llbeansandrice

You’ve made the same mistake that this thread is talking about.

It’s not about whether the abstraction is human or not, it’s the level of abstraction you can operate at. Using hand tools vs power tools as a bad analogy: you can use either and still become a good carpenter. If you have someone build your cabinets for you that’s a totally different level of abstraction and you don’t actually have any carpentry skills or knowledge.

Housing is a market and the value of items in a market can go up or down.

For some reason going down isn’t allowed in housing.

If Nvidia or Tesla tanked tomorrow to $10/share are those who own shares being “denied” money when they sell? Obviously not.

The sales tax comes out to $0.03 more on a $100 purchase. I don’t think this argument about providing these types of social services really holds that much water. That obviously depends on the actual tax amount but in the case of Front Range Passenger Rail it’s safe to say that the value provided by having a train outweighs the mill-levy.

I don’t know anything about your country’s situation so I can’t speak to it specifically. The US spends $200bn/year on roads and then there is the massive socialized cost of owning a car. Providing alternative options pretty clearly outweighs the social cost.

Taking regional rail to avoid a car trip would already pay back the sales tax I will pay many times over.

> US/Colorado money

CO is quite constrained in taxes compared to other states. Any tax increase must be voted on and have the spending already determined. This sounds nice in theory, in practice people hate new taxes intrinsically even when services are horrifically deteriorated.

Funny how those never seem to favor labor. I wish I could have an accounting error like that don’t you?

> but why on HN?

It makes sense to discuss it here since YC is largely US-based and the US has been such a large center of tech, VC-funding, etc. That impact obviously extends globally but I’m fascinated by the attempt to be “apolitical” on HN when those in charge of YC and nearly all of those in YC’s orbit are anything but.

I understand wanting to keep discussion curious and meaningful, but the influence of tech and these companies cannot be separated from either red v blue, capital-P Politics nor from small-p policy and politics on any level. It cannot, in my opinion be “apolitical” in the sense of “absence of politics”.

Either way, there clearly seem to be bubbles on HN. I’ve almost never seen pro-union sentiments here but other commenters indicate that the prevail view here is left of Marx. Evidence of bias either way is impossible with anec-data. I find the arguments about the actions and views of those in charge more meaningful than complaining about post and comment removal personally, but the discussion here is multi-faceted and prone to folks talking past each other.

Tfa only spend a small amount of time using grok threads as a case study of the general views and actions of HN though.

I think this assessment is fairly reductive and doesn’t consider that the realm of start up tech is massive, the political affiliations and views of those at YC and the inherent stance that being “apolitical” actually ends up being.

I also feel that HN attempts to avoid these classic forum trappings and in my personal opinion it has failed. Either you are correct and this is a minority of people or it’s not a minority and HN is pervaded by extremists. Both are bad and if HN wants to continue to be good it needs to be solved imo.

I wonder how quickly businesses would advocate for better land use and city planning if these externalities were more apparent and properly accounted for instead of providing “convenience” in a system that has been designed to be inconvenient.

You are excusing literal theft to the tune of $16mm. And the excuse is that the company is so large and vast and dominant that the scale to the company is a drop in the bucket.

Does the theft of $16mm become worse if DoorDash was half the size?

If I steal $16mm I’d go to jail but it’s no big deal because a corporation did it? The apologia for this is baffling to me.

Colorado is shipping a regional rail project in the front range. Service will start in ‘29 and the district is voting on new sales tax to fund the expansions.

It’s a very solvable problem. We’re also not talking about removing car infrastructure just funding a small amount of reasonable local transit. You can get quite far with Bus Rapid Transit, bike facilities, etc. The goal is to reduce the vehicle miles traveled in cars in general. Right now it’s very hard for any individual to make that choice because the transit infrastructure sucks.

It’s actually quite easy. RTD in the front range in Colorado has drastically reduced issues on buses and the light rail the past couple of years. It wasn’t that hard.

I take various forms of transit regularly and I’ve never had an issue more noteworthy than any interaction I’ve had in a car.

So you agree there should be more options besides cars?

Roads cost $200b a year and that doesn’t include the individual cost of owning a vehicle, fuel, insurance and maintenance. It also ignores the opportunity cost in having parking lots and land taken up by highways instead of being more economically productive in even small cities.

Unnecessary is the perfect word. If a car is unnecessary then can simply choose to not have one. Right now a car is required to live in most places in the US.

No one is saying people must give up their cars. I just want more options.

Your housing analogy is also perfect. Nearly 80% of the land in my city is single-family zoning so it’s necessary to buy an expensive detached home to live in my city. I would like more choice in housing, transit, etc.

Unnecessary is the perfect word and it’s not strong at all

Then why is Amtrak breaking ridership records?

My pithy response is the same as people who have told me what to do when I try and advocate for transit. “Move somewhere else.”

I don’t find these problems unsolvable. We spend over $200 billion on roads a year. That’s almost $75bn more than the CA high speed rail. That’s project has its own problems but local buses and street cars and road diets would cost minuscule fractions of that number and improve conditions and options for nearly everyone.

Cars are clearly not a perfect solution. They are expensive and unsafe. But for some reason transit and buses have to be the perfect solution for everyone upon immediate delivery just to get the tiniest fraction of funding.