The big companies in this case are not the ISPs giving you trouble. They're the backbone ISPs. Completely different culture and mentality.
What is more, what you're not getting about the backbone ISPs is that they're not as heavily controlled as to when and where they can lay cable. As a result there is competition there already. They already know that if they mess with the flow someone else will run cable next to them and they'll lose.
Competition works.
Look at your shoes. Did they need to pass regulations to make your shoes not terrible? No. Competition did it. You as a consumer check out the shoes in the store and you only buy the ones that are worth your money. You don't buy the ones that are bad.
The same principle can work in almost infinite applications.
As to key distribution and management, yes it is easy actually. It simply requires that the source and destination are not idiots.
Managing a security system amongst idiots is in practical terms impossible. People that are not idiots have to be in control of it. And if the source and destination are clueless then an educated third party has to manage it.
However, assuming neither source nor destination are clueless... it can be done easily. And it is done all the time by those that aren't clueless.
You're confusing last mile connections with... some bullshit you made up.
I can get a line brought to a neighborhood from the backbone. It could cost a million or a couple hundred thousand... or substantially less. It depends on how far away it is from the neighborhood I want to wire. Ideally you should pick one close to where ever it coming from so you pay as little as possible initially. But once that has happened, I have all the resources at that point to wire the neighborhood. That is if I have the fiber to do the last mile and some switching and routing equipment. All told it is entirely manageable. I do not need to wire the entire city. All I need is a fat link. And those links are not provided by Comcast or Verizon etc typically. They tend to be offered by companies like Qwest communications.
And as I said, 80 percent of the backbone is idle. It is a buyer's market.
I do not need to wire the entire city to wire a single neighborhood.
All I need is a permit to do it.
You could have high speed fiber in your house right now if your local officials just allowed this to happen. It would cost them nothing.
... of the FCC in the process. That is their primary beef. They see it as an encroachment of federal regulation which they're reflexively against.
This said, if you want the conservatives on your side there is a way to do it while getting effectively to net neutrality.
The issue is that we have a few large companies that are monopolizing everything. Why is that? Mostly because it is almost impossible to lay the last mile of cable from a regulation stand point. Cities, counties, and sometimes even states put taxes, regulations, and conditions on laying cable on the last mile.
Laying backbone cable is much easier. I think I saw an estimation that over 80 percent of US backbone bandwidth is laying idle. The issue is the last mile and the problem is government interference. LOCAL government interference. Not federal.
If you pitch to conservatives "hey, you're allowing monopolistic companies to rob you because local corrupt government officials are getting bribed to shut out competitors" then you're going to have an easier time getting conservatives on board.
If what you want is a better and freer internet... then this gets you that. With expanded competition, the big ISPs will not be able to play these games. Mom and pop ISP providers will sprout up like mushrooms in any area with an issue. Yes, running an ISP is an investment but not nearly as big of a deal as many people think.
If you only serve a given neighborhood then the costs aren't that big a deal. Why does a new ISP automatically have to service the entire city? Does the local sandwich shop need to open 50 locations to be able to operate? Obviously not. You open one franchise in one area that you feel you can turn a profit in and you expand from there if you are successful.
THAT is what the future of ISPing should be. Local ISPs that run last mile internet service in a few square blocks, cut their teeth on that, and then expand to neighboring blocks as they recoop their investment.
You don't need mega billion dollar corporations to make this work.
Right now, look at the cost of fiber cable. The raw wholesale cost of fiber. Look up what a fiber switch costs to serve a couple hundred users. This is the sort of price structure you are looking at and it is comparable to what you find in a lot of other small businesses.
Pitch this and conservatives will be all over it. If instead you say "we need the federal government to come in and regulate everything for the greater good"... you're going to run shivers up the backs of conservatives and they're going to fight you reflexively.
Why do we need to do it this way? Won't it be better this other way? Think about it.
As to the rightness and wrongness of models, the current climate models are only valid if given non-falsifiable tests.
Non-falsifiable science is not science.
If your model cannot fail a test... then it is not being tested. How is this an alien concept?
This is the consistent issue with climate models. They are non-falsifiable. They are mostly tested against FUTURE predictions which is like saying your model of gravity says a given planet will be in a given place at a given time in the future. But by the time we know what really happened, never mind what my model said before.
I'm sorry but that isn't valid. You need to test your models under conditions where there is a failure state or they are not being tested and are inadmissible. Full stop.
In regards to who I was citing, the scientist that Al Gore cited and said inspired him to go on his environmental crusade.
As to politics, the issue is 95 percent political at this point. Price of bringing politicians into it. It is unavoidable. If you want to keep the politics out, then you're going to have to kick the politicians out. And they already own the issue so that is less likely then the scientists getting kicked out. How many of the UN climate reports were written by politicians? Every single one. It has caused some problems because scientists have said things in their reports to the UN that included qualifiers that were repeatedly deleted because the politicians wanted to make a clearer and more extreme statement. Some of the scientists pulled their reports from the UN on this basis... which proved to be difficult because the UN didn't want to shed any of the reports.
As to there being too much science being done around the world, I really doubt you're reading from anything but two labs. One in the US and one England. They're the ones mostly driving the whole thing. Have you for example looked at what the Japanese are saying about this issue?
The japanese built a super computer. The Earth Simulator... it was built specifically to run these climate models. It had the processing power to model the whole world's climate in extreme detail. They uploaded the climate models currently in vogue at the time, fed in historical data, and saw if the system accurately predicted known climate conditions at those times. Shockingly... it predicted nothing even remotely accurately. I believe in one simulation the oceans boiled. The Japanese called up the people that provided the models and said "what gives?"... the people that provided the models responded by introducing PLUG variables at given periods of time to force the system to give rough approximations of the correct answer at given times. Effectively, the model only worked when the computer was told the correct answer in advance.
The Japanese have had a somewhat different opinion on this issue ever since.
I'm sorry. The models are garbage and the people presuming to predict the future have no more credibility on the issue then some jackass like myself until such time as their models actually work.
Simple as that. You either have a working model or you don't know what is going on. That is obvious and self evident in every field except climate science where they don't know what they're doing but presume to still tell everyone what is going to happen. It is beyond absurd. It is pathetic.
We've been watching the evidence of their issues for several years now as one holder of CA licenses after another gets compromised and fucks everyone over in the process.
Only two entities should have the keys. The source and the destination. And there is even an argument for having more tightly regimented systems then that.
What you're basically saying is "are you implying that our widely used encryption systems are bad!?"
Yes... they're trash. I thought everyone here already knew that.
There is an average time between ice ages and we're getting due for it.
As to CO2 concentrations, where are you getting your information? Because the ice core records are known to be unreliable indications of CO2 concentration.
Regardless, the levels of CO2 have gone up and down many times in earth's past without correlating temperature swings. The notion that CO2 is a relevant driver of global climate makes very little sense.
Mostly this is because it makes up a relatively small portion of our atmosphere. Here you'll say that it uniquely blocks certain spectrums of light but that isn't accurate. Water vapor blocks the same spectrums and quite a bit more of it. What is more, water vapor makes up a much more relevant portion of our atmosphere. And water also has the problem that it does funny things like turns into reflective clouds or solidifies into white reflective sheets. It dramatically complicates your models because you have to predict cloud cover, radiation into space from snow, etc.
Ultimately, I think you have grounds to be concerned but I think without reservation anyone that says they know what they're talking about on the issue is talking out of their asses. Not one of the models subjected to scrutiny has withstood it. Not one. Zero. Cite any falsifiable test and they've failed them all. Which just means they're wrong. Period. Now they might be getting closer to being right but they're still wrong. They are unable to do simple things like predict PAST and KNOWN weather conditions given PAST and KNOWN weather variables. A good way of judging any model is feeding in known data from that time and seeing if it can predict the next KNOWN data point. If it can't then the model is bad.
Take Newton's laws of motion. They were able to predict the all sorts of astronomical events with a high degree of accuracy. That is ultimately what validated them. If you cannot predict known events given known information then you do not have a functional model. End of story.
What you probably don't know is that the scientist that came up with the green house theory disavowed it before he died. He was praised for being a genius at one point but when he disavowed AGW they said he was a senile old man. What you get for bucking the political masters. I can provide links if you like. But this is a massively over hyped issue that is going to go down as an embarrassment.
This whole thing is a lesson in the ability of money to pervert science. You've thrown so much money at institutions that they feel they are literally living and dying on your interest in this issue. They can't kill it. It means massive funding cuts.
But I don't expect you to take my word for any of that. If you want to have an extended discussion about this with cited sources etc, then I'm game.
Do remain respectful though. I will do my best not to allow my passions to make me rude. Kindly show me the same courtesy as lacking that it is hard to have an extended and serious discussion.
Frankly, in the long term I see us going to peer to peer VOIP in any case. Everything in between doesn't need to encrypt or know my encryption keys. All it needs to know is how to route my data stream to my target.
As it stands, if I want to make a secure call, I can already do it... for free. There are lots of VOIP programs that do it. The only issue is interlocking the VOIP systems with the old phone networks. And again, you can do that in your own home without a lot of trouble.
Aren't our calls supposed to be encrypted anyway? I mean, so some jack ass with a radio can't listen to them? So what are they charging me for here?
Sounds like a reasonable product for the government.
For the consumer though, you have to ask yourself what you're actually getting with this? Doesn't appear to be anything. After all, the only people that could normally break into your communications would be the government anyway.
I didn't suggest that NYC didn't have an effective mass transit system. I instead said that the effect of that system was to allow for greater density... it did not and does not reduce commute times or distances.
The average commute in Los Angeles is about an hour both ways assuming you don't completely miss the rush.
And the average distance of commute might be anywhere from 10 to 20 miles.
Compare that to other major cities and you'll find the commute is not unusual or the distances unusual.
The only thing that is different is the density levels.
If you want to increase density and see density as an end unto itself... then mass transit is good. It makes density possible. However, mass transit does not reduce commute times or distances. So if you want to effect those then mass transit does not address the problem. All it does is allow for greater density.
As to your dreams of global pandemic, I can't support that. As to your notion that it is about political power bases... that is interesting. I think that is certainly why cities like to be tight because they are easier to politically control.
However, it doesn't explain why businesses cooperate with them. After all, businesses could more easily and cheaply bribe smaller towns then larger cities.
I think a lot of what makes cities attractive is that they're very useful for elites. People in the 1 percent can get everything they want and the price doesn't especially matter. I question whether they serve the other 99 percent however in the 21st century. Between the internet and airplanes I don't see why we pack people in that densely anymore.
You're just as guilty of that as me, Dave. Neither of us can explain the full complexity of our positions in a few sentences and neither of us try to do it.
Suggesting that I am uniquely at fault for this sort of thing is laughable. You know damn well that everyone on this topic is simplifying especially on internet forums.
*kicks dave off his high horse so he's standing in the shit with everyone else*
As to static economies, because they constantly say they'll change one variable in the system without accounting for all the other variables that change in relation to them.
For example, they tend to think they can raise taxes without depressing the economy despite that happening every single time. Just one example. They always think they can change one thing without effecting everything. It betrays an assumption that economies are static. They have no appreciation or education in the dynamism of an actual economy. Simply pointing out that one thing they're doing is going to effect something else they don't want to effect tends to make them upset. It is sort of funny.
Actually that is specifically what they are saying. They tried to show AGW as causing more droughts and found that all the droughts were explainable by natural weather patterns that were predicted and not unusual.
What conditions do you think would prevent another ice age? The CO2? Really? You think the CO2 is going to stop periodic ice ages? The impact of our current CO2 on our existing climate is so minor that the issue remains controversial. And you think it is going to stop something that overwhelms summers for thousands of years?
I only post strawman when someone uses that specific logical fallacy against me.
It is hardly the only one I see. Right now you're attempting to troll me by looking through my post history and commenting on other things I've commented upon.
You're currently trying an ad hominem in that you're suggesting that because I said something you dislike or am a bad person in your view that my arguments are wrong.
This is ultimately my problem with ignorant people like you. You do not know how to form a coherent argument. All you know how to do is use these cookie cutter fallacies to con people into thinking you actually had a point.
Your problem in regards to me is that I'm slightly better educated then most of your victims. I know what you're doing and pin your bullshit to a specimen board like preserved beetles. I put the latin name for your idiocy down below the poor attempt at reasoning... and snap the case shut.
That is all your sad attempts at having a point are to me... a catalog of stupidity.
No I am not. I am assuming statistical probabilities which will incline certain probabilities and patterns. Specifically, I am not inferring any given person will do any given thing. As groups, people are much more predictable.
I see, so if I don't permit you to strawman me, then that is evidence of some inherent character flaw I have?
Eh, anonymous coward? You presume to judge me when you won't even reveal your fake name? What a pathetic piece of shit. For all any of us know you're off spouting racist bullshit half the time. But we'll never know because you won't permit a record of your horseshit.
As to whether my idea was tried and failed, it wasn't actually. Density was not limited and commercial and residential space was not balanced. So no you fucking waste of oxygen... I was not proven wrong.
As to the rest of the community being tired of me... big words for a troll that won't even reveal his fake name. That you believe such a transparent bluff has any weight is perhaps the most damning condemnation of your own intelligence. Only a complete fuckwit could believe such a statement would mean anything to anyone that wasn't likewise a fuckwit.
I see, you're wrong about something and rather then own up to your ignorance like an adult, you're going to throw out infantile insults?
It is specifically people like you that are the worst thing on forums like this... you offer nothing of value. You don't even try to be useful. You are literally a waste of bandwidth.
You're missing the point. I threw out a number as an example. The point was to reduce density in areas that were having a problem.
What is more, if you have a lot of people working in a region but not enough of those people living there, then rezone some of the commercial space into residential space. Continue to do that every time you see a pattern of too many people commuting to that region. Eventually, either enough of those people will live in the area and thus not need to commute or there won't be any more jobs there to commute to thus ending the issue.
Likewise, areas that have lots of people commuting from them can have the opposite pattern worked on them.
The point will be to encourage bosses to commute to the office farther while their employees commute shorter distances. This is largely what is causing the problem.
The businesses people are commuting to are in nice parts of town near the homes of senior management. Their employees live on the other side of town and must commute to work. Reduce office space in the nice parts of town and they'll move their offices to the places where their employees live instead. This will largely address the problem so long as density is kept reasonable.
You'll also increase population density which will put further strain on everything.
As to your claim that high density housing means people don't commute long distances or times... then your claim is that people in New York City, London, and Tokyo do not commute long distances to work. Factually inaccurate. Commute times and distances for those cities are comparable to Los Angeles. The difference is the number of people commuting over the same territory to the same places not the length of the wait or distance.
If you want to reduce the distance, then you need to reduce the ratio of work space to living space in that area. And if you want to make sure the roads do not get congested, then you need to keep the population density low enough that the roads are not stressed.
Slashdot Mirror
... you do realize you're outing yourself as a fascist, right?
It is nazis like you that have always been the problem. Kill yourself.
No, I am not kidding. Do it now. Get up, find a clean and effective means to end yourself... and do it. The world will be a better place.
And that is how libertarians kill people. We suggest you do it to yourself and then leave the choice to you.
People like you just shoot people. You don't believe in choice. You don't believe in freedom. All you believe in is violence and hate.
Kill yourself. Not kidding. Do it now.
The big companies in this case are not the ISPs giving you trouble. They're the backbone ISPs. Completely different culture and mentality.
What is more, what you're not getting about the backbone ISPs is that they're not as heavily controlled as to when and where they can lay cable. As a result there is competition there already. They already know that if they mess with the flow someone else will run cable next to them and they'll lose.
Competition works.
Look at your shoes. Did they need to pass regulations to make your shoes not terrible? No. Competition did it. You as a consumer check out the shoes in the store and you only buy the ones that are worth your money. You don't buy the ones that are bad.
The same principle can work in almost infinite applications.
As to key distribution and management, yes it is easy actually. It simply requires that the source and destination are not idiots.
Managing a security system amongst idiots is in practical terms impossible. People that are not idiots have to be in control of it. And if the source and destination are clueless then an educated third party has to manage it.
However, assuming neither source nor destination are clueless... it can be done easily. And it is done all the time by those that aren't clueless.
You're confusing last mile connections with... some bullshit you made up.
I can get a line brought to a neighborhood from the backbone. It could cost a million or a couple hundred thousand... or substantially less. It depends on how far away it is from the neighborhood I want to wire. Ideally you should pick one close to where ever it coming from so you pay as little as possible initially. But once that has happened, I have all the resources at that point to wire the neighborhood. That is if I have the fiber to do the last mile and some switching and routing equipment. All told it is entirely manageable. I do not need to wire the entire city. All I need is a fat link. And those links are not provided by Comcast or Verizon etc typically. They tend to be offered by companies like Qwest communications.
And as I said, 80 percent of the backbone is idle. It is a buyer's market.
I do not need to wire the entire city to wire a single neighborhood.
All I need is a permit to do it.
You could have high speed fiber in your house right now if your local officials just allowed this to happen. It would cost them nothing.
... of the FCC in the process. That is their primary beef. They see it as an encroachment of federal regulation which they're reflexively against.
This said, if you want the conservatives on your side there is a way to do it while getting effectively to net neutrality.
The issue is that we have a few large companies that are monopolizing everything. Why is that? Mostly because it is almost impossible to lay the last mile of cable from a regulation stand point. Cities, counties, and sometimes even states put taxes, regulations, and conditions on laying cable on the last mile.
Laying backbone cable is much easier. I think I saw an estimation that over 80 percent of US backbone bandwidth is laying idle. The issue is the last mile and the problem is government interference. LOCAL government interference. Not federal.
If you pitch to conservatives "hey, you're allowing monopolistic companies to rob you because local corrupt government officials are getting bribed to shut out competitors" then you're going to have an easier time getting conservatives on board.
If what you want is a better and freer internet... then this gets you that. With expanded competition, the big ISPs will not be able to play these games. Mom and pop ISP providers will sprout up like mushrooms in any area with an issue. Yes, running an ISP is an investment but not nearly as big of a deal as many people think.
If you only serve a given neighborhood then the costs aren't that big a deal. Why does a new ISP automatically have to service the entire city? Does the local sandwich shop need to open 50 locations to be able to operate? Obviously not. You open one franchise in one area that you feel you can turn a profit in and you expand from there if you are successful.
THAT is what the future of ISPing should be. Local ISPs that run last mile internet service in a few square blocks, cut their teeth on that, and then expand to neighboring blocks as they recoop their investment.
You don't need mega billion dollar corporations to make this work.
Right now, look at the cost of fiber cable. The raw wholesale cost of fiber. Look up what a fiber switch costs to serve a couple hundred users. This is the sort of price structure you are looking at and it is comparable to what you find in a lot of other small businesses.
Pitch this and conservatives will be all over it. If instead you say "we need the federal government to come in and regulate everything for the greater good"... you're going to run shivers up the backs of conservatives and they're going to fight you reflexively.
Why do we need to do it this way? Won't it be better this other way? Think about it.
As to the rightness and wrongness of models, the current climate models are only valid if given non-falsifiable tests.
Non-falsifiable science is not science.
If your model cannot fail a test... then it is not being tested. How is this an alien concept?
This is the consistent issue with climate models. They are non-falsifiable. They are mostly tested against FUTURE predictions which is like saying your model of gravity says a given planet will be in a given place at a given time in the future. But by the time we know what really happened, never mind what my model said before.
I'm sorry but that isn't valid. You need to test your models under conditions where there is a failure state or they are not being tested and are inadmissible. Full stop.
In regards to who I was citing, the scientist that Al Gore cited and said inspired him to go on his environmental crusade.
As to politics, the issue is 95 percent political at this point. Price of bringing politicians into it. It is unavoidable. If you want to keep the politics out, then you're going to have to kick the politicians out. And they already own the issue so that is less likely then the scientists getting kicked out. How many of the UN climate reports were written by politicians? Every single one. It has caused some problems because scientists have said things in their reports to the UN that included qualifiers that were repeatedly deleted because the politicians wanted to make a clearer and more extreme statement. Some of the scientists pulled their reports from the UN on this basis... which proved to be difficult because the UN didn't want to shed any of the reports.
As to there being too much science being done around the world, I really doubt you're reading from anything but two labs. One in the US and one England. They're the ones mostly driving the whole thing. Have you for example looked at what the Japanese are saying about this issue?
The japanese built a super computer. The Earth Simulator... it was built specifically to run these climate models. It had the processing power to model the whole world's climate in extreme detail. They uploaded the climate models currently in vogue at the time, fed in historical data, and saw if the system accurately predicted known climate conditions at those times. Shockingly... it predicted nothing even remotely accurately. I believe in one simulation the oceans boiled. The Japanese called up the people that provided the models and said "what gives?"... the people that provided the models responded by introducing PLUG variables at given periods of time to force the system to give rough approximations of the correct answer at given times. Effectively, the model only worked when the computer was told the correct answer in advance.
The Japanese have had a somewhat different opinion on this issue ever since.
I'm sorry. The models are garbage and the people presuming to predict the future have no more credibility on the issue then some jackass like myself until such time as their models actually work.
Simple as that. You either have a working model or you don't know what is going on. That is obvious and self evident in every field except climate science where they don't know what they're doing but presume to still tell everyone what is going to happen. It is beyond absurd. It is pathetic.
We've been watching the evidence of their issues for several years now as one holder of CA licenses after another gets compromised and fucks everyone over in the process.
Only two entities should have the keys. The source and the destination. And there is even an argument for having more tightly regimented systems then that.
What you're basically saying is "are you implying that our widely used encryption systems are bad!?"
Yes... they're trash. I thought everyone here already knew that.
There is an average time between ice ages and we're getting due for it.
As to CO2 concentrations, where are you getting your information? Because the ice core records are known to be unreliable indications of CO2 concentration.
Regardless, the levels of CO2 have gone up and down many times in earth's past without correlating temperature swings. The notion that CO2 is a relevant driver of global climate makes very little sense.
Mostly this is because it makes up a relatively small portion of our atmosphere. Here you'll say that it uniquely blocks certain spectrums of light but that isn't accurate. Water vapor blocks the same spectrums and quite a bit more of it. What is more, water vapor makes up a much more relevant portion of our atmosphere. And water also has the problem that it does funny things like turns into reflective clouds or solidifies into white reflective sheets. It dramatically complicates your models because you have to predict cloud cover, radiation into space from snow, etc.
Ultimately, I think you have grounds to be concerned but I think without reservation anyone that says they know what they're talking about on the issue is talking out of their asses. Not one of the models subjected to scrutiny has withstood it. Not one. Zero. Cite any falsifiable test and they've failed them all. Which just means they're wrong. Period. Now they might be getting closer to being right but they're still wrong. They are unable to do simple things like predict PAST and KNOWN weather conditions given PAST and KNOWN weather variables. A good way of judging any model is feeding in known data from that time and seeing if it can predict the next KNOWN data point. If it can't then the model is bad.
Take Newton's laws of motion. They were able to predict the all sorts of astronomical events with a high degree of accuracy. That is ultimately what validated them. If you cannot predict known events given known information then you do not have a functional model. End of story.
What you probably don't know is that the scientist that came up with the green house theory disavowed it before he died. He was praised for being a genius at one point but when he disavowed AGW they said he was a senile old man. What you get for bucking the political masters. I can provide links if you like. But this is a massively over hyped issue that is going to go down as an embarrassment.
This whole thing is a lesson in the ability of money to pervert science. You've thrown so much money at institutions that they feel they are literally living and dying on your interest in this issue. They can't kill it. It means massive funding cuts.
But I don't expect you to take my word for any of that. If you want to have an extended discussion about this with cited sources etc, then I'm game.
Do remain respectful though. I will do my best not to allow my passions to make me rude. Kindly show me the same courtesy as lacking that it is hard to have an extended and serious discussion.
Best regards.
if the keys aren't private then it is hard to claim the encryption is worth anything..
Frankly, in the long term I see us going to peer to peer VOIP in any case. Everything in between doesn't need to encrypt or know my encryption keys. All it needs to know is how to route my data stream to my target.
As it stands, if I want to make a secure call, I can already do it... for free. There are lots of VOIP programs that do it. The only issue is interlocking the VOIP systems with the old phone networks. And again, you can do that in your own home without a lot of trouble.
Aren't our calls supposed to be encrypted anyway? I mean, so some jack ass with a radio can't listen to them? So what are they charging me for here?
Sounds like a reasonable product for the government.
For the consumer though, you have to ask yourself what you're actually getting with this? Doesn't appear to be anything. After all, the only people that could normally break into your communications would be the government anyway.
I didn't suggest that NYC didn't have an effective mass transit system. I instead said that the effect of that system was to allow for greater density... it did not and does not reduce commute times or distances.
The average commute in Los Angeles is about an hour both ways assuming you don't completely miss the rush.
And the average distance of commute might be anywhere from 10 to 20 miles.
Compare that to other major cities and you'll find the commute is not unusual or the distances unusual.
The only thing that is different is the density levels.
If you want to increase density and see density as an end unto itself... then mass transit is good. It makes density possible. However, mass transit does not reduce commute times or distances. So if you want to effect those then mass transit does not address the problem. All it does is allow for greater density.
As to your dreams of global pandemic, I can't support that. As to your notion that it is about political power bases... that is interesting. I think that is certainly why cities like to be tight because they are easier to politically control.
However, it doesn't explain why businesses cooperate with them. After all, businesses could more easily and cheaply bribe smaller towns then larger cities.
I think a lot of what makes cities attractive is that they're very useful for elites. People in the 1 percent can get everything they want and the price doesn't especially matter. I question whether they serve the other 99 percent however in the 21st century. Between the internet and airplanes I don't see why we pack people in that densely anymore.
You're just as guilty of that as me, Dave. Neither of us can explain the full complexity of our positions in a few sentences and neither of us try to do it.
Suggesting that I am uniquely at fault for this sort of thing is laughable. You know damn well that everyone on this topic is simplifying especially on internet forums.
*kicks dave off his high horse so he's standing in the shit with everyone else*
As to static economies, because they constantly say they'll change one variable in the system without accounting for all the other variables that change in relation to them.
For example, they tend to think they can raise taxes without depressing the economy despite that happening every single time. Just one example. They always think they can change one thing without effecting everything. It betrays an assumption that economies are static. They have no appreciation or education in the dynamism of an actual economy. Simply pointing out that one thing they're doing is going to effect something else they don't want to effect tends to make them upset. It is sort of funny.
Roughly 400 million years ago the CO2 levels were significantly above what they are now and the normal cycles of ice ages were undisturbed.
Actually that is specifically what they are saying. They tried to show AGW as causing more droughts and found that all the droughts were explainable by natural weather patterns that were predicted and not unusual.
What conditions do you think would prevent another ice age? The CO2? Really? You think the CO2 is going to stop periodic ice ages? The impact of our current CO2 on our existing climate is so minor that the issue remains controversial. And you think it is going to stop something that overwhelms summers for thousands of years?
Things really haven't changed that much.
That said, I hope you're right. Ice ages suck.
Sure... and I repeat, how has the war on drugs gone?
When will you people learn that you are not in control. You never have been and you never will be. Not even in soviet russia did this work.
Supply and demand do not care what you think.
I only post strawman when someone uses that specific logical fallacy against me.
It is hardly the only one I see. Right now you're attempting to troll me by looking through my post history and commenting on other things I've commented upon.
You're currently trying an ad hominem in that you're suggesting that because I said something you dislike or am a bad person in your view that my arguments are wrong.
This is ultimately my problem with ignorant people like you. You do not know how to form a coherent argument. All you know how to do is use these cookie cutter fallacies to con people into thinking you actually had a point.
Your problem in regards to me is that I'm slightly better educated then most of your victims. I know what you're doing and pin your bullshit to a specimen board like preserved beetles. I put the latin name for your idiocy down below the poor attempt at reasoning... and snap the case shut.
That is all your sad attempts at having a point are to me... a catalog of stupidity.
No I am not. I am assuming statistical probabilities which will incline certain probabilities and patterns. Specifically, I am not inferring any given person will do any given thing. As groups, people are much more predictable.
I see, so if I don't permit you to strawman me, then that is evidence of some inherent character flaw I have?
Eh, anonymous coward? You presume to judge me when you won't even reveal your fake name? What a pathetic piece of shit. For all any of us know you're off spouting racist bullshit half the time. But we'll never know because you won't permit a record of your horseshit.
As to whether my idea was tried and failed, it wasn't actually. Density was not limited and commercial and residential space was not balanced. So no you fucking waste of oxygen... I was not proven wrong.
As to the rest of the community being tired of me... big words for a troll that won't even reveal his fake name. That you believe such a transparent bluff has any weight is perhaps the most damning condemnation of your own intelligence. Only a complete fuckwit could believe such a statement would mean anything to anyone that wasn't likewise a fuckwit.
I see, you're wrong about something and rather then own up to your ignorance like an adult, you're going to throw out infantile insults?
It is specifically people like you that are the worst thing on forums like this... you offer nothing of value. You don't even try to be useful. You are literally a waste of bandwidth.
And bandwidth is cheap.
You're missing the point. I threw out a number as an example. The point was to reduce density in areas that were having a problem.
What is more, if you have a lot of people working in a region but not enough of those people living there, then rezone some of the commercial space into residential space. Continue to do that every time you see a pattern of too many people commuting to that region. Eventually, either enough of those people will live in the area and thus not need to commute or there won't be any more jobs there to commute to thus ending the issue.
Likewise, areas that have lots of people commuting from them can have the opposite pattern worked on them.
The point will be to encourage bosses to commute to the office farther while their employees commute shorter distances. This is largely what is causing the problem.
The businesses people are commuting to are in nice parts of town near the homes of senior management. Their employees live on the other side of town and must commute to work. Reduce office space in the nice parts of town and they'll move their offices to the places where their employees live instead. This will largely address the problem so long as density is kept reasonable.
You'll also increase population density which will put further strain on everything.
As to your claim that high density housing means people don't commute long distances or times... then your claim is that people in New York City, London, and Tokyo do not commute long distances to work. Factually inaccurate. Commute times and distances for those cities are comparable to Los Angeles. The difference is the number of people commuting over the same territory to the same places not the length of the wait or distance.
If you want to reduce the distance, then you need to reduce the ratio of work space to living space in that area. And if you want to make sure the roads do not get congested, then you need to keep the population density low enough that the roads are not stressed.
You are arguing against math. Stop it.