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> It would be difficult for me to estimate how many times I've bypassed certain shops/businesses because there's either no parking or the on-street parking is f

• hilbert42 5y ago
  See my reply to azemetre. "It incorporates elements of Shoup's Georgist philosophy." Funny that, some years back I was a member of the local Georgist group (I've even some old newsletters to prove the point—again, it's a same I can't post some front cover images here for you to see). Yes, I understand the argument well. Again, these matters are never as simple as they first appear. For starters, these plans rarely take into account the different abilities of different citizens to physically access shops and or their actual needs when they do (how often are the forced to go shopping, etc. — say versus window shopping just for an outing). For example, would the elderly or infirm have privilege or advantage? Would you penalize or add an extra 'flag-fall' to the parking charges of someone who usually does online shopping and has all the facilities to do so—because they could have saved the shopping trip by shopping online? Now take the case of someone who cannot do online shopping (there are many people who cannot for many reasons)—should they be subject to the same parking penalty by default? And if a differential rate were applied to advantage them then how would you police it to stop abuse? Where I live none of these issues has been thought about let alone implemented.
  • hilbert42 5y ago
    Afterthought: I should mention the reason I'm not now a member of the local Georgist society is that it was eventually abandoned out of the lack of interest (insufficient membership). The local organizer was upset to the extent that he financed the newsletter at his own expense for some years after the group folded—that's to say he sent non-financial members copies of the newsletter in the hope that he could revive the group but that wasn't to be. The obvious question that arises is why was Henry George so popular in the 19th Century and these days so very few have even heard of him—except oddballs like me (and obviously Shoup). (Yes, I even a copy of Progress and Poverty and I've actually read it although I've not done so for at least a decade.) If you read between the lines of my original post then you'll see my comment was pretty cynical (as well as being self-centered). Well, I thought about this at the time the Georgist Society was folding and I came to the conclusion that it's just not possible to implement Georgist ideas in a modern society without a great deal of restructuring—everything from the bottom line of banks (mortgage changes etc.) to the way our governance is done would have to change and that's a too bigger ask. Simply, the economic order would have to change and at present there's far from sufficient disruption to the present order of things for that to happen (and a lot of powerful fat cats would miss out). Whilst many would agree in principle with Henry George's ideas there's always been something that's been holding people back from actually implementing them. I'd argue that this was true in the latter half of the 19th Century when Progress and Poverty was first published for that's when his ideas were at their most popular. I'd further argue that in the modern economic world people's beliefs about Georgist philosophy are even more antithetical in the sense that in their minds they've further separated the ideal world from the day-to-day pragmatic one. That's to say when it comes to the rights and wrongs of parking, cognitive dissonance is alive and well across large swathes of the population. Thus, to put parking into perspective, whilst many will support Shoup's notions in theory it will be damn hard to implement them in practice. (Though I'd add a mild caveat here, I'm primarily talking about the Anglophone world here, having lived in Europe I can attest that views are somewhat different there.) It would be interesting to psychoanalyze Shoup. I'll bet he's an idealist.