully altered to support total war. Every fit man under 40, pretty much, shipped off to be in the military (you can see hints of this in late-war f…
That's an interesting take - although there was literally a global pandemic just a few years ago. Granted, the nature of surviving that pandemic involved reinforcing several isolating habits on a societal scale. I'm curious as to what situations would actually result in more fabric produced on a large scale.
Oh, the pandemic - that's a great counterpoint you bring up. And I like the distinction you make that the collective experience was quite strange: collective in the aggregate, but profoundly isolating in (individual) practice.
I wonder if the deeply isolated experience of covid actually feeds into and supports the original premise, in its own inverse way.
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 tri…
There are probably some savings in externalities not accounted for as well.
Seems to me mass transit could reduce road maintenance costs, parking infrastructure, and such. Not to mention reduction in pollution and increase in desirability.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to “capture” those savings explicitly. So it ends up looking like a taxpayer funded charity program…