To expand on this point, 'nuclear waste' consists of a number of different elements and isotopes. Generally speaking, the only isotopes that have half lives long enough to still be producing radioactivity after 100k years are also useful as fuel.
So you reprocess/recycle the waste, extracting those elements for another pass through the reactor. The remaining isotopes tend to be 'hot' - IE highly radioactive with short half lives.
Short half lives mean it's 'cool' orders of magnitude sooner.
Isn't that included in the price of the fuel? I don't think that the EPA and it's equivalents in other countries are going to be letting them off. That's a bit like asking 'What about the waste from refining copper?' when it comes to wiring up your house.
I also believe that the amount of 'nuclear' waste that people are worried about is minimal.
That being said, some reactors like the CANDU don't need enriched fuel.
Would that be an actual case of entrapment, because you demonstrated that you were attempting to observe the laws to the best of your ability and to the best of the ability a reasonable person could reasonably be expected to have?
A jury might find that a reasonable argument, but state legislatures have decided that youths need to be protected from sex so much that, like the gp said, it's a 'strict liability' law, even if the minor wants sex so bad they're willing to lie and obtain forgeries to help assist with their lies.
Budget balance: First, the pipeline opened when I was ONE. I literally don't remember a time when the pipeline(and therefore oil money) wasn't flowing in. Still, from what I've been told, during that time we did have an income tax.
Old budget adjusted for population: 1. It's been well over 30 years since we had to do a budget without oil money. It wouldn't be valid anymore 2. It still wouldn't balance because we cut other taxes in response. 3. We ARE cutting spending. Quite severely. 2013 Budget? 9B revenue, 8B spent, 1B saved. 2014 was 7.6B revenue, 7B spent. 2016? Like I said, $5B was what our congress authorized, but with only $2B of income, that would mean $3B from the reserves, which needs that 75% vote. Spending is half what it was 3 years ago.
The main point is that it takes time to properly wind down spending and spin up new sources of revenue.
that said, Alaska is overly dependent on that money.
No Kidding. Remember the 'socking away' part? Given sufficient time with the high prices, we would have had enough to cover the government on the interest alone.
I am not sure what other industries you have, but consider relying upon a more diversified income stream. You can't control that of course... just saying.
Some limited amounts of farming. Fishing is fairly big. Tourism. Other resource extraction. Believe it or not, some people like retiring up here as opposed to Florida. The military is huge, which helps drive federal spending up here.
Worst case, along with cutting spending in various ways, we may have to implement a state-wide income or sales tax. It's that or jack up the property tax *A LOT*.
What kind of state employee are you? What do you do? Forget the department... like what do you actually do? I'm sure there is some other job that needs whatever that skill is...
1. Student employee at the state university at the moment. I'm not actually too worried about the job. My job security consists of 'He's literally 1/5th the cost of anybody else!'. 2. Mostly fix up web pages*, some script programming, emails lists. It's actually relaxing compared to my last job. 3. I'm actually security+ certified, and have a wide field of experience, but I have this wonderful scholarship from my last employer that pays as much as what I could get elsewhere. So I'm going for a higher degree. 4. Going back to college has been fun. The student position is mostly to widen my resume, provide some spending cash(so I don't have to tap into investments during the summer), etc...
*The department reps who create them do great, mostly. I fix up things like 509 compliance, make sure they're not putting in multi-megabyte images unless necessary, etc...
So look at that price and think of paying it annually. I upgrade frequently. But I do so in the mid levels. You keep pace and don't break the bank.
I buy a good upper mid-grade card and use it until I'm no longer satisfied with it. I'm currently at 5 years with my current card, but am looking at upgrading now.
However, given Alaska's budget situation(currently a state employee)*, I might be out of a job in a couple weeks. So I'm holding on.
*We're having the same thing on a state level as has happened on the federal level several times. Due to the drop in oil prices, our income has gone from about $6B down to $2B. Our budget was about $5B. Being smart lads, our congress had been socking money away, but per the constitution it takes a 75% majority to tap that money. They voted a $5B budget, but didn't manage to vote to tap the reserve. Ergo the Governor did what he had to do and line item vetoed $3B out of $5B in spending. The police and emergency services are the only ones funded after mid-June. My section is looking at a 60% cut, mostly due to us being partially federally funded.
I'm still 'rocking' a Radeon HD 5870. Looking them up on passmark, I have about 400 points on you.
Personally, my standard for upgrading my video card is that the benchmarks would have to double - which just wasn't happening last year, at least affordably. This year it looks like a GTX 960 might be a good choice.
but often works great for the day traders that aren't going to hold onto the stock long enough to see more than a couple of quarters pass in the quest for instant returns.
The vast majority of stock is held for 10 years or longer. Something like 1% of stocks see 99% of the trading.
Your translation doesn't seem to mention a militia at all...
And yours doesn't mention 'the people'. That mention is rather a big deal, I think.
The 'well regulated milita' is known as a prefactory clause. It explains part, not necessarily all, of the reasoning for the following rule. Which is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms 'shall not be infringed'.
Personally, to me that means that the government can't prevent you from purchasing, keeping, or carrying firearms short of conviction(or commitment) in a court of law.
Consider it like the right to have an abortion - but the right to keep arms is actually in the bill of rights. It's #2 even.
Consider what the pro-life types are trying to do with abortion - same darn things as the anti-gun types are. Waiting periods - make it a pain in the butt, discourage it. Not allowed past a certain point. Gun Permits - equivalent to the briefings/propaganda that they're trying to push on women seeking an abortion. Extra fees compared with forbidding insurance from paying in order to increase the cost. Banning specific versions. Etc...
The 'shall not be infringed' part should be a high standard against all of the above. Road blocks and detours when it comes to 'arms' should NOT be allowed. Despite this, there's a lot of unconstitutional law out there, and some of it has been in place for quite some time. It's a constant battle to protect our rights - freedom of speech, to bear arms, to privacy, religion, etc...
Your interpretation is quaint, and incorrect, at least it didn't mean that until 2008, Columbia v. Heller [thedailybeast.com]
Isn't this self-contradicting? 'quaint' ~ 'old fashioned'. A decision as recent as 2008 is very much not old fashioned.
The public's understanding of the 2nd Amendment started to be distorted by the NRA [politico.com] early in the last century.
The NRA wasn't a lobbying organization until late in the last century, so this statement is incorrect. The NRA ended up becoming a lobbying organization due to the spread of gun control laws resulting in it's membership having it create a lobbying branch.
The NRA has been filling the minds of gun owners with an interpretation that was never intended by the Founders for some time,
Given what I've read in sources like the federalist papers, I think that the NRA version is closer to reality than yours.
That being said, your rights can be restricted through 'due process of law', IE conviction by a court and jury of your peers. So I'm okay with things like the NICS check, prohibition by felons. I think that the post-facto punishment of misdemeanor DV charges is a violation, because there's a very good chance that people like police officers who were convicted of such things, usually by pleading guilty, long before this rule was in effect, would have fought it in court and won at least a percentage of the time if the rule had been in place, or they knew it was coming, before they pled guilty.
Personally, I allow the adblock allowed ads. Not many sites use them.
Sites I frequent that give me the 'Please disable your adblocker' I tend to respond with(and yes, I've used their forum/webmaster address to do this) 'Then use adblocker approved ads'.
After about the 3rd time the ad sites tried to serve me malware it became more about protecting my computer than anything else. The fact that many sites are unusable to the point that I wonder if their web-admin is even testing the sites without an ad blocker doesn't help.
Interesting how governments sometimes differ. USA, supposedly land of the free, would quickly have the Department of Transportation having a word with the owners of said billboards, as you describe them.
Things like lit scrolling marquees are fine - most gas stations show their prices using a digital billboard today, and rolling time/temperature/ad is common,
But there are rules in place about potentially 'distracting' displays.
By the way, I just did the survey and it worked fine for me. Latest version of firefox.
Cowering in the corner isn't necessarily a bad strategy, but it's not optimal. Defending yourself with an effective weapon generally has the best options. The 'passive aggressive' strategy of passive non-compliance that police were recommending for a while is actually the worst.
Though I'll admit that I have a good deal of belief in the theory of 'all that evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing', thus believe that even if it's non-optimal for the first person, the prevention of a criminal from attacking successive targets makes everybody safer in the long run.
Personally, I want as many guns in 'good' hands as possible, while denying them to the 'bad' people. However, denying 'bad' people weapons is a never-ending battle. Witness England, where they're even trying to crack down on knives, sturdy umbrellas, and the sort. All that does is enable the physically fit thug.
Well, I was just correcting what I saw as mistakes in the AC's posting. There's a reason why I said 'kind of sucks.' It's my expression for 'well, that didn't work out, but there's really nothing that can be done to recover from it'.
As for benefiting the drivers - not really. You have to remember that they're also losing fairs to the cheaper and more lushly equipped Uber drivers who, not having to pay for the medallion or follow the cumbersome NYC taxi rules, can afford to run a nicer vehicle than the cabbies.
Note on following NYC taxi rules - Uber is, to my knowledge, operating perfectly legally in NYC. NYC has several categories of 'hired vehicle'. There's two categories of taxi and several for non-taxi private car. Uber is NOT operating as a taxi service per NYC rules, but as a 'black car' service. It's drivers hold a chauffeur license, do not respond to street hails(IE putting out a hand and yelling as opposed to the app), have certain destination and pickup restrictions, etc... Matter of fact, Uber would likely fire any drivers found responding to street hails in NYC.
That being said, I have the feeling(not confirmed) that due to Uber's rating system and having superior pay, that cabbies that can do customer service better are being lured away by Uber. I remember reading somewhere that Uber effectively fires any driver whose rating drops below a 4.4 out of 5 stars.
So a guy who's friendly and shows up with a Tesla model S* will retain his position in Uber while the grouch with an old smelly Crown Vic might as well stick to the cab side.
You're assuming that 'proper public transport' would be efficient. That's not a guarantee, seeing as how these micro-buses can fulfill numerous transport needs in flexible fashions.
Of course, perhaps you have a different picture in mind than a typical system operating large buses on fixed routes and schedules.
I'll also note that I know it's not about the USA, but the USA is most of my experience, which is why I said so.
That's the thing. It's not a proper 'bubble'. It's 'artificial property'. You literally hold 'nothing' real by owning a Taxi Medallion. One stroke of a pen by the government - whether by the regulatory body, legislature, or court, and your property is gone. *poof*. Worthless.
Which is why I mentioned that taxi companies are extremely protective of them.
Everything? 1. A smaller bus has better gas mileage. 2. A smaller bus can reach more areas 3. Unregulated driver is probably paid less(being paid more isn't a guarantee of improved quality) 4. A smaller bus is still efficient even with smaller loads.
We have a real problem in the USA that due to low ridership, many bus systems INCREASE the pollution on the roads, rather than decreasing it. Unless you have somewhere around 12-20 riders on a bus, it's not actually more efficient/less polluting than private autos.
The laws aren't there to create artificial scarcity and drive up prices. You'd have to be an idiot to think that.
The moment you create a medallion system where, by law or regulation, only a limited number of licenses are created you're deliberately creating artificial scarcity. Basic economics translates to that driving up prices.
The Taxi industry is a classic case of 'regulatory capture', where the regulations become less about protecting the consumer than favoring the existing players through a system of waivers and them just being able to adopt to the regulations gradually, while a new player has to go through a phone book of regulations, making trivial but still business killing violations extremely likely simply due to complexity.
However, consider that the book value of NYC's medallions is well over ten billion dollars. You propose taking that artificial property away from them, or even significantly decreasing it's value, and you'll see hell.
The Taxi companies are very careful to court the local politicians to prevent that very occurrence.
That's the original argument behind places like NYC putting medallion systems in place. The idea is that by restricting the number of taxis, you get the following benefits: 1. People use taxis less, because there's just not enough supply. It means that they walk a little further, take the bus, or ride the subway. 2. Because there's not so much competition, Taxi drivers are guaranteed to make decent money and are able to afford all the regulation - things like car safety, age, equipment, etc...
That being said, I do believe that the system has degenerated too far into a protectionist system, where the idea is to protect the current players in the cab business, not customers.
When a driver wants to get out of the business they have to sell the medallion to someone else and hope they've paid off enough on it to break even.
First, most cab drivers in NYC don't own a medallion. The cab company they're working for owns it and essentially rents it out to it's drivers. They also rent out the cab itself, but the cab is actually cheaper(rent wise) than the medallion. There's a limited number of 'owner-operator' medallions where one of the requirements is that the owner drive the cab for X hours/day on average, and they tend to be cheaper than the unrestricted ones.
Second, medallions, especially owner-operator ones, have generally appreciated in value sufficient that they're more often treated as part of the owner's retirement plan/investment than 'hope to break even'.
That's crashing right now, which kind of sucks for those that invested under the assumptions of the 'old system'.
There is no way to differentiate since the end results are the same.
No, they really aren't. Well, even a completely sign-less intersection should have people 'assume' yield signs, but you should never just blow through an intersection.
As for signalling, well, last night I had a bit of an issue with people in cars not signalling, so it's definitely not restricted to bicycle riders.
Oh, please. You can't imagine how a bicyclist who runs down a pedestrian could do significant physical harm to them? A twenty MPH piece of steel/carbon fiber/whatever with an attached human mass would just what, bounce off a pedestrian?
Sure, it could cause injury. But a car causes death at the same speeds, having orders of magnitude more mass. Personally, I just go for real-world statistics. The number of pedestrians injured in bicycle accidents are insignificant compared to the number and magnitude of car strikes.
You keep ignoring the fact that vehicle law is not created just to protect the automobile driver from death by bike accident. It's there to protect YOU, too. And the pedestrians who you are a serious threat to.
Actually, you're simply assuming that, I suggest you stop with that assumption. Also, talk about blowing it out of proportion. I'd be insane to assume that. Yes - vehicle laws are made, for the most part, to try to keep everybody safe. What you're ignoring is that the law can always be adjusted to increase safety, efficiency, or whatever. So I'm free to talk about a hypothetical law that allows bicyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield sign.
Also, 'almost ran over' isn't 'run over'. I'm starting to wonder if you have an excessively wide definition of 'almost' given how often you use it.
You question the fact that when vehicle laws are obeyed the people involved are safer?
No, I question the effectiveness of a law that nobody obeys. Whether following it or not would be safer is irrelevant when it's not obeyed by default. That's where you have to go back and assess what the law was trying to do, consider human nature, and try something different.
Other than that, it seems you're determined to read everything I write in the stupidest way possible. When I talk about cops 'enforce not being stupid', that roughly meant 'hand out tickets for particularly stupid/dangerous acts(that are also illegal for good reason)'. That means handing out tickets for violating the stop sign, but concentrating on those that violate the stop sign in a dangerous manner. By doing so you avoid pissing off the community too much.
So I suggest going back, rolling back your conclusions that lead to anger and such, reread my posts in a reasonable light, then come back.
You can stop arguing that the existing laws shouldn't apply to them. That's a start. I remember the idiots because they are both so common and do memorably stupid things.
Such as this. I proposed a change to the law, not that existing law shouldn't apply. For that matter, I even explained why the change would be irrelevant to the idiots, because they'd still be violating even my proposed changed law. It's all a balancing act anyways. Hell, maybe the law change combined with a media campaign advertising it would catch a the attentions of a few of them and get them to change their behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
To expand on this point, 'nuclear waste' consists of a number of different elements and isotopes. Generally speaking, the only isotopes that have half lives long enough to still be producing radioactivity after 100k years are also useful as fuel.
So you reprocess/recycle the waste, extracting those elements for another pass through the reactor. The remaining isotopes tend to be 'hot' - IE highly radioactive with short half lives.
Short half lives mean it's 'cool' orders of magnitude sooner.
Isn't that included in the price of the fuel? I don't think that the EPA and it's equivalents in other countries are going to be letting them off. That's a bit like asking 'What about the waste from refining copper?' when it comes to wiring up your house.
I also believe that the amount of 'nuclear' waste that people are worried about is minimal.
That being said, some reactors like the CANDU don't need enriched fuel.
Would that be an actual case of entrapment, because you demonstrated that you were attempting to observe the laws to the best of your ability and to the best of the ability a reasonable person could reasonably be expected to have?
A jury might find that a reasonable argument, but state legislatures have decided that youths need to be protected from sex so much that, like the gp said, it's a 'strict liability' law, even if the minor wants sex so bad they're willing to lie and obtain forgeries to help assist with their lies.
Budget balance: First, the pipeline opened when I was ONE. I literally don't remember a time when the pipeline(and therefore oil money) wasn't flowing in. Still, from what I've been told, during that time we did have an income tax.
Old budget adjusted for population:
1. It's been well over 30 years since we had to do a budget without oil money. It wouldn't be valid anymore
2. It still wouldn't balance because we cut other taxes in response.
3. We ARE cutting spending. Quite severely. 2013 Budget? 9B revenue, 8B spent, 1B saved. 2014 was 7.6B revenue, 7B spent. 2016? Like I said, $5B was what our congress authorized, but with only $2B of income, that would mean $3B from the reserves, which needs that 75% vote. Spending is half what it was 3 years ago.
The main point is that it takes time to properly wind down spending and spin up new sources of revenue.
that said, Alaska is overly dependent on that money.
No Kidding. Remember the 'socking away' part? Given sufficient time with the high prices, we would have had enough to cover the government on the interest alone.
I am not sure what other industries you have, but consider relying upon a more diversified income stream. You can't control that of course... just saying.
Some limited amounts of farming. Fishing is fairly big. Tourism. Other resource extraction. Believe it or not, some people like retiring up here as opposed to Florida. The military is huge, which helps drive federal spending up here.
Worst case, along with cutting spending in various ways, we may have to implement a state-wide income or sales tax. It's that or jack up the property tax *A LOT*.
What kind of state employee are you? What do you do? Forget the department... like what do you actually do? I'm sure there is some other job that needs whatever that skill is...
1. Student employee at the state university at the moment. I'm not actually too worried about the job. My job security consists of 'He's literally 1/5th the cost of anybody else!'.
2. Mostly fix up web pages*, some script programming, emails lists. It's actually relaxing compared to my last job.
3. I'm actually security+ certified, and have a wide field of experience, but I have this wonderful scholarship from my last employer that pays as much as what I could get elsewhere. So I'm going for a higher degree.
4. Going back to college has been fun. The student position is mostly to widen my resume, provide some spending cash(so I don't have to tap into investments during the summer), etc...
*The department reps who create them do great, mostly. I fix up things like 509 compliance, make sure they're not putting in multi-megabyte images unless necessary, etc...
So look at that price and think of paying it annually. I upgrade frequently. But I do so in the mid levels. You keep pace and don't break the bank.
I buy a good upper mid-grade card and use it until I'm no longer satisfied with it. I'm currently at 5 years with my current card, but am looking at upgrading now.
However, given Alaska's budget situation(currently a state employee)*, I might be out of a job in a couple weeks. So I'm holding on.
*We're having the same thing on a state level as has happened on the federal level several times. Due to the drop in oil prices, our income has gone from about $6B down to $2B. Our budget was about $5B. Being smart lads, our congress had been socking money away, but per the constitution it takes a 75% majority to tap that money. They voted a $5B budget, but didn't manage to vote to tap the reserve. Ergo the Governor did what he had to do and line item vetoed $3B out of $5B in spending. The police and emergency services are the only ones funded after mid-June. My section is looking at a 60% cut, mostly due to us being partially federally funded.
Why would you want to heat your office with an extra 0.25KWatt heater if you don't live in Alaska?
Electricity prices are high enough up here in Alaska that you don't want to be using a space heater either. Oil/Gas is much cheaper.
I'm still 'rocking' a Radeon HD 5870. Looking them up on passmark, I have about 400 points on you.
Personally, my standard for upgrading my video card is that the benchmarks would have to double - which just wasn't happening last year, at least affordably. This year it looks like a GTX 960 might be a good choice.
5 years out of a video card isn't bad at all.
but often works great for the day traders that aren't going to hold onto the stock long enough to see more than a couple of quarters pass in the quest for instant returns.
The vast majority of stock is held for 10 years or longer. Something like 1% of stocks see 99% of the trading.
Your translation doesn't seem to mention a militia at all...
And yours doesn't mention 'the people'. That mention is rather a big deal, I think.
The 'well regulated milita' is known as a prefactory clause. It explains part, not necessarily all, of the reasoning for the following rule. Which is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms 'shall not be infringed'.
Personally, to me that means that the government can't prevent you from purchasing, keeping, or carrying firearms short of conviction(or commitment) in a court of law.
Consider it like the right to have an abortion - but the right to keep arms is actually in the bill of rights. It's #2 even.
Consider what the pro-life types are trying to do with abortion - same darn things as the anti-gun types are. Waiting periods - make it a pain in the butt, discourage it. Not allowed past a certain point. Gun Permits - equivalent to the briefings/propaganda that they're trying to push on women seeking an abortion. Extra fees compared with forbidding insurance from paying in order to increase the cost. Banning specific versions. Etc...
The 'shall not be infringed' part should be a high standard against all of the above. Road blocks and detours when it comes to 'arms' should NOT be allowed. Despite this, there's a lot of unconstitutional law out there, and some of it has been in place for quite some time. It's a constant battle to protect our rights - freedom of speech, to bear arms, to privacy, religion, etc...
(I'm pro-choice and pro-gun btw).
Your interpretation is quaint, and incorrect, at least it didn't mean that until 2008, Columbia v. Heller [thedailybeast.com]
Isn't this self-contradicting? 'quaint' ~ 'old fashioned'. A decision as recent as 2008 is very much not old fashioned.
The public's understanding of the 2nd Amendment started to be distorted by the NRA [politico.com] early in the last century.
The NRA wasn't a lobbying organization until late in the last century, so this statement is incorrect. The NRA ended up becoming a lobbying organization due to the spread of gun control laws resulting in it's membership having it create a lobbying branch.
The NRA has been filling the minds of gun owners with an interpretation that was never intended by the Founders for some time,
Given what I've read in sources like the federalist papers, I think that the NRA version is closer to reality than yours.
That being said, your rights can be restricted through 'due process of law', IE conviction by a court and jury of your peers. So I'm okay with things like the NICS check, prohibition by felons. I think that the post-facto punishment of misdemeanor DV charges is a violation, because there's a very good chance that people like police officers who were convicted of such things, usually by pleading guilty, long before this rule was in effect, would have fought it in court and won at least a percentage of the time if the rule had been in place, or they knew it was coming, before they pled guilty.
Personally, I allow the adblock allowed ads. Not many sites use them.
Sites I frequent that give me the 'Please disable your adblocker' I tend to respond with(and yes, I've used their forum/webmaster address to do this) 'Then use adblocker approved ads'.
After about the 3rd time the ad sites tried to serve me malware it became more about protecting my computer than anything else. The fact that many sites are unusable to the point that I wonder if their web-admin is even testing the sites without an ad blocker doesn't help.
Interesting how governments sometimes differ. USA, supposedly land of the free, would quickly have the Department of Transportation having a word with the owners of said billboards, as you describe them.
Things like lit scrolling marquees are fine - most gas stations show their prices using a digital billboard today, and rolling time/temperature/ad is common,
But there are rules in place about potentially 'distracting' displays.
By the way, I just did the survey and it worked fine for me. Latest version of firefox.
Cowering in the corner isn't necessarily a bad strategy, but it's not optimal. Defending yourself with an effective weapon generally has the best options. The 'passive aggressive' strategy of passive non-compliance that police were recommending for a while is actually the worst.
Though I'll admit that I have a good deal of belief in the theory of 'all that evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing', thus believe that even if it's non-optimal for the first person, the prevention of a criminal from attacking successive targets makes everybody safer in the long run.
Personally, I want as many guns in 'good' hands as possible, while denying them to the 'bad' people. However, denying 'bad' people weapons is a never-ending battle. Witness England, where they're even trying to crack down on knives, sturdy umbrellas, and the sort. All that does is enable the physically fit thug.
I may have to change my sig. It's been years since I visited it.
The survey is more an SocraticExercise than anything else, the results aren't actually tabulated.
Well, I was just correcting what I saw as mistakes in the AC's posting. There's a reason why I said 'kind of sucks.' It's my expression for 'well, that didn't work out, but there's really nothing that can be done to recover from it'.
As for benefiting the drivers - not really. You have to remember that they're also losing fairs to the cheaper and more lushly equipped Uber drivers who, not having to pay for the medallion or follow the cumbersome NYC taxi rules, can afford to run a nicer vehicle than the cabbies.
Note on following NYC taxi rules - Uber is, to my knowledge, operating perfectly legally in NYC. NYC has several categories of 'hired vehicle'. There's two categories of taxi and several for non-taxi private car. Uber is NOT operating as a taxi service per NYC rules, but as a 'black car' service. It's drivers hold a chauffeur license, do not respond to street hails(IE putting out a hand and yelling as opposed to the app), have certain destination and pickup restrictions, etc... Matter of fact, Uber would likely fire any drivers found responding to street hails in NYC.
That being said, I have the feeling(not confirmed) that due to Uber's rating system and having superior pay, that cabbies that can do customer service better are being lured away by Uber. I remember reading somewhere that Uber effectively fires any driver whose rating drops below a 4.4 out of 5 stars.
So a guy who's friendly and shows up with a Tesla model S* will retain his position in Uber while the grouch with an old smelly Crown Vic might as well stick to the cab side.
You're assuming that 'proper public transport' would be efficient. That's not a guarantee, seeing as how these micro-buses can fulfill numerous transport needs in flexible fashions.
Of course, perhaps you have a different picture in mind than a typical system operating large buses on fixed routes and schedules.
I'll also note that I know it's not about the USA, but the USA is most of my experience, which is why I said so.
That's the thing. It's not a proper 'bubble'. It's 'artificial property'. You literally hold 'nothing' real by owning a Taxi Medallion. One stroke of a pen by the government - whether by the regulatory body, legislature, or court, and your property is gone. *poof*. Worthless.
Which is why I mentioned that taxi companies are extremely protective of them.
Everything?
1. A smaller bus has better gas mileage.
2. A smaller bus can reach more areas
3. Unregulated driver is probably paid less(being paid more isn't a guarantee of improved quality)
4. A smaller bus is still efficient even with smaller loads.
We have a real problem in the USA that due to low ridership, many bus systems INCREASE the pollution on the roads, rather than decreasing it. Unless you have somewhere around 12-20 riders on a bus, it's not actually more efficient/less polluting than private autos.
The laws aren't there to create artificial scarcity and drive up prices. You'd have to be an idiot to think that.
The moment you create a medallion system where, by law or regulation, only a limited number of licenses are created you're deliberately creating artificial scarcity. Basic economics translates to that driving up prices.
The Taxi industry is a classic case of 'regulatory capture', where the regulations become less about protecting the consumer than favoring the existing players through a system of waivers and them just being able to adopt to the regulations gradually, while a new player has to go through a phone book of regulations, making trivial but still business killing violations extremely likely simply due to complexity.
NYC Taxi rules went far beyond basic safety.
Some areas are this way.
However, consider that the book value of NYC's medallions is well over ten billion dollars. You propose taking that artificial property away from them, or even significantly decreasing it's value, and you'll see hell.
The Taxi companies are very careful to court the local politicians to prevent that very occurrence.
That's the original argument behind places like NYC putting medallion systems in place. The idea is that by restricting the number of taxis, you get the following benefits:
1. People use taxis less, because there's just not enough supply. It means that they walk a little further, take the bus, or ride the subway.
2. Because there's not so much competition, Taxi drivers are guaranteed to make decent money and are able to afford all the regulation - things like car safety, age, equipment, etc...
That being said, I do believe that the system has degenerated too far into a protectionist system, where the idea is to protect the current players in the cab business, not customers.
Not really, because regulated busses with greater capacity and better safety can take their place.
Which is no longer the cheap transportation they can afford...
When a driver wants to get out of the business they have to sell the medallion to someone else and hope they've paid off enough on it to break even.
First, most cab drivers in NYC don't own a medallion. The cab company they're working for owns it and essentially rents it out to it's drivers. They also rent out the cab itself, but the cab is actually cheaper(rent wise) than the medallion. There's a limited number of 'owner-operator' medallions where one of the requirements is that the owner drive the cab for X hours/day on average, and they tend to be cheaper than the unrestricted ones.
Second, medallions, especially owner-operator ones, have generally appreciated in value sufficient that they're more often treated as part of the owner's retirement plan/investment than 'hope to break even'.
That's crashing right now, which kind of sucks for those that invested under the assumptions of the 'old system'.
There is no way to differentiate since the end results are the same.
No, they really aren't. Well, even a completely sign-less intersection should have people 'assume' yield signs, but you should never just blow through an intersection.
As for signalling, well, last night I had a bit of an issue with people in cars not signalling, so it's definitely not restricted to bicycle riders.
Oh, please. You can't imagine how a bicyclist who runs down a pedestrian could do significant physical harm to them? A twenty MPH piece of steel/carbon fiber/whatever with an attached human mass would just what, bounce off a pedestrian?
Sure, it could cause injury. But a car causes death at the same speeds, having orders of magnitude more mass. Personally, I just go for real-world statistics. The number of pedestrians injured in bicycle accidents are insignificant compared to the number and magnitude of car strikes.
You keep ignoring the fact that vehicle law is not created just to protect the automobile driver from death by bike accident. It's there to protect YOU, too. And the pedestrians who you are a serious threat to.
Actually, you're simply assuming that, I suggest you stop with that assumption. Also, talk about blowing it out of proportion. I'd be insane to assume that. Yes - vehicle laws are made, for the most part, to try to keep everybody safe. What you're ignoring is that the law can always be adjusted to increase safety, efficiency, or whatever. So I'm free to talk about a hypothetical law that allows bicyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield sign.
Also, 'almost ran over' isn't 'run over'. I'm starting to wonder if you have an excessively wide definition of 'almost' given how often you use it.
You question the fact that when vehicle laws are obeyed the people involved are safer?
No, I question the effectiveness of a law that nobody obeys. Whether following it or not would be safer is irrelevant when it's not obeyed by default. That's where you have to go back and assess what the law was trying to do, consider human nature, and try something different.
Other than that, it seems you're determined to read everything I write in the stupidest way possible. When I talk about cops 'enforce not being stupid', that roughly meant 'hand out tickets for particularly stupid/dangerous acts(that are also illegal for good reason)'. That means handing out tickets for violating the stop sign, but concentrating on those that violate the stop sign in a dangerous manner. By doing so you avoid pissing off the community too much.
So I suggest going back, rolling back your conclusions that lead to anger and such, reread my posts in a reasonable light, then come back.
You can stop arguing that the existing laws shouldn't apply to them. That's a start. I remember the idiots because they are both so common and do memorably stupid things.
Such as this. I proposed a change to the law, not that existing law shouldn't apply. For that matter, I even explained why the change would be irrelevant to the idiots, because they'd still be violating even my proposed changed law. It's all a balancing act anyways. Hell, maybe the law change combined with a media campaign advertising it would catch a the attentions of a few of them and get them to change their behavior.