California’s proposed car ban is the perfect mix of hubris and silliness

[Tech2]

California’s proposed car ban is the perfect mix of hubris and silliness

https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/01/13/c...silliness/

[pbrower2a]

The economic reality of cities with high population densities implies that motor vehicles can be a luxury. Middle-class people in Manhattan might not own cars and might have to rely upon taxis and public transportation; poor people in New Mexico (which outside of Albuquerque and Santa Fe is thinly populated) have cars. High-density cities tend to have mass employers and close hubs to economic activity, even if the work is 'only' working in a store or a restaurant.

So imagine that you work in Manhattan and you have a middle-income occupation as an accountant. If you work in a gigantic glass tower you would find that parking will devour your pay. Space of any kind is at a premium in Manhattan. if you live in western Long Island and commute, you will find that the rent for a parking space for a car is more expensive than the car payments.

In 1993 I got a little economics lesson on the Tappan Zee Bridge, Interstate 87 leading from Upstate New York to the Big Apple. People returning from their weekend places in cars all seemed to be driving expensive ones -- Mercedes, Bentley, Lexus, Acura, late-model Lincoln or Cadillac vehicles... few Toyota, Nissan, or even Buick or Honda, let alone elderly domestic American makes. Such people, who could afford rent for a space for a car similar to the rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Albuquerque, could treat the toll as a triviality.

Prices and costs matter, and customs give way to economic reality. Economic reality can shatter customs and cultural patterns. One might as well rely upon a cab. Shopping? The lower level will probably have a food store and a pharmacy. Clothes? You ride the subway. That is if you are middle class in Gotham.

The heavily-populated parts of California are becoming the sorts of places where housing costs are exorbitant. So is the space for owning a car. Contrast Detroit, where the big cost for driving a car is vehicle insurance.

[Tech2]

Welcome to the land of the free.

[pbrower2a]

(06-10-2019, 07:26 AM)Tech2 Wrote: Welcome to the land of the free.

Driving a car ranges from a luxury to a convenience to a necessity. The motor vehicle is a later innovation than democracy. The private automobile is a dying institution in such places as New York City, Tokyo, Paris, London, Seoul, and maybe San Francisco.

Economic convenience is not democracy. Democracy cannot give people everything that they want. Some people get priced out of living certain places and into miserable places. Nobody wants to live in a slum, but that is what is available to many of us. To adapt a phrase of Benjamin Franklin, people who would trade their essential freedom for economic gain will lose their freedom and get no gain.

[beechnut79]

(06-11-2019, 03:50 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-10-2019, 07:26 AM)Tech2 Wrote: Welcome to the land of the free.

Driving a car ranges from a luxury to a convenience to a necessity. The motor vehicle is a later innovation than democracy. The private automobile is a dying institution in such places as New York City, Tokyo, Paris, London,  Seoul, and maybe San Francisco.  

Economic convenience is not democracy. Democracy cannot give people everything that they want. Some people get priced out of living certain places and into miserable places. Nobody wants to live in a slum, but that is what is available to many of us. To adapt a phrase of Benjamin Franklin, people who would trade their essential freedom for economic gain will lose their freedom and get no gain.

Regarding first paragraph, the latter status applies in virtually all suburban areas excepting some close to central cities. In Chicago this would apply to the likes of Evanston, Oak Park and Berwyn. Over on the old boards I created a thread exploring whether we will ever reduce auto dependency in this country. So far we seem to have not had the desire to do so, as gasoline demand increased along with prices in many cases. How high do you feel the price would need to go before we would see a significant drop in consumption? When the rideshare thing began there was much speculation that such could reduce the number of cars on the road. Opinions still are mixed on the results. Common answer is probably not as there are so many folks seeking even the slightest sliver of the gig economy pie, which includes all the food delivery drivers as well.

Over-dependency on the auto was called into question back in 1973-74 when we had that awful gasoline shortage when many had to wait in long lines just to fill their tanks. And yet there are considerably more cars on the road today then there were at that time, along with the expansion of what has become known as the exurbs, home to the so-called McMansions discussed elsewhere on this forum, which has served to increase auto dependency even more. And yet we haven't even come close to another gasoline shortage? Anyone care to analyze the wherefore and why, and do you think another such shortage looms in our future?

[pbrower2a]

(06-11-2019, 10:13 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(06-11-2019, 03:50 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-10-2019, 07:26 AM)Tech2 Wrote: Welcome to the land of the free.

Driving a car ranges from a luxury to a convenience to a necessity. The motor vehicle is a later innovation than democracy. The private automobile is a dying institution in such places as New York City, Tokyo, Paris, London,  Seoul, and maybe San Francisco.  

Economic convenience is not democracy. Democracy cannot give people everything that they want. Some people get priced out of living certain places and into miserable places. Nobody wants to live in a slum, but that is what is available to many of us. To adapt a phrase of Benjamin Franklin, people who would trade their essential freedom for economic gain will lose their freedom and get no gain.

Regarding first paragraph, the latter status applies in virtually all suburban areas excepting some close to central cities. In Chicago this would apply to the likes of Evanston, Oak Park and Berwyn. Over on the old boards I created a thread exploring whether we will ever reduce auto dependency in this country. So far we seem to have not had the desire to do so, as gasoline demand increased along with prices in many cases. How high do you feel the price would need to go before we would see a significant drop in consumption? When the rideshare thing began there was much speculation that such could reduce the number of cars on the road. Opinions still are mixed on the results. Common answer is probably not as there are so many folks seeking even the slightest sliver of the gig economy pie, which includes all the food delivery drivers as well.

Rideshare allowed people to take longer commutes. For may people it is the short trips that eat the miles -- and gasoline. There's the big disparity between 'city' driving and 'highway' driving. I am amazed at how long it takes for me to go four miles from my house through town to a grocery store. Fifteen minutes? Now that is stop-and-go driving. A car consumes gas while idling at a stoplight.

The incentive to share a ride increases with length. Maybe one can get a little shut-eye while someone else drives.

Ride-sharing is far easier for people who live in the same apartment complex and work the same schedule in the same place. The gig economy does not so work.

Quote:Over-dependency on the auto was called into question back in 1973-74 when we had that awful gasoline shortage when many had to wait in long lines just to fill their tanks. And yet there are considerably more cars on the road today then there were at that time, along with the expansion of what has become known as the exurbs, home to the so-called McMansions discussed elsewhere on this forum, which has served to increase auto dependency even more. And yet we haven't even come close to another gasoline shortage? Anyone care to analyze the wherefore and why, and do you think another such shortage looms in our future?

Exorbitant prices, shortages, or unavailability. At a high-enough cost, people return to horses in rural areas.

As for McMansions, those reflect almost as a rule people with more money than common sense; they are possible only when a comparative few people make huge incomes in the presence of so many working poor.

[pbrower2a]

(06-12-2019, 09:31 AM)pretty Wrote: The USA feels like the Twilight Zone today.

Considering that Rod Serling was an American and relied upon his experiences, and that much of the Twilight Zone is subtle parody of uncomfortable aspects of American life... maybe France has its equivalent as television drama.

Quote:Our overlords make a decree and we just have to obey it like slaves.

To this the solution (and the overlords are really the bosses of Corporate America) is to be an  entrepreneur so that one can get the best of American life, which means not being under the thumb of some narcissist in a three-piece suit.

Quote:Americans who were taught to love freedom must be puzzled now be told to be Nazis and Commies.

Those are now among the arch-villains of American history. Try again.

Quote:The only options now seems to either be a obedient slave and pay taxes, dropout, or go Postal.

If you don't have the money with which to invest in a small business and the willingness to live far below your means while working harder than anyone else, then you will have to be an employee and defer to owners and managers. That is how life has always been, no matter what the political order. Drop out? Your success will depend upon the level of prosperity of the overall society, and quite possibly the assets that you already have.

A violent outrage will cause you to be blown away or put away.

Quote:Americans are finding out that breaking the law is easy when everything is illegal, illegal aliens don't obey the law, and the government doesn't obey the law. When you are suddenly forced to buy insurance or register your guns, you might think every law has become a joke.


Do you feel safer now?

I am sure that there are people who would have preferred that people rely entirely upon FoX Newspeak Channel for information and its Two Minute Hate (remember the Orwell reference?) against the persons or institutions that its management loathes. You have a contradiction there in saying that as citizens we can get away with nothing and that illegal aliens can get away with anything. 

Were I a sport hunter I would willingly register my gun in case someone steals it.

Quote:Do Americans not feel responsible for wars, debt, checkpoints, NDAA indefinite detention, kill lists, NSA wiretapping, curfews, gun bans, forfeiture, the end to the right to silence, free speech bans, torture, kill lists, no fly lists, searches without warrants, private prisons, mandatory minimums, 3 strikes laws, DNA databases, CISPA, SOPA, IMBRA, FBAR, FATCA, TSA groping, secret FISA courts, and Jade Helm?

Yawn!

25-to-life for armed robbery looks like a suitable mandatory minimum because armed robbery is at least as dangerous as attempted murder. Any armed robbery can result in a murder.

Three strikes? California started using three strikes against such offenders as burglars, and rape went down. Burglars are often rapists.

DNA databases? Do the crime, and I expect the government to make it less easy to get away with doing more crime.

Violent crime is not an exercise in freedom. Law and order is the first civil right, without which all the enumerated rights of humanity become cant. Lawlessness, whether by street thugs, organized crime, or a government degrades my freedom.

Quote:How do you feel when someone looks you in the eye and tells you that everything is just fine?

I pity the fool who says that, whether out of folly or out of instructions by his boss.

Quote:What do you think when someone tells you that all the problems in the US would be fixed by a trade war, bailouts, mandatory microchip implants, a higher minimum wage, free college, launching more wars, increasing the debt, banning free speech, closing churches, outlawing protests, banning guns, outlawing straws, and increasing forfeiture?

Trump's trade war is a disaster in the making.

Bailouts are at times necessary for rescuing key players in the economy who did nothing wrong. Thus the auto industry is not at fault for the subprime mortgage fraud of the Double-Zero decade.

...Do you really want what Big Business salivates at -- workers being paid starvation wages?

You could use some more formal education, especially in a philosophy class that allows you to better discern between fallacy and valid syllogism. You need to learn some tests of truth. It is not enough to question authority if one lacks the means of determining which authority merits question.

Quote:Do you think the elites have learned their lesson and will end the police state, end the wars, and decrease the debt on their own?

Electoral defeat can show people the folly of their ways.

Quote:Do you think tyranny won't get worse?

Only if we let it. Only if we expect the government to make things easy for us.

[pbrower2a]

(06-12-2019, 10:32 PM)Dutch Wrote: If the US was free, peaceful, had a booming economy, had a balanced budget, had sound money, had safe streets, had no minimum wage, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income in the past, are Americans happier now that the USA is a police state, at war, has a dead economy, is in debt, has a minimum wage, and high taxes?

A police state and a welfare state are two very different things. The Soviet Union was a police state without a welfare state; South Africa under Apartheid was a police state for non-whites but a welfare state for whites; Chile under Pinochet was a police state trying to gut a welfare state. It is possible to have a police state that is also a welfare state, as in Castro's Cuba.

Balanced budgets occurred as late as the 1990s in part because the federal government needed not spend so much money defending against the dreaded Soviet thrust through the Fulda Gap or across the North German Plain in a drive to Brittany and Gibraltar. Sound money? That was the euphemism for the gold standard that created a more capricious economy that had to contract when gold got exported. Safe streets? Back in the days of Irish immigrant gangs in America in the 1860s? No minimum wage? Just the thing you need for debt bondage on the Plantation.

Lower taxes? Those were possible when most people dropped out of school after 'solid eighth-grade educations' to be child labor, and when roads were two-lane blacktops also known as 'Blood Alley'. Do you know anyone who wants to return to the 1920s? That is how I interpret "Make America Great Again".

[pbrower2a]

(09-01-2019, 10:44 AM)dcvote Wrote: Americans want to live in a happy paradise with high wages, no guns, no blacks, no Muslims, no illegal immigrants, no beggars, no smokers, no straws, and no flag-burning, but how did tyranny work out for the USSR?

If wages are low enough and jobs are scarce enough, then we will have beggars. High wages are the only appropriate way of promoting high competence on the job and high productivity. Good pay is one way to induce people to migrate illegally to where the jobs are. No blacks? This is the 400th anniversary of the establishment of African slaves in America. We aren't undoing that.  No Muslims? Freedom of religion. Americans are among the lightest smokers in the world. No plastic or paper straws? We can have metal or carbon-fiber straws that we must wash. Flag-burning? How often do we see that? Of course, I would gladly burn a Nazi or Confederate flag in the presence of the Klan. Besides, forty-eight stars and thirteen stripes marched into Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen, leaving no doubt of the meaning of such to inmates.

It is a great myth that the Soviet Union was gun-free. If one was on good terms with the Communist party, one could get a gun.  

Quote:Do you really want to live in a world where everyone is a mindless sheep, everyone has the same thinking, and everyone wears the same clothes?

Strawman. It isn't happening.

[Tabi]

The elites have turned everyone into liars, hypocrites, cowards, or criminals.

Obeying the law is easy when only murder and theft is illegal, but no one respects the law when everything is illegal.

Everyone has a breaking point.

Americans might support a decree that requires everyone to get a tattoo, but why is this the government's business?

What do you do if cohabitation is illegal, but married couples are taxed at a higher rate?

Why get a driver license when you must give the government your fingerprints?

The constitution protects the right to own a gun, but what if guns are illegal?

What do you do if you don't want insurance, but you are legally required to buy insurance?

What do you do if watering your lawn is illegal, but not watering your grass is also a crime?

Why obey the law if the government doesn't?

[Hintergrund]

(09-01-2019, 09:36 PM)Tabi Wrote: What do you do if watering your lawn is illegal, but not watering your grass is also a crime?

Now that should be plain forbidden.

[pbrower2a]

Perfect freedom does not exist except for the hermit who has chosen the prison of loneliness.

[Anthony '58]

(06-13-2019, 07:37 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-12-2019, 10:32 PM)Dutch Wrote: If the US was free, peaceful, had a booming economy, had a balanced budget, had sound money, had safe streets, had no minimum wage, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income in the past, are Americans happier now that the USA is a police state, at war, has a dead economy, is in debt, has a minimum wage, and high taxes?

A police state and a welfare state are two very different things. The Soviet Union was a police state without a welfare state; South Africa under Apartheid was a police state for non-whites but a welfare state for whites; Chile under Pinochet was a police state trying to gut a welfare state. It is possible to have a police state that is also a welfare state, as in Castro's Cuba.

Balanced budgets occurred as late as the 1990s in part because the federal government needed not spend so much money defending against the dreaded Soviet thrust through the Fulda Gap or across the North German Plain in a drive to Brittany and Gibraltar. Sound money? That was the euphemism for the gold standard that created a more capricious economy that had to contract when gold got exported. Safe streets? Back in the days of Irish immigrant gangs in America in the 1860s? No minimum wage? Just the thing you need for debt bondage on the Plantation.

Lower taxes? Those were possible when most people dropped out of school after 'solid eighth-grade educations' to be child labor, and when roads were two-lane blacktops also known as 'Blood Alley'. Do you know anyone who wants to return to the 1920s? That is how I interpret "Make America Great Again".

Actually MAGA seeks a return to the 1880s.  To its devotees, the Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890, was the first step on the way down.

[Warren Dew]

What's with the bannings?

[Ragnarök_62]

(11-23-2019, 02:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: What's with the bannings?

Simple.  There are busy bodiy SJW's  that like getting in everyone's business.  Fuck 'em.
It's like the right wing variant of religious whackos who also get into everyone's business.  Hell, a pox on both their houses.

[David Horn]

(11-23-2019, 03:09 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(11-23-2019, 02:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: What's with the bannings?

Simple.  There are busy bodiy SJW's  that like getting in everyone's business.  Fuck 'em.
It's like the right wing variant of religious whackos who also get into everyone's business.  Hell, a pox on both their houses.

Yes, both sides are generating whacknuts at a furious pace, but the number and intensity of whacknuts still resides with the GOP by a wide margin.

[dcjogger]

Does anyone get the feeling that the Uniparty has been bought off by the elites?

https://text.wizchan.org/index.html

[pbrower2a]

(11-09-2019, 05:52 PM)Anthony Wrote:

(06-13-2019, 07:37 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-12-2019, 10:32 PM)Dutch Wrote: If the US was free, peaceful, had a booming economy, had a balanced budget, had sound money, had safe streets, had no minimum wage, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income in the past, are Americans happier now that the USA is a police state, at war, has a dead economy, is in debt, has a minimum wage, and high taxes?

A police state and a welfare state are two very different things. The Soviet Union was a police state without a welfare state; South Africa under Apartheid was a police state for non-whites but a welfare state for whites; Chile under Pinochet was a police state trying to gut a welfare state. It is possible to have a police state that is also a welfare state, as in Castro's Cuba.

Balanced budgets occurred as late as the 1990s in part because the federal government needed not spend so much money defending against the dreaded Soviet thrust through the Fulda Gap or across the North German Plain in a drive to Brittany and Gibraltar. Sound money? That was the euphemism for the gold standard that created a more capricious economy that had to contract when gold got exported. Safe streets? Back in the days of Irish immigrant gangs in America in the 1860s? No minimum wage? Just the thing you need for debt bondage on the Plantation.

Lower taxes? Those were possible when most people dropped out of school after 'solid eighth-grade educations' to be child labor, and when roads were two-lane blacktops also known as 'Blood Alley'. Do you know anyone who wants to return to the 1920s? That is how I interpret "Make America Great Again".

Actually MAGA seeks a return to the 1880s.  To its devotees, the Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890, was the first step on the way down.

 
Seemingly everyone has a distinct idea of who the 'right' and 'wrong' elites are and has politics to fit. I prefer elites who achieve and innovate (educated professionals and owners of small businesses) to those who profiteer by creating and exploiting scarcity and unequal opportunity. I prefer the software engineer to the landlord who gouges the software engineer for half of his income. It is best that we have low taxes on income earned the hard way (I see many small-business owners as genuinely proletarian) and high taxes on easy money. As such I am much closer to Henry George than to Karl Marx.

Donald Trump is an exponent of monopoly capitalism with a heaping helping of cronyism. America is at its best when

(1) capitalists are the only people getting rich, and
(2) small-scale enterprise is the norm.

Think about it: in the 1950's Americans endured some of the highest taxes on income from passive investments -- and such activities as restaurants, retail stores, banks, and even manufacturing could be cottage industries.The current federal  tax code promotes monopolies or cartels -- and vertical integration. Such is excellent for promoting the most severe inequality of economic results possible.

[pbrower2a]

(11-23-2019, 02:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: What's with the bannings?

Usually spammers and conspiracy theorists. One posted links to porn sites.

[David Horn]

(11-25-2019, 06:52 AM)dcjogger Wrote: Does anyone get the feeling that the Uniparty has been bought off by the elites?

https://text.wizchan.org/index.html

It's always that way until something breaks badly enough to force the elites out of their shared throne.  Normally, they have the money and power to maintain their money and power, so no need for great expectations until that changes.