8 ms·

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 k

by tjic 10y ago

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 basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not. To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading.

languagewars 10y ago
I find this a little different than your examples since it is government forcing your actions within the private market, not forcing you to pay for its bundle of services. There is no cost to the system to stop doing this one, it just would make car drivers as frustrated as dog owners when they shop for an apartment in a metro area. Given how much funding already goes to roads I would say enough is enough. But there is a risk of more long distance commuters, and it is hard to claw back the subsidies that make them.
ue_ 10y ago
>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-hucksters-there-is-nothing-anarchistic-about-capitalism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daibhidh-anarcho-huc...
- jessaustin 10y ago
  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?
  - thorawy33 10y ago
    I think you're getting hung up on too specific an idea (unbundling costs). In the linked page on "anarchocapitalism": "They use the term “anarchist”, but at the expense of their credibility — why? Because their self-definition doesn’t hold up to even the most rudimentary questioning." Basically peddling "more of the same" and trying to sound cutting edge by adding "anarcho". It lacks intellectual honesty in the first place. We've been down the laissez faire path (a label pointlessly added before capitalism anyway given the traditional values upheld in capitalism; it wants to be left alone in the first place). It was a disaster, and would be again if we allowed it anymore rope to hang us all with. He's basically peddling that which he rants against: Monolithic economic policy that fits with his preferences.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    I was picking up on a point or what I saw as a contradiction or misunderstanding. I see no problem with doing this. It is true that I was not directly attacking or agreeing with his or her position, but I do not see why I must do so when commenting. Ironically in the spirit of libertarianism, feel free to ignore my comment if you find it annoying or off-point.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
  >Blah blah blah, only my definitions are allowable.
adrianN 10y ago
Isn't people saying "I would like this government policy changed" an essential step in a working democracy?
- tjic 10y ago
  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.
  - sergiosgc 10y ago
    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.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      "Externality" is a useful concept, but its mere existence doesn't mean that capitalism has "failed". Sure there are unfair conditions for lots of people, but in general there aren't too many Holodomors or Great Leaps Forward in capitalist societies. That's worth something. That said, I'm no capitalist. So much seems so arbitrary. Like me, most people who advocate "radical" critiques of the status quo don't do so because they seek the most extreme disaster scenarios one can imagine resulting from those critiques. Rather, they see that current society isn't perfect, and could be improved by moving away from rigorously enforced neoclassical neoliberalism.
aninhumer 10y ago
I don't think that's special pleading exactly. They're not saying "people should only pay for what they use, except for all these things I want and they don't", they're saying "people should be forced to pay for certain things, and those things should coincidentally be the ones I want". It's self-serving, but it's not an exception to a general principle.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
VLM 10y ago
"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.
- ythn 10y ago
  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.
at-fates-hands 10y ago
Just in case someone wants to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe that, in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what its proponents describe as a "voluntary society").[2][3] One aspect that concerned me: In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. Sooooooooo private security firms for law enforcement? Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. There's a ton of flaws with this philosophy once you start thinking about it and following certain aspects to their logical conclusion. Such as: >>> I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. So you only use 2.5 miles of a highway to get to and back from work - right? Should you pay for the entire highway or just the parts you use? So what if other people only use "parts" of that same highway? Does that mean we suddenly have huge gaps in our highways since people are only paying for the parts they use?
- hellcow 10y ago
  You're describing toll roads, which of course work fine.
- naasking 10y ago
  > Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. There's a ton of flaws with this philosophy once you start thinking about it and following certain aspects to their logical conclusion. Blackwater contractors don't actually have to live in these places, they're just there for a short time to get paid, and then they get out. Arguably the incentives are different if you're an actual member of this society. I recommend Friedman's book if you want a proper introduction to anarcho-capitalism, instead of forming an overly simplistic view based on Wikipedia's introduction. His book addresses many of the naive counterarguments most people consider to be 'devastating' to anarcho-capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom
carapace 10y ago
To what granularity? Toll booths at each intersection? (Serious question.)
- freehunter 10y ago
  I shouldn't have to pay for the northbound lanes of I-580! I only ever take that road southbound! STOP TAXING ME! /s
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Many tollbooths have been replaced by overhead transmitters/receivers that interact with in-car electronic devices. ISTM such a technology could continue to improve, to the point that eventually an exact accounting of road use would be practical.
  - e28eta 10y ago
    And fully tracking every trip made in every car. That'd be an interesting database to compile
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Sure, that would be the easy way to set up the system. Perhaps something more sophisticated and privacy-preserving could be done with blockchains... That's probably wishful thinking, though. It would be wonderful if travel database access were limited to lawful court orders, but on current trends that seems impossible.
msl 10y ago
> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. Which means that your kids will live in society largely made up of people who have received some education. You could argue that there is more value in this than there is in providing parking.
- bluecalm 10y ago
  The argument is that he is paying double: for homeschooling and for other kids in public schools. Other parents are paying only for public schools even though they benefit from living in a society where kids not attending public school received education as well. I sympathize with parent's views but I think early education (say up to high school) is a good thing to put in a common basket. If you want to home school you need to do well enough to be able to afford it which filters out people who shouldn't be homeschooling at least a bit.
  - a3n 10y ago
    Agreed. Pare it back to someone who doesn't have kids. If I had no kids I would still want a society where most people are generally educated. I benefit from that public good.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
> 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?
- brewdad 10y ago
  Because they need the children of today to grow to be productive members of society who will fund the retirees' Social Security.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    Too much education though, and they might become aware of the ponzi scheme they're being forced into.
imgabe 10y ago
> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids and you receive the benefit of living in a society where most people have a minimum level of education. You can then hire these people and not have to pay to teach them how to read. > You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them Maybe you personally somehow never enjoy seeing nature, I don't know. You still enjoy the benefit of a society where people get to see a little nature which is shown to make people happier and more productive, rather than everyone living in a bleak grey dystopian landscape.
- mason240 10y ago
  In this case, people without cars benefit from parking lots at stores, because store wouldn't be able to stay open if they only catered to people without cars. You still enjoy the benefit of a society where people get to choose their transportation and more be productive, rather than everyone living in a bleak grey dystopian city where everyone is riding the bus and can't control when or where they want to travel.
  - lhc- 10y ago
    But the article doesn't argue for NO parking lots; it argues that FREE parking lots are the issue. The stores could stay open with paid parking, and could lower costs for non-drivers because they no longer needed to subsidize that free parking by charging everyone more.
    - tertius 10y ago
      "NO parking lots" is, in this case, analogous to "NO paying for parking lots."
    - ars 10y ago
      Any store that tried to make people pay for parking would go out of business equally as fast as one without parking. (i.e. in some places that would fly, in most it would not.) Your store or entertainment or whatever better be something absolutely unique and special for me to be willing to pay for parking. The reasons cities require stores to build free parking is otherwise people park in residential areas and annoy the residents with extra traffic.
hx87 10y ago
> To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading. If everyone is pleading in this manner, then it isn't so special.
tgb 10y ago
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.
- tjic 10y ago
  No, you're doing EXACTLY what I was calling out. You've got your own ethical / utility function and are explaining to me that basket of goods X is ideal bc it's exactly the basket that your ethical / utilitarian code wants, and basket Y is very bad, because it's the basket that other people want. This is special pleading.
  - tgb 10y ago
    I find your argument utterly bizarre. You're saying "these are all members of a category, therefore you must accept ALL of them or NONE of them". But your choice of category is arbitrary! Why make it "currently executed subsidies" instead of "all possible subsidies" instead of "subsidies that were done in ancient Sumeria" instead of "subsidies that primarily aid those less well off"? I have no problem doing what you're calling out because what you're calling out is reality. You're proving far too much.
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    By that logic the current basket is special pleading and any basket is as good as the other.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
thorawy33 10y ago
"...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 basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not." Oh the irony of calling everyone else out for their love of monolithic solutions, then peddling your personal preference for how the economy for everyone should work for everyone. The 99.9% is just asinine. It's another ideological monolith. It's this over generalization, this "the world is against me" narrative that is peddled here, Twitter, Reddit... How about some rigor in our discourse. Peddle your ideals with detail, not your emotional hangups and QQ's
- r_smart 10y ago
  They identified as being anarcho-capitalist. I'm willing to accept the premise that 0.1% of the population subscribes to that ideology. I suspect their claim is that there should be no 'economy for everyone', but I don't know much about an-caps.
galdosdi 10y ago
Yes, we do each of those things because we want to strongly encourage their use. The unfairness is supposed to be outweighed by the social benefits to all by this encouragement. This is a good thing IF we think it's a good thing for people to: - Go to parks more, and be more relaxed and healthy, benefiting everyone - Get more education more, benefiting all of society - Drive more.... thus creating more traffic, accidents, and pollution?? One of these things is not like the other! At the very least, if you want to encourage people travelling (for some reason, not clear what the benefit is) you should be fair and equally subsidize car usage, transit usage, and bike/walk usage. (In much of the USA, parking is free, usage of most freeways is free, but trains and buses cost money and bike/walking is made difficult. The only conclusion to draw is that government wants to encourage usage of cars instead of non-car transport mediums, for unfathomable reasons)
- o0-0o 10y ago
  Somehow I doubt your support of home schools. Even though the students perform better.
  - galdosdi 10y ago
    WTF? I didn't mention home schools. I'm in no way against them. (I see your point though -- I think you are implying that since home school parents are not given any of the money that would be spent in the school district, this strongly encourages public schooling as opposed to home (or private) schooling. TBQH changing this to be fairer to home schoolers would be fine by me, seems like a parallel example. But whatever, I'm trying to have a conversation about transportation here, not education)
jessaustin 10y ago
[I] would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. If you don't like subsidies, why make such a show of arguing in favor of this subsidy? (Sure, from a particular idiosyncratic point of view, you aren't so arguing, but you've deliberately left that quite ambiguous...)

by tjic 10y ago

languagewars 10y ago

I find this a little different than your examples since it is government forcing your actions within the private market, not forcing you to pay for its bundle of services. There is no cost to the system to stop doing this one, it just would make car drivers as frustrated as dog owners when they shop for an apartment in a metro area. Given how much funding already goes to roads I would say enough is enough. But there is a risk of more long distance commuters, and it is hard to claw back the subsidies that make them.

ue_ 10y ago

>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-hucksters-there-is-nothing-anarchistic-about-capitalism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daibhidh-anarcho-huc...

jessaustin 10y ago
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?
- thorawy33 10y ago
  I think you're getting hung up on too specific an idea (unbundling costs). In the linked page on "anarchocapitalism": "They use the term “anarchist”, but at the expense of their credibility — why? Because their self-definition doesn’t hold up to even the most rudimentary questioning." Basically peddling "more of the same" and trying to sound cutting edge by adding "anarcho". It lacks intellectual honesty in the first place. We've been down the laissez faire path (a label pointlessly added before capitalism anyway given the traditional values upheld in capitalism; it wants to be left alone in the first place). It was a disaster, and would be again if we allowed it anymore rope to hang us all with. He's basically peddling that which he rants against: Monolithic economic policy that fits with his preferences.
- ue_ 10y ago
  I was picking up on a point or what I saw as a contradiction or misunderstanding. I see no problem with doing this. It is true that I was not directly attacking or agreeing with his or her position, but I do not see why I must do so when commenting. Ironically in the spirit of libertarianism, feel free to ignore my comment if you find it annoying or off-point.
AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
>Blah blah blah, only my definitions are allowable.

adrianN 10y ago

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

tjic 10y ago
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.
- sergiosgc 10y ago
  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.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    "Externality" is a useful concept, but its mere existence doesn't mean that capitalism has "failed". Sure there are unfair conditions for lots of people, but in general there aren't too many Holodomors or Great Leaps Forward in capitalist societies. That's worth something. That said, I'm no capitalist. So much seems so arbitrary. Like me, most people who advocate "radical" critiques of the status quo don't do so because they seek the most extreme disaster scenarios one can imagine resulting from those critiques. Rather, they see that current society isn't perfect, and could be improved by moving away from rigorously enforced neoclassical neoliberalism.

aninhumer 10y ago

I don't think that's special pleading exactly. They're not saying "people should only pay for what they use, except for all these things I want and they don't", they're saying "people should be forced to pay for certain things, and those things should coincidentally be the ones I want". It's self-serving, but it's not an exception to a general principle.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

VLM 10y ago

"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.

ythn 10y ago
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.

at-fates-hands 10y ago

Just in case someone wants to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe that, in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what its proponents describe as a "voluntary society").[2][3] One aspect that concerned me: In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. Sooooooooo private security firms for law enforcement? Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. There's a ton of flaws with this philosophy once you start thinking about it and following certain aspects to their logical conclusion. Such as: >>> I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. So you only use 2.5 miles of a highway to get to and back from work - right? Should you pay for the entire highway or just the parts you use? So what if other people only use "parts" of that same highway? Does that mean we suddenly have huge gaps in our highways since people are only paying for the parts they use?

hellcow 10y ago
You're describing toll roads, which of course work fine.
naasking 10y ago
> Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. There's a ton of flaws with this philosophy once you start thinking about it and following certain aspects to their logical conclusion. Blackwater contractors don't actually have to live in these places, they're just there for a short time to get paid, and then they get out. Arguably the incentives are different if you're an actual member of this society. I recommend Friedman's book if you want a proper introduction to anarcho-capitalism, instead of forming an overly simplistic view based on Wikipedia's introduction. His book addresses many of the naive counterarguments most people consider to be 'devastating' to anarcho-capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom

carapace 10y ago

To what granularity? Toll booths at each intersection? (Serious question.)

freehunter 10y ago
I shouldn't have to pay for the northbound lanes of I-580! I only ever take that road southbound! STOP TAXING ME! /s
jessaustin 10y ago
Many tollbooths have been replaced by overhead transmitters/receivers that interact with in-car electronic devices. ISTM such a technology could continue to improve, to the point that eventually an exact accounting of road use would be practical.
- e28eta 10y ago
  And fully tracking every trip made in every car. That'd be an interesting database to compile
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Sure, that would be the easy way to set up the system. Perhaps something more sophisticated and privacy-preserving could be done with blockchains... That's probably wishful thinking, though. It would be wonderful if travel database access were limited to lawful court orders, but on current trends that seems impossible.

msl 10y ago

> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. Which means that your kids will live in society largely made up of people who have received some education. You could argue that there is more value in this than there is in providing parking.

bluecalm 10y ago
The argument is that he is paying double: for homeschooling and for other kids in public schools. Other parents are paying only for public schools even though they benefit from living in a society where kids not attending public school received education as well. I sympathize with parent's views but I think early education (say up to high school) is a good thing to put in a common basket. If you want to home school you need to do well enough to be able to afford it which filters out people who shouldn't be homeschooling at least a bit.
- a3n 10y ago
  Agreed. Pare it back to someone who doesn't have kids. If I had no kids I would still want a society where most people are generally educated. I benefit from that public good.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

> 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?

brewdad 10y ago
Because they need the children of today to grow to be productive members of society who will fund the retirees' Social Security.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  Too much education though, and they might become aware of the ponzi scheme they're being forced into.

imgabe 10y ago

> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids and you receive the benefit of living in a society where most people have a minimum level of education. You can then hire these people and not have to pay to teach them how to read. > You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them Maybe you personally somehow never enjoy seeing nature, I don't know. You still enjoy the benefit of a society where people get to see a little nature which is shown to make people happier and more productive, rather than everyone living in a bleak grey dystopian landscape.

mason240 10y ago
In this case, people without cars benefit from parking lots at stores, because store wouldn't be able to stay open if they only catered to people without cars. You still enjoy the benefit of a society where people get to choose their transportation and more be productive, rather than everyone living in a bleak grey dystopian city where everyone is riding the bus and can't control when or where they want to travel.
- lhc- 10y ago
  But the article doesn't argue for NO parking lots; it argues that FREE parking lots are the issue. The stores could stay open with paid parking, and could lower costs for non-drivers because they no longer needed to subsidize that free parking by charging everyone more.
  - tertius 10y ago
    "NO parking lots" is, in this case, analogous to "NO paying for parking lots."
  - ars 10y ago
    Any store that tried to make people pay for parking would go out of business equally as fast as one without parking. (i.e. in some places that would fly, in most it would not.) Your store or entertainment or whatever better be something absolutely unique and special for me to be willing to pay for parking. The reasons cities require stores to build free parking is otherwise people park in residential areas and annoy the residents with extra traffic.

hx87 10y ago

> To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading. If everyone is pleading in this manner, then it isn't so special.

tgb 10y ago

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.

tjic 10y ago
No, you're doing EXACTLY what I was calling out. You've got your own ethical / utility function and are explaining to me that basket of goods X is ideal bc it's exactly the basket that your ethical / utilitarian code wants, and basket Y is very bad, because it's the basket that other people want. This is special pleading.
- tgb 10y ago
  I find your argument utterly bizarre. You're saying "these are all members of a category, therefore you must accept ALL of them or NONE of them". But your choice of category is arbitrary! Why make it "currently executed subsidies" instead of "all possible subsidies" instead of "subsidies that were done in ancient Sumeria" instead of "subsidies that primarily aid those less well off"? I have no problem doing what you're calling out because what you're calling out is reality. You're proving far too much.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  By that logic the current basket is special pleading and any basket is as good as the other.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

thorawy33 10y ago

"...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 basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not." Oh the irony of calling everyone else out for their love of monolithic solutions, then peddling your personal preference for how the economy for everyone should work for everyone. The 99.9% is just asinine. It's another ideological monolith. It's this over generalization, this "the world is against me" narrative that is peddled here, Twitter, Reddit... How about some rigor in our discourse. Peddle your ideals with detail, not your emotional hangups and QQ's

r_smart 10y ago
They identified as being anarcho-capitalist. I'm willing to accept the premise that 0.1% of the population subscribes to that ideology. I suspect their claim is that there should be no 'economy for everyone', but I don't know much about an-caps.

galdosdi 10y ago

Yes, we do each of those things because we want to strongly encourage their use. The unfairness is supposed to be outweighed by the social benefits to all by this encouragement. This is a good thing IF we think it's a good thing for people to: - Go to parks more, and be more relaxed and healthy, benefiting everyone - Get more education more, benefiting all of society - Drive more.... thus creating more traffic, accidents, and pollution?? One of these things is not like the other! At the very least, if you want to encourage people travelling (for some reason, not clear what the benefit is) you should be fair and equally subsidize car usage, transit usage, and bike/walk usage. (In much of the USA, parking is free, usage of most freeways is free, but trains and buses cost money and bike/walking is made difficult. The only conclusion to draw is that government wants to encourage usage of cars instead of non-car transport mediums, for unfathomable reasons)

o0-0o 10y ago
Somehow I doubt your support of home schools. Even though the students perform better.
- galdosdi 10y ago
  WTF? I didn't mention home schools. I'm in no way against them. (I see your point though -- I think you are implying that since home school parents are not given any of the money that would be spent in the school district, this strongly encourages public schooling as opposed to home (or private) schooling. TBQH changing this to be fairer to home schoolers would be fine by me, seems like a parallel example. But whatever, I'm trying to have a conversation about transportation here, not education)

jessaustin 10y ago

[I] would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. If you don't like subsidies, why make such a show of arguing in favor of this subsidy? (Sure, from a particular idiosyncratic point of view, you aren't so arguing, but you've deliberately left that quite ambiguous...)