11 ms·

The Dangers of Elite Projection (2017)

52 points by williamsmj 8y ago

tivert 8y ago
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devwastaken 8y ago
>humantransit.org >Resource limit reached Now this is real life immersion. Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0sKpw3K785IJ:https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projection.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0sKpw3...
martythemaniak 8y ago
The article's idea of a "elite" is a person who relies on a car to get around. I find it unintentionally funny, as people who rely on transit in the US are either big city urban elites, or the poor stuck in crappy burbs with shitty mobility. Thus, "more transit" is itself the elite projection, as it supposes that what's good for the urban elite, must be good for everyone else. It would help if you thought of transit as a continuum: - the private single-occupancy car - shared car - shared mini bus - bus - tram (ie, n linked busses) - subway (ie n linked trams, underground) This is hard to see today, but autonomous cars will essentially bring this about. Everybody will be riding in autonomous vehicles. If you're well-off, you'll pay for more privacy and space and time (vehicle comes to you, goes to your destination), if you're not so well off, you'll share the vehicle with other people and will have to spend more time as the vehicles makes more stops (and each stop will be further from your desired source/destination). Busses as we know them today will become obsolete, as they are functionally equivalent to a heterogenous mix of autonomous vehicles driving in the same direction. Trams will become obsolete, as they are functionally equivalent to the heterogeneous-autonomous-vehicle-chain paying a premium to use a dedicated lane. Basically, everything should be a battery skateboard riding on asphalt by way of rubber. The more you pay, the more privacy you have, the more the mobile battery goes towards your personal destinations.
- hammock 8y ago
  I don't understand why you are suggesting that autonomous cars will make buses and trams obsolete. They are the closest to autonomous vehicles out of everything on your list (they run around on meta-organized and efficient routes, you don't drive them yourself, etc).
  - martythemaniak 8y ago
    They are, which is why I'm suggesting that instead of thinking of "transit vs private cars" everything will essentially melt together. IE, if you take a bus with 30 riders today and replace it with 5 AV-minivans each with 6 occupants driving behind each other, is it any different? What if instead of the city, I own one of these minivans? What if I pay 6 fares and have the minivan take my family to somewhere? What if 6 passengers split a minivan, but pay extra to use a dedicated lane?
    - didibus 8y ago
      Read the authors other article: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/what-elon-musk-doesnt-get-about-urban-transit/548843/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/what-elon-mus... He makes the argument the reason that doesn't work is geometry and utilisation of limited city space.
    - hammock 8y ago
      >IE, if you take a bus with 30 riders today and replace it with 5 AV-minivans each with 6 occupants driving behind each other, is it any different? Yeah, it is different. You have five engines instead of one, and 20 tires instead of four, meaning maintenance and fuel costs are some multiple higher, and wear-and-tear on the road surface is higher, noise and air pollution are higher. Among other things. >What if instead of the city, I own one of these minivans? Then you have to go through an additional middleman, the city, to find parking for your 1/5-of-a-bus and permission to drive on certain roads, in certain lanes, etc. Among other things.
      - 8y ago
xte 8y ago
Hum. Few sparse thoughts: élites I may know have mostly a marginal interest in public transportation witch is making money through it. If it's not profitable is of no interest. At least European élites, with the notable but marginal exception of very few politics or other VIPs move on private transport not public one. Interest in public transport have political and military interest for both reduce/control ability of individual to move and possible vulnerabilities in case of war scenarios but again "efficient public transportation for the masses" is not really in any bullshit-free agenda's. The sole political/military push toward "personal car free" society, concentrated in megacities serve the purpose to easier control people: - control a city require few manpower than a vast area, more in detail to control a city you need only a fraction of human inside on your side, to control a vast area you need more human on your side than the "target"/"enemy"; - control a city is easier simply because a city consume food, energy, water etc but do not produce most of it nor it can so cutting supply means cutting city off; - a city is a nice and easy target: you can shoot and being sure to create significant damage; - public transportation is nice: lock it (it's easier than lock many individual's vehicles, especially if they are not connected so not easy to disable en masse from remote) and anyone will be on foot. I do not really see other interest. Maybe there are economical interest from the enterprises that can gain big money on creation and maintenance of public transport network...
- Bizarro 8y ago
  Yes, control is always a nice side-effect for the statists when they busy-body around looking for a crisis to fix and solve by limiting something or another that those evil humans (not enlightened like himself) are doing.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > The sole political/military push toward "personal car free" society, concentrated in megacities serve the purpose to easier control people: People being concentrated in larger cities is mostly an outcome that comes from the free market. Higher population levels helps bring about higher levels of economic productivity, and people go where there are jobs. Having decent public transit -- and walk and bike options, for that matter -- in urban areas is just good policy. No conspiracies necessary, it's just good to have more options, especially more geometrically efficient ones when space is at a premium. Trying to ignore transit just gets you to LA's position, where they built mountains of freeways and got the worst traffic in the country in return, with poor options to bypass that traffic for most of the local population.
helen___keller 8y ago
Reminds me of the constant inclusion of stock market values in political discourse. Stock market up in 2017? Trump takes credit. Stock market correction in December 2018? Everyone blame Trump for your investments taking a hit. Thing is, there's a whole lot of people out there with no money in the stock market at all (or only in a 401k, not in an account that can be liquid in the short term). It seems fair that the fixation with the stock market is another example of elite projection. Sure, the market matters and market trends are correlated with more concrete figures like employment rates and wage growth, but it's just that, a correlation.
- esotericn 8y ago
  Average wage growth and employment rates across a country are irrelevant for, well, almost anyone that's not specifically studying them. Even on a more local level - the median income in London, say, is not interesting to a shop worker, and neither is it to a lawyer. It's just another Statistic(tm). I don't know of anyone else (in real life) who even knows what the median income is, and about the only thing I've ever used median incomes for is to determine that the median person in my city is a serf (you'd require about double that to buy a small apartment). By contrast, the stock market is at least interesting to anyone who has any savings (because market return is your baseline expectation for an investment). It should also be interesting to those who aspire to have savings (which, at least rationally, should be most people). That latter point specifically is important because most people believe in, or at least desire, upward mobility. I (a person below the retirement age) expect that in ten years' time I'll have more than I do now. It would be odd for me to expect otherwise; that would imply that I should just sack off working and enjoy myself whilst I can. I agree that linking it with things like presidencies is silly, though.
  - helen___keller 8y ago
    >Average wage growth and employment rates across a country are irrelevant for, well, almost anyone that's not specifically studying them. True, it doesn't directly address any single person's wallet but it paints a picture that actually includes every single person with an income. I don't know, maybe there's a better metric, but specifically the point I'm trying to make is this: >By contrast, the stock market is at least interesting to anyone who has any savings (because market return is your baseline expectation for an investment). This is exactly the "elite projection" the article is talking about. For most people, "savings" refers to a checking account or savings account that can be withdrawn from on a rainy day. These will always have a negligible return rate. I believe that around 13 percent of families own stocks directly, less than that for other major types of non-retirement investments, and 53 percent a retirement account ( see https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf table 3 on page 18 ). I mean, the stock market IS interesting in it's own right, and I can see why the news reports on a big correction and what not. But it's interesting in the same way that currency conversion rates can be interesting - because it holds some kind of macroeconomic significance. Not because a large percentage of Americans regularly move a large amount of cash between countries.
clairity 8y ago
this elite projection describes the common phenomenon of outsiders (and even local elites) disparaging LA for having no/crappy public transportation, which is odd to me as an multimodal angeleno who gave up my car years ago. this admission was refreshing and identifiable: > "And since I’m one of these elites — not at all in wealth but certainly in education and other kinds of good fortune — it’s sometimes my work as well." but this is probably of most interest here, with all the talk of autonomous vehicles: > "Now, the same mistake powers the endless vague promises of tech disruption in transit, especially the mathematically absurd notion that transit that comes to your door when you call it will scale to the entire population of a dense city." basically he says we don't have enough (road) space for every person to be taken directly from point to point in a vehicle. currently this is (partially) solved by having people walk the last mile. let's have electric scooters/bikes at every train and bus stop--they can solve the point-to-point first/last mile problem while being relatively dense. not everyone will use them, but with critical mass, it will reduce overall congestion.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > this elite projection describes the common phenomenon of outsiders (and even local elites) disparaging LA for having no/crappy public transportation, which is odd to me as an multimodal angeleno who gave up my car years ago. Los Angeles has a transit mode share of only 5%, which is extremely low for a principal city with a metro population of 13 million. This is a good indicator that its public transportation is indeed very weak. To be sure, though, they've been steadily improving it.
  - clairity 8y ago
    interesting, how is that transit share calculated? ridership / regional population? i’m certainly not trying to say LA is a beacon of transit, but it’s not all cars here. it’s quite possible to get around without driving.

52 points by williamsmj 8y ago

I'm getting a: > Resource Limit Is Reached > The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later. Here's an archive link that works: https://web.archive.org/web/20190102183318/https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projection.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190102183318/https://humantran...

devwastaken 8y ago

>humantransit.org >Resource limit reached Now this is real life immersion. Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0sKpw3K785IJ:https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projection.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0sKpw3...

martythemaniak 8y ago

The article's idea of a "elite" is a person who relies on a car to get around. I find it unintentionally funny, as people who rely on transit in the US are either big city urban elites, or the poor stuck in crappy burbs with shitty mobility. Thus, "more transit" is itself the elite projection, as it supposes that what's good for the urban elite, must be good for everyone else. It would help if you thought of transit as a continuum: - the private single-occupancy car - shared car - shared mini bus - bus - tram (ie, n linked busses) - subway (ie n linked trams, underground) This is hard to see today, but autonomous cars will essentially bring this about. Everybody will be riding in autonomous vehicles. If you're well-off, you'll pay for more privacy and space and time (vehicle comes to you, goes to your destination), if you're not so well off, you'll share the vehicle with other people and will have to spend more time as the vehicles makes more stops (and each stop will be further from your desired source/destination). Busses as we know them today will become obsolete, as they are functionally equivalent to a heterogenous mix of autonomous vehicles driving in the same direction. Trams will become obsolete, as they are functionally equivalent to the heterogeneous-autonomous-vehicle-chain paying a premium to use a dedicated lane. Basically, everything should be a battery skateboard riding on asphalt by way of rubber. The more you pay, the more privacy you have, the more the mobile battery goes towards your personal destinations.

hammock 8y ago
I don't understand why you are suggesting that autonomous cars will make buses and trams obsolete. They are the closest to autonomous vehicles out of everything on your list (they run around on meta-organized and efficient routes, you don't drive them yourself, etc).
- martythemaniak 8y ago
  They are, which is why I'm suggesting that instead of thinking of "transit vs private cars" everything will essentially melt together. IE, if you take a bus with 30 riders today and replace it with 5 AV-minivans each with 6 occupants driving behind each other, is it any different? What if instead of the city, I own one of these minivans? What if I pay 6 fares and have the minivan take my family to somewhere? What if 6 passengers split a minivan, but pay extra to use a dedicated lane?
  - didibus 8y ago
    Read the authors other article: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/what-elon-musk-doesnt-get-about-urban-transit/548843/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/what-elon-mus... He makes the argument the reason that doesn't work is geometry and utilisation of limited city space.
  - hammock 8y ago
    >IE, if you take a bus with 30 riders today and replace it with 5 AV-minivans each with 6 occupants driving behind each other, is it any different? Yeah, it is different. You have five engines instead of one, and 20 tires instead of four, meaning maintenance and fuel costs are some multiple higher, and wear-and-tear on the road surface is higher, noise and air pollution are higher. Among other things. >What if instead of the city, I own one of these minivans? Then you have to go through an additional middleman, the city, to find parking for your 1/5-of-a-bus and permission to drive on certain roads, in certain lanes, etc. Among other things.
    - 8y ago

xte 8y ago

Hum. Few sparse thoughts: élites I may know have mostly a marginal interest in public transportation witch is making money through it. If it's not profitable is of no interest. At least European élites, with the notable but marginal exception of very few politics or other VIPs move on private transport not public one. Interest in public transport have political and military interest for both reduce/control ability of individual to move and possible vulnerabilities in case of war scenarios but again "efficient public transportation for the masses" is not really in any bullshit-free agenda's. The sole political/military push toward "personal car free" society, concentrated in megacities serve the purpose to easier control people: - control a city require few manpower than a vast area, more in detail to control a city you need only a fraction of human inside on your side, to control a vast area you need more human on your side than the "target"/"enemy"; - control a city is easier simply because a city consume food, energy, water etc but do not produce most of it nor it can so cutting supply means cutting city off; - a city is a nice and easy target: you can shoot and being sure to create significant damage; - public transportation is nice: lock it (it's easier than lock many individual's vehicles, especially if they are not connected so not easy to disable en masse from remote) and anyone will be on foot. I do not really see other interest. Maybe there are economical interest from the enterprises that can gain big money on creation and maintenance of public transport network...

Bizarro 8y ago
Yes, control is always a nice side-effect for the statists when they busy-body around looking for a crisis to fix and solve by limiting something or another that those evil humans (not enlightened like himself) are doing.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
> The sole political/military push toward "personal car free" society, concentrated in megacities serve the purpose to easier control people: People being concentrated in larger cities is mostly an outcome that comes from the free market. Higher population levels helps bring about higher levels of economic productivity, and people go where there are jobs. Having decent public transit -- and walk and bike options, for that matter -- in urban areas is just good policy. No conspiracies necessary, it's just good to have more options, especially more geometrically efficient ones when space is at a premium. Trying to ignore transit just gets you to LA's position, where they built mountains of freeways and got the worst traffic in the country in return, with poor options to bypass that traffic for most of the local population.

helen___keller 8y ago

Reminds me of the constant inclusion of stock market values in political discourse. Stock market up in 2017? Trump takes credit. Stock market correction in December 2018? Everyone blame Trump for your investments taking a hit. Thing is, there's a whole lot of people out there with no money in the stock market at all (or only in a 401k, not in an account that can be liquid in the short term). It seems fair that the fixation with the stock market is another example of elite projection. Sure, the market matters and market trends are correlated with more concrete figures like employment rates and wage growth, but it's just that, a correlation.

esotericn 8y ago
Average wage growth and employment rates across a country are irrelevant for, well, almost anyone that's not specifically studying them. Even on a more local level - the median income in London, say, is not interesting to a shop worker, and neither is it to a lawyer. It's just another Statistic(tm). I don't know of anyone else (in real life) who even knows what the median income is, and about the only thing I've ever used median incomes for is to determine that the median person in my city is a serf (you'd require about double that to buy a small apartment). By contrast, the stock market is at least interesting to anyone who has any savings (because market return is your baseline expectation for an investment). It should also be interesting to those who aspire to have savings (which, at least rationally, should be most people). That latter point specifically is important because most people believe in, or at least desire, upward mobility. I (a person below the retirement age) expect that in ten years' time I'll have more than I do now. It would be odd for me to expect otherwise; that would imply that I should just sack off working and enjoy myself whilst I can. I agree that linking it with things like presidencies is silly, though.
- helen___keller 8y ago
  >Average wage growth and employment rates across a country are irrelevant for, well, almost anyone that's not specifically studying them. True, it doesn't directly address any single person's wallet but it paints a picture that actually includes every single person with an income. I don't know, maybe there's a better metric, but specifically the point I'm trying to make is this: >By contrast, the stock market is at least interesting to anyone who has any savings (because market return is your baseline expectation for an investment). This is exactly the "elite projection" the article is talking about. For most people, "savings" refers to a checking account or savings account that can be withdrawn from on a rainy day. These will always have a negligible return rate. I believe that around 13 percent of families own stocks directly, less than that for other major types of non-retirement investments, and 53 percent a retirement account ( see https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf table 3 on page 18 ). I mean, the stock market IS interesting in it's own right, and I can see why the news reports on a big correction and what not. But it's interesting in the same way that currency conversion rates can be interesting - because it holds some kind of macroeconomic significance. Not because a large percentage of Americans regularly move a large amount of cash between countries.

clairity 8y ago

this elite projection describes the common phenomenon of outsiders (and even local elites) disparaging LA for having no/crappy public transportation, which is odd to me as an multimodal angeleno who gave up my car years ago. this admission was refreshing and identifiable: > "And since I’m one of these elites — not at all in wealth but certainly in education and other kinds of good fortune — it’s sometimes my work as well." but this is probably of most interest here, with all the talk of autonomous vehicles: > "Now, the same mistake powers the endless vague promises of tech disruption in transit, especially the mathematically absurd notion that transit that comes to your door when you call it will scale to the entire population of a dense city." basically he says we don't have enough (road) space for every person to be taken directly from point to point in a vehicle. currently this is (partially) solved by having people walk the last mile. let's have electric scooters/bikes at every train and bus stop--they can solve the point-to-point first/last mile problem while being relatively dense. not everyone will use them, but with critical mass, it will reduce overall congestion.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> this elite projection describes the common phenomenon of outsiders (and even local elites) disparaging LA for having no/crappy public transportation, which is odd to me as an multimodal angeleno who gave up my car years ago. Los Angeles has a transit mode share of only 5%, which is extremely low for a principal city with a metro population of 13 million. This is a good indicator that its public transportation is indeed very weak. To be sure, though, they've been steadily improving it.
- clairity 8y ago
  interesting, how is that transit share calculated? ridership / regional population? i’m certainly not trying to say LA is a beacon of transit, but it’s not all cars here. it’s quite possible to get around without driving.