what_a_maroon
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User ID: 644
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
By market I meant "the supermarket", not a market in the economy sense, sorry
Ok, the combined revenue (or profit) of the 2 markets is higher than of the single supermarket before. Yes, but this doesn't tell us anything. There is no corresponding value in the analogy, because the roads are free to use. There's also no way to know, in this case, what the correct number of roads actually is, because again there is no market (general definition).
But seems dumb, precisely because 'existing people driving a bit faster' seems worse than 'more people using the highway'?
A ban is dumb, but there should be congestion pricing. Keeping the highway uncongested is actually relatively valuable, because it increases throughput. But again, the real problem is that you will never build enough highways. It is impossible.
But given that alternative isn't happening, and both lack of political will and existing dysfunction in construction in the US make it unlikely to happen soon. Whereas the highway expansion is happening. So outside of that, what better alternatives are there for that money, do you think?
As the article I linked mentioned, the city recently passed a bond to fund more transit. But overall, I find this logic fairly circular, like when liberal groups use endless litigation to drive up the cost of the death penalty, and then try to have the death penalty banned because it's so expensive. Part of the reason transit is so expensive is because of people who want to build more roads instead. (For what it's worth, I don't think most US cities need a subway. Light rail is fine, and even in the US that compares pretty well in terms of cost per mile per passenger's worth of capacity).
we'll be arguably worse off, without expanded highways or better transit
The city is working on better transit, and either project will certainly take years, if not decades, to complete, and probably be subject to substantial opposition and delays. Overall it seems like your argument boils down to "building roads has more existing political support, so let's keep providing more political support to building more roads" which, again, seems circular.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I would certainly not accepted an argument along the lines of "mini super helicopters are bad because they let people's live in single family homes outside of the urban core". Just as I don't expect the government to had out free helicopters. I'm not asking for the government to buy me an SUV.
Sure, and this all sounds good. But cars are very heavily subsidized. I know people don't like to accept this fact, because they see how much they are paying and assume that it can't be that much after subsidies. The fact is simply that driving is very expensive, and costs aside, is a terrible way to have everyone get around inside a city.
I am going to vote for a very small portion of my taxes being used on basic infrastructure such as light rail in the urban core and a robust freeway network.
Austin has almost no light rail, and what little there is, isn't near I-35. If it did, this wouldn't be such an issue!
I don't think road costs up being "a very small portion" of taxes. This one project is estimated to cost 7.5 billion; Austin's population is about a million. That's $7,500 per resident. Obviously the state is spending the money in this case, and some of the people impacted don't live in the area, but again it's only one project in one small part of the city.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
...what? I have no idea what you're trying to say. This is just a non sequitur.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Is this a failure?
If your goal is to reduce congestion, which is typically a major stated goal of these projects, then yes, it's clearly a failure.
And the market makes more money!
I don't think this statement means anything, but also there is no "market" here. The state government just wants to build more highway, regardless of costs or benefits.
a separate goal of 'more people getting to where they want to'
I don't know why every time I end up in a discussion about roads on here, all of the car enthusiasts use the same analogy as if I don't understand that more people driving means that more people are going places. That's not the question. The question is how this particular use of space, money, and time compares to alternatives. It's like offering starving people 1,000-dollar truffle mushrooms as food, and then when someone points out that 98% of them are still starving because you could only afford to feed 2%, you pat yourself on the back because, well, you fed some people, right?
Plus, you can't just completely ignore everyone except for the group who benefits. What about the businesses and homes that would be subsumed by the wider freeway? Are they better off? What about people who live in East Austin and would like to be able to get into downtown without driving? What about people who can't or don't want to drive?
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Depends on what infrastructure people want. If everyone has septic tank, you don't need central sewage. If people want central water treatment, but don't want to (or can't) pay the taxes for it, then you have problems. There certainly are examples of sprawling suburbs (or cities with lots of suburban area) that either go into bankruptcy or depend on state/federal bailouts, or where the low-density areas of a city are effectively subsidized by the higher-density ones.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Why stop there? Why not buy everyone their own helicopter? It's not the responsibility of government to try to satisfy everyone's preference on everything at no cost to them. That's not economically efficient.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
You seem to have fallen for the “induced demand” meme
It's not a meme; it's basic economics which is also backed up by fairly overwhelming empirical evidence.
People want to live in the suburbs and work downtown.
Given Austin's zoning map, a correct statement would be "Austinites are largely prohibited from living anywhere except a suburb or right in the middle of downtown." Also, people may "want"* to live in the suburbs and drive into downtown, but that's not possible. Doubling freeway capacity would not change that, because it is literally impossible to fit the whole population into cars. They simply take up too much space.
*I put "want" in scare quotes because rarely do such people want to pay all of the costs associated with doing so.
The welfare of the area would be increased.
No, it would be a net decrease, because the cost of doing so would be very high, and those resources could be more efficiently used elsewhere. It would suck for anyone who currently lives in the area and has to deal with additional car traffic, construction, and possibly have their property sized to make room. It would separate downtown from East Austin even more, etc.
People hate driving through Austin. Other Texas cities with functional freeway systems are objectively easier to get around.
There's no reason to have the only interstate go straight through downtown. Lots of cities have interstates that go around the core. San Antonio has 410. Houston has 610 and I think others I don't recall the number of. DFW has 635, 20, and again I think others. Elsewhere, 95 goes totally around Boston, while 90 and 93 go into the city. Austin only has 45, which isn't an interstate and is a toll road, so all the trucks and other thru traffic go through the city even though it's slower.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
It sometimes legitimately feels like the state does things for no other reason than to frustrate the city and its residents. In this case I think the relevant state officials really do believe that expanding the highway will reduce congestion in spite of overwhelming empirical evidence, but wouldn't be surprised if they felt the ability to throw their weight around and ignore the city's point of view was a bonus.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
pro-car pro-suburb traditionalists.
Your footnote says that this is just a name, but I would point out that car-dependent suburbs are relatively new, mostly post WW2. The neighborhoods that urbanists like tend to be the older ones, and in fact often describe this as a "traditional" development style.
If you’re actively involved in the politics of the places where the most valuable land is, you’re dealing with the Democratic Party’s internal politics far more than any interparty fighting.
This is somewhat true, but far from completely. Highways especially are often the domain of the state or federal government, so you have situations like the state of Texas trying to expand I-35 through downtown Austin that the city generally opposes. Or small groups of individuals who join together based on their self-interest rather than political agreement to oppose changes with nitpicky legal maneuvering. In general, lawsuits filed by individuals or small groups are a common tool to prevent development, and the laws these suits are based on can come from any level of government.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
That's fair as a point of view; I'm talking about the absolute bare minimum to consider allowing it.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
You made a big deal about the severity of the punishment. Whether his actions were justified is not dependent on whether someone died, but the level of punishment, if a crime was committed, very much does depend on whether someone died. Why did you bother to make a big deal about the size of the punishment? Either he was justified and there will be no punishment, or he wasn't and is guilty killing another person, in which case a significant punishment is clearly appropriate.
The question is whether Penny's actions in putting him in a chokehold and thereby risking Neely's death were justified, not whether Neely's death was justified.
I think this is just semantic games. We have legal standards for when civilians can use lethal force (for what I hope are obvious reasons) which amount to "it is justified to kill this person." Using lethal force does not always result in death, but death has to be a justifiable outcome in order for the use of deadly force to be legitimate.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Ulbricht's sentence was based off of the idea that he ordered killings, which was shown "by a preponderance of evidence." This is not how we are supposed to do criminal law in the US; I have no idea how or why none of the appeals went anywhere. And no matter what you think of selling drugs, no one gets a double life sentence just for that.
which is a moral rather than a purely legal question
It's also a question of fairness--I don't believe that anyone else involved with the original or subsequent silk roads got anywhere near as long a sentence.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Restraining a person sometimes causes their death, as it did in this case.
If Perry does get convicted of manslaughter, it is false that it would be for restraining someone. Death is an essential component. There is absolutely no reason to describe the events this way except to make it seem like Perry didn't do anything wrong, without addressing any of the relevant facts.
Our prior for Penny acting violently or in a threatening way on the train should indeed be affected by his previous arrests.
"Our" prior does not justify your claim that he was violent. This is at best extremely weak evidence; the only witness statement I saw claimed he was not violent, which while obviously far from perfect is better evidence.
The question is whether Neely's behavior justified Penny's actions, not whether they justified the result.
This is just bizarre. Are you of the opinion that the consequences (or at least, expected consequences) of an action, have nothing to do with whether they are justified? I suppose this would be consistent with your idea that drivers shouldn't be held responsible for driving recklessly.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
The comment I replied to is low-effort sneer that contains claims but no arguments.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Since I was asked to elaborate: Just about every part of this comment is extremely low quality.
restraining
Excuse me? A 15 minute chokehold resulting in a dead person is "restraining"?
violent
This is not in evidence. Unless you mean his prior assault arrests, which were not known to anyone on the train and thus irrelevant.
drug-addled mentally-ill
Neither of these remotely justifies death.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I can do that, but when are you going to make the same point to nybbler ?
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Man, that's an awful lot of euphemism, nonsense, and irrelevance crammed into such a short post.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
There’s a reason criminal trials are conducted on behalf of the state and not the victims. It’s because justice is something sought by society against transgressors. Getting money isn’t “Justice,” and I feel like the legal profession has just gaslit the entire world into believing it is. Of course, I think it is very difficult to provide restorative justice to someone who has been physically attacked or raped or obviously murdered. The deed is done, and money won’t magically make it go away.
Justice for a rape victim isn’t their rapist writing them a big check, it’s the rapist rotting in prison and unable to rape more people. That’s why I find statements like the press release for the bill that created this cause of action a figment of lawlogic that’s totally alien to my worldview:
This is a point of view you can to take, but it's not at all obvious, and in fact this is exactly how many societies throughout history handled justice, and it's certainly not new. The entire idea of imprisoning average criminals is a few hundred years old at most, and has only been practical for less than that, and only in rich societies. (Aside from payment, societies also used slavery, exile, execution, torture, and probably other methods I'm forgetting). Similarly for the idea that the state handles everything--polycentric legal systems based on resolving disputes between 2 parties are also very common historically.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
He or someone else might at least see it if you cross-post to the actual LW forum.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
here is Science insisting that trans women don’t even have an advantage.
This includes the line:
No, Vilain says. The lab studies of athletes’ hemoglobin and muscle mass say nothing about whether trans women can run faster, jump higher, or throw farther. “You have to demonstrate that before excluding” transgender athletes, he says.
I'm probably preaching to the choir, but this is utterly backwards. The default is that men can't compete in women's sports. If you want to assert that some set of procedures the man undergoes makes it fair for them to compete, that is what has to be demonstrated. One study with n = 8 doesn't cut it. I'm sure that a wokeist would screech in rage that obviously transwomen are women, but such claims are just definitional assertions that are not-even-wrong and convey no information.
That a policy is discriminatory simply cannot suffice as an argument against it, particularly when the whole point of the category is to implement a form of discrimination!
This is true, and we could have many additional splits when it comes to sports. In fact, we do have other splits. An obvious one is by age (minimum or maximum), but we also have teams composed of only students from one school or university, we have weight classes in combat sports, etc. The goal is to make competitions that are relatively fair and competitive, although of course some people have massive natural advantages over others like being tall in basketball, and AFAIK there isn't really a "average height basketball league." It all seems somewhat arbitrary to me, to be honest, but I think the solution is something like a trans division (probably not enough population to make it competitive though).
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I'm definitely on the "normal people should be able to ride a subway without being harrassed and threatened with immediate violence" side. Unfortunately, there's no foolproof way to achieve that that doesn't carry some risk. Penny should've been a feckless coward putting up with it like every other New Yorker; the subway will continue to be a miserable experience, it's just now one life is over and another likely ruined.
It sounds like we agree, except that I wouldn't call anyone a coward for not acting. I've only been able to find 1 witness statement and no video from prior to Penny acting, but the one statement I found said Neely wasn't being violent. Maybe that's wrong, and the rest of this paragraph will turn out to be irrelevant. But being able to sit there and distinguish something that is aggravating or annoying, but not dangerous, and not respond to the former with violence, is essential to being able to participate in society. If you go to /r/IdiotsInCars, you'll see, among other things, a steady stream of people who go absolutely nuts in response to the slightest behavior they don't like. In my opinion, these are the people who are antisocial and disruptive to the community--the same accusations that many Motteizans have leveled at Neely.
It's tempting to just go something something healthcare system but it's gotta be more than that; the US creates way more wackadoos per capita regardless of their later (lack of) treatment.
I don't really know enough about all of those other countries to have more of an explanation than healthcare or locking up wackadoos (whether in prison or hospitals). Social contagion is in vogue recently, and American culture probably encourages more acting weirdly than other cultures, so maybe that provides part of an explanation. Americans do drive a lot, so maybe it just looks like there's a higher portion of wackadoos because fewer regular people take transit, but even in NYC there's a famously high number of wackadoos. Maybe they are forced to congregate in the few cities you can live without a car. Or perhaps other countries have stronger familial ties, and the family takes on the responsibility of sheltering the wackadoo--one article I saw claimed that Neely's problems largely started after his mother died.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I think it's highly unlikely he's never committed any legitimate crime, but spouting a number like "42 arrests" is actively misleading and "reign of terror" is a frankly embarrassing level of unsupported, pearl-clutching propaganda.
Anything's possible. The moon could really be green cheese!
And it's even possible the veteran had mind-reading powers to get any of this information!
You're engaged in mockery, but when the veteran put him in that chokehold, he didn't even know any of this. Literally the only information he had was what he observed, Neely walking back and forth and angrily ranting. This was apparently sufficient to put him in a chokehold for, what, 10 minutes? 15? You can see some of the video here; Neely is barely responsive and the restraint continues. Like, sure, be skeptical of claims that he was as pure and innocent as the new-fallen snow. But also be skeptical of claims that he spent all his time terrorizing the populace and execution was the only solution.
But I could be wrong, and maybe he's the one subway weirdo that never did anything actually wrong, but New Yorkers singled him out anyways with false accusations.
There's a lot of subway weirdos. I suspect the crime rate would be much higher than it actually is if every subway weirdo regularly committed crimes.
What a sad and boring society it would be if we executed all weirdos.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Yeah, "public nuisance crimes" are not what I would call a "reign of terror." No one knew who this guy was until he was killed. An open container of alcohol in public? Turnstile hopping? This forum will get incensed over the fact the FBI uses loopholes and process crimes to punish politicians and rich celebrities who lied to said FBI, and then turn around and seriously claim that these are very legitimate crimes that prove Neely was dangerous and it was a massive failure of law and order for him to still be on the streets. I haven't found any reference to kidnapping; the only serious or violent crimes I've seen reference to are 4 assaults (over 8 years) and without knowing more about those cases, it's wildly irresponsible to jump straight from "arrested" to "definitely guilty." Like, it's entirely possible that he did commit those crimes, and others, and the DA just let him go out of misplaced sympathy. It's also possible he got into altercations with other mentally ill homeless but it's unclear who was at fault. Or that he was misidentified, or was the victim of a false accusation for being weird and noisy in public (it's totally impossible that someone could overreact to him dancing and being loud on the subway, right? that would definitely never happen?).
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I think this is just a semantic quibble. The way the phrase "civil rights" is generally used is consistent with what I wrote. Obviously putting someone in prison requires restricting their rights at that point, but we can still respect the rights against unwarranted search and seizure, right to jury trial, right not to self-incriminate, etc.
I missed some of these comments from before.
"Don't tax people as much" is pretty efficient. You can make any project at all seem good by comparing it to something even worse, but this isn't a high standard.
You're not counting any of the money spent as part of the net negative. If we could teleport roads in for free, then yeah, that be a different calculation. But the roads are free to drive on, which means they are being used above the level which is economically efficient, and building more lanes would just exacerbate the problem. This is what I mean by net negative: We're spending more and more money for what is, yes, a fairly marginal benefit. You know what would let a lot more people commute faster, with fewer externalities? A train.
Let me ask you this: Is there any domain where this argument doesn't apply? Should the government supply every good at 0 cost to the consumer? Because I'm pretty sure that communism doesn't work very well.
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