fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
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User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
From what I remember, some of the fluffers were absolute smoke shows. The one I remember was way hotter than Aella.
https://imgur.com/a/QMsEBrK (meme not a fluffer)
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
In an ideal world we'd fly people in from the Nigeria, India, etc and fly them back with a fat stack of cash from US wages, but the US won't do that. Non-forced labour from the first world is not a viable replacement for migrant farmworkers.
Canada has many immigration issues, but the temporary foreign worker program for agriculture is actually a huge success. Absolutely dialled work groups from Jamaica/Guatemala/etc come in for various picking seasons, make a fat stack of cash, and then leave to a different country elsewhere for another harvest season.
There is actual competition between farmers for the best/highest skil work groups because the boys are absolutely dialled at their various fruit/vegetable harvesting skills.
The huge issue with farm work is that it isn't year round, which is a massive issue for western workers.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
The American people famously never get extremely mad about the cost of living.
I'm sure there will be absolutely 0 societal backlash from the resulting increase in prices when farm worker pay goes up and productivity goes down.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
If you paid enough and also improved working conditions, you could guaranteed get better people to work on the farm
I'm not sure about this. For one, while you made good point about cost/substitution, there is a ceiling on how much you can pay farm manual labour.
Especially because of how seasonal the work is. No first world citizen wants a job for 6 months and then ??? for the other 6.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Yeah the last time we did regime changes in Iran it had such great outcomes!!!
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Not to mention the whole coup/Shah thing on behalf of oil interests.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
It wasn't a strawman, it was a humorous example to point out that "it's fine if your travel time increases 3x, you can just think about stuff and you won't even notice" is a profoundly silly thing to say. Obviously we're not going to replace air travel with ocean liners.
I'm not sure why you think there isn't demand for bike travel? Do you think there is a conspiracy to make bike lanes against the will of the electorate? In Toronto, where I live, pro-bike lane politicians are quite popular, and we just had an election where a very notable anti-bike lane incumbent lost their seat in an election where their party dominated.
Toronto bike share use has increased like 20% YoY for 5 years and counting.
Again you say "biking doesn't make sense" but I don't understand where you get that. From my apartment to my office the options are:
Drive: 20-30 minutes (longer with accidents or road closures), parking is $30+ a day in the area.
Transit: 45 minutes, longer with (frequent) delays
Walk: 1.5 hours
Bike: 28 minutes
Biking makes the most sense here by far, because it's tied for fastest, it's the cheapest, and most importantly imo, it's by far the most consistent
And this pattern plays out constantly. Driving is fast, unless it's rush hour. Parking is very expensive. Transit basically always takes 30+ minutes due to walking, waiting, and transfers. Biking is incredibly fast and always the same amount of time per distance.
Note, I live in the downtown core of a major city. I don't give a shit about biking in a suburban hellscape and I agree it's probably not a very good mode of transportation out there. Although I find it pretty funny that "the land of the free" totally falls apart for "preference of form of travel". Similarly, I also find it funny you feel comfortable dictating people's travel options to them.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Thanks for sharing that snippet. I did not realize Warhammer books were packing heat.
Curious why you shared it though, maybe I need a coffee but I'm not getting the connection.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
The fact that the federal government invented e-verify and then doesn't make anyone use it is such blatant evidence they don't actually want to fix this.
They literally invented a perfect solution but won't use it...
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
I guess if none of my negative examples are good enough, do you have any positive ones? Because you're right, LA is an example of a car-centric city, which did it's best to orient cars and yet driving there sucks.
I guess you're saying they specifically did a bad job and that's why their traffic sucks. I'm saying at a certain population size (depending on geography, alternatives, etc) it's not possible to do it well period. Because at a certain point the people of the city/society stop letting you flatten neighborhoods for more highways, and then your road capacity gets fixed and fills up and bam here we are.
Are there any large cities that were able to scale car use into the mid-millions well?
Because like I said, even the sunbelt cities who are in their growth golden area are seeing 5-8% YoY growth in travel times/delays/etc. So they're well on their way to being just like LA!
Also thanks for the point about low road per capita in LA, I didn't know that and this is an interesting sub topic to research.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Distorting the market in favor of “necessary” goods usually ends up with those goods costing just as much, other goods costing more, and inequality rising.
Fully agreed.
I think my gut feeling is that this distorts the market in favor of homeowners, although I really need to sit down with some paper and excel and model this to be confident in my assertions (hence why I am bugging you, as you seem quite knowledgeable on the topic).
I'm also deeply supply pilled on housing, so exempting landlords from taxes on rentals doesn't sound like the worst idea right now (although gutting zoning garbage would be much more effective).
I guess my question(s) to you are:
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am I off base for assuming/feeling like this tax policy will make people tilt even harder towards ownership vs rental
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maybe this is the same question phrased differently but how is this not a huge imputed benefit for home owners? We already give them SO many (tax free appreciation, the fact you get so much leverage at all, frequently able to gain tax benefits from mortgage interest or Smith maneuver HELOCs, tax breaks/credits for Hosie upgrades that improve quality of life subsidized by taxpayers) and now on top of that there is a consumption tax on rent.
I also again want thank you for introducing this idea to me. I've actually been thinking a lot about tax policy recently (lmao) and I'd recommend taking a look at the Mirrlees report if this is a subject of interest to you, it was cool.
Personally, I was thinking of a tax regime along the lines of:
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Land value tax (maybe not 100% Georgist, as I think there are some economically optimal but societally sub optimal outcomes in extremely expensive downtown cores)
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0% corporate tax
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Aggressive marginal income taxes with brackets wayyyyy up into the millions.
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Elimination of tax deferral/planning at a HoldCo level with extremely punitive (in Canada, referred to as "Part IV taxes") measures to ensure that all cash not reinvested into businesses is taxed immediately. Galen Weston, a Canadian billionaire, has a private HoldCo that receives more than $100mil in dividends each year from his public operating companies. I want that $100mil either poured back into his operating companies at their level as tangible investments in the company, or taxed at his personal income tax rate before he gets to invest it in whatever else he feels like.
The two outstanding parts to this "model" are:
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I need to make sure "Part IV on steroids" doesn't break LP/GP structures and other such things. I am not trying to cripple the finance industry, just ensure everyone pays their fair share and money gets put to the highest and best use.
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I wasn't sure how to deal with sales taxes. I generally view them as regressive and kind of silly, and a burden on everyone to file for, etc. seemed "cleaner" to just boil it all down to income tax and then ensure everyone's income was fully reported.
However, FairTax might be converting me. It is actually even cleaner to just delete everything and instead just do sales tax. It's an interesting proposal.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
That's kind of my point though.
Even major cities which have tried to prioritize driving as the primary transport modality fail, because it doesn't scale.
I'm sure 50 years ago the LA road per capita stat was way better. And then LA's population continued to rise, and amount of roads stayed fixed.
The sunbelt cities are earlier in this life cycle. Their populations are lower and they're not so sprawled you can't drive across them. But they'll keep growing, eventually more up then out, and traffic will continue to get worse and worse, which we already see.
Yeah great plan, let's see how that's working in cities which have leaned that way like LA.... Oh wow no way, it's one of the most congested places on the continent? That's crazy! Who could ever have predicted that...
Maybe Dallas and Houston? They're doing better than LA, but no suprise their traffic congestion stats get worse every year. It's almost like this doesn't work at scale.
Putting aside the fact that cities that are 50% parking area absolutely suck.
The problem there is too many people in too little space
At this point it's all just preferences though. I believe what you say, it is a calmer existence in a less dense north american city. I also find it a soulless hellscape of awful design that I want to get away from immediately, whereas one of my favorite activities is wandering around Toronto with my dog (no destination, just vibes).
Edit: I should add, I have no problems with less dense cities, and think they should be free to shape their built form however they please, which they do. I dislike this form, so I don't go (which is fine). But then dense cities don't get this benefit, and have to cater to everyone's tastes, which results in really mediocre outcomes. If one doesn't like bike lanes, one should move somewhere that doesn't have or need them, instead of fighting to make everything worse for everyone, including themselves.
The issue is that people who have (valid) preferences for living in less dense cities then try to take their preferences and impose them on dense cities (also funny how the suburban preference people still love coming downtown, but the downtown people don't want to go hang out in the suburbs, I wonder why), and everyone loses because it fundamentally doesn't work because of spacial limitations and a refusal to change anything, ever.
Build bike lanes for more efficient transportation? No! Can't take space from cars?
Build LRTs or dedicated bus lanes? NO! can't take space from cars.
Build subways? Okay but only one as they are expensive.
WHY IS TRAFFIC SO BAD? WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS WOULD HAPPEN?!?!?!?
I'll also offer some hope re: cycling. I bike most months of the year, basically only Dec/Jan are when my ability to bike is seriously constrained. Snow plowing infrastructure has improved a lot, and we have sidewalk plows now that do bike lanes, so they're quite clear. Also climate change means even Toronto winters are very mild. Feels like we get more rain than snow in winter now, and days under -10 are so rare vs my childhood.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Driving's just a lot better than cycling for most things
Fully agree, that's why I own a car. I am typing this from the waiting room at the dealership as they replace my underside cover.
There is one thing that driving profoundly fails at though, both on its own and really really badly once you compare to cycling.
Scale.
The road capacity of downtown cores is fixed. The population, as more and more towers get built, is not.
Each human wants to go places, if they all pick "car", eventually it all stops working. Nothing can fix this aside from having people go places not in a car.
Coincidentally, bikes are ridiculously better than cars downtown as they are much faster.
From my apartment to the dealership is 19 minutes right now by car or bike. This afternoon rush hour, it'll be over 30 minutes by car, and still 19 minutes by bike.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
I agree with you there. The rules of the road are not enforced enough for anyone. Cars and bike drivers both need to shape up, or be made to.
I do agree, bikes, due to their flexibility and relative lack of danger posed to others, do dumb shit. Like I said, I am in favor of much more enforcement.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Lets you think and go on autopilot, making up for lost speed.
You might be on to something here. We should replace all trans-atlantic flights with ships again. It's so simple, the passengers can just think and that will pass the additional time, they won't even notice!
Walking to my office is a 1hr 25 min walk, or 28 minute bike. I would vastly prefer to not wake up a full hour earlier, and no amount of extra "thinking" time will make up for that...
Syncs with other forms of transport well, no restrictions on taking a non-existent bike with you.
Solved by bike rental/bike share programs in most major cities.
Can easily head into a shop without having to tie up a bike.
This is significantly easier and faster (or equivalent, if there is ample parking) than parking a car. This takes 30 seconds? How is this a barrier?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
"we designed a huge majority of the land use of the built environment for only one modality of transportation, and now that modality is the dominant form. Checkmate atheists"
You're not exactly working with a control group here...
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Today there are people who ride bikes as back then but the public discussion is dominated by a new group who are Cyclists. Ie. people who make cycling a replacement for a car and a core part of their identity.
What a lovely strawman.
In my major North American city, basically every pro cycling person I see and hear has opinions like "my building has 0.3 parking spots per person, and I want to get to work faster than walking/transit" or "I like biking to my soccer league but the current layout of roads makes me fear for my life"
The vast majority of cyclists I see passing by my apartment window are on city rental bikes, which are 30 minute time limit (you only use for A>B, not recreation) and are super heavy so you can't go fast.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Nature paths don't have store entrances all along them for people to veer into or randomly pop out of.
Also frequently they are much wider than sidewalks.
They also don't have anywhere near the clutter (sandwich boards, planter boxes, utility poles) that sidewalks do. They also don't have as much pedestrian density (usually) as sidewalks.
what is the difference between a bike lane on a road and a bike lane on a sidewalk that was expanded onto the road?
I think you prefer the sidewalk bike lane as there is grade separation. It's possible to make nicely separated bike lanes in roads too. Not all bike lanes are painted lines, American cities just don't build nice ones.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Have you seen a sidewalk?
This is such a bad idea. Sidewalks are full of stuff like signs, trees, children, dogs, people moving in any direction at any time because inertia isn't a thing when you're walking.
The only sidewalks it's possible to bike on functionally would be completely empty ones near strip malls or residential neighborhoods in suburbia, at which point, sure, bikes can go crazy on those. But the second there's more than a handful of people per block this gets incredibly stupid.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1yr ago
Interesting.
The rental price drop makes sense, although seems a bit handwavey. Although rental prices are set by the market (supply/demand) anyway so I'd imagine they'd have a hard time arbitrarily going up.
The DVD analogy really bugs me though, I need to think about why.
Partially it's because DVDs are a luxury item consumed for enjoyment and places to live are a hard requirement for life to not suck. I don't understand why renters aren't entitled to any "philosophical rewards" despite also being humans who need to live somewhere, who have any number of reasons to not want to buy a home (either voluntary, or involuntary). That part doesn't sound very fair.
There's also the fact that renter FairTax paid >>> homeowner FairTax paid over basically any period. Again, seems quite unfair, although I'll need to think on this more. I don't remember how deadweight losses imposed by taxes work but I'm curious how that plays in this specific scenario.
That's a great point actually
I'm concerned that all these jobs are significantly more productive than farm labour, and thus command higher wages.
I guess we can price floor farm work wages but I have a feeling Americans will freak the fuck out when strawberries get more expensive.
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