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This entire article is predicated on the premises that 1) Cars are bad, and 2) social engineering (as distinct from punishing crime) is a legitimate function of

by teilo 16y ago

This entire article is predicated on the premises that 1) Cars are bad, and 2) social engineering (as distinct from punishing crime) is a legitimate function of government. I deny both and have two other premises: 1) Cars = freedom. 2) The more governments intervene with regulation and taxation, the more they impose upon our freedoms. Let the market determine how much parking there is. Holding up New York as a virtuous example because parking there is expensive ignores the fact that New York has the highest cost of living of any city in the US, and is also the most heavily taxed and regulated.

philwelch 16y ago
As the article points out, local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. In fact, the article didn't advocate any government action at all, other than perhaps deregulating how private businesses are allowed to use their real estate. I don't think you understand Tyler Cowen's background, much less the article itself, if you think he takes social engineering by the government as a premise. Also, I dare say your premises themselves are contradictory. Cars are only useful, and only provide freedom, where there are copious paved streets and freeways; there are only copious paved streets and freeways where governments in the 20th century redesigned the landscape around the automobile, all but requiring its use for most Americans whether they want it or not. The amount of regulation and taxation required to keep the infrastructure functional for motorists and all but useless for everyone else gets in the way of our freedom and safety, to say nothing of the other negative externalities. Your right to operate a vehicle ends at your property line. Past that, it's a privilege--and in my opinion, one which has been abused.
- kiba 16y ago
  When you have 300 million people, the privilege tends to get abused.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. That's reflective rather than manipulative. Most municipalities have long knowledge of transportation patterns, and they know that when an establishment has insufficient parking, it causes grief for neighbours. People end up circling the area indefinitely, or they park illegally on neighbouring grounds, etc. The real social engineering are articles like this that are, as someone else mentioned, essentially propaganda pieces. There are places where vehicles aren't appropriate or as usable -- dense urban centres -- and in those places most people don't drive. Most New Yorkers don't own a car. People living in downtown TO condos don't own a car. That is great, but that density and very expensive mass transit system doesn't carry forth to the suburbs, exurbs, or rural areas, so save the rhetoric.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Of course cars are necessary in the suburbs--suburbs were designed around freeways exactly to enable automobile usage in the first place! Refusing to see the post-WWII changes in urban design, land use, and zoning laws as the social engineering they were and continue to be is shortsighted.
    - ergo98 16y ago
      I hear this a lot -- this notion that suburbs are some sort of artificially propped up and sustained artifact of automobile life -- and I wonder how people can ignore the overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary. Virtually every large pre-automobile city had a very similar population density distribution to modern cities, albeit with a gentler distribution curve. Usually the poor clustered densely together in the center, the wealthy layered out in decreased density patterns (essentially suburbs), and then the rural areas surrounded. The desire for a bit of space and not to be around quite as many people -- aside from being simply more hygienic and less fragile -- goes back through time, just as it exists today. I don't want to live in a 500 sq. ft condo and like it. I don't want to cluster in crowds everything I do. And if you do find yourself living in some shady little inner-city apartment, don't fall to the classic justification pattern of suddenly pretending that you're doing the world a favour. You aren't.
      - philwelch 16y ago
        We all want different things. For instance, I would like to have a way to get around that didn't involve a non-negligible risk of death, the stress of spending an hour or two trapped in a metal box on a congested freeway, the complete isolation from the surrounding environment, or the desolate, isolating distance between various places I may want to go. I would also like having shops near where I live instead of across town. It would be a nice bonus if I could get along without spending thousands of dollars of borrowed money on a depreciating asset, or spending hundreds of dollars a month to maintain, insure, and operate it. But only one of us has had their desires subsidized by various levels of government for decades. That's you, so I guess you already win. You even get the right add insult to injury by calling it "social engineering" when someone asks them to stop.

by teilo 16y ago

philwelch 16y ago

As the article points out, local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. In fact, the article didn't advocate any government action at all, other than perhaps deregulating how private businesses are allowed to use their real estate. I don't think you understand Tyler Cowen's background, much less the article itself, if you think he takes social engineering by the government as a premise. Also, I dare say your premises themselves are contradictory. Cars are only useful, and only provide freedom, where there are copious paved streets and freeways; there are only copious paved streets and freeways where governments in the 20th century redesigned the landscape around the automobile, all but requiring its use for most Americans whether they want it or not. The amount of regulation and taxation required to keep the infrastructure functional for motorists and all but useless for everyone else gets in the way of our freedom and safety, to say nothing of the other negative externalities. Your right to operate a vehicle ends at your property line. Past that, it's a privilege--and in my opinion, one which has been abused.

kiba 16y ago
When you have 300 million people, the privilege tends to get abused.
ergo98 16y ago
>local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. That's reflective rather than manipulative. Most municipalities have long knowledge of transportation patterns, and they know that when an establishment has insufficient parking, it causes grief for neighbours. People end up circling the area indefinitely, or they park illegally on neighbouring grounds, etc. The real social engineering are articles like this that are, as someone else mentioned, essentially propaganda pieces. There are places where vehicles aren't appropriate or as usable -- dense urban centres -- and in those places most people don't drive. Most New Yorkers don't own a car. People living in downtown TO condos don't own a car. That is great, but that density and very expensive mass transit system doesn't carry forth to the suburbs, exurbs, or rural areas, so save the rhetoric.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Of course cars are necessary in the suburbs--suburbs were designed around freeways exactly to enable automobile usage in the first place! Refusing to see the post-WWII changes in urban design, land use, and zoning laws as the social engineering they were and continue to be is shortsighted.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    I hear this a lot -- this notion that suburbs are some sort of artificially propped up and sustained artifact of automobile life -- and I wonder how people can ignore the overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary. Virtually every large pre-automobile city had a very similar population density distribution to modern cities, albeit with a gentler distribution curve. Usually the poor clustered densely together in the center, the wealthy layered out in decreased density patterns (essentially suburbs), and then the rural areas surrounded. The desire for a bit of space and not to be around quite as many people -- aside from being simply more hygienic and less fragile -- goes back through time, just as it exists today. I don't want to live in a 500 sq. ft condo and like it. I don't want to cluster in crowds everything I do. And if you do find yourself living in some shady little inner-city apartment, don't fall to the classic justification pattern of suddenly pretending that you're doing the world a favour. You aren't.
    - philwelch 16y ago
      We all want different things. For instance, I would like to have a way to get around that didn't involve a non-negligible risk of death, the stress of spending an hour or two trapped in a metal box on a congested freeway, the complete isolation from the surrounding environment, or the desolate, isolating distance between various places I may want to go. I would also like having shops near where I live instead of across town. It would be a nice bonus if I could get along without spending thousands of dollars of borrowed money on a depreciating asset, or spending hundreds of dollars a month to maintain, insure, and operate it. But only one of us has had their desires subsidized by various levels of government for decades. That's you, so I guess you already win. You even get the right add insult to injury by calling it "social engineering" when someone asks them to stop.