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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
I know, the Marxist ax won't grind itself, but please consider this constructive feedback - this silly, self-indulgent appeal to ideology does nothing to advance your point. It only serves to discredit you among those who subscribe to other ideologies and those who are rational and free-thinking.
I spent most of my life in Boston - last time I took public transportation from the airport to my house, at the time, it took almost 3 hours. (3 trains and a bus, wait time for each connection was relatively minimal). That same trip by car is usually 30-60 minutes, depending on traffic.
At one time I attended UCLA, I took the bus to school every day, 2 hours each way. Same trip by car - 30-45 minutes.
But yeah, Charles, only rich people should have cars!
I think you completely missed Charles' point.
I believe he is advocating for greatly improved public transportation; such that you (or anyone) wouldn't have to spend hours getting where you're going, and that it would be easier and faster to take public transportation than private.
I think that's what he's saying, at least... Charles is always a abstract.
What's so difficult to get? Do you think self-interested market actors would simply refrain from using their wealth to manipulate the governemnt to enrich themselves? Capitalism doesn't stop at building better mousetraps and expanding trade. Why would it? Human laws are not forces of nature. You can use capital to change the laws to your advantage. And because they can, they do. And they have. And here we are.
Is there something about that that's so hard to figure out?
Lot of accidents in transit rich, high density San Francisco.
Wouldn't they naturally use all those metro and BART services and not own cars, since, as you say, it's so great?
And take walkable Height-Ashbury. No one drives there... right? Although, why did it take me 30 minutes to find a parking space then. Mmm....
as to insurance. ahem. Been saying over and over: ALL drivers should be required to carry like THREE MILLION in coverage. yes it's a few hundred dollars more. this is an example of failed regulation due to self interest -- in this case the self interest of the masses in not paying a few hundred dollars more. they love it till the individual is sitting in a wheelchair with no bowel functioning due to a car accident and deprived of his or her $120K income to boot, ie they need 3 to 5 million just for care and income replacement for the next 40 years. instead of debating abstractions like marx this, neo that, good god the solution is waaaay easy. step one raise required minimum to three million step two create online insurance registration showing dec page and license plate searchable. step three-- tell cops to fucking enforce the damn law. and courts. right now they just don't. 20% of all drivers today don't have ANY insurance. and courts let them defer on and on till they get a job six months later so they only pay $150 and almost NEVER get their license yanked right then and there in the courtroom at the first hearing. with online registration any cop should be able to issue the needed $2,000 fine in about two minutes all day long -- infraction notice sent to you in the mail -- something that really hits and boom in one hearing pay, prove innocence (very difficult to do -- "I was between insurers, see here's the proof and in that one day my car was stolen!" maybe would do it) or get your license yanked. this isn't about grand debates just the nitty gritty of making law and government actually work.
Your constant use of a heavy blue filter loudly echo’s Viagra’s marketing material.
Is that intentional or subconscious?
I get what you're saying here Charles. No one wants to spend 2-3 hours going to and from work and a comprehensive public transportation would be a better investment that would help prevent situations like mine from occurring.
Either that or his monitor is fucked up and he's correcting for that in Photoshop, but I doubt it. Maybe the plug is falling out of the back and he can't reach it for all the junk on his desk.
But in a truly civilized, urban world, reporters would be doing that simple, elementary research for their posts, not unpaid commenters! (Alert: Subsidy! SUBSIDY!!!)
Nor would is that big of a subsidy really. A few dollars a month unless you have a really shitty record.
Your biggest problems with these posts is that you're following the South Park method of advocating your point.
1. I hate cars.
2. ??????????
3. Capitalism is brought to it's knees/New Urbanist Utopia!
Why won't you ever discuss the limits of what you advocate? The fact that not everyone lives or works within a city with decent mass transit is a huge issue. The fact that folks switch jobs frequently means they have to move frequently, so they're moving significantly farther and more often (and they're using their cars!!). Not to mention the compounding issues of poverty, racism, income inequality and so on.
So I ask you, Mr. Mudede, rather than telling us all about how much you hate cars in all shapes and forms, why don't you instead discuss what the next step is. Talk about what some of the hard problems are, and how you incorporate people from all walks of life regardless of rural/suburban/urban, racial/gender and class differences.
I'm honestly quite interested to hear what you have to say, it's obvious that you're passionate. But all I see is "I hate cars".
The insurance companies oppose raising the minimum requirements; the rabble has little to do with it. Take a look at what ALEC has been doing in that regard.
Original author here. $70 million isn't a whole lot, true, but that's just for pedestrians. It's very likely that the number of drivers being injured is much higher, since the number of collisions that are driver-vs-driver are much larger than the number of driver-vs-ped. And that's just the city of SF, not even the county, so less than 1 million people, out of a state with 40 million.
It also doesn't take into account people whose private insurance covered their health care costs. Those people are paying higher premiums whether they drive or not, so that if someone DOES hit them with a car insurance companies don't lose money.
Like I said, it's all baked into the premium, and ultimately we're allowing health insurance to take some of the burden off of car insurance -- a burden that SHOULD be on car insurance.
Whether all of this means that costs would increase significantly on an individual basis is less important than the fact that nationwide it's likely to be at least billions of dollars, and that it's a much smarter move to pay the billions up front to increase safety (part of which involves providing people with safer mobility options) rather than paying it on the back end to cover someone's medical care after they're critically injured.
Some have. Millions of others have not. The idea that that's what capitalism is "always about" is as absurd as the idea that the world was created by god in 7 days, and yet people believe...
BTW, do you honestly think Marxism has allowed you to transcend the selfish impulses that come with being human? Perhaps Marxism is nothing more than an elaborate delusional justification for the desire to take from others what you did not earn.
If you want to compare light rail to the subway, I used to go to school in Boston and I lived in Cambridge. My house, in Cambridge was 3 blocks away from the Purple line (Boston's equivalent of light rail) and my school was a short bus ride from the light rail terminal. The trip was still only marginally faster than taking the subway.
On the other hand, if you live further west from Boston, the Purple line made it possible to commute at all. But, Charles, who lives in a house, thinks that everyone should live in an apartment, in the city, so I don't think that light rail providing the suburban population access to the city is what he has in mind.