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A rant on bus stops

walkingtheworld.substack.com

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Re: A rant on bus stops

#101

Post by Retric »

mindslight wrote: post #73
Retric wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism doesn’t inherently mean companies get to alter the laws to favor themselves or government should decide winners and losers with bailouts. That’s a function of the political system involved. This is something else. In some ways it’s closest too feudalism where the rule of law is subservient to various powerful entities and limited competition exists parallel to various monopolies. Though obviously it’s very…

It kind of does? I go back and forth on this - I do hate the trope of blaming everything on "capitalism", because doing so seems like a recipe for something much worse. But the best good faith definition of capitalism that I can come up with is that it's a framework focusing on capital first and foremost. Contrast with focusing on free markets first and foremost. A lot of people hand wave away the distinction between…

> Similarly, capitalism would seem to include regulatory capture and other purchased legislation as a form of business capital.

That seems to equate our current system as the only thing that qualifies as capitalism. Slavery or the abolition of slavery both seem happy to coexist in our definition of capitalist societies. We are happy to talk about ownership of the means of production without including the ownership of workers. The same presumably applies to the existence or non existence of individual elements like intellectual property etc.

Ie. The idea of patents of limited duration alongside copyright of seemingly endless duration both seem to qualify as capitalism.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#102

Post by vegetablepotpie »

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.

America could benefit from looking at what other countries are doing and implement the best ideas to improve quality of life in the US.

La Sombrita, however, is a uniquely American invention, designed by Americans, to solve American problems within the constraints imposed by America. LA spent $300k on a bus stop that neither provides the homeless population with any benefits, nor provides the ridership with shade nor adequate lighting.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#103

Post by em-bee »

nine_zeros wrote: post #55

Oh yes, the old, "Everyone gotta have ID because what if there is voter fraud"...even if it eliminates the right to vote for some people. "Everyone gotta get preauthorization from insurance because what if there is insurance fraud"....even if the delay kills someone on the hospital bed. "Everyone gotta carry REAL ID because what if some people are illegal"...even if the delay in getting REAL ID causes legal people to…

"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 here. an ID or a passport is required from the age of 16, and you can apply for it early enough. passports are issued even from birth. there should never be a situation where you don't have an ID unless you forget to renew it. and even then, if there is real urgency and you can't wait a few weeks, you can get a temporary ID. so noone is going to loose their job over this, and noone is prevented from voting.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#104

Post by nine_zeros »

em-bee wrote: post #103
nine_zeros wrote: post #55

Oh yes, the old, "Everyone gotta have ID because what if there is voter fraud"...even if it eliminates the right to vote for some people. "Everyone gotta get preauthorization from insurance because what if there is insurance fraud"....even if the delay kills someone on the hospital bed. "Everyone gotta carry REAL ID because what if some people are illegal"...even if the delay in getting REAL ID causes legal people to…

"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.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#105

Post by Clubber »

nine_zeros wrote: post #100
Clubber wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gun ownership rights are constantly being attacked, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Freedom of speech is also constantly under attack, as is press. Religion is constantly under attack too. Freedom of assembly is almost non-existent. Any government redress is fine as long as it can be ignored. That's just the first two amendments.

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.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#106

Post by xyzzyz »

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…

> But many of the solutions to these problems are already ruled out in the USA. And that's precisely because the US has attempted to carry on slavery by other means. If you look carefully, you can see that the American obsession with punishing the poor or the sick almost always derives from fear of a racialized underclass.

I looked extremely carefully, and observed no such thing. I think you are quite obsessed about race, which is why you are trying to make everything about it. Regular people hate being threatened by aggressive, erratic hobos, no matter what their race is. Last time a crazy vagrant threatened to "fuck me up" for daring to wait for a bus at a bus stop, he happened to be white, and this did not make me feel any more safe or tolerant.

> Thus it's impossible to make a public space welcoming, because you-know-who will benefit. It's impossible to make public health good, because you-know-who will benefit.

Europe makes public space welcoming by aggressively removing and prosecuting vagrants for panhandling, public intoxication, simple drug possession (very much enforced throughout huge swaths of Europe), and disorderly conduct. Europe is much less tolerant about hobos in general, and is on hair-trigger when they're violent. This is also one of the reasons why more regular people use public transit there, because people behaving erratically are promptly physically removed. Ordnung muss sein.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#108

Post by ryandrake »

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.

You can import ideas from other countries without paying for airfare, hotel, and meals for people to jaunt off to essentially vacation in those countries.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#109

Post by theGnuMe »

I think we've become increasingly anti-human. Everything must be monetized and transactional including basic interactions. We argue that everything has a cost instead of growing the pie.

To be human is to be connected in our shared humanity. Instead we build walls or worse, fail by default design to build 'connections' between us and prefer to insulate and isolate ourselves in socio-economic psychological safety.

Re: A rant on bus stops

#110

Post by BaseballPhysics »

kika wrote: post #53

I'm happy I don't live in California anymore. Although some of my taxes were spent on these gender equal shades, I left 13 months ago.

You didn't have to bring in your entirely tangential culture war hobby horse, but ya did it anyway. Congrats. I don't know if your goal is to troll, but this is how you do it!
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