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

#361

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

ue_ wrote: post #255

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…

>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. Anarchocapitalism isn't anarchistic, as capitalism necessarily entails the establishment of at least two classes: the proletariat and bourgeoisie, defined in terms of the relationship to the means of production. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daibhidh-anarcho-huc...

That seems unrelated to the discussion. If GP had said, "I'm a blueberry muffin and would love to see all of these costs unbundled...", could you have responded differently?

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

#362

Post by brewdad » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #322

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…

> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. Being a Floridian, we get a lot of retirees from other states (shocker, right?). A portion of these retirees don't like paying taxes for education. They say their kids are grown and they went to schools in other states, so why should they pay taxes for education?

Because they need the children of today to grow to be productive members of society who will fund the retirees' Social Security.

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

#363

Post by ythn » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #297

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…

"99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions," Yes, police, parks, fire, libraries, K-12 schools, air traffic control, restaurant health inspectors, everyone agrees ... Just don't bring up the seemingly tiny little detail of the financial structure of the health care system in the USA. And secondary side issue of roads full of cars.

Are police, parks, libraries and such federally regulated? I thought it was controlled more at the state level. I mean yeah, FBI is federal, but if I call 911, I'm going to get state-level police care.

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

#364

Post by snrplfth » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

skrap wrote: post #326

joelwilliamson wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$120K per parking spot is ridiculous. Some construction firm must have very good ties with your city government.

It's a bit complicated by the location where they must be built - essentially into the side of a 1-to-1 slope rocky hillside. At least that's what the government claims is the reason for the expense. It still seems a pretty tough number to swallow given that its capacity can only serve less than half a percent of the city's population, and probably will be restricted to only city employees.

If it's structured parking on a difficult grade, that's actually a totally plausible price, no cozy cost-inflating required. Recall that you're not just building the area of each parking space, but all the aisles and space leading up to them, and that it has to be built out of reinforced materials to carry the weight. Standard aboveground parking garage spaces frequently run into $60k+ apiece.

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

#365

Post by Decade » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #293

JDDunn9 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the benefits you listed are good examples of how people are actually pretty bad at predicting what will make them happier. We have a lot of data on the subject. - People think that living in a larger home will make them happier than a shorter commute. Cohort studies show the opposite is true. We adapt most quickly to things (good/bad) that stay the same (like the size of your house), and poorly to things that…

> We know people in cities are, on average, happier and healthier. I've lived in both and had a happy, healthy life in both. When I was young, the city was definitely where I wanted to be. I loved the energy and the density. I was close to my friends and because of easy transportation, could get to them anytime I want. Almost thirty years later, I'm now living in the 'burbs and I never want to leave. It's quiet and I…

> With self-driving cars on the horizon, I think the suburbs might go through some type of re-birth.

Suburban sprawl. I have several concerns with that. In places like San Francisco, there is no space to sprawl. It’s healthier for kids to use physical activity to move around. Only 7 miles from the office? When everybody goes to the suburbs, typical commuting distances are measured in the dozens of, or even over 100, miles.

But I haven’t seen an answer to the concern about economic sustainability. The tax revenues from the properties have not been high enough to maintain the infrastructure, and likely cannot be high enough with middle-class people living there. I can imagine Donald Trump, how would he solve it? Hire contractors to rebuild the infrastructure and then threaten to sue them when they present the bill? That’s how he built his own properties. I don’t think it will work for the rest of the nation.

http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

Even in mildly dense areas like San Francisco, revenues do not cover maintenance. The BART district just passed bonds to rebuild the tracks, but we haven’t finished paying off the bonds to construct the tracks. This entire region needs to become dramatically more dense, preferably gradually over the last 50 years, but now we might finally have the political will to do it; just so we can afford to maintain the infrastructure.

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

#366

Post by sergiosgc » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

tjic wrote: post #261

adrianN wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't people saying "I would like this government policy changed" an essential step in a working democracy?

I'm anarchocapitalist; I don't believe that "working democracy" is a thing. Or, perhaps, if it is a thing, it's not what you think it is.

I'm falling for the "someone on the Internet is wrong" trap, but neverthless: Anarchocapitalism is fundamentally flawed because it rests on the assumption that capitalist markets optimize for the best utility function. They don't. Further, even in the optimization they do provide, they are flawed. Capitalist markets are powerful optimization systems, but they routinely fail, in pretty well described scenarios. Namely:

1. Wherever there are externalities, capitalism fails. For negative externalities, individual entities are motivated to capture the positive value, burdening the whole with the negative. For positive externalities, individual entities are not motivated to absorb the negative value when they can't capture the positive one.

2. Capitalist markets are, on aggregate behaviour, short-term oriented. This is a risk reduction strategy, but society requires some long term investments. Some of these long term investments also classify as positive externalities.

3. Pure capitalist markets have no provision for wealth redistribution and tend to accumulate wealth. While this is morally defensible, huge disparities in wealth tend to produce revolutions. Revolutions are undesirable.

4. Due to (3), pure capitalist markets devolve into monopolies and oligopolies, producing local maxima in the resource optimization utility function usually associated with capitalism.

All in all, anarchocapitalism is a naïve view of capitalism, where a good optimizer is mistaken as the perfect optimizer.

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

#367

Post by hackuser » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #171

hackuser wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are self-driving cars more easily or more likely shared than human-driven cars? Someone else pointed out that they cost less to operate, but I wonder how much will change. People like owning things, including nice cars.

A fleet of self driving cars equal to the maximum needed simultaneously can move around ferrying first one person then another to their destination. Car ownership requires at worst 1 car per person. Carpooling requires a lot of planning and only works for with individuals with similar scheduled routes and requires the humans to include the time to drop off additional passengers or pass control of the vehicle to anoth…

> A fleet of self driving cars equal to the maximum needed simultaneously can move around ferrying first one person then another to their destination.

A fleet of taxis or cars from similar services could do the same. I don't see how the self-driving aspect changes the situation, other than possibly reducing cost by eliminating the driver.

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

#368

Post by tgb » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:08 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…

I think you've missed the point of the article. People who don't use public transportation subsidize those who do, but we're OK with that as a society in large part because many need to use public transportation; the young, the disabled, anyone who can't afford a car and or to live next to their work and a grocery store. Similarly, we subsidize schooling and school lunches. But subsidizing parking is the opposite of that: the poorer pay for the richer. No one would be concerned that the ultra-rich are forced to subsidize parking they're not using when they take their private jets instead of road-tripping.

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

#369

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:09 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…

[deleted]

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

#370

Post by snrplfth » Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 5:10 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #315

tjic wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason why rent is so high in these places is because there's a lot of demand to live there - No. Mere demand alone does not raise costs. There is a lot of demand for water, but it is still super cheap. Prices are high when demand is high and supply is low. The reason that prices in Manhattan and SF are high is because (a) lots of people want to live there, and simultaneously (b) government policies severely li…

I've heard stories about SF's housing problems, but not about Manhattan. I know Manhattan is expensive, but it's also full of some of the tallest buildings in the world, and more are built every day. Are there actually policies restricting housing in Manhattan?

Hugely. It's possible to build extremely tall buildings in certain specific areas of Manhattan (and New York in general, like in Downtown Brooklyn), but most of the city is "maxed out" to its zoning - that is, the tallest building that can be legally built is already there. Indeed, in many places, the existing buildings are taller than the zoning code allows - so if you demolished an old building, you'd have to build a shorter one in its place!