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This is what you get when ideologies of hyperindividualism are presumed as natural law. It sounds like something out of some 80s lampooning cyberpunk movie. Th

This is what you get when ideologies of hyperindividualism are presumed as natural law. It sounds like something out of some 80s lampooning cyberpunk movie. The whole premise of cities is efficiency through collaborative infrastructure. It's really wild how badly we do it.

ajross 3y ago
> This is what you get when ideologies of hyperindividualism are presumed as natural law. It sounds like something out of some 80s lampooning cyberpunk movie It... what? How do you get from the six sentence linked article to that?[1]. Can't it just be a silly boondoggle? I mean: how does public funding of transportation infrastructure (however silly) even remotely follow from "hyperindividualism"? [1] I mean, I know how you got there. It's got nothing to do with tunnels and everything to do with how fun it is to hate the nutjob that runs the tunnel company.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  No it's got nothing to do with Elon Musk or Tesla. There's efficient systems that already exist to solve these problems but there's ideologies that act as blinders and keep the better solutions shelved as impractical or facing erected roadblocks like "where's the money" When Tesla decides they don't care about it any more, then the tax payer becomes responsible. This is the classic "public-private partnership" where the responsibilities and liabilities are on the tax payer while the profits and power are privatized. It's a raw deal. The most famous example of how this works is Conrail, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail It was initially private until it couldn't be profitable and then it became public until it was profitable because the public stewardship was trying to do a service and not simply milk the consumer, then they privatized it again when it was profitable. So when it loses money it's our responsibility when it makes money it's their benefit and we don't see any of it. It's totally insane but we have ideologies that demand it to be this way so that's what we get
  - fullshark 3y ago
    Ideologies like the gov't must compensate private property owners when utilizing eminent domain? Environmental protection? Need to use union labor? What are the philosophical blockers to public infrastructure projects? Cause as far as I can tell the primary blocker is their massive costs.
    - Retric 3y ago
      the major blockers to public transportation is spending government money to benefit people that aren’t necessarily you. The rest is mostly smoke and mirrors. The long term ROI may be huge economically and environmentally, but that’s far to abstract to motivate most people.
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      You're blinded by your ideology so that certain types of projects you categorize one way and other types you categorize another. For example when LAX, which is government controlled by the city of Los Angeles, was expanding in the 1950s on up to today, all of the costs of expanding the airport were not controversial up to where it's now servicing 100,000 people daily. You know what was controversial? Public transit there. Building an airport that can fly in and out 100,000 people was not expensive, was not complicated, was not some huge cost for the taxpayer. Those adjectives were not assigned to that project. However the idea of putting a train there, that is complicated, that is expensive and that is a huge cost to taxpayer because people have decided to use those adjectives there. And that's the only reason. Here's another example. Cincinnati built a 400 million dollar sports stadium on the tax dollars dime. When it wasn't profitable they ended up having to sell off hospitals and raid their savings. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ohio-county-stadium-debts-cincinnati-bengals-reds_n_1347733 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ohio-county-stadium-debts-cin... The stadium didn't get assigned the adjectives that say a 400 million park or housing project would have gotten, regardless of the fact that a 400 million dollar housing project would have far more predictable revenue and wouldn't lead to the city being forced to sell off hospitals. No that would have gotten the adjectives complicated difficult expensive and all those other negative modifiers because of the underlying ideologies. Those adjectives are assigned to reflect the ideological commitments I wrote a related article about this 6 years ago https://kristopolous.medium.com/public-private-partnerships-and-the-shafting-of-america-5cdee04aa336 https://kristopolous.medium.com/public-private-partnerships-...

ajross 3y ago

> This is what you get when ideologies of hyperindividualism are presumed as natural law. It sounds like something out of some 80s lampooning cyberpunk movie It... what? How do you get from the six sentence linked article to that?[1]. Can't it just be a silly boondoggle? I mean: how does public funding of transportation infrastructure (however silly) even remotely follow from "hyperindividualism"? [1] I mean, I know how you got there. It's got nothing to do with tunnels and everything to do with how fun it is to hate the nutjob that runs the tunnel company.

kristopolous 3y ago
No it's got nothing to do with Elon Musk or Tesla. There's efficient systems that already exist to solve these problems but there's ideologies that act as blinders and keep the better solutions shelved as impractical or facing erected roadblocks like "where's the money" When Tesla decides they don't care about it any more, then the tax payer becomes responsible. This is the classic "public-private partnership" where the responsibilities and liabilities are on the tax payer while the profits and power are privatized. It's a raw deal. The most famous example of how this works is Conrail, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail It was initially private until it couldn't be profitable and then it became public until it was profitable because the public stewardship was trying to do a service and not simply milk the consumer, then they privatized it again when it was profitable. So when it loses money it's our responsibility when it makes money it's their benefit and we don't see any of it. It's totally insane but we have ideologies that demand it to be this way so that's what we get
- fullshark 3y ago
  Ideologies like the gov't must compensate private property owners when utilizing eminent domain? Environmental protection? Need to use union labor? What are the philosophical blockers to public infrastructure projects? Cause as far as I can tell the primary blocker is their massive costs.
  - Retric 3y ago
    the major blockers to public transportation is spending government money to benefit people that aren’t necessarily you. The rest is mostly smoke and mirrors. The long term ROI may be huge economically and environmentally, but that’s far to abstract to motivate most people.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    You're blinded by your ideology so that certain types of projects you categorize one way and other types you categorize another. For example when LAX, which is government controlled by the city of Los Angeles, was expanding in the 1950s on up to today, all of the costs of expanding the airport were not controversial up to where it's now servicing 100,000 people daily. You know what was controversial? Public transit there. Building an airport that can fly in and out 100,000 people was not expensive, was not complicated, was not some huge cost for the taxpayer. Those adjectives were not assigned to that project. However the idea of putting a train there, that is complicated, that is expensive and that is a huge cost to taxpayer because people have decided to use those adjectives there. And that's the only reason. Here's another example. Cincinnati built a 400 million dollar sports stadium on the tax dollars dime. When it wasn't profitable they ended up having to sell off hospitals and raid their savings. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ohio-county-stadium-debts-cincinnati-bengals-reds_n_1347733 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ohio-county-stadium-debts-cin... The stadium didn't get assigned the adjectives that say a 400 million park or housing project would have gotten, regardless of the fact that a 400 million dollar housing project would have far more predictable revenue and wouldn't lead to the city being forced to sell off hospitals. No that would have gotten the adjectives complicated difficult expensive and all those other negative modifiers because of the underlying ideologies. Those adjectives are assigned to reflect the ideological commitments I wrote a related article about this 6 years ago https://kristopolous.medium.com/public-private-partnerships-and-the-shafting-of-america-5cdee04aa336 https://kristopolous.medium.com/public-private-partnerships-...