amrocha

I didn’t say that they’re voting for a candidate and would never change their mind either.

The issue is that you think people are voting for policies. I don’t think that’s true anymore, and maybe it never was true.

Deceptive advertising! haha

That can be said about pretty much anything though. Don’t drink shampoo!

>Would you allow an 8 year old to wander New York City unattended?

I know you meant this as a rhetorical question but honestly, the answer should be yes.

And if the city is too dangerous for kids to live in it now, then fix that.

Likewise for the internet. Kids are going to use it, we should make sure it’s designed around that.

That doesn’t mean we need surveillance like this though.

I see, by “MMT” you mean quantitative easing. Not really the same thing.

Can you give an example of countries listening to MMT economists?

Economics isn’t a science though. There’s no scientific rigour to any central banks actions.

The comment was about needing a car in the cities, so that’s not really relevant

Kyoto has a lot of buses, so maybe that’s where it was. I’ve found that they’re usually on time and not too crowded, but maybe you had a different experience.

I’ve personally never felt like I needed a car in fukuoka, osaka, or kyoto. What places did you have a bad experience at?

I really don’t think you can argue that buying a car for groceries is cheaper than getting them delivered every once in a while. Even just in terms of gas and taxes it’s already more expensive.

Sounds like cars should be slowed down in your city, and public transport should be expanded

I’ll take the option without landlords personally

All of that is only possible because of network effects, and a nationalized JR built most of that network.

And honestly, I think you’re overstating the degree of choice you have as a rider. Different lines carved out their corners and companies avoid each other. Service level is generally high, to the point that it’s a non factor. You take whichever train is cheaper/faster, and that’s it.

The problem is that rail has huge positive externalities that are not captured by the operators. You can address that by letting operators speculate on real estate, or you could do it with taxes.

This is putting the cart before the horses. These wealthy countries haven’t even stopped burning fossil fuels. Let’s focus on that first.

Can you name a single web framework with wide adoption that was released in the last 6 months? I expect you to delete your comment if you can’t.

To be fair I don’t know how often elderly care workers are going to 6 different locations in a single day, but it’s hard to imagine it’s a very common thing. If there’s a large condo with lots of residents wouldn’t it be more efficient to hire a permanent employee?

This edge case that you came up with warrants a car, but is that really the reality of most cars parking in any given community?

And honestly, it’s questionable whether it warrants a car too. In Tokyo it would be perfectly fine to do those trips by public transport. My biweekly cleaner gets around by train to all the places she works at. And local delivery companies all use bicycles for last mile delivery.

Maybe that’s not viable right now, but I think that’s the point of Donald’s advocacy. By not pricing parking correctly we provide perverse incentives as a society that lead us down a vicious cycle. Free parking means more cars means less transit ridership means we need more free parking, and repeat.

This shapes our cities into places that prioritize cars over humans. High housing costs, air pollution, less mobility, less freedom.

If you price parking appropriately, you get a virtuous cycle instead. Expensive parking means less driving means more transit ridership means more free parking slots means more room for other development, etc.

Well, there’s a lot of people in this thread not content with the status quo.

The whole urbanism movement of the past decade is evidence of that I think.

Moreover, even if a community is happy with free parking and expensive housing within that community, it doesn’t mean that people outside that community are happy with it.

I think it’s a bit more complicated than people are happy with the status quo.

Donald’s book The High Cost of Free Parking is about this! Really great read, highly recommended.

Rest in peace.

I’m not sure where you live, but I’ve never had to install anything to access the features you described, going back over a decade.

All of that has been solved by the web at this point.

I don’t see how this is a net positive for programmers, and for people in general. It’s hard to fathom why anyone worked on this.

That’s not what I said at all! There’s no failure being hidden, public deficits are a normal feature of fiat currencies.

The value of a currency has nothing to do with how that country’s economy is doing. It’s mostly a factor of international trade. That has nothing to do with debt ratios.

I’ll be clearer. The failure mode that you’re talking about, where debt ratios are so high that a country isn’t able to service its debt, is economically speaking impossible. This isn’t “too big to fail”, it’s the system working as intended.

Of course that’s not what I’m arguing, please don’t straw man me.

The constraint on public spending is the amount of real resources that can be utilized. Productive utilization of resources is not inflationary. For example, if you have 10% unemployment, a government can hire those people to build infrastructure regardless of the debt ratio. On the other hand, if you issue public debt to purchase commodities that’s obviously inflationary.

But in either case, the constraint is real resources and inflation, not the debt ratio.

You asked why countries haven’t done this already? They have, it’s called quantitative easing and they do it in financial crises to absorb the productive capacity that the private market isn’t utilizing anymore.

No, you didn’t explain how Japan is different. Because in fact it’s not. The key point is that a government that issues debt in its own currency can always service that debt, and this is NOT inflationary.

Zimbabwe’s inflation happened because the country had debt denominated in USD and CNY, along with massive political instability, a shrinking economy, and a war happening all at the same time. Couple that with a useless central bank and you have hyperinflation.

How is that in any way comparable to the US? It’s not. This is obvious to anyone arguing in good faith.

There is no failing for a country with a sovereign currency. Fish can’t drown in the sea. A country is not a business.

Money creation is necessary in a healthy economy. It makes all of us richer when the government spends money on infrastructure.