4 ms·

>local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. That's reflective rather than ma

by 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.
    - ergo98 16y ago
      You've pretty much covered the gamut of ridiculous urbanism hyperbole, so there's that. >But only one of us has had their desires subsidized by various levels of government for decades. This is almost comically wrong, but given the ridiculous hyperbole you engage in, you won't be convinced otherwise.
      - philwelch 16y ago
        Ridicule isn't very convincing. What exactly are you disagreeing with? Did you only spend hundreds of dollars on your car and maybe a few dozen a month for gas, insurance, and (amortized) repairs and maintenance? Have you never lived anywhere with chronic traffic jams? Have you never noticed the statistics on traffic accidents? Or do you think roads are paid for by pixie dust and good wishes? Also, why are my personal desires "urbanist hyperbole" while yours are, evidently, something I should be forced to not only pay for, but live in myself?
        ergo98 16y ago
        It isn't ridicule. It's a simple statement of fact that you're so far down the justify-my-life hyperbole well (you sound like any early-20 year old living in a tiny dump downtown) that you won't be convinced to the contrary. And I don't want to live in a dirty, squalid, crime-filled ghetto of overcrowding and limited accommodation that is the city. Of course that's hyperbole, but given that I'm responding to a guy who referred to suburbs as "the desolate, isolating distance between various places", it sounds like it's the colour of the argument. Of course, I like driving in my comfortable, air-conditioned, very safe vehicle (without the risks of dangers and olfactory offenses of public transit -- again, just borrowing some of your style) while listening to music of my own choice. >something I should be forced to not only pay for Yes, you've covered this again and again. It turns out that in a modern society all of us pay for a lot of things that we don't personally benefit from. I pay towards mass transit that I don't use. I pay towards welfare that I don't use. I pay towards police that aren't policing me, and doctors that aren't tending to me. I pay for arts facilities that I don't use, and sports facilities that I don't play at. That's aggregate living for you. Of course cities simply can't exist without the transportation networks around them (the products and foods that you exist on most certainly weren't made locally), so your argument smells a little more ripe. Let me make it totally clear that I engaged in this discussion with a full expectation of being downvoted (even for absolute statements of fact such as the reason for parking space regulations). People who live in the suburbs generally just enjoy life. People who live in the city sit online justifying why living in the city is the ideal form of existence.
Confusion 16y ago
People end up circling the area indefinitely, or they park illegally on neighbouring grounds, etc. We probably shouldn't have abolished slavery either; that just led to war, the KKK and more things we didn't want. In other words: immediate negative consequences are not a good argument, because most change causes some immediate unhappiness for greater good later. essentially propaganda pieces Something isn't propaganda just because you don't like what it argues. The fact that you have to stoop to arguments founded on paranoid delusions of propaganda squarely shows what a good argument the article makes. Otherwise you could have restricted yourself to factual corrections and counterarguments. Supposing that Tyler Cowen would write pro-tax government propaganda is, well, preposterous isn't a strong enough word for that.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >We probably shouldn't have abolished slavery either Extraordinary. Slavery no less. You should have gone with Hitler. >In other words: immediate negative consequences are not a good argument, because most change causes some immediate unhappiness for greater good later. Positive actions yield positive outcomes. A positive action is, for instance, creating robust, usable mass transit systems. Building bike paths and car sharing lanes and other actions that encourage and assist people in moving to the behavior that is desired. Negative actions, on the other hand, are the domain of the dim witted, and countless stunning failures go ignored: If teens are causing trouble at night, don't think of positive ways of engaging their interest and attention, instead announce restrictive laws and punishments. >The fact that you have to stoop to arguments founded on paranoid delusions of propaganda Slavery, paranoid delusion...your spittle will probably get upvoted, as such nonsense generally does in generalist discussions on HN (courtesy of the Reddit refugees). I think you overstate what propaganda is.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    What about curtailing the "positive actions" that encourage and enable driving? Cowen isn't talking about outlawing free parking or anything, just removing all the subsidies and mandates that prop it up. That's more of a non-action than an action. Some of the other things you suggest (mass transit, bike paths) by necessity have to take either space or money away from roads for cars. I think those ideas are essential, but you can't accomplish them very well without impeding cars. (The naive solution of putting a bike lane right between on-street parking and moving traffic only works as a cruel joke on cyclists. Cities that take bike paths seriously physically separate them from motorways, but that often involves reducing the space of the motorway.)

by ergo98 16y ago

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.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    You've pretty much covered the gamut of ridiculous urbanism hyperbole, so there's that. >But only one of us has had their desires subsidized by various levels of government for decades. This is almost comically wrong, but given the ridiculous hyperbole you engage in, you won't be convinced otherwise.
    - philwelch 16y ago
      Ridicule isn't very convincing. What exactly are you disagreeing with? Did you only spend hundreds of dollars on your car and maybe a few dozen a month for gas, insurance, and (amortized) repairs and maintenance? Have you never lived anywhere with chronic traffic jams? Have you never noticed the statistics on traffic accidents? Or do you think roads are paid for by pixie dust and good wishes? Also, why are my personal desires "urbanist hyperbole" while yours are, evidently, something I should be forced to not only pay for, but live in myself?
      - ergo98 16y ago
        It isn't ridicule. It's a simple statement of fact that you're so far down the justify-my-life hyperbole well (you sound like any early-20 year old living in a tiny dump downtown) that you won't be convinced to the contrary. And I don't want to live in a dirty, squalid, crime-filled ghetto of overcrowding and limited accommodation that is the city. Of course that's hyperbole, but given that I'm responding to a guy who referred to suburbs as "the desolate, isolating distance between various places", it sounds like it's the colour of the argument. Of course, I like driving in my comfortable, air-conditioned, very safe vehicle (without the risks of dangers and olfactory offenses of public transit -- again, just borrowing some of your style) while listening to music of my own choice. >something I should be forced to not only pay for Yes, you've covered this again and again. It turns out that in a modern society all of us pay for a lot of things that we don't personally benefit from. I pay towards mass transit that I don't use. I pay towards welfare that I don't use. I pay towards police that aren't policing me, and doctors that aren't tending to me. I pay for arts facilities that I don't use, and sports facilities that I don't play at. That's aggregate living for you. Of course cities simply can't exist without the transportation networks around them (the products and foods that you exist on most certainly weren't made locally), so your argument smells a little more ripe. Let me make it totally clear that I engaged in this discussion with a full expectation of being downvoted (even for absolute statements of fact such as the reason for parking space regulations). People who live in the suburbs generally just enjoy life. People who live in the city sit online justifying why living in the city is the ideal form of existence.

Confusion 16y ago

People end up circling the area indefinitely, or they park illegally on neighbouring grounds, etc. We probably shouldn't have abolished slavery either; that just led to war, the KKK and more things we didn't want. In other words: immediate negative consequences are not a good argument, because most change causes some immediate unhappiness for greater good later. essentially propaganda pieces Something isn't propaganda just because you don't like what it argues. The fact that you have to stoop to arguments founded on paranoid delusions of propaganda squarely shows what a good argument the article makes. Otherwise you could have restricted yourself to factual corrections and counterarguments. Supposing that Tyler Cowen would write pro-tax government propaganda is, well, preposterous isn't a strong enough word for that.

ergo98 16y ago
>We probably shouldn't have abolished slavery either Extraordinary. Slavery no less. You should have gone with Hitler. >In other words: immediate negative consequences are not a good argument, because most change causes some immediate unhappiness for greater good later. Positive actions yield positive outcomes. A positive action is, for instance, creating robust, usable mass transit systems. Building bike paths and car sharing lanes and other actions that encourage and assist people in moving to the behavior that is desired. Negative actions, on the other hand, are the domain of the dim witted, and countless stunning failures go ignored: If teens are causing trouble at night, don't think of positive ways of engaging their interest and attention, instead announce restrictive laws and punishments. >The fact that you have to stoop to arguments founded on paranoid delusions of propaganda Slavery, paranoid delusion...your spittle will probably get upvoted, as such nonsense generally does in generalist discussions on HN (courtesy of the Reddit refugees). I think you overstate what propaganda is.
- philwelch 16y ago
  What about curtailing the "positive actions" that encourage and enable driving? Cowen isn't talking about outlawing free parking or anything, just removing all the subsidies and mandates that prop it up. That's more of a non-action than an action. Some of the other things you suggest (mass transit, bike paths) by necessity have to take either space or money away from roads for cars. I think those ideas are essential, but you can't accomplish them very well without impeding cars. (The naive solution of putting a bike lane right between on-street parking and moving traffic only works as a cruel joke on cyclists. Cities that take bike paths seriously physically separate them from motorways, but that often involves reducing the space of the motorway.)