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Yes, that's why I prefaced my statement with "in an ideal world." Obviously we would need better public transit and urban planning before we can tax cars to obl
by Aunche 5y ago
Yes, that's why I prefaced my statement with "in an ideal world." Obviously we would need better public transit and urban planning before we can tax cars to oblivion. 8.3 million is still less than the 10 million that the DoT prices for an infrastructure proposal will save a life, so I'd still say the money at least wasn't wasted. It's debatable whether it was actually worth it, but consider that if we were purely utilitarian, we would all be like Bill Gates and prioritize eradicating malaria.
- Aloha 5y agoThe costs to replace everything we have and force people to change behaviors are basically so large as to be impossible to calculate, or frankly pay for. This isn't software where you can engineer your way out of technical debt, the debt is baked into concrete, steel and psychological behaviors. Of those, I'd note the hardest one to change is that last one, it prevents the trillions from being spent to change the first two. I'd also like to note, it's not a one time charge. It's 1.75b dollars a year ongoing in perpetuity, that's what bothers me, are there not other things we could spend 1.75b dollars a year on, that are more worthy? How many busses could 1.75b dollars a year buy? In the end, our focus on what people perceive as perfection in urban development, gets in the way of making what we have more sustainable and incrementally better, which costs less, and sees much more immediate results.