Your title of “Strait of Malacca Ship Tolls Divide Emerges Between Indonesia, Singapore“doesn’t reflect the article title, nor what was said it in the article. Both Indonesia and Singapore are aligned in maintaining free shipping.
“Balakrishnan added that Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia are all aligned on maintaining free passage.
“All of us are trade-dependent economies. All of us know it is in our interest to keep it open,” he said. “The point here is that all three countries have a strategic interest and are strategically aligned in keeping it open. That’s not something which you can take for granted in many other places.”
It’s just Iran that wants to hold world trade hostage to fund their regime.
It's more likely both are true. We can afford to do more for the people, but at the same time we are over-spending. Streamlining some of these functions would be nice. One area we are vastly over-spending is highway and roadway construction, for example. Even if we can afford it, we shouldn't pay for it. There are other more politically hot topics here and both general sides of the debate have merit, but we should try to not be dogmatic about it and instead think in systems terms and long-term outcomes. When I see a city or state spending $400,000/each on units for housing homeless people, well, that's obviously a misuse of funds. That's not sustainable. We shouldn't do it even if we can afford it. When we spend $50 billion in a week of the Iran war (which I support but just as an example), well, that $50 billion could have paid off a lot of mortgages - so maybe we should or could do that instead.
Maybe start with universal healthcare and rezoning laws so Airbnb can’t sit on housing. Make public college free. Reduce military spending drastically. Force billionaires to pay a 25% tax on net worth (they’d still increase their wealth).
I don't like or valorize billionaires, I guess (I mostly don't care about them), but I don't understand what's "inhumane" here. There aren't very many billionaires. Billion dollar companies are far more salient to ordinary people than billionaires are. And, obviously, you can't fund universal health care by liquidating the billionaires!
I've never really understood why people are so het up about billionaires. The distinction between them and decimillionaires seems mostly like comic book lifestyle stuff; like, OK, they fly their pets private for visitation with their ex-spouses or whatever, I guess that's offensive aesthetically?
Far, far more damaging to ordinary people is the Faustian bargain struck between the upper middle class and the (much smaller) upper class, which redistributes vast sums of many away from working class people into the bank accounts of suburban homeowners.
(Because fundamental attribution error guarantees threads like this will devolve into abstract left vs. right valence arguments, a policy stake in the ground: I broadly favor significantly higher and more progressive taxes, starting with a reconsideration of the degree to which we favor cap gains.)
I really applaud the work McKenzie Scott is doing. A lot of billionaires play the "aw shucks if only someone would tax me" - nothing is stopping them from just donating to the government if they really thought that. We have a housing problem, why not play Sim City in real life and build houses for people or something? Personally I think it would be a blast.
Similarly though, there's nothing stopping you personally from taking $50, $100, whatever and walking over to a shelter or food bank and donating. You don't need to wait for the government to stand up a program. Lead by example like McKenzie Scott is. We donate money to local organizations - again, no barriers here.
I don't care if someone is a billionaire, though of course we should tax them "appropriately". But if you're really mad about billionaires and you want these programs, you should be giving away your own money too and there's nothing stopping you. Waiting until you get just the right program or tax the right person is a bad strategy if you really care about some of these issues.
The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots in American downtowns and stopping the development and expansion of highways through the same. If you did nothing else that would have a significant positive impact. For almost all communities those surface parking lots are economic extracts from the community. They're woefully underpriced for tax purposes too.
The removed parking needs to be replaced by transit options people actually want to use.
I live just outside a fairly large city. Getting downtown sucks. Driving is the only real option, but parking is annoying and expensive. Even if it was free, it would still be annoying. I almost exclusively take an Uber because of it. Those can add up and be a mixed bag as well.
There is bus service, but it’s infrequent and quadruples the time. In some cases, the transit directions say 1h 20 minutes, where 47 minutes of that is walking. Meanwhile, a car is under 20 minutes.
I used to live outside of Chicago. The Metra could get me downtown faster than a car (during rush hour) for just a few bucks. The train became the pragmatic choice and dictated where I chose to live.
Removing parking doesn’t build a train, it just raises parking rates, keeping people from even bothering to go downtown.
I agree that surface lots are terrible, but they have to be replaced by something.
> The removed parking needs to be replaced by transit options people actually want to use.
Removing surface lots doesn't immediately mean removing parking. You're still free to build parking - you just have to integrate it into the building it is serving. Which gives you a pretty big incentive to only build the parking you actually need, and share it with neighboring buildings to reduce costs.
> Removing parking doesn’t build a train, it just raises parking rates, keeping people from even bothering to go downtown.
Removing surface lots means increasing density, which means the same transit stop can serve more people, which lowers per-passenger costs and allows for higher-frequency running and denser transit networks.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem: you don't want surface lots removed because there is no good alternative, but a good alternative isn't economically viable due to the surface lots enforcing low density.
I agree with you. The person I replied to said, “if you did nothing else that would have a significant positive impact.”
Building parking structures is also something else. They would make parking better than the surface lots, but make traffic worse.
My objection was so the “nothing else” part. Surface lots are bad, but just removing them doesn’t solve the problem they are currently poorly solving. Larger parking structures would be better, and transit options that offer options that are faster, cheaper, and easier than driving/parking would be better still.
If I may clarify, my intent was just to suggest that if we did nothing else with respect to better transit that removing the surface parking lots and replacing them with something else would have that positive impact. Of course, I didn't clearly state that, but I wanted to let you know what I intended. :)
Something that peeves me where I'm at is that the transportation system here (not Chicago) is not coordinated across the systems. Here there's a bus that could take me to where I work, but it stops once every hour and is often late by 20 minutes. Local businesses also sponser a "free trolley" that follows the same route. It's overfull at peak hours and as a form of transportation the seats and setup make it much less safe for passengers. (Park benches as seats, and when the driver breaks you're holding on for life) The worse part is that this "free option" now competes with an existing valid option that cost a dollar. But that means that based on fares it's likely they will reduce stops and reduce hours (they have) it would have been better had the business incentive had just sponsered the existing bus route instead. Additionally comparing to china's awesome bus system (depending on the city), there, there is always two buses that come every 20 minutes. So you're never really ever suffereing. (Major cities anyways) The trolly is poorly managed and often three of them will come at once as they don't sync them when they run late they just all go so often you have three trolleys following each other and a very late bus. So it just... I never understood with the advent of GPS why buses aren't syncing so that they could just be traffic bound instead of time bound That way a bus could always arrive every x minutes instead of well the bus is scheduleed to arrive at x time and it might not arrive due to traffic woes. This should be syncable. ... Like why is the system so... I can't avoid saying it... capitalistically bound instead of populas bound. I mean it would better for capalism if that was more human centric. /political rant blah blah
Buses are a simpler solution. A city should solve the anywhere to downtown is quick on bus or train thing. You need transit lanes and more buses. Ideal is public transit is faster and cheaper. Even someone who already has a car will not use it.
Then once solved, let people get across from one suburb to the next on transit quickly but that is harder to do economically.
Simpler solution but they’re a strictly worse version of your car and they still depend on highway widening projects. In other words, more of the same.
To change the culture in the US we will have to make category changes. Cars and busses are in one category, walking, biking, and rail options in another. We need the latter or we risk just wasting time, effort, and resources.
Busses make more sense and work better as an add-on to rail systems and walking/biking.
A typical commute bus would carry 30-80 people so that replaces probably 30-80 cars. I don't know how a bus is worse than a train in this regard. Both need land to be built. Unless you are talking underground but they are expensive.
If your city is a shit place to commute adding buses and bus lanes can help. Once you are on a bus zooming past all the traffic you can see.
Also important point: I'd do min 300m between stops maybe more.
I would be more pro train and anti bus for "last mile(s)" if the bus is petrol but if all electric I am for the bus! Where I live there are a plethora of places my kids can get to on a bus much quicker than even if we were near a station and they got a train.
It's more about changing cultural habits. We already have busses and bus rapid transit, for example, where I live. And while I generally support the effort, it doesn't and won't have the adoption that something like, say, a street car or tram would have going along other various routes. The issue is the bus is just a worse version of your car. Even today people buy cars, drive them, pay $15 to park, rather than hop on our park-and-ride service that are conveniently located in the suburbs. That should tell you something about how difficult it is to change cultural habits.
But rail is a category change. You walk up to it, it takes you somewhere on a fixed line, you hop off. You continue on your walking journey. You expect things to be a little closer, more dense (but not too dense). You're not thinking much about bus time tables, it's new, it's cool, Europe has it. Japan has it. And those are great places you've visited, right?
The bus is way more nice to get suburbs to city than my car though. It is actually quicker. And that is with a walk both ends and leaving at $random time. Make it a better car and people will switch. Part of it is making the car crapper. Bus lanes do that. Limited parking does it.
Of course if there were a train nearby I would probably get it. I'd pay an extra 10 mim commute time for that smooth ride (e.g. if train stops further away as they likely are). But if you are low on trains, buses can do a great job.
And if people won't shift make them free. Might be cheaper than building more roads anyway.
The person I was replying to said to remove the parking and “nothing else”. To me this means no investment in transit options to compensate. This just kills the city as the money from the suburbs can’t get to the city to spend.
Exactly. I already don't go into the large relatively nearby city as much as I used to because of both general inclination and traffic/parking hassles. Which is fine.
But if people in the main stop going into the city you'd probably see a drop-off in the city amenities that make many people want to live there in the first place.
This is like that phrase “nobody goes there anymore it’s too popular”. The surface parking lots would be replaced with things people want to go downtown for in the first place, never mind additional residences which mean more customers for businesses.
Nowhere in the world, and I mean the entire world, has the scenario in which surface parking lots are replaced with other productive uses have resulted in a drop off in city amenities - it’s a non-sequitur. The businesses and residences that replace the lots are city amenities. Adding them has the opposite effect that you describe.
Think about it another way - what if we add surface parking lots? What would you drive to downtown to do? There wouldn’t be anything there because the amenities would have been replaced by mostly empty parking lots.
We can also just have multi-story garages. We can actually increase parking (on a social scale) while removing surface parking lots. That would create amenities and allow folks like yourself to easily come to town. Would it cost? Sure. So what?
Just go (or don't go) to places based on how much of a hassle it is to do so. If enough people--local or otherwise--want to visit good for them. I definitely make choices based on how easy or hard it is to get to the destination.
I hear ya. I'm the same way. Funny enough we actually actively try to avoid going to the suburbs in our metro, especially some of the areas with Costco and such because the traffic and anger and road rage is just so god damn stupid and I think, frankly, things have gotten rather dangerous. Maybe I'm getting old. I find it much easier and less stressful to just walk over to somewhere and grab what we need when that is an option.
This is what the activists think but in reality it just slowly makes everyone's lives worse. There's typically some sort of political or social dysfunction preventing effective transit and reducing parking doesn't magically make that go away. It's analogous to the tired refrain about new technology not fixing social problems.
Not in this case. Traffic and the movement of people are a bit like water. Path of least resistance. Make parking more difficult and folks will take transit, or live closer to work. Both options are better for local economies and save everyone money.
Which means you also need to battle the housing problem, too, though, plus changes in settlement patterns take years to decades to manifest. In the meantime, you might have to weather quite some griping about it or even serious pushback.
Generally speaking, not my problem and not something I care all that much about in my city.
I don't think society needs to accommodate that lifestyle so someone can live 30 miles away from work and treat my city like a place you just commute to work to. Those days are increasingly over, as cities realize this is bad for the city and incredibly expensive to operate (surface parking lots are economic extractions and tax revenues low).
You are of course right there is pushback, and things take time to manifest, but we moved to the suburbs at one point there's no reason we can't fix that. I'm not entirely sure why my city council for example cares what suburban voters who don't vote in our elections really think outside of 2nd hand complaining from employers. But they're free to relocate their large downtown offices to the suburbs, we shouldn't cater to them anyway precisely because they can move at any time leaving quite the financial problem as building patterns revolve around this 8-5 white collar commuter scheme to surface parking lots, and if the anchor tenant leaves you're left with, basically, a dead city. It's incredibly fragile and stupid.
Maybe the parking lots, but if you know anything about the major Japanese cities with satisfyingly good train systems then you'll also know they have a lot of expressways running through them.
Yes, I do love the rail system in Japan. Went a few years ago, going back next year most likely. I've also driven in Japan (Osaka). I just meant, in general, a low-hanging fruit we could tackle is making surface parking lots a thing of the past in downtown or urban areas. With actual economically productive constructs there instead, such as business, retail, housing, parks, &c. we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense, and in some cities we could work on intra-city rail too.
I think where I live (Columbus) is very well positioned for this model if only our civic leaders had courage and stopped thinking of transit as a "blue" thing (also our city council needs to stop suburban thinking). We don't need to build any more expressways or highways. We are maxed out. The only sane option is respecting appropriate density, and focusing on categorical changes in how we move people: walk/bike/rail instead of bus/car/roadways.
> we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense
That's the key issue. We don't need to launch a war on surface parking to achieve the necessary density. Zoning and mass transit buildout go hand in hand and the problem getting in the way is fundamentally a political one. If the politics is solved and the density increases market forces will cause the surface parking to go away on their own.
Surface parking is a huge waste of space that becomes unusable for pedestrians. You can't apply market forces to it because unpaid roadside parking is effectively a tragedy of the commons.
You do though, because you need a higher level of density to make transit make sense, and you need more interesting places for people to live and walk to. When you have easy and convenient parking, particularly these surface lots in downtown areas, you kill the downtown because there's nobody there to support business outside of 9-5 office commutes.
Small quibble: visits downtown are an uncommon occurrence for many (most?) Americans. The vast majority of their transit is intra/inter-suburb. Where I live, it's relatively simple and easy to hop on a commuter train or bus to get downtown. It's impossible to use public transit to get from one place along the ring road to another, or from one side of a particular suburb to another. Therefore, everyone still needs a car.
I'm a Tokyo local and yes, this is real. Even I find it uncomfortable. On the Yamanote Line during rush hour, trains come every 2-3 minutes and it can still look close to this.
That said, most people's daily commute isn't this extreme -- it depends heavily on the line and direction. The tradeoff most Tokyo residents accept is: 30 minutes of crowded train vs. hours stuck in traffic with nowhere to park.
The OP is missing that you do the same thing you just do it in a car in a congested highway with your road rage, spend a lot of money, and all of that to avoid the impression of a subway ride that would never happen in an American city except maybe New York because these cities obviously lack population density at the scale of Tokyo. Oh and you get in car crashes and die.
This isn’t an anti-car rant. I’m actually trying to just get folks who don’t want to drive and shouldn’t be driving off the road so we can save money and do more with the infrastructure we already have while restoring economic bases and entrepreneurship to our non-coastal cities. It is quite literally a win for everyone except bloated highway departments and their downstream contractors.
That's because subways are a dead end. They need to be removed entirely, and the dense cities need to be de-densified. That's the long-term plan.
> I’m actually trying to just get folks who don’t want to drive and shouldn’t be driving off the road so we can save money and do more with the infrastructure
Can we PLEASE just stop with the "saving money" and "off the road" nonsense? Please.
If you dream of rail going to every city block like in NYC, then you should think about its other side effects: toxic densification, unaffordable housing, depopulation.
> That's because subways are a dead end. They need to be removed entirely,
I certainly agree subways aren't the way of the future, at least in America. Too expensive and, frankly, unnecessary. We are already de-densified (which is why I find your below comment bizarre)
> and the dense cities need to be de-densified. That's the long-term plan.
Can you point to a single elected official in an American city that has a plan of reducing density in their city? I'm curious.
> Can we PLEASE just stop with the "saving money" and "off the road" nonsense? Please.
Well, no, I won't stop because it's true and arguments to the contrary are faulty for various reasons. For example, suggesting that transit doesn't reduce congestion misses the fact that you can't count future growth that didn't occur. Every single person riding transit would be driving, if there was no transit. It's just logically false. It's also ignoring the fact that growth and congestion and transit typically go hand-in-hand.
> And it is NOT cheaper than owning a car.
The only way for this to be true is to ignore all of the factors of car ownership. Even then it's probably still false.
> If you dream of rail going to every city block like in NYC, then you should think about its other side effects: toxic densification, unaffordable housing, depopulation.
No I don't. Also NYC is the most populous city in America so depopulation here as an argument yet again makes 0 sense. Housing is unaffordable precisely because of the density and demand, which go hand-in-hand.
> We are already de-densified (which is why I find your below comment bizarre)
The US is rapidly densifying, and this will get _worse_ as the population starts shrinking in earnest. Japan leads the way here, its population has been going down for a while. Yet Tokyo now is in a real estate bubble.
> Can you point to a single elected official in an American city that has a plan of reducing density in their city? I'm curious.
Plenty of cities are resisting the density increases, NIMBYs are holding the line.
> Well, no, I won't stop because it's true and arguments to the contrary are faulty for various reasons. For example, suggesting that transit doesn't reduce congestion misses the fact that you can't count future growth that didn't occur.
Again. Transit does NOT reduce the congestion. This is a simple observable verifiable fact.
You can say that transit enables more density (true), but it does NOT reduce congestion.
> Every single person riding transit would be driving, if there was no transit.
And there would be fewer of these people.
> The only way for this to be true is to ignore all of the factors of car ownership. Even then it's probably still false.
In Seattle, I'm going to end up paying $150k in taxes/fees for the failrail line that will go nowhere near me. This is literally more than a lifetime of owing a cheap car.
But even if we just look at operating costs of transit, a single trip on transit is about $20. This ends up being about equal to the IRS deduction for car depreciation for the average trips.
> No I don't. Also NYC is the most populous city in America so depopulation here as an argument yet again makes 0 sense.
Look at the fertility rate for people in dense city cores vs. suburbs.
> Housing is unaffordable precisely because of the density and demand, which go hand-in-hand.
Indeed. Now think about this: the total US population is shrinking. NYC is growing. What is happening?
> The US is rapidly densifying, and this will get _worse_ as the population starts shrinking in earnest. Japan leads the way here, its population has been going down for a while. Yet Tokyo now is in a real estate bubble.
There are a lot of factors that go in to real estate prices, and I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to compare Tokyo to any city in America besides New York in just about any aspect.
> Plenty of cities are resisting the density increases, NIMBYs are holding the line.
Name one. That's not the same thing as NIMBY. No city is actively against growth.
> Again. Transit does NOT reduce the congestion. This is a simple observable verifiable fact. You can say that transit enables more density (true), but it does NOT reduce congestion.
It's the same thing, and it goes very well with your thesis that the US is rapidly densifying. As it densifies congestion gets worse, adding transit takes away additional cars that would otherwise be on the road.
In Seattle whatever transit exists is gone, now those people would drive cars, ergo congestion increases. This seems very obvious.
> In Seattle, I'm going to end up paying $150k in taxes/fees for the failrail line that will go nowhere near me. This is literally more than a lifetime of owing a cheap car.
Ok and do you not see what the problem is with this argument? I could just say, I'm paying $150k more in taxes for a new highway being built somewhere that won't go anywhere near me or I won't drive on.
Second, you're not including the costs for highway construction, maintenance, insurance, gas/oil (why do you think we're in Iran) &c. that goes into car ownership.
Third - Most Americans aren't buying cheap cars.
> But even if we just look at operating costs of transit, a single trip on transit is about $20. This ends up being about equal to the IRS deduction for car depreciation for the average trips.
Weird. I took a "single trip on transit" and it was less than $5 in New York. See I can just pull numbers out of my ass and apply them without any good reason too.
> Look at the fertility rate for people in dense city cores vs. suburbs.
What about them?
> Indeed. Now think about this: the total US population is shrinking.
> There are a lot of factors that go in to real estate prices, and I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to compare Tokyo to any city in America besides New York in just about any aspect.
Yes, it absolutely makes sense. The trend is simple: you build rail transit, you get unaffordable housing. Go on, try to find a counter-example.
> Name one. That's not the same thing as NIMBY. No city is actively against growth.
Princeton, Texas.
> It's the same thing, and it goes very well with your thesis that the US is rapidly densifying. As it densifies congestion gets worse, adding transit takes away additional cars that would otherwise be on the road.
No, it does NOT take cars off. A car that is on the road, stays on the road. Cars are _vastly_ superior to any transit mode on average, so people almost never give them up.
You basically need to make your streets impassable before people start switching from cars to transit.
> In Seattle whatever transit exists is gone, now those people would drive cars, ergo congestion increases. This seems very obvious.
Then people would out-migrate, companies will close dense offices, and congestion will relax.
> Ok and do you not see what the problem is with this argument? I could just say, I'm paying $150k more in taxes for a new highway being built somewhere that won't go anywhere near me or I won't drive on.
And to give you some perspective, one mile of this failrail will cost about the same as construction of 1000 miles of modern 6-lane freeway. The entire project will cost about the same as the total highway spending for entire WA for 15 years.
> Third - Most Americans aren't buying cheap cars.
As I sa
> Weird. I took a "single trip on transit" and it was less than $5 in New York. See I can just pull numbers out of my ass and apply them without any good reason too.
That's because transit riders in the US (or Europe for that matter) never pay the full fare cost, it's always subsidized.
And the ~$20 number is easy to get. For example, MTA: 1.15 billion annual rides (2023), total _operating_ budget $19.2B. Divide one number by another. And this does not include all the new subway construction cost, which is harder to account for.
It doesn't. Tokyo metro is like, 30+ million people. That has very little in common with, say, where I live which is Columbus, Ohio. You can argue this point but I am closed-minded to any difference of opinion here.
> The trend is simple: you build rail transit, you get unaffordable housing. Go on, try to find a counter-example.
That's because the demand for rail transit is so high that people will pay a premium to live next to it. When you say people really want to live in the suburbs, well, the market disagrees and that is reflected in housing prices.
> Princeton, Texas.
Ok so you've found a city of a little under 40k that is opposed to growth? How so? What article are you referring to? Who specifically from Princeton, Texas is speaking out? Why do you have to go to such a small town to find an example?
> No, it does NOT take cars off.
Ok but it does, because those people have to move around and if they're not using a train or something they'll use a car. I don't know why you're disputing this pretty trivial fact.
> Cars are _vastly_ superior to any transit mode on average, so people almost never give them up.
I don't think anyone needs to give up their car. I certainly don't want to. They're convenient and awesome. But I don't need or want to get in a car and drive 20 miles or something to buy a loaf of bread. That's a dumb and expensive transportation model.
Not true in all states. Pretty much untrue generally. You're forgetting about the federal highway dollars that go into this stuff, which comes out of general federal taxes. Either way you pay for all sorts of things you don't use all the time. I don't use Social Security or Medicaid. Guess I should start arguing to get rid of those.
> And to give you some perspective, one mile of this failrail will cost about the same as construction of 1000 miles of modern 6-lane freeway. The entire project will cost about the same as the total highway spending for entire WA for 15 years.
Well to start we should just stop building freeways, we already built a lot and don't need them. Second please cite your source. Third, not applicable to all states.
> That's because transit riders in the US (or Europe for that matter) never pay the full fare cost, it's always subsidized.
Very few people pay the full cost for anything, including highways, or the police who have to ticket traffic offenders, or the fire trucks that have to go scrape dead kids off the pavement. Bad argument.
> And the ~$20 number is easy to get. For example, MTA: 1.15 billion annual rides (2023), total _operating_ budget $19.2B. Divide one number by another. And this does not include all the new subway construction cost, which is harder to account for.
You're just cherry-picking random things to argue about. First it's Seattle, then it's NYC, who knows what city you'll pick next to create an arbitrary data point.
We already have too many people anyway (earth should have closer to a billion). And we can increase the population if we so desire through immigration or benefits to promote procreation. What does this tie to anyway? Was your argument that because population levels are declining, Americans are moving to cities and driving up housing prices? Who cares?
> They don't.
Well they do, otherwise they wouldn't be moving there.
> Most people would prefer to live in suburbs, but they HAVE to live in dense cities.
If most people preferred to live in suburbs they wouldn't be moving to urban areas.
There is only one truly dense city in America and that's NYC and I guess you could argue Chicago. Other cities have some parts that are kind of dense, but even those are very car-centric (DC, Boston, for example).
Also, for whatever it is worth, I'm not in favor of NYC style development. I live in a single family house with a detached garage, with restaurants, parks, coffee shops, grocery, and more within a 15-20 minute walk and of course I can drive to those things too if I want. Initially what I was talking about was a city like where I live where we have these economically destructive surface parking lots and commuter culture which is bad for the city and bad for the economy. Adding transit to my city, particularly a north/south tram line will alleviate congestion, improve quality of life, and attract more people. Our surrounding neighborhoods can continue to have mixes of apartments, single-family homes, duplexes, and more.
Yes, and this exactly is the problem. WHY is it a city of 30 million when the country's population is shrinking?
> That's because the demand for rail transit is so high that people will pay a premium to live next to it. When you say people really want to live in the suburbs, well, the market disagrees and that is reflected in housing prices.
No. There is NO demand for transit from people living in the city. None. The demand is from _companies_ that force people to work in/near dense city cores.
> Ok so you've found a city of a little under 40k that is opposed to growth? How so?
Moving goalposts?
> You're just cherry-picking random things to argue about. First it's Seattle, then it's NYC, who knows what city you'll pick next to create an arbitrary data point.
I'm sorry. I can't argue with you in good faith. You have zero understanding of the problem, and when confronted with facts or examples, you slink away from them. Because they are not to your liking.
For what city do you want me to give you the data? I can assure you that I'm not cherry-picking, and that NYC is actually one of the better-run transits.
> Well they do, otherwise they wouldn't be moving there.
> If most people preferred to live in suburbs they wouldn't be moving to urban areas.
Spoken like a true privileged dude. Have you ever heard of doing what you hate because you _have_ to? That's exactly what is happening with cities.
> There is only one truly dense city in America and that's NYC and I guess you could argue Chicago. Other cities have some parts that are kind of dense, but even those are very car-centric (DC, Boston, for example).
The problem is that cities are getting _more_ dense. Not the absolute density.
> No. There is NO demand for transit from people living in the city. None. The demand is from _companies_ that force people to work in/near dense city cores.
Am I missing an obvious joke here? Because I've lived in multiple cities with great public transit, and this quote couldn't be further from the truth - the people love their public transit options, and they keep voting to build it out further.
The cost of housing further backs this claim. The market is usually right - and amenities like a tram or great public transit lead to higher prices particularly near the stops or in a certain proximity. With extra travelers you get shops and small business that spring up that corporations like Starbucks can't as readily compete against. That further drives interest and development and you create a positive economic feedback loop.
> Yes, and this exactly is the problem. WHY is it a city of 30 million when the country's population is shrinking?
Because there are better opportunities and amenities in the city? I don't know. Can you elaborate on what your larger point is here? I still don't understand why Tokyo is relevant to this conversation, but happy to chat about it if you can help me better understand the point you are trying to make.
> No. There is NO demand for transit from people living in the city. None. The demand is from _companies_ that force people to work in/near dense city cores.
Or maybe companies are locating to where people want to live? I.e. California or San Francisco specifically.
> Moving goalposts?
You just named a random city, the least you can do is grab an article where an elected official is talking about how they're against growth or urban infill or something.
Then we can talk about why this is a bad example.
> I'm sorry. I can't argue with you in good faith. You have zero understanding of the problem, and when confronted with facts or examples, you slink away from them. Because they are not to your liking.
Or maybe you aren't doing a good enough job explaining the problem. What does filling some crappy surface parking lots and putting a tram through Downtown Columbus, Ohio (for example) have to do with Tokyo or New York City?
> For what city do you want me to give you the data? I can assure you that I'm not cherry-picking, and that NYC is actually one of the better-run transits.
Columbus, Ohio. Let's talk about that since you have the data and I live here and can confirm your data.
> Spoken like a true privileged dude.
Damn right, and I'm not apologizing for it. :)
> Have you ever heard of doing what you hate because you _have_ to? That's exactly what is happening with cities.
I've heard of it. I would categorize commuting as "doing what you hate".
> The problem is that cities are getting _more_ dense. Not the absolute density.
Doesn't seem to be a problem. The increase in density increases tax revenue, allows folks to live closer to where they work, enables entrepreneurs to start new businesses because they have a larger serviceable population, and more. And that can all happen while I still have a 2.5 car garage, car, and single family home.
If you want to talk about density in American cities, I'd suggest not talking about Tokyo or New York City, because those are extreme outliers and no American city is going to look like that anytime soon.
I have a hard enough time dealing gracefully with moderately congested trains in a place like DC. How do you coordinate your positioning so you can get off at the correct stop if the train gets packed this tightly?
From another city where things can get quite packed on some lines at rush hour:
People in front of the door know that people will get out so they step outside to let the flow out and are the first ones to get back in, giving them the opportunity to go further inside so that they don't have to do it at every stop. Might even get a seat at some point (the longer the travel, the most likely to get a seat)
I have been stuck in commute traffic for hours, 30 minutes of that is infinitely preferable.
Also if it's really too packed, just wait 2 minutes for the next one
Thanks for the explanation. Someone else thought my question was impertinent, I'm happy you spent the time to educate me. I've never had to deal with public transit as congested as Tokyo, not even close. Hell, even on Portland light rail I find it stressful to try and navigate my way to the right place on the train to get off at my stop if I started my journey while the train was fairly empty.
> I have been stuck in commute traffic for hours, 30 minutes of that is infinitely preferable.
Can't argue with that. I won't ever have another commuting job again. I go into the office once a month, and after driving 45 minutes each way just because my company felt like our office needed to be in the most congested area of Portland, at the end of that day I thank my lucky stars that it's only once a month.
No probably a better. Never had to let more than 2 trains go but mostly just one, but even in rush hour the most common though is there is just enough space so I don't have miss any train.
That is wild, I wouldn't have nearly enough faith in the structural integrity of the doors for that. Not to mention that packing people in like that seems vaguely unsafe.
Champagne has an interesting tie to the UK as well.
Agree with you about Douro Valley. Separately the oldest port I’ve had was something like a 1928 Seppeltsfield (don’t recall the exact year). The nose was incredible and at that age, not very sweet at all. How was it served? About a spoon’s worth, dip your finger in and rub on your lips haha. You can find the bottles though, it’s not super expensive. Really cool if you haven’t had something like that before.
Are you suggesting for a fact that Iran as the guidance and targeting systems to identify specific LEO objects, and fire missiles at those targets with accuracy?
I'm saying I don't think Iran has the capability and the difference in capabilities between America and China on one hand, and Iran on the other is so different that I'm perplexed as to why they would even be mentioned in the same sentence.
I'm actually not even sure your suggestion is true. Theoretically they don't need to launch a missile and could attempt to infiltrate a data center instead. They're secure but not that secure against a determined enemy with any amount of real training.
Launching something into orbit is much harder than intercepting something because to intercept you don't need to reach orbital velocities. You can just go up and boom. The velocity of the target does the rest. Tracking it really isn't such a hard thing these days.
Then whose ships are left? The US doesn’t have any. If you think Iran will just sell oil to China and India (gentle reminder Iran is with Russia against Ukraine) and somehow the Gulf States and Europe won’t get theirs, the US will just blow up Iran’s oil exporting capacity and then nobody gets oil.
The rest of the world better start figuring out how to pressure Iran or take military action against Iran, or the whole Gulf is going to shut down and America isn’t hurt that bad besides MAGA not being able to fill up their giant trucks.
Great to see the US is asserting its control over the Straight of Hormuz. Just like Iran "asserted control" by threats with missiles, we now assert control in the same fashion with our navy. Crazy! :)
The US is shooting down its citizens, blockading vital commerce routes, and accumulating a dangerous amount of nuclear weapons. It seems ripe for regime change.
> Iran has murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens for peacefully protesting. The US has not done that, nor have we "shot down" our citizens.
The US has incarcerated ~1.2 million people. Just the year, agents of the U.S. government executed two citizens in broad daylight caught by dozens of cameras, it was national news in both cases.
> Yea, 2 people killed in highly volatile situations
Don't forget the other ICE shootings and killings like the citizen in Texas that they killed and covered up for more than a year and when it was finally exposed...nothing. And the other shootings where people didnt die. Of course it was never the ice agent at fault, everyone tryin' run'em over all a sudden -- until video shows agents use the dumbest excuses to shoot people.
> Iran’s government literally ordered soldiers with machine guns to fire indiscriminately toward protestors
That's not great, but are you really trying to lower the standard we have for the US to Iran levels of terrible?
The US needs to stay out of other peoples business and focus on the US. America first, no foreign wars -- isn't that what was promised. We destroy our institutions and infrastructure investments that actually worked for the people here to re-allocate a couple billion dollars into corporate tax cuts cause "my tax dollars", then multiply that "savings" into spend by fighting Israel's war for them. This isn't the US bailing "out the rest of the world" here. This is the US bailing out ourselves from our own mess.
The US is wasting time and resources in overseas conflicts, National security should be built on domestic strength, specifically by securing our power grid and reducing global oil dependence. We have the technology, tools, solar, wind, advanced battery storage, nuclear power and electric vehicles to make this happen.
We have the wrong people in place to make this happen.
> Iran has murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens for peacefully protesting. The US has not done that, nor have we "shot down" our citizens.
Yet the US has been an accomplice to that, by intentionally destabilizing the country and then arming its population. And then murdering children.
> Yes, this is in response to the Iranian regime's attempts to hold global trade hostage for their own benefit and enrichment - i.e. if you pay the regime ransom money you can purchase oil, but that is not acceptable so we will not allow it. Unfortunately, the United States yet again has to bail out the rest of the world.
"You" won't allow it? You were the ones who started a war with a country for your own nefarious interests, then destabilized world commerce, then asked the rest of the world to fix your own fuckup, and you have the gall of "not allowing" something? You should go sit in a corner and stop putting all of us in distress. Regarding "bailing out," trying to fix your fuckups by throwing even more fuel on the fire is not bailing out.
> Nuclear weapons are dangerous, for sure. That's why Iran can't be allowed to posses one.
And that's why a trigger-happy, deranged nation shouldn't be allowed to possess them either.
> Usually every four years we select a new President. Every 2 years we hold elections and usually we select new Senators or members of the House of Representatives. Iranians, unfortunately, just live under a brutal military dictatorship without the possibility of regime change despite their ever-increasing desire and need.
Your "elections" are a mockery where an entire nation is funneled into choosing between two parties that agree on everything that matters. You are given the choice between Dumb and Dumber.
> Yet the US has been an accomplice to that, by intentionally destabilizing the country and then arming its population. And then murdering children.
So we've reached the point where the Iranian government giving an order to IRGC troops to pick up machine guns, aim them at peaceful protestors, and then fire and kill over 30,000 people is the US's fault?
> Unfortunately, the United States yet again has to bail out the rest of the world.
You mean like the one last time where they fought the war on terrorism in Afghanistan for the rest of the world and where it took them 20 years to replace the Taliban with … ehm … the Taliban?
First - there's no "kind". I don't align with MAGA or any of those guys. Most should be in jail.
Second - that's not the point I was making. I have a lot of respect for the military members that served alongside us during our time in Afghanistan.
But just as though the United States military can be apolitical and is largely treated as such in the United States, we can criticize the broader actions by the governments of those who sent troops without criticizing the valiant efforts of those troops who fought alongside us.
I‘m a bit confused by your statement. In Afghanistan a NATO coalition fought in the war. 456 British, 301 French, 158 Canadian and 54 German soldiers died.
Besides that I’m really unsure why you think that more military power would have helped. I really do believe that in a general sense this is true: since WWII the US has won every battle but lost every war. And that’s not down to an inability to be tactically extremely successful. It‘s down to taking on war aims that are impossible to achieve or at least extremely difficult and (most notably currently) being strategically totally lost.
> Besides that I’m really unsure why you think that more military power would have helped.
More troops on the ground means more resources to help keep the peace. I think that's just something we can take at face value to prove more military power would have helped.
But the issue was political power, not military power. The US performed exceptional - we kept at it in Afghanistan for 20 years, through a financial crises, and more. But without the rest of the world signing on to help politically and even militarily, instead choosing to jeer and strut their rooster feathers from the sidelines, there was only so much we could do. And now even today folks seem to like to cheer that the US "lost" Afghanistan without realizing what the repercussions are for those who live there.
The US actually won quite a few wars since World War II. Iraq being a very good recent example. That one is kind of funny because for a long time the consensus has been America screwed up, but the last I checked Iraq is doing much better, has a functioning parliamentary style government, and the only real negative thing to say is to ask whether it was worth it or not to have that come to be. I would say yes.
> It‘s down to taking on war aims that are impossible to achieve or at least extremely difficult and (most notably currently) being strategically totally lost.
It's been like 2 months and we've decimated Iran's military, killed a lot of their leadership, and neutered their nuclear program and the best they can do is threaten to lob missiles at oil tankers like the Houthis. It's unfortunate but time will tell whether this was a "strategic failure", and it's even more so unfortunate we can't in real life run the counter-factual where Iran continues to build missiles until we actually can't do anything, then they close the Straight and that's the end of maritime trade as we know it.
30,000+ Iranian civilians (probably some children too) murdered by the Iranian regime - we can speak to their justice first when the IRGC and their cronies answer for their malicious and violent crimes against the world.
Unlike the Iranian regime we don’t intentionally kill or murder people. How do you know? Because they take their own people and at the point of a gun force them to stand around on bridges and stuff because even the Iranian regime knows that we don’t kill civilians. Something that, for some reason seems to be solely lost on you.
Iran fired 2,500 ballistic missiles at the United Arab Emirates alone, intentionally targeting civilians.
We could pose it as a simple question and examine what the answers would be:
Do western powers bomb civilians intentionally?
US -> No
Israel -> No
Other westerner powers -> No
Iran -> No
Hamas/Hezbollah/Other terrorist murders -> No
You -> Yes
It's a strange thing when you aren't even on the same page as your Iranian friends.
And intent matters. I for one support a form of reparations paid to the families of those who we mistakenly killed. Will Iran pay such reparations for those they've murdered inside and outside of Iran? Of course not. There's a difference - we're morally superior.
On the other hand I’m very conveniently enjoying my experience, I don’t have to waste time screwing with stuff I have no interest in screwing with - like the OP’s examples, and if I want to run Linux I’ll just install it and do what I want or rent out some compute time somewhere.
Besides, you can buy a Mac and do whatever you want and go buy a bunch of off the shelf components to do whatever hobby stuff you want to do too.
Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself.
> Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself.
Nothing wrong with applying limitations to oneself. That's discipline, principles. It's important stuff.
The real problem is accepting the completely made up limitations that others apply on you. Corporation wakes up one day and just decides people can't run more than two virtual machines? That's stupid. Actually defending this with "but convenience" arguments as if convenience was supposed to override freedom? No.
Freedom isn't something you actively work towards. It's something you start with. It's the status quo. Others take it away from you. You can either accept it passively and enjoy the "convenience", or you can resist and go down the harder path. It's very disappointing to see people on Hacker News choose the former path.
You’re just living under the illusion of freedom. You are completely dependent on the decisions of others and their good graces for all of your computing needs, from the silicon to the Linux distro you use. You’re just drawing an arbitrary line a little further to feel like you’re in control, but you’re not.
Silicon? Sure. Billion dollar fabs are huge single points of failure. It's turning into a problem too due to the war on general purpose computing. Free software doesn't matter if we can't run it. Linux distro? Not really. It's only a matter of how much effort I want to put into things. I can make my own distro, I can't make my own trillion dollar fab.
Anyway, what even is this argument? Can't control everything, so it doesn't matter? Don't even bother trying? Just give up? Just accept your lot in life as a serf in Apple's digital fiefdom? I'm pessimistic about the future but even I haven't completely succumbed to such total nihilism yet.
You're trying to assert this big claim about freedom because some users can't I guess run more than 2 VMs on their MacBook Pro. Since we don't care we're not trying, we just gave up, we're serfs even. Well you're still a serf too your bounds of serfdom are just long enough to trick you into believing otherwise.
Who cares? I don't. I can't do anything with open source software either - like I'm going to spend hundreds or thousands of hours figuring our how any given software package works and that's going to somehow make me more free? C'mon. I can't tell Apple no anymore than I can tell someone maintaining a Linux distribution no.
It just seems like they are unhappy with the algorithm, and like any customer for any service you can cancel service, say why you are canceling service, and move to alternatives especially when your concerns aren't addressed.
Seems like they prefer those platforms and perhaps the algorithm works better for their goals. Maybe they'll grow users over time and it'll be better for the EFF on a post/engagement ratio. Maybe more engaging users are on those platforms? I'm not fan of Bluesky (interactions I've seen are racist and/or far-left lunatics or communists and other such water heads), but then again who cares where they post?
It's certainly an untenable idea, and while I'd agree that the US isn't the best beacon of governance today, I'd also argue that the EU as a whole has not been either and most of the problems are obscured from English-speaking Americans because we don't have the time or language capacity to understand all of the nuance and problems for each member state. It's hard to understand.
On the other hand, the US is big time. We're always on the front page, and so Europeans of course begin to believe they know a lot about American politics and thoughts because they read about it all the time. That leads to outlandish understandings and expectations of the US and so even when you want to start looking at governance comparisons it's hard to have conversations because "defenders" of American systems don't know enough about the EU and European "defenders" of the EU think they know quite a bit about American politics. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings, unfortunately.
The reality is that both systems have pros and cons, and how good each system is really depends on individual circumstances, and even then those circumstances and pros/cons change over time.
To keep the fun part of the conversation going, I actually think the United States and the rest of the Anglosphere should join together in one bloc. Sometimes I fantasize about how different and perhaps better history would have turned out had the American Revolution not happened.
Your title of “Strait of Malacca Ship Tolls Divide Emerges Between Indonesia, Singapore“doesn’t reflect the article title, nor what was said it in the article. Both Indonesia and Singapore are aligned in maintaining free shipping.
It’s just Iran that wants to hold world trade hostage to fund their regime.