Except when they use their political influence to get the city to reject managed retreat as a coastal erosion adaptation strategy. Guess who those homeowners expect to pay to rebuild the coastline?
Disarming good people means bad people cannot steal their guns. So instead of disarming good people, let's cut off that source of guns for bad people by making it a crime to leave any gun unlocked. Currently, only Massachusetts has that law. (Other states only require it in households with children.)
Gas taxes and other user fees combined pay less than half of the cost of the roads. In California we heavily subsidize the roads with sales taxes such as Measure M in Los Angeles, TransNet in San Diego, and Prop K in San Francisco.
I know developers are cheats enough to claim they put in grade-A sidewalks when they really just painted the dirt.
I see, when decisions are made at the street level instead of the city level, developers suddenly start committing fraud. Do you have any examples of fraud happening when decisions are made at the street level but not the city level? I would like to investigate the psychology that causes this and try to find a solution.
people make choices for themselves that include running over anybody in their way... Sorry, your libertarian anarchy dreams are just inane.
Have you ever been to Europe? They have such charming little towns that were built without zoning laws. In fact, modern zoning laws make those towns illegal to build today. (Cobblestones? Narrow, winding streets? You can't drive a 35 foot fire truck down that street, better make the street illegal!) Instead, all we can build are neighborhoods devoid of character; pristine, sanitized little boxes all the same, reminiscent of communist architecture but decorated with stone facades to break up the monotony a little and make the houses more palatable. Don't be fooled, that is what zoning laws and central planning give us!
What you call "anarchy" I call "organic". Why is what worked so well for us in the past now considered "inane"?
Zoning codes exist so that some developer who doesn't want to pay for wide sidewalks can't get by with putting in what he thinks is reasonable.
Do you honestly think developers are not greedy enough to put in sidewalks as wide as their customers demand?
Why should bikes pay nothing? Why should people who walk pay nothing? Why should trucks not pay more since they do more damage?... Electric cars will need to pay a mileage tax as well...
Sure, make them all pay a weight-mile tax. For bicycles, the easiest way is to tax their tires. But also keep fuel taxes to pay for the nonzero cost of air pollution and other environmental damage caused by burning the fuel.
In my area there are no real options to cars
Yes, when you build your town around the car, you suddenly have no choice but to drive everywhere. You've painted yourself into a corner. It's bad strategy to have only one way to get around, because it makes you a slave to your car, Big Oil, and so on. But look on the bright side: the oil companies love you!
Should cities have been laid out differently in some vast utopian fantasy where that were possible? Sure. But that isn't the world we live in.
How many of the buildings around you do you think will be still be there 200 years from now?
The sooner we end the subsidies and government meddling in the market for transportation, the sooner people can start making choices that save themselves money and make our cities more financially productive.
Liberals will pay for body cameras on Police. Progressives may like that idea, but they also want to address the training the cops receive that necessitate the need for the cameras.
Liberals will vote for a stimulus package. Progressives might too, but they'll also plead for an investigation into why it's needed, how it will be spent, and if the system will allow for the same problem to happen again.
Liberals will raise millions to beat Republicans despite Republicans having more big donors. Progressives think large donations fundamentally corrupts politics.
Liberals will promote after school programs for inner city youth. Progressives might too, but will also address the minimum wage, lack of jobs, historical housing discrimination and the over-arresting of black youth across the country.
Liberals will raise taxes to pay for our social programs. Progressives will increase tax revenue by closing the tax loopholes that allow corporations to pay little to no income tax.
Liberals might watch MSNBC. Progressives generally agree that the mainstream media is a part of the problem.
Rather than discourage independent thought, it seems that progressive ideology encourages it by asking questions.
Taller buildings equals...bigger pipes under the streets...a dense apartment building scenario equals bigger cost and higher cost to build and repair.
Not that much higher. Have you ever had to fix an underground pipe? Most of the cost is digging the trench. Otherwise the Flint water crises would have been solved almost as soon as it started.
Zoning standards specify what is required for street width, sidewalk style and size. If you think the property owner has anything to do with that you're crazy.
That's true, most city's zoning standards are copied from another city's zoning standards, because the city thinks a formula in a book knows better than you and your neighbors about how wide your sidewalk should be. Wouldn't it be better if these things could be decided on a street by street basis?
There are really no streets that are never used as roads to use your terminology.
I never said there are non-road streets, I said there are non-street roads. For example, a freeway is a type of road that isn't a street.
Streets are the endpoints, the destinations. The places. Roads (including streets) connect these places to each other.
you have to have a fairly significant population density to make any of the alternatives to cars viable.
Cars aren't viable either, not without massive subsidies (cars pay less than half the cost of the roads) and zoning laws that force property owners to build more parking than the market thinks is optimal. Would you drive everywhere if the gas tax were $2.22 per gallon and you weren't guaranteed free parking at your destination?
The sewers go under the street and are shared among all buildings on the street. More buildings on the street means the sewers cost less per building. Taller buildings means the sewers cost less per housing/retail/office unit.
Sidewalks... Trees...
Making the property owner responsible for these and not for the roadway naturally results in fewer trees, narrower sidewalks, and wider roads, an environment hostile to life. Unless, of course, you are a car!
[Streets] are paid for as part of the initial purchase of the lot...
Only if you ignore the opportunity cost of that land!
Not everyone drives on the particular road in front of my house, but there's a vast amount of city street mileage I never drive on...
The street benefits the owner of the adjacent property. For example, a restaurant needs some way to bring customers in. A house needs a way for the owner to get in and out. So it makes sense to pay for these with property taxes.
Non-street roads benefit people traveling from A to B, so it makes sense to pay for these with some kind of user fee (gas tax, tolls, etc.) the same way transit is (partially) funded with transit fares.
But the first step is to make a distinction between streets and roads!
Property taxes do virtually nothing in causing a person to choose an apartment or a condo or a free standing house...
Yes, let's eliminate the regressive sales tax, make up the difference with other taxes and fees, and give people more opportunities to economize when faced with a choice between an apartment or a house. The sales tax does not give them that choice. Freedom is a good thing, right?
But what we really need are fees proportional to the land parcel's burden on the city. For example, a property with a long street frontage requires more city money to maintain the street, the sidewalk, the sewers, and the trees, so a street frontage fee would be appropriate and give the poor a new opportunity to save money on their living expenses by living in a building with a narrow front.
Replacing property taxes with property burden fees would also make apartments more economical because adding the 2nd floor would not significantly increase the fee.
Property burden fees would also allow more properties to be built in a given land area, satisfying demand for housing and lowering the price of housing.
It would also make the city more tax-efficient in revenue versus city spending, allowing other taxes to be lowered, such as the much more regressive sales tax.
Great idea! Finance the military directly from the wealth it protects. Rich people will think twice about starting wars when they have to finance them 100%.
The socialized police.
Not a function of the federal government.
The socialized education system.
The one where the rich get a better education than the poor? That doesn't sound very socialized to me!
Certainly get rid of the socialized IRS
Yes! Send each state a bill for services rendered. Most red states (excluding Texas) will be forced to raise their taxes to make up the lost subsidy from blue states. Can we kick out from the union any state that goes bankrupt?
You don't have to read past the first sentence of the article to understand that it doesn't apply to ticket scalping:
Artificial scarcity describes the scarcity of items even though either the technology and production, or sharing capacity exists to create a theoretically limitless abundance, as well as the use of laws to create scarcity where otherwise there wouldn't be.
(Emphasis added.)
Because there are a limited number of tickets for any given event, scarcity exists even without scalping. Scalping cannot create a scarcity of tickets, artificial or otherwise, because the scarcity already existed.
Keep reading and you'll see that artificial scarcity (what the scalper does) can also cause a shortage.
The Wikipedia article on artificial scarcity says otherwise. Could you point me to the text you are using that claims scalpers cause artificial scarcity? Usually the original seller is blamed for encouraging scalping by setting prices so low like what Nintendo does.
To save you money by powering off when electrical demand is high in areas where demand management is in place, and to coordinate with other water heaters so they don't all turn on at once and cause the voltage to sag.
Slashdot Mirror
So capitalism solves the problem of population overshoot.
How does socialism solve it?
By "average" do you mean the median or the mean?
Except when they use their political influence to get the city to reject managed retreat as a coastal erosion adaptation strategy. Guess who those homeowners expect to pay to rebuild the coastline?
Disarming good people means bad people cannot steal their guns. So instead of disarming good people, let's cut off that source of guns for bad people by making it a crime to leave any gun unlocked. Currently, only Massachusetts has that law. (Other states only require it in households with children.)
Gas taxes and other user fees combined pay less than half of the cost of the roads. In California we heavily subsidize the roads with sales taxes such as Measure M in Los Angeles, TransNet in San Diego, and Prop K in San Francisco.
I agree, firefighters should bill your insurance like the paramedics do.
Now what should we do about our socialized roads?
Which plan was that?
Did the fire fighters ask for priority, or did they ask for their unlimited data plan to be de-throttled?
Was it the Casio fx-7000G? I still have mine.
They should hire homeless people to climb up to the top floors of buildings and take the elevator down.
When it's so expensive to get psychological help and when there's a stigma attached to it, you can't really be surprised when things like this happen.
You're not impeding traffic if traffic can change lanes to pass.
I see, when decisions are made at the street level instead of the city level, developers suddenly start committing fraud. Do you have any examples of fraud happening when decisions are made at the street level but not the city level? I would like to investigate the psychology that causes this and try to find a solution.
Have you ever been to Europe? They have such charming little towns that were built without zoning laws. In fact, modern zoning laws make those towns illegal to build today. (Cobblestones? Narrow, winding streets? You can't drive a 35 foot fire truck down that street, better make the street illegal!) Instead, all we can build are neighborhoods devoid of character; pristine, sanitized little boxes all the same, reminiscent of communist architecture but decorated with stone facades to break up the monotony a little and make the houses more palatable. Don't be fooled, that is what zoning laws and central planning give us!
What you call "anarchy" I call "organic". Why is what worked so well for us in the past now considered "inane"?
Do you honestly think developers are not greedy enough to put in sidewalks as wide as their customers demand?
Sure, make them all pay a weight-mile tax. For bicycles, the easiest way is to tax their tires. But also keep fuel taxes to pay for the nonzero cost of air pollution and other environmental damage caused by burning the fuel.
Yes, when you build your town around the car, you suddenly have no choice but to drive everywhere. You've painted yourself into a corner. It's bad strategy to have only one way to get around, because it makes you a slave to your car, Big Oil, and so on. But look on the bright side: the oil companies love you!
How many of the buildings around you do you think will be still be there 200 years from now?
The sooner we end the subsidies and government meddling in the market for transportation, the sooner people can start making choices that save themselves money and make our cities more financially productive.
Do you mean liberal idology?
Rather than discourage independent thought, it seems that progressive ideology encourages it by asking questions.
Not that much higher. Have you ever had to fix an underground pipe? Most of the cost is digging the trench. Otherwise the Flint water crises would have been solved almost as soon as it started.
That's true, most city's zoning standards are copied from another city's zoning standards, because the city thinks a formula in a book knows better than you and your neighbors about how wide your sidewalk should be. Wouldn't it be better if these things could be decided on a street by street basis?
I never said there are non-road streets, I said there are non-street roads. For example, a freeway is a type of road that isn't a street.
Streets are the endpoints, the destinations. The places. Roads (including streets) connect these places to each other.
Cars aren't viable either, not without massive subsidies (cars pay less than half the cost of the roads) and zoning laws that force property owners to build more parking than the market thinks is optimal. Would you drive everywhere if the gas tax were $2.22 per gallon and you weren't guaranteed free parking at your destination?
That sounds nice but politicians are trying to avoid that.
The sewers go under the street and are shared among all buildings on the street. More buildings on the street means the sewers cost less per building. Taller buildings means the sewers cost less per housing/retail/office unit.
Making the property owner responsible for these and not for the roadway naturally results in fewer trees, narrower sidewalks, and wider roads, an environment hostile to life. Unless, of course, you are a car!
Only if you ignore the opportunity cost of that land!
The street benefits the owner of the adjacent property. For example, a restaurant needs some way to bring customers in. A house needs a way for the owner to get in and out. So it makes sense to pay for these with property taxes.
Non-street roads benefit people traveling from A to B, so it makes sense to pay for these with some kind of user fee (gas tax, tolls, etc.) the same way transit is (partially) funded with transit fares.
But the first step is to make a distinction between streets and roads!
Yes, let's eliminate the regressive sales tax, make up the difference with other taxes and fees, and give people more opportunities to economize when faced with a choice between an apartment or a house. The sales tax does not give them that choice. Freedom is a good thing, right?
False.
But what we really need are fees proportional to the land parcel's burden on the city. For example, a property with a long street frontage requires more city money to maintain the street, the sidewalk, the sewers, and the trees, so a street frontage fee would be appropriate and give the poor a new opportunity to save money on their living expenses by living in a building with a narrow front.
Replacing property taxes with property burden fees would also make apartments more economical because adding the 2nd floor would not significantly increase the fee.
Property burden fees would also allow more properties to be built in a given land area, satisfying demand for housing and lowering the price of housing.
It would also make the city more tax-efficient in revenue versus city spending, allowing other taxes to be lowered, such as the much more regressive sales tax.
Great idea! Finance the military directly from the wealth it protects. Rich people will think twice about starting wars when they have to finance them 100%.
Not a function of the federal government.
The one where the rich get a better education than the poor? That doesn't sound very socialized to me!
Yes! Send each state a bill for services rendered. Most red states (excluding Texas) will be forced to raise their taxes to make up the lost subsidy from blue states. Can we kick out from the union any state that goes bankrupt?
I agree. What should we do about our socialized roads?
Because companies don't need laws to prevent them from becoming monopolies, withholding information from their customers, or creating pollution!
You don't have to read past the first sentence of the article to understand that it doesn't apply to ticket scalping:
(Emphasis added.)
Because there are a limited number of tickets for any given event, scarcity exists even without scalping. Scalping cannot create a scarcity of tickets, artificial or otherwise, because the scarcity already existed.
The Wikipedia article on artificial scarcity says otherwise. Could you point me to the text you are using that claims scalpers cause artificial scarcity? Usually the original seller is blamed for encouraging scalping by setting prices so low like what Nintendo does.
To save you money by powering off when electrical demand is high in areas where demand management is in place, and to coordinate with other water heaters so they don't all turn on at once and cause the voltage to sag.