Hacker News Reader

Comment by sprout | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by

>One social engineering event per conversation, please.

Wasn't the central 'event' of the article social engineering?

The central point of the article seemed to be the assertion that people who are that poor and should not be living so far from their place of employ would be better off if we did this. Yes, they would lose their jobs if they stayed where they are.

But the taxes on parking would discourage borderline-poor from owning cars in the city, which in turn would bring down housing costs in the city, making it possible for your neighbors to live more cheaply and healthfully by biking/busing to their now nearby job.

Yes, there would be hardship involved. But the alternative is waiting until fossil fuels rise to such a cost that they can't afford to drive to the city anyway. We've then destroyed their chance of earning a livelihood by chasing their short-term comfort.

View on HN

I'm done here, but let me explain.

Too often the pattern in "what do do about problem X" is to write an essay espousing that we do "A"

Usually these essays gloss over, ignore, or belittle side-effects because a discussion of all the edge cases and results doesn't make a good essay (or a good book). In addition, most things in life are complicated, and authors need to make a succinct point, quickly.

The problem is that what makes for good essays, what makes for good political talk, very rarely is as clear-cut as the essayists make out to be. So along comes some schmuck (I volunteer for this role in my story) and points out the half-dozen or so unstated implications of A.

No problem, the supporters say, we'll just add B and C in there. Now, that fixes all your concerns.

Well yes, but are we talking about A, or A, B, and C. You're just adding in more stuff. Because now we need to talk about the implications of B and C, which you probably haven't thought that much about and are probably worse than the ones for A.

"No problem," folks say, because when we do B and C, obviously D, E, and F come along. They're needed to take care of C.

This can continue ad infinitum, with each addition of terms being less and less thought out, and the implications more and more unpleasant.

The thesis of the article, if I understood it, was that the cost to society for parking in the city (and he seemed to be saying the suburbs as well, although I might have misread) outweighs the benefits. A tax, or elimination of some parking would produce more good than bad.

I take issue with that conclusion, although I grant his premise -- costs of stuff keep going up -- to be true. I take issue with it for many reasons: cost to the rural poor and middle-class, cost to the urban poor, view of the problem from an academic standpoint instead of a practical one, using a long-term problem without clear costs (fossil fuel issues) to directly hurt people living today. There are all kinds of reasons I take issue with his thesis. In addition, the premise was trite. Mundane. The conclusion I found supercilious. It was just really bad. I'm sure the author is a great guy and wonderful and all, and I agree with his cause, but that doesn't mean I have to like this essay. I don't.

Some things are really simple. For example, ALL subsidies are economically harmful.

The mortgage tax credit is a great example of this. It promoted an increase in the average home price because people without home mortgages where subsidizing those with them. It also reduced the value of existing homes because they where built before the increase in average size etc etc. It destabilized the economy by promoting excessive borrowing... (why pay down your mortgage with an effective rate of 3.5% when you can invest in other things etc.)

The people that benefited from it loved it. However, if you had just given the same people that money without the subsidy they would have spent it on other things and been happier.

There are times when subsidies seem to create short term benefit, however it's always more effective to tax what you don't like than subsidize what we do like or simply have the government build it outright.

For example, ALL subsidies are economically harmful.

You are overstating your case. In a completely free market, public goods (goods which are non-rivalrous and non-excludible) will be under provisioned, since people will have an incentive to freeload of the people who do pay. Subsidies for public goods, or even private goods with a positive external benefit can (if the level is chosen correctly) prevent this under provisioning.

Granted, parking (and owning a home) are private goods, so the point is moot for the purposes of this article and your example.

A true public good (non-rivalrous and non-excludible) would in effect need to be completely subsidized. The closest real world example would be pure research which in the real world is paid for by the government or non profit seeking organizations. IMO, GPL code is close, however it is somewhat rivalrous in that only a few branches will be maintained, and insuring code which best supports your organization is in the main branch has value. EX: Google does not want an add blocker to be installed in Firefox by default.

However, that's not what is generally considered a subsidy. A targeted tax break on wind farms is the the class of activity I am talking about. When governments directly provide services there is little incentive to increase production beyond what is useful and significant incentive to cut back production. However, with farm (food) subsidies there is by definition overproduction which prevents non subsidized actors from competing and distorts consumption.

PS: Thanks, I should have been more clear.

> A true public good (non-rivalrous and non-excludible) would in effect need to be completely subsidized.

Not necessarily. Please see "The private provision of public goods via dominant assurance contracts" ( http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/PrivateProvision.pdf)

Wait, Assume that all agents are anti free-riders. Whether from moral prohibition or for some other reason none of these agents will ever knowingly free ride on another. Assume, however, that each agent is unaware that the others are anti free-riders.

I am a free rider when possible so his logic falls apart. People make irrational choices all the time so charites are capable of gathering relativly small amounts of money (total from all of them is 2.2% GDP and there are a lot of such orginizations). However, there is a reason expencive things like building ITER are not based on cheritable donations.

Your previous comments provided an interesting (if unnecessarily polemical) counterpoint, but you've lost me with this one. Exploring the potential ramifications of a policy change is the very reason for discussing it, and the point of an article like this is to spur discussion. But in this comment you seem to go beyond criticizing the particular article, to criticizing the very idea of suggesting a policy change. You seem to be saying, "nobody should ever propose changing anything, because whatever change they propose, I can probably think of negative consequences that they didn't mention." Presumably that's not what you meant, but I can't guess what you did mean.

    But the taxes on parking would discourage borderline-poor
    from owning cars in the city, which in turn would bring
    down housing costs in the city, making it possible for
    your neighbors to live more cheaply and healthfully by
    biking/busing to their now nearby job.

This seems a bit backwards to me. If parking costs substantially more in the city, wouldn't some of the people commuting into the city look to relocate closer to their job? Wouldn't this increase in demand result in an increase in the cost of living in the city?

The point isn't to reduce prices, the point is to make sure that prices accurately reflect costs. In this case, prices do not reflect the cost of parking, which lets some people get away with not paying for land in the city, even though they use land in the city.

If this increases prices, that's good, because it lets people more accurately understand the cost of their habitation and transportation.

Alternately, if that's bad, I think the burden of proof is on you to show why inaccurate pricing results in more wealth overall.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com