This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
If your goal is to reduce congestion, which is typically a major stated goal of these projects, then yes, it's clearly a failure.
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.
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?
Okay, lets bring some numbers into it. I-35 through downtown has an average annual daily traffic count (AADT) of 150,000-200,000. The widest section of the Katy Freeway in Houston has an AADT of about 300,000. It seems plausible that if we doubled the width of I-35 we could get an AADT of 250,000-300,000 before experiencing the current level of congestion. That's 50,000 extra commuters (since AADT measures traffic both ways). To put that in perspective, 50,000 is 4% of the entire population of Travis County. Suppose an entire city block has to be demolished the whole length of the freeway through the county, does that directly impact 50,000 people? Do 4% of the county's citizens live or work directly adjacent to the East side of I-35? It's not like these people are thrown into the fires of Mordor either. The massively increased throughput will open up development opportunities further away from the city center, increasing the supply of housing and driving down rents.
Having your business seized is probably much worse than being able to live in a slightly further out area is good, and destroying the downtown makes it less valuable to everyone, including the new commuters, but as I tried to describe in my replies to curious, the main issue is cost. 7.5 billion is $140,000 per commuter. Another issue is just time--Austin's population increased by 200,000 between 2005 and 2015 (corresponding to each of those commuters supporting a family of 4, though in reality this is generous since families aren't that big any more). Are you going to build another 4 lanes every <10 years? Constant construction, until the whole of downtown is pavement?
The problem isn't being too far from the city, it's limitations on development. There's enormous amounts of underdeveloped land extremely close to downtown. Destroying an apartment building close to downtown so you can build more sprawling houses far away is a terrible way to reduce rents. Similarly, development opportunities far away are much less valuable. Like, this is just so backwards--let's destroy development downtown so we can build slightly more very far away? Should we just not have cities at all?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
By market I meant "the supermarket", not a market in the economy sense, sorry
Well, that's the main stated goal because 'people who do not shop or live or work here, but will after we do ' isn't a particularly valuable constituency for local politics, whereas 'people who live here and want driving to be easier is'. But ... imagine we expand the highways, but we track everyone who uses the highway & their frequency of use in the preceding months, and ban anyone from using the highway more frequently than they did in the past. This would ensure congestion is relieved. But seems dumb, precisely because 'existing people driving a bit faster' seems worse than 'more people using the highway'?
If all the transit-urbanism claims are true and that money should go into efficiently constructed subways instead, and if doing so would cause road use to be demanded so much less that current congestion dries up ... strong assumptions, but then yes, the current highway expansion would be pointless. 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?
It makes the question of 'should we stop handing out the truffle mushrooms'? And - if you're an individual who has that power, yes, you should simultaneously stop buying truffles and start buying rice. But given I don't have that power, I don't see how advocating against building the highway helps much - because if the highway stops, the existing (stronger) forces preventing better (i am assuming they are better for this discussion, haven't thought enough to be sure) forms of transit won't suddenly dissipate, we'll be arguably worse off, without expanded highways or better transit
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).
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.
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).
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The market in this case is utility enjoyed by people living where they prefer.
...what? I have no idea what you're trying to say. This is just a non sequitur.
People derive enjoyment from certain living arrangements? This seems pretty uncontroversial to me. Some people may like trees, some may like an upper floor on a tall building, some may like having a garage or a big back yard or a pool or a huge basement or space for their mother in law to live with them but in a physically different structure or any of a zillion other things.
The amount of enjoyment is measured by economists as utility. People might or might not trade something they really like like eating less pizza for something else they like like a skinny waist or giving up a short commute to get some housing feature they prefer. These trade decisions are just as much market decisions as trades purely done with currency they just involve trades of utility, too.
Just because no dollars are exchanged it's still a trade which means it's effectively a market, and the same tools we use to study currency based markets work to study utility markets, it's just harder to directly observe prices.
What trades are you talking about? What does any of this have to do with the subject at hand? I'm well aware of what utility is and the fact that people have preferences, but you haven't explained how any of it relates to roads.
People trade more time commuting for a home that has some feature they value with more utility than one that would have a shorter commute.
This is your 3rd comment and you have yet to say anything that is clearly related to the thread topic. There is no market in roads, which are all built by the government. That roads allow some people to live further out (at the cost of preventing other people from living closer in) does not change this fact.
The roads are the marketplace, which facilitate direct utility trading. It's like the government expanding a market place allowing more people to buy food. The goal of building a road shouldn't be to reduce congestion its to allow more people to pay the congestion price to get the home they value more than the time they pay.
Similar to building a larger market or a second market may not reduce the price of wheat or bread the purpose of the expansion was to it increases the volume of wheat or bread sold in the market.
This is a very bizarre way of making your point.
Whether or not you personally think reducing congestion is a good goal, it is a commonly stated goal. I've already addressed the "people sitting in traffic is fine because you can eventually get places" elsewhere.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link