Why hazard a guess when there's actual research that will tell you about Trump supporters. They're authoritarians -- that's the common thread. Couple of good articles in Vox on this.
With whining racist AC complaining about the wrong facts on Slashdot but too cowardly to speak clearly and so resorting to hints ("moneychanger"). Poor ickle racist AC. I bet you pine for the days when men were men, women knew their place, and you could carry out a lynching without anyone complaining.
Why on earth would you cite water laws as being something instituted by "a bunch of socialist states"?? As the article you yourself linked to demonstrates, these laws are actually an embodiment of crazy ideologies about individual ownership -- the principle being that the owner of the rainwater is not the person on whose head it falls, but the person whose great-grandpappy laid claim to a river into which the raindrops might conceivably wend their way in due course. Extremes of individual property ownership, in other words, not state appropriation.
You really have to live in the most bizarre headspace to conceive of the wild frickin' West of the 19th Century, the era in which these laws typically originated, as an era of socialism.
Gosh, I wonder if there are any externalities associated with your choices? Because the way you write it, it sounds like the only factor to consider is cost. That might be just a teensy bit shortsighted.
I'm wary of any single point solutions. They generally imply a lack of full engagement with the issues and too high a reliance on a personal perspective. For example, a focus on the behavior of regulators as individuals means ignoring systemic effects, funding, toothlessness written into law, conflicting objectives, tools and methodologies, innovation, and arms race effects, to name just seven potential; factors off the top of my head. If you are indeed a consultant, you really ought to be doing more to define, structure, prioritise and analyze the problem. Even in a Slashdot discussion. Just for reasons of professional pride.
I'm pretty sure that very few people, relatively speaking, travel from Watford to Hertford. In the South, mass transit routes follow travel patterns fairly closely.
That's because the UK has shamefully underinvested in transport infrastructure for the North. There's lots of studies showing the roi for northern transport schemes are huge cf crossrail etc. Germany shows what can be done. But of course public transport always makes most sense for relatively densely populated areas.
I did realize that effective was the operative word, and you'd have to misread my post quite thoroughly to think otherwise. My question was, what are you proposing should be done to achieve more effective regulation, given the world as we know it, ms/mr erp consultant?
You said, and I quote: "Government - with few exceptions - is the problem not the solution"
You now say: "effective government oversight IS needed".
Presumably you mean something like: "effective government oversight is needed, but in practice we not only don't have it, we never get it, and spending more doesn't seem to improve things".
Your handle implies you are an erp consultant. Perhaps you could take a leaf out of McKinsey's book, and put together a decent problem statement and an issue tree for how this challenge could be solved. No point just moaning. For my own part, I will say that some regulators are clearly more effective than other regulators; that adequate funding is necessary but not sufficient; that many texts have been written on effective regulation and there's a reasonable corpus of knowledge built up; and that *disproportionate* naysaying itself damages the effectiveness of regulators.
What a stupid bloody comment -- in each case you cite, are you suggesting that absent a government regulator, companies would have behaved *better*? You yourself used phrases like "banks were able to get away with things" suggesting you understand that people will often behave venally and what is required is a decent regulator.
You speak as though public transport has to be so infrequent that you have to plan which bus / train to catch. Where I live (London), a bus comes along every minute or so; a tube every three minutes or so. There's no need to plan or wait.
Why on earth would you think that it is a universal that pubic transport "takes significantly longer to get [where you want to go]"? Surely you have some imagination. Have you never been to a congested city? Many, many journeys in London, for example, are quicker on the tube than by car. You wouldn't go from Finchley Road to Pinner by car quicker than by tube. You wouldn't get in from Highgate to central London by car quicker than by tube. You can't get to Manchester faster in a car, either -- 2 hours vs 3.5hours. And of course beyond all of this, there is the fact that car journey times would be dramatically slower if the millions of journeys currently taking place on public transport in London were displaced into private cars.
On germs, if you live in a city, you cannot reasonably minimise your exposure to human-borne pathogens just by avoiding public transport. And it's not clear that's a good thing to do anyway.
And on EVs, public transport is capable of being EV. Trains are often EVs. Buses aren't there yet, but trolleybuses are. Metro systems are EVs. Etc.
Finally, the US has poor public transport infrastructure for many reasons: size is one, but it is not *so* gigantic. Low density urban sprawl, lack of planning, a love affair with the car, and an unwillingness to invest in public transport because it's socialised evil (I paraphrase) are more important reasons.
That is truly jaw-dropping. How do these editors live with themselves? I mean, Fox is relatively understandable, this doesn't fit their main narratives, but CNN and MSNBC?
Well, in fairness, that is the EU... (don't take that as a knock, you are free to run your nation how you wish) You have a situation there that doesn't exist anywhere else that I am aware of. Between your gas taxes, your car taxes, your EV rebates, etc. I can understand why more people in the EU buy EVs than anywhere else in the world.
Well sure, the EU is unique. So is the US. And more particularly, so is Texas. You argued that EVs make sense only where fuel taxes are high *and* you drive a lot. Fuel costs are high in the UK, but I don't drive a lot and an EV makes sense precisely for that reason. So I was showing you that your assumptions about when there is a good use case for EVs are far from universal.
On price: myy Renault Zoe costs me a grand total of £180 per month -- maybe 300 bucks.
On numbers: Zoes aren't yet selling like hotcakes, and range plays a big part in that, but the numbers are growing pretty rapidly.
On chargepoints: I said many millions of folks could fit a charge point at home. You said I overestimate how many folks have a garage or safe place or own their own home. Look again at what I said: "many millions". Look what I didn't say: "almost all"; "the majority" etc. It could be a small fraction of the population who had a suitable home and still be many millions of folks. I dont believe you would specifically argue that there are *not* many millions of Americans who have a home with a driveway and the authority to install a charge point, would you? You're simply focusing on the people who don't. But that doesn't mean I've over-estimated, it shows you're thinking about downside risk, not upside opportunity.
1. You pay a crap ton for fuel because of taxes 2. You drive well above the average number of miles
Funny you should say this. I have an electric car precisely because we drive so little. It's very cheap -- £180 per month including charging costs, about $300. It's a little Renault Zoe and it's fantastic. We charge it maybe once a week. (The charge point was installed free, too)
The bet is that there is a large chunk of the population who prefer the tradeoffs involved in an electric car to the tradeoffs involved in a gas-powered car, especially once range anxiety is dealt with by hitting 200miles. Clearly, range anxiety is more psychological than a practical concern for the typical US driver, given that on average people drive 37 miles per day. There are many millions of folks who could fit a charge point at home and find themselves using it only once a week, overnight, and using a public charging station maybe once a quarter. The $35k price point is a way of accessing this large chunk of the population.
Now you may say that for you, it's obvious that the tradeoffs are nowhere near to close to favouring an electric car -- and who's to argue with how you personally feel? But it's not obvious that the same is true for everyone else. Certainly, many people who've been in my little Renault Zoe with a wimpy range of just 60 miles have told me they really prefer it to their gas-powered cars: they're very attracted by the quiet, lack of vibration, instant acceleration and ability to charge at home. (Being urban in a city with good public transport, we charge it less than once a week.)
Given respiratory disease rates and noise pollution, that "just" is a pretty extraordinary qualifier. A Delhi where cars are all electric would be a shit-ton quieter and less smelly and less bad for your health, even if the fuel supply wasn't decarbonised.
Where I live, I see at least a dozen Zoes. Zoes are great cars! They have one significant limitation: range. But 99%+ of my trips are under 5 miles in length, so it isn't an issue. YMMV, quite literally.
Apart from range, what on earth's not to like? They work the same way as a petrol car, just... better. Quieter, nippier off the red lights, no vibrations, automated everything, no need to stop at a petrol station ever, fully charged each morning. They're ace! And Zoes are pretty well spec'd for a car in this price range (satnav, rear camera, automated lights, wipers, aircon, active charcoal filtering, good looking interior and exterior). And it costs me £180 a month all-in, and in three years, I'll hand the keys back and get a new car with a much better range.
I couldn't give a hairy shit what Clarkson thinks.
Kindly point out where in my post I assumed car occupancy was 1? It takes some chutzpah on your part, by the way, to make the complaint you did and then talk about cars carrying 2, 3 or 4 people, when the average car occupancy in the UK is about 1.5. https://www.gov.uk/government/...
It takes even more chutzpah to then pull mpg numbers out your ass, in which -- surprise! -- you underestimate bus mpg. 2? 4? More like 6: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...
The *entire point* of my using the London example (vs a US or UK example) was to show what could be achieved in a well-regulated bus system designed to promote ridership.
Slashdot Mirror
Why hazard a guess when there's actual research that will tell you about Trump supporters. They're authoritarians -- that's the common thread. Couple of good articles in Vox on this.
Sanders supporters are not authoritarians
With whining racist AC complaining about the wrong facts on Slashdot but too cowardly to speak clearly and so resorting to hints ("moneychanger"). Poor ickle racist AC. I bet you pine for the days when men were men, women knew their place, and you could carry out a lynching without anyone complaining.
Why on earth would you cite water laws as being something instituted by "a bunch of socialist states"?? As the article you yourself linked to demonstrates, these laws are actually an embodiment of crazy ideologies about individual ownership -- the principle being that the owner of the rainwater is not the person on whose head it falls, but the person whose great-grandpappy laid claim to a river into which the raindrops might conceivably wend their way in due course. Extremes of individual property ownership, in other words, not state appropriation.
You really have to live in the most bizarre headspace to conceive of the wild frickin' West of the 19th Century, the era in which these laws typically originated, as an era of socialism.
And of course scale effects and learning curves will drive the costs down much further.
Gosh, I wonder if there are any externalities associated with your choices? Because the way you write it, it sounds like the only factor to consider is cost. That might be just a teensy bit shortsighted.
I'm wary of any single point solutions. They generally imply a lack of full engagement with the issues and too high a reliance on a personal perspective. For example, a focus on the behavior of regulators as individuals means ignoring systemic effects, funding, toothlessness written into law, conflicting objectives, tools and methodologies, innovation, and arms race effects, to name just seven potential; factors off the top of my head. If you are indeed a consultant, you really ought to be doing more to define, structure, prioritise and analyze the problem. Even in a Slashdot discussion. Just for reasons of professional pride.
I'm pretty sure that very few people, relatively speaking, travel from Watford to Hertford. In the South, mass transit routes follow travel patterns fairly closely.
That's because the UK has shamefully underinvested in transport infrastructure for the North. There's lots of studies showing the roi for northern transport schemes are huge cf crossrail etc. Germany shows what can be done. But of course public transport always makes most sense for relatively densely populated areas.
I did realize that effective was the operative word, and you'd have to misread my post quite thoroughly to think otherwise. My question was, what are you proposing should be done to achieve more effective regulation, given the world as we know it, ms/mr erp consultant?
You said, and I quote: "Government - with few exceptions - is the problem not the solution"
You now say: "effective government oversight IS needed".
Presumably you mean something like: "effective government oversight is needed, but in practice we not only don't have it, we never get it, and spending more doesn't seem to improve things".
Your handle implies you are an erp consultant. Perhaps you could take a leaf out of McKinsey's book, and put together a decent problem statement and an issue tree for how this challenge could be solved. No point just moaning. For my own part, I will say that some regulators are clearly more effective than other regulators; that adequate funding is necessary but not sufficient; that many texts have been written on effective regulation and there's a reasonable corpus of knowledge built up; and that *disproportionate* naysaying itself damages the effectiveness of regulators.
What a stupid bloody comment -- in each case you cite, are you suggesting that absent a government regulator, companies would have behaved *better*? You yourself used phrases like "banks were able to get away with things" suggesting you understand that people will often behave venally and what is required is a decent regulator.
You speak as though public transport has to be so infrequent that you have to plan which bus / train to catch. Where I live (London), a bus comes along every minute or so; a tube every three minutes or so. There's no need to plan or wait.
This is a really weird post.
Why on earth would you think that it is a universal that pubic transport "takes significantly longer to get [where you want to go]"? Surely you have some imagination. Have you never been to a congested city? Many, many journeys in London, for example, are quicker on the tube than by car. You wouldn't go from Finchley Road to Pinner by car quicker than by tube. You wouldn't get in from Highgate to central London by car quicker than by tube. You can't get to Manchester faster in a car, either -- 2 hours vs 3.5hours. And of course beyond all of this, there is the fact that car journey times would be dramatically slower if the millions of journeys currently taking place on public transport in London were displaced into private cars.
On germs, if you live in a city, you cannot reasonably minimise your exposure to human-borne pathogens just by avoiding public transport. And it's not clear that's a good thing to do anyway.
And on EVs, public transport is capable of being EV. Trains are often EVs. Buses aren't there yet, but trolleybuses are. Metro systems are EVs. Etc.
Finally, the US has poor public transport infrastructure for many reasons: size is one, but it is not *so* gigantic. Low density urban sprawl, lack of planning, a love affair with the car, and an unwillingness to invest in public transport because it's socialised evil (I paraphrase) are more important reasons.
That is truly jaw-dropping. How do these editors live with themselves? I mean, Fox is relatively understandable, this doesn't fit their main narratives, but CNN and MSNBC?
Well, in fairness, that is the EU... (don't take that as a knock, you are free to run your nation how you wish)
You have a situation there that doesn't exist anywhere else that I am aware of. Between your gas taxes, your car taxes, your EV rebates, etc. I can understand why more people in the EU buy EVs than anywhere else in the world.
Well sure, the EU is unique. So is the US. And more particularly, so is Texas.
You argued that EVs make sense only where fuel taxes are high *and* you drive a lot. Fuel costs are high in the UK, but I don't drive a lot and an EV makes sense precisely for that reason. So I was showing you that your assumptions about when there is a good use case for EVs are far from universal.
On price: myy Renault Zoe costs me a grand total of £180 per month -- maybe 300 bucks.
On numbers: Zoes aren't yet selling like hotcakes, and range plays a big part in that, but the numbers are growing pretty rapidly.
On chargepoints: I said many millions of folks could fit a charge point at home. You said I overestimate how many folks have a garage or safe place or own their own home. Look again at what I said: "many millions". Look what I didn't say: "almost all"; "the majority" etc. It could be a small fraction of the population who had a suitable home and still be many millions of folks. I dont believe you would specifically argue that there are *not* many millions of Americans who have a home with a driveway and the authority to install a charge point, would you? You're simply focusing on the people who don't. But that doesn't mean I've over-estimated, it shows you're thinking about downside risk, not upside opportunity.
EVs right now seem to only make sense if:
1. You pay a crap ton for fuel because of taxes
2. You drive well above the average number of miles
Funny you should say this. I have an electric car precisely because we drive so little. It's very cheap -- £180 per month including charging costs, about $300. It's a little Renault Zoe and it's fantastic. We charge it maybe once a week. (The charge point was installed free, too)
The bet is that there is a large chunk of the population who prefer the tradeoffs involved in an electric car to the tradeoffs involved in a gas-powered car, especially once range anxiety is dealt with by hitting 200miles. Clearly, range anxiety is more psychological than a practical concern for the typical US driver, given that on average people drive 37 miles per day. There are many millions of folks who could fit a charge point at home and find themselves using it only once a week, overnight, and using a public charging station maybe once a quarter. The $35k price point is a way of accessing this large chunk of the population.
Now you may say that for you, it's obvious that the tradeoffs are nowhere near to close to favouring an electric car -- and who's to argue with how you personally feel? But it's not obvious that the same is true for everyone else. Certainly, many people who've been in my little Renault Zoe with a wimpy range of just 60 miles have told me they really prefer it to their gas-powered cars: they're very attracted by the quiet, lack of vibration, instant acceleration and ability to charge at home. (Being urban in a city with good public transport, we charge it less than once a week.)
It just moves the exhaust elsewhere.
Given respiratory disease rates and noise pollution, that "just" is a pretty extraordinary qualifier. A Delhi where cars are all electric would be a shit-ton quieter and less smelly and less bad for your health, even if the fuel supply wasn't decarbonised.
Gotta love that post-hoc rationalisation.
Own your words and admit that you didn't think about the geography.
It makes as much sense to say that the Sahara is the Middle East as it does to say that Indonesia or Pakistan are the Middle East.
And this despite my agreeing that a massive advantage of solar power is that it can offer many countries a greater degree of energy independence.
In what sense is Sahara the Middle East? Look at a map!
Where I live, I see at least a dozen Zoes. Zoes are great cars! They have one significant limitation: range. But 99%+ of my trips are under 5 miles in length, so it isn't an issue. YMMV, quite literally.
Apart from range, what on earth's not to like? They work the same way as a petrol car, just ... better. Quieter, nippier off the red lights, no vibrations, automated everything, no need to stop at a petrol station ever, fully charged each morning. They're ace! And Zoes are pretty well spec'd for a car in this price range (satnav, rear camera, automated lights, wipers, aircon, active charcoal filtering, good looking interior and exterior). And it costs me £180 a month all-in, and in three years, I'll hand the keys back and get a new car with a much better range.
I couldn't give a hairy shit what Clarkson thinks.
Kindly point out where in my post I assumed car occupancy was 1? It takes some chutzpah on your part, by the way, to make the complaint you did and then talk about cars carrying 2, 3 or 4 people, when the average car occupancy in the UK is about 1.5.
https://www.gov.uk/government/...
It takes even more chutzpah to then pull mpg numbers out your ass, in which -- surprise! -- you underestimate bus mpg. 2? 4? More like 6:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...
The *entire point* of my using the London example (vs a US or UK example) was to show what could be achieved in a well-regulated bus system designed to promote ridership.
Wow.
In the UK, it's:
"That'll be 27.73"
*get wallet, tap card*
And that is it. A little beep signifies the transaction was approved
Apple Pay works the same way, except no need to get your wallet out.
Not in the UK, you don't. You can tap through the gates on the Tube with your phone, for example