what_a_maroon
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User ID: 644
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
There are always different leagues and social milieus with their own exclusive prizes. That said if you think most parents aren't thinking about school districts when deciding where to live then you've not met many.
The average person is fine with a good school, where their kids will learn something and won't be mugged, which isn't constrained the way relative status (e.g. top 5%) is.
There are highschools where zero students will go to an ivy league school, high schools where maybe one will and highschools where greater than 20% of the students will go to one.
Yes, and the school itself is only doing marginal amounts of work. Most of it is the students and parents (and the school looks good due to selection).
even if your kid isn't getting into an ivy there is still a lot of benefit to growing up rubbing shoulders with the type of person who does.
In my personal experience, the total benefit to doing this, without going to a good school yourself, is pretty much 0. Maintaining social connections, especially ones that could result in a meaningful benefit, that long is uncommon. Yes, people are willing to pay quite a lot money for private schools and/or good public schools, but the evidence of either of them providing a strong causal benefit is, as far as I'm aware, pretty weak. Saving your money and just giving it to them will probably be way more helpful.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Most people aren't worried about high-status high schools and aren't getting into top colleges, regardless of price. To the extent that drives the two-income trap, it doesn't affect the bulk of the population.
One of the highlighted comments in this old SSC post points out that we could have vastly more space in elite colleges. But elite colleges aren't discriminating based on price anyway--having a second income earner in your household probably makes them less affordable given how generous they're getting for low and even middle income students.
And given the decline in fertility, especially among the very people jostling for space in high status schools, we probably could have fewer students in those desirable schools even as if we built way more housing!
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
inelastic in supply (Real estate in a good school district, tuition into high status schools
This is entirely an artificial problem. We could build more housing, but no, because then NIMBYs might only make 300% returns on their house instead of 400%.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
This is complete nonsense. US population growth has been slowing for decades even with immigration, and the barriers to building more housing are all completely artificial.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
You want to "fix" the housing problem? Kick women out of the workplace and a married family will be able to raise their kids on a single salary, with mom at home keeping an eye on the schools and housing prices will be within the reach of a single-family income.. as they were until the mid-late-60s.
Is there even the slightest shred of evidence for this claim? The number of new housing units being built has declined compared to population. The incomes of households will not change the underlying fact that there isn't enough housing.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given that this isn't even the 5th boldest claim you've made in this post without providing any sort of argument.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Admittedly not "old timey" but I have been working with a matchmaker. I think I had fairly reasonable expectations going on, so I can't speak to whether they'll try to talk you down if you're being delusional. But they do put a cap on the number of hard requirements you can impose on possible matches, and you have to go on the dates they arrange without seeing the other person first.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I appreciate your open-minded and transparent response!
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Those who write software for the electrical grid, defence contractors, or industrial machines seem to have moved rightwards over the past decade. Those who work in industries propped up by low interest rates have all gone radically left.
Reverse causation sounds like an obvious alternative hypothesis to consider. The military and heavy industry are already right-coded, while Silicon Valley and art/creative industries are left-coded. Beyond the explicit politics, there's going to be lots of differences between working at Spotify and at an energy company. The former will probably value the use of data, changing things quickly, employee independence, creativity, new technology, etc. The latter will move slowly, do things the traditional way, have a stricter hierarchy, etc. I suspect these sorts of factors weighed more on your average classmate than did considerations such as:
Their business-model is essentially dependent on an extreme individualist philosophy. If music is an integral part of culture, something that is typically experienced live and locally, the business of making cents per thousand listens is infeasible. Spotify is built on billions of people listening to the same pool of music. No nations, no borders, just atomized consumers is a suitable ideology for such a company. Grubhub, uber, twitter and Netflix make small sums of money off vast quantities of people. In a more nationalistic world, they wouldn't be nearly as valuable. My woke friends nearly all went for a company that has millions of clients all over the world, generating tiny profits off each client. The art stemming from these companies tends to be bland and placeless. Strong collective identities such as nationalities, ethnic groups, traditions and gender roles doesn't flow well with a world consisting of users.
I doubt most of them thought this way at all, and were instead attracted to places where other employees were like them, or the workplace culture was one they appreciated, and you just didn't notice they were already like that back in college (or their preferences changed over time).
(On a side note, Spotify actively recommends new artists, has contributed to me seeing at least 1 in-person concert by pointing it out to me, and makes sharing music or playing it in social contexts extremely easy).
Those coding for the electrical company are more interested in people who are committed long term to their society. They don't need a global market, as their market doesn't extend further than the grid. Their interest is people with high skin in the game in terms of the society they live in and who are willing to make long term investments in the grid.
I admittedly have limited experience with the energy industry, but based on what I do know, it's about as global as industries get. European companies are building solar plants on American farmland, every country in the world relies on oil from a handful of major producers, etc. If every country became much more insular, you would still have an energy industry, but it would be way smaller and poorer.
The end of occupy Wall street is often viewed as the start of the great awokening, the end of the global financial crisis was the FED printing money. The great awokening occurred roughly at the same time as zero interest rates started to have a tangible effect on the economy.
I don't think these events could have happened quickly enough to explain the "awokening," which was already starting by 2014. The biggest tech companies (facebook, google, microsoft, apple) all quite predate this time frame and were successful already (facebook had a billion dollars in profit in 2012, for example; Netflix was originally a mail-service company founded back in the 90s and was profitable as early as 2003). Even twitter was founded back in 2006. Even if there was an effect, it seems unlikely that it could have happened so quickly. From the fed funds rate being lowered in 2008 to the aforementioned 2014 is only 6 years--not a lot of time to found a company, grow it, hire lots of people, and then have it become an unprofitable zombie enterprise.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Yes, that's generally true.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
There is definitely a legal difference in actively provoking a fight. And if there isn't, there should be. Counter-protesting is protected speech. Speech isn't really protected if doing so negates your basic rights.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I'm interested to know to what extent people agree that (a) the goal of society should be to increase happiness, and that (b) for that goal, achieving a very low level of violent crime and holding it there is probably more important than tackling air pollution, even if air pollution kills many more people.
So I think that your point of view accurately describes how many people perceive risk, but this usually leads to a mistaken perception of how actions and policy affect "happiness and well-being." The effects of e.g. air pollution are very downstream from the air pollution itself, and often manifest as an increase in some condition that already existed, so you cannot identify any specific person as dying because of air pollution. These deaths are also often going to be slow and uninteresting, while murder is big, breaking news that you can put pictures of on the front page of the paper. It's similar to the dilemma the FDA faces, where anyone who dies from an approved drug can be pointed to as a victim of their failure to be strict enough, while no one person who dies from a heart attack while waiting for beta-blockers to be approved can be definitively chalked up to the FDA's overly-strict behavior. So the incentive is for them to be extremely cautious and conservative. However, the effects are still real, and preventing 1,000 deaths from side-effects but causing 10,000 from heart attacks will definitely cause happiness and well-being to go down.
A death from murder and a death from air pollution or a work accident are not exactly the same, sure. People feel differently about them. But to what extent is that a result of fallacious reasoning, like if the news over-reports murder compared to accidents and people take that at face value? Or because people don't know that air pollution can even cause deaths, and so automatically chalk all of those deaths up as tragic but unpreventable happenings of life?
would you rather live in (1) a society where your life expectancy is 80, but your lifetime risk of being murdered, mugged, or raped is 90%, or (2) a society where your life expectancy is 70, but your lifetime risk of being murdered, mugged, or raped is 10%
The badeconomics subreddit has a rule:
Rule V No reasoning from a price change in general equilibrium.
In other words, you cannot ask about the effects of some price changing without establishing why the price changed, because the price is determined by external factors. That underlying cause will determine the effects. For example, you can't say, "if the price of gas goes down, people will buy fewer electric vehicles." Maybe the reason why gas prices went down is because someone discovered an alternative energy source that is way cheaper than gasoline, and people will rush to buy electric vehicles because they're practically free to fuel up. Or maybe they discovered a ton of oil, and electric vehicle sales will decline. You can't even say whether the equilibrium quantity of gas sold will change, for the same reasons.
I have a similar feeling here. Why, if crime plummeted, did my life expectancy drop? There must be some cause, some other cause of death that went up. Is that cause of death painful or painless? And ideally, why did that cause of death change? Is crime low because I'm living in a 1600s puritan-like regressive culture where enjoying anything means I'm probably sinning, and life expectancy is low because we don't have medical technology or expertise? Or do we live in a futuristic utopia, but a lot of people have unsafe hobbies like BASE jumping?
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Narcissism
Sounds like it to me, although I'm no psychiatrist.
But also, this is a kid talking about doing violence at school, with guns or knives. Is narcissism hereditary? Did his home environment contribute to this?
In her tweet, she claims the son is autistic. Could be real, although if it has anything to do with his mother, I suspect "mother seized upon some minor tics to she could feel special by claiming an autistic child" is the most likely relationship.
Out of sheer both-sides-ism I want to say "there are surely equally bizarre figures in right wing politics" but I can't actually find any.
I find it a little hard to believe that you couldn't find any such people if you looked. For example, do you think that megapastors who claim God wants them to buy a private jet are any less narcissistic? (Also claiming that COVID was already over in March 2020 due to prayer and that even those who lost their job should continue to give him money). As far as I can tell, people like Copeland and Joel Osteen are just as delusional and narcissistic as Jones and have suckered in at least as many people.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Thanks for following up and for your posts on housing!
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I specifically used the word riot because of how charged "insurrection" is!
The extent to which said riot was even Trump's fault is... eh. I'm personally inclined to blame individuals for their own actions. The 1/6 riot was the fault of the rioters, not Trump. BLM riots were the fault of BLM rioters, not some academic writing a sociology paper on how riots are the voice of the unheard. Mass shootings are the fault of mass shooters, not the NRA. It's not so much that he's mostly to blame as that I think we should have a very high standard when it comes to "are politicians following rules and norms for a peaceful transfer of power." Trump's behavior was a contributing cause, but even if it's only 5% of the cause, it should 0.001% (numbers fabricated).
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Accusations of unfair elections have always been around, but the politicians themselves are supposed to accept defeat. Consider the 2000 presidential election: Al Gore disputed 1 legitimately very close state with sketch election practices, and when he lost the court challenges, that was it. There weren't dozens of lawsuits filed against every state and election official where he lost, alleging far-flung conspiracies. There wasn't a riot at the Capitol. There was definitely a lot of double-think and crappy opinionating from the peanut gallery (e.g. is it a question for Florida state courts or SCOTUS; depends on who everyone thinks they'll side with) but I think overall I think he had a much better case than Trump for losing unfairly and managed to handle it more gracefully.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
As far as I can tell, urbanists propose quite a lot of reforms that are quite far from "ban all cars." Here's a handful (keeping in mind that not everything on the list is implemented everywhere all at once; the priorities would be for cities, downtowns, and areas near transit):
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Repeal CAFE and replace it with a carbon tax and/or higher gas tax.
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Create more pedestrian areas with few vehicles.
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Build more bike lanes. Having lanes that are protected from cars and in useful places is more important than having many miles of bad bike lanes.
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Repeal or reduce SFR only zoning, along with related policies like parking minimums, setback requirements, minimum lot sizes, etc.
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Build more traffic calming measures. We already have speed bumps and low speed limits, even (especially!) in low-density suburbs, but those aren't really enough.
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Instead of building infinite roads with the mistaken belief it will alleviate congestion, provide alternatives and use congestion pricing. Similar for parking; don't provide free or subsidized public parking.
In any case, dropping subsidies for all modes of transportation is probably reasonable, won't really kill them, and maybe should be done
FWIW, I'm 100% ok with living in Ancapistan, and there are a lot of things I would not object to (or think about differently, at least) in that world. We don't live in Ancapistan, so if I'm being taxed to pay for roads, then I think it's reasonable to expect that e.g. those roads are safe to use.
Now, this is probably a rare position among urbanists. But from an economist's point of view, if you want to subsidize something, it probably makes sense to A) subsidize things with positive externalities or minor negative externalities over those with large negative externalities; B) have a plan for how you're going to handle the increased consumption. I think that walking, cycling, and transit are vastly superior to cars on both of these measures.
In addition, I think that subsidies and regulations are more relevant if you rely heavily on arguments like "I just want to live in a single family home" or "I like to drive." If someone legitimately thinks that building roads for cars, and no infrastructure for anything else, for example, creates positive externalities--then my pointing to subsidies wouldn't be a good counterargument.
No, I'm not. We could install protected bike lanes and traffic calm roads in every last suburb tomorrow (i.e. make it possible to get by without a car everywhere, but not necessarily be faster than a car), but the impression I get from urbanists is that this simply wouldn't be enough for them, and more drastic measures need to be taken. If they're actually fine with only those things, that's cool! But that's not the impression I'm getting.
Do those suburbs still have e.g. laws banning building anything other than single family homes? "Just" putting in bike lanes and traffic calming is not going to undo 75 years of mistakes, but personally I would think it makes more sense if the priority is to legalize some dense suburbs, especially around transit, with those features, and improve downtown cores, rather than redoing "every single" suburb.
(I know that "protected bike lanes and traffic calm roads in every last suburb" sounds like a lot, but given the vast amount of time, effort, money, and regulations that have gone into making almost every last corner of the US dependent on cars, I actually don't think it's very much. This report, for example, finds that 300 miles of bikeways costs the same as 1 mile of 4-lane freeway. What would these suburbs look like if they spent the same amount of money on alternatives as on cars?)
Are urbanists fine with all of those cars in rural areas? (For all the many videos Not Just Bikes has made about the Netherlands, he surprisingly doesn't seem to have covered much of the country that exists outside the Randstad.)
I think you already know the answer, which is: You would have to ask him (he does talk about rural areas in his Switzerland video).
Are urbanists fine with only doing that?
I mean, they'd probably like the option to be car-free in and near cities. Beyond that, I couldn't say, but my internal model of people I know says basically yes. To be honest, the US is so far from even the most basic urbanist goals that I'm confused why this is such a big sticking point. Are you worried that if we make even moderate reforms, suddenly all cars will be banned? You are clearly aware that nothing of the sort has happened in the Netherlands, and what is going on there has taken decades to accomplish.
edit: I looked through the thread you linked and it seems like pretty much every comment is saying what I've been saying... don't need to get rid of all cars, but make other options viable.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
To me, this all points to Columbine-style school shootings being vastly overpublicized relative to the actual amount of harm they cause.
From a pure body-count standpoint, yes, this is something we already knew. You could make arguments that pure body count isn't exactly the right metric (the victims are usually innocent children, while the median murder victim outside of mass events is probably an adult criminal) but there's no way any reasonable calculation covers the factor of 100 or 1,000 in sheer number.
One factor of course, is the pure emotion attached to children; the difference in emotional reaction to harming them and harming an adult is vastly in excess of any sort of QALY analysis or whatever. There might be evolutionary reasons for this, so I hesitate to call it wrong necessarily. Another factor is the uncertainty, probably alongside "it could happen to me": Most violent crime is relatively predictable. Murder is largely limited to very specific neighborhoods, towns, and groups of people. But a school shooting could happen anywhere, any day, to almost any school. To paraphrase Freakonomics on lynchings, few things are as powerful as the fear of random violence.
Between these 2 factors, it's certainly not surprising that school shootings provoke a much stronger response than you might expect given how many more murders take place in other contexts. The idea that your child might not come back from an ordinary day at school is terrifying, even if the probability is extremely low.
It also feels out of your individual control as a parent. For example, it's probably more likely that your child dies on the way to and from school (assuming they're being driven) than in one of these shootings (this source claims about 1,200 deaths for children aged 0-14 in car crashes in 2018). But people feel safer driving than e.g. flying, in part because they feel in control. Drowning is another major cause of death for young children, but also probably feels more in control, and isn't so violent.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Except these same urbanists then turn around and say we need to stop building suburbs
No. We (or at least, I) say that:
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We shouldn't require by law (and encourage by implicit and explicit subsidy) that all suburbs be sprawling and car-dependent. There are many urbanist videos praising suburbs and other areas that are not the middle of downtown Manhattan.
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Central areas, like downtowns and cities, should have as few vehicles as possible.
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Alternatives to driving should exist for as many trips as possible.
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Cars generate a lot of negative externalities, such as noise, pollution, and safety, which should be internalized or regulated (especially when cars are used in populated areas).
Yes, if you want to drive a full size car everywhere (e.g. not a microcar, which the Netherlands allow on bike paths for the disabled), you should probably not live right in the middle of a major city. The unlimited use of any amount of public space for any purpose at any time, is not a right--as everyone agrees, since every time this discussion happens on The Motte you get plenty of people saying how the police should aggressively round up the homeless to stop them from sleeping or using drugs on sidewalks and in parks.
It also still seems to me, based on the alleged contradiction in those quotations, that you are conflating "banning cars" with "making it possible to get by without a car."
only a quarter of Dutch households are car-free (a decreasing figure!).
A few things. First, this number is substantially higher in Amsterdam--I believe a majority of households do not own a car. Second, making households completely car-free is not the only measure of success. The US is at around .89 [cars per person](
(numbers from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita)), while the Netherlands is at .588. The number of multi-car households is quite high (https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/household-vehicles-united-states/), so there's a lot of room to reduce the number of cars in each household without necessarily making many households car free.
And if people own cars, then planners will do things like build expensive parking garages beneath canals which end up doubling the number of parking spaces, and having more parking spaces is bad because as long as they're there, people will still want to drive (as NJB says).
I just re-watched that section. It seems like he's overall strongly favor, but doesn't like the fact that the underground spaces are cheap while the garage was expensive to build, which subsidizes cars.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
So I dunno, you tell me why he doesn't allow Rob's content on his subreddit.
I'm not him and I can't read minds. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to want to keep the subreddit for his channel primarily focused on his stuff and stuff he agrees with? It's probably not what I would personally do, but again I don't think it should be stronger evidence than what he explicitly says. Like, for another example, this line right here. Doesn't sound rabidly anti-car to me.
No, of course not. The problem is, while his solutions are technically not banning cars, it results in dramatic lifestyle changes that many people aren't much keen to take on.
I wonder if they aren't keen to take them on in part because they don't seem to understand what the changes actually are. For example, you write:
so the urbanists say you should just go to the supermarket every day. Well, many people take issue with that, and don't want to go to the grocery store every single day, and there's also concerns about impulsive buying
"Every day" is probably an exaggeration. I shop largely by foot (or I stop on the way home from driving somewhere else, but buy enough I could easily carry it on foot). That's 2-3 trips a week. Just for me, but I also work from home and go out to eat pretty rarely. The other thing is that you don't have to "go to the supermarket;" you can stop by a small store or 2 on your way home from somewhere else. You can still drive, too--he points out the parking lot at the grocery store in this video.
And for what it's worth, looking at obesity and food waste rates in the US, it seems hard to imagine that "impulse buying" could get any worse. Maybe it would even be improved if you had to think more about what you buy, I don't know. I'm less concerned about this particular argument since there are many secondary costs and benefits one could think of. If you don't want to live in the middle of a big city and never use a car, you don't have to--again, at no point have I ever seen NJB or the other channels I mentioned say we should ban all cars everywhere.
For example, having to pay for a rental car instead - it has all the potential headaches of having to pick up the car, or if not that then the car potentially not being in working order, or maybe there's no cars available or you have to wait a while, etc.
Based on his video on the subject, it actually seems extremely convenient (I haven't had much reason to rent a car recently, so I can't personally attest). Owning your own car has headaches too--it can also run into mechanical trouble, for example, and then you don't have any alternatives and it's your responsibility to fix, while in a populated area, you might have several rental apps each with multiple cars. You also have access to different vehicles for different purposes. And it seems like it's much cheaper, unless you are driving more than a few times per week.
Or using one of those cargo bikes which really don't look like they can carry very much.
Serious question: have you tried? Or done some investigation to find out exactly? Or this just a guess? Personally I very rarely cary lots of cargo--rarely enough that few trips that couldn't fit in a cargo bike could be done by renting, Uber, or having things delivered (e.g. when buying furniture, most of which wouldn't fit in my car anyway).
proposition of ditching a car in any meaningful way is a very serious proposition to make to someone,
Well, yes. That's the point: If you design cities and towns differently, then ditching the car isn't so serious! Obviously ditching a car in a car-dependent place is a big deal.
For example, Not Just Bikes hates the implicit message of Road Guy Rob's videos, where car infrastructure in the USA isn't fatally flawed and if we just fix a few things here or there it'll be all good.
I mean, I think that message is wrong. There are a lot of things that you would have to change to make it so that a substantial portion of the population could reasonably not own a car if they don't want to. As emphasized in the video about IKEA I linked above, it would be nice to have options. Most American cities don't give you an option: You need a car to do the most basic things. It's literally written into a lot of municipal codes, which have parking minimums for homes and businesses that assume at least 1 car per customer/dwelling. Adding a bike lane here or there is an improvement, but isn't going to change that basic fact. But again, I think this is a disagreement, not "NJB secretly wants to ban all cars everywhere."
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
That's the second time I've been told "it's just a joke".
... the video is literally entitled "Roasting Other Urban Planning and Transit Channels" and consists entirely of short snippets making fun other channels. I don't know what to tell you.
The other "joke" was... NJB mentioning those people using cocaine in the pedestrian bridge? Right? Where he says "the people were nice enough to offer him some of their crack cocaine. Canadians are so friendly!" That doesn't seem even remotely close to me. Like are you legitimately concerned that NJB is going to literally use this as an example of how Canadians are friendly?!
This is the most complete enumeration of the interactions between Not Just Bikes and Road Guy Rob that I could find. If you have any evidence of NJB feeling differently, I would love to see it.
Ok. It seems like they disagree, and NJB prefers his subreddit to not have that content. Rather than reading into the choice of the term "car apologist" (which is generally anybody who defends a thing or position--it's not "apology" like apologizing for a personal insult) or the timing of videos, I think his direct statements on his opinions on cars and driving are much stronger evidence. I think it's much more likely that you are missing something, or misinterpreting something, than his whole video about rental cars and his whole video about driving in the Netherlands being, as well as the vast array of videos where he says "there should be some car-free areas" and "separate cars from pedestrians and cyclists" and very much does not say "ban all cars" are what, a big psy-op? Like if those are all lies, why not allow Rob's stuff on the subreddit?
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
To be honest I probably would have had no objection if you left your post at the first 2 paragraphs, because I realize modding is hard, and would have left it alone unless I saw particularly egregious examples in the future. The assertion that I was just being biased because I provided feedback is what got to me.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I've definitely reported posts whose "thesis" I agreed with, or agree with some of what they said, but then made big sweeping claims that aren't supported or attack strawmen.
Rather than "guessing" you could have maybe asked for more detail?
I'm guessing you also know that posters on every side have constantly accused us of this since the Motte was created.
I'm aware, and I didn't say it was bias, I just said it was inconsistent.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I don't disagree, but if pedestrian bridges (not at-grade) are car-centric, then they're bad and that means that something has gone wrong in the planning process, right? If they're bad, then maybe the planner somehow didn't take into account all road users, for example. But yes, it only means that this part of the city is bad and car-centric; the rest of the city will still be pretty okay.
It still feels like we're talking past each other here. Merely having a pedestrian bridge, without knowing any other context, is not the be-all end-all of city design. There probably are good reasons to sometimes have them.
Do you think they're bad and shouldn't have been built? I personally don't see any problem with them, and in fact there are a few people in the comments section who like them too. But then there's these urbanist types who say things like the following:
It's kind of hard to tell with the Japan example, but it looks to me like there could have easily been crosswalks on the road below. If I'm just trying to cross one of the roads, say on the left, then a crosswalk would be something like 1/4 the length and not require walking uphill. But it looks like it might be connecting to a higher building on the right? I can't really tell.
The one in China looks like a good example of the urbanist complaint. Why is there such a massive road there to begin with? (Also, does this picture look digital to you? Something about it seems off). There's absolutely no way it's feasible for all of the people who live/work in all of those huge buildings to get in and out by car. It already has crosswalks and an intersection, so it's not like it's preventing traffic from having to stop. Replacing some of the car lanes with bike lanes and a train or dedicated bus lane would make the road easy to cross at street level and increase capacity.
At the end of the day, if I think that these complaints come from a place of actually caring about car-centric infrastructure, I get confused and start wondering why people would complain about something that seems perfectly fine and usable.
Is this just a question of what one is used to? Without the alternatives being pointed out to me, I would have never thought about many of these things. For example, why are crosswalks at street level, requiring you to step down from the sidewalk? That seemed obvious to me, but in some places the crosswalk is raised and cars have to go over it. This has a number of advantages (forces cars to slow down at intersections and in places where pedestrians are likely to be, makes the trip smoother for those with disabilities, makes children more visible to those in high vehicles, etc.) but seems to be practically unheard of in North America. To someone who's used to it, narrow car lanes and limited road and parking space might seem "fine and usable." Or maybe "fine and usable" is just a low bar for a major city in a country as rich as the United States, which spends lots of money on infrastructure, but still manages to be full of congested and crumbling roads.
It seems to be from a dislike that car traffic gets to flow unimpeded.
Car traffic already doesn't flow unimpeded in cities, because of congestion.
Again, "annoy drivers" is not the end goal. The goal is to make walking, cycling, and transit easier. The problem is that these alternative modes all get vastly fewer resources and consideration than driving, which makes them much worse and makes driving slightly better (well, in the short term). If you theoretically could have a pedestrian crossing that was as easy as a crosswalk but didn't require cars to stop, that would be fine. But we don't have that--we have to tradeoff between these things. That's what the complaint means: Drivers are not being asked to make any compromise or sacrifice while pedestrians are being asked to make a very substantial one.
Doesn't that lead to the logical conclusion that a city should basically ban almost every car?
The center of a city should have the absolute minimum possible number of vehicles. As you move to a more spread out area, cars make more sense.
How about the things they do disavow? All those channels exist on a sliding scale of more or less car hatred, but some of the more car-hatey ones hate the YouTube channel Road Guy Rob, who notably does not hate cars and says himself he is pro-car while recognizing that many of the Dutch infrastructure NJB champions as being great for bicycles are great for cars alike. However, despite his numerous videos about infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, he gets called a "car apologist" by Alan Fisher. This is a sentiment that NJB shares. In RGR's latest livestream, he mentions that NJB may even be mad at him.
The Alan Fisher video is literally an entire video of jokes, come on now. Without knowing more about Road Guy Rob or what exactly NJB's issue is, which isn't explained, I can't really comment.
I think you weren't sure about what constitutes the "worst NIMBYs." By coincidence this video just came out, and I think it provides a decent example. There's no issues of pretending that zoning is a property right, it's just very obvious that the neighbors are claiming the right to prevent anything from being built on some nearby land the city already owned because it might be slightly inconvenient for them. There's a good kafkatrap as well (opposing having too many affordable units and then opposing too few affordable units, and also all the time demanding the market-rate units are "luxury"). The already-existing taller building got in on the action as well. It also points out that several of the representatives claimed to support affordable housing... just not in their district, I guess. To paraphrase you, if I wanted to spread the message that I cared about anyone other than myself, or supported affordable housing, I wouldn't do, well, any of those things.
I went through training for this when I worked for the Scouts. If you even had the opportunity to commit abuse, you had already broken most of the rules we learned, which for the most part seemed pretty reasonable to me and I don't think would prevent any mentorship if followed.
No, because as your list of examples indicates, the group itself has basically nothing to do with it, except around some details. I won't pretend to be a mind reader and say why people sexually abuse children, except that, as the saying goes, "power corrupts." (Some) people will do whatever they feel like if they think they'll get away with it. Spend all your free time thinking of a justification to yourself, and you'll find one. Tell yourself enough times "how bad can it be?" and you'll start to believe it. Ideology is irrelevant, just like communist leaders often direct much consumption to themselves.
Also don't forget that caring about power, and about your own position, will always be an advantage over people who are actually selfless when it comes to taking power. Narcissists, sociopaths, and the generally power-hungry are willing and able to lie, to pretend, to work themselves into positions of trust and authority. People are willing to cover for their friends, or to maintain their own power, or for many other reasons. Again, ideology is irrelevant; in some sense, this is just one particular instantiation of "who watches the watchers?" You could also ask why some CEOs steal from their company, or why some politicians take bribes to favor one group over another, or why police abuse their authority and then cover for each other. Has anyone solved this problem?
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