Dear all,
I am from the Vienna University of Business and Economics and am currently doing a research on Smart City Trends. The aim if the project is to develop innovative solutions that will be able to solve some of the Mega City problems.
Would be great if you could share your opinion on air and water pollution, urban transportation inefficiency, unsafety on roads, traffic congestion, commuting, etc. Do you see any sustainable solutions for solving these and other problems?
For urban transportation, traffic congestion, roads, etc I would say that a network of subways and above ground railways is most likely the best solution. As well as this one could replace roads with paths set aside for walking and bicycling for shorter distances. I would be much interested in getting rid of cars entirely and replacing them with railways, the railway being one of the most efficient methods of transportation to exist.
I've always wondered if a sort of layered city would work. As in, the first layer is the ground layer, and it's normal, roads with building lining each end. Then the second layer, several dozen feet off the ground is another road held up by supports to the ground below and attachments to adjacent buildings. The underside could have artificial lights who's brightness depends of time of day. The top layer could use the rooftops of buildings near it's height as parks or parking lots. Just think of any layer below the top layer as a large well lit tunnel but with sidewalks and buildings on each side.
Would be cool but I have no idea of how practical it would be.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;32778029]For urban transportation, traffic congestion, roads, etc I would say that a network of subways and above ground railways is most likely the best solution. As well as this one could replace roads with paths set aside for walking and bicycling for shorter distances. I would be much interested in getting rid of cars entirely and replacing them with railways, the railway being one of the most efficient methods of transportation to exist.[/QUOTE]
The problem with this would be other people's cars, to accommodate people who need to go to the city, but have no public transport to there, you'd have to build a lot of parking centers for these people to use.
Privatization. The issue is central planning, the assumption that a small group of people is able to come up with good ideas with the motivation of doing good for the people.
The make an analogy, if a restaurant goes out of business, why was it? Was it the location? Was it the quality of the food? Was it the people hired? Was is the type of food being served? None of those reasons would be a reason as to why the restaurant had gone out of business because it would be similar to saying in the case of a murder, that someone died because of the blood loss. Just the same, the manager/owner is at fault for picking the location, for serving the low quality food, for hiring the workers, for not anticipating nobody likes eating dirt, and so on.
The idea extends just as well to roads and public infrastructure. The reasons for highway deaths that are given are often that the hospital was too far away, that the driver was driving too fast, the driver distracted drivers, and so on. These are just proximate causes. When someone goes off the road because they were going too fast around a turn, the issue is not that they were going too fast, the issue is the turn was too sharp and that there isn't enough safety monitoring present.
The solution is to privatize. What would private entities come up with? That can't be known, but through privatization and profit seeking activities, the ideas that work will be adopted while the ones that won't will not. This applies to all public infrastructure. One way to think of it is like this: if you're going to find a cure for cancer, would you want one cure being researched and tested at a time, or would you prefer 1000 different cures to be researched and tested?
Here is a video going over the basics of the road argument.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUA4h8ctNWM[/media]
[QUOTE=Pepin;32779977]Privatization. The issue is central planning, the assumption that a small group of people is able to come up with good ideas with the motivation of doing good for the people.
The make an analogy, if a restaurant goes out of business, why was it? Was it the location? Was it the quality of the food? Was it the people hired? Was is the type of food being served? None of those reasons would be a reason as to why the restaurant had gone out of business because it would be similar to saying in the case of a murder, that someone died because of the blood loss. Just the same, the manager/owner is at fault for picking the location, for serving the low quality food, for hiring the workers, for not anticipating nobody likes eating dirt, and so on.
The idea extends just as well to roads and public infrastructure. The reasons for highway deaths that are given are often that the hospital was too far away, that the driver was driving too fast, the driver distracted drivers, and so on. These are just proximate causes. When someone goes off the road because they were going too fast around a turn, the issue is not that they were going too fast, the issue is the turn was too sharp and that there isn't enough safety monitoring present.
The solution is to privatize. What would private entities come up with? That can't be known, but through privatization and profit seeking activities, the ideas that work will be adopted while the ones that won't will not. This applies to all public infrastructure. One way to think of it is like this: if you're going to find a cure for cancer, would you want one cure being researched and tested at a time, or would you prefer 1000 different cures to be researched and tested?
Here is a video going over the basics of the road argument.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUA4h8ctNWM[/media][/QUOTE]
no no no no no no no and no
how exactly would privatisation lead to a better infrastructure? your restaurant argument sums up the fallacy perfectly - the reason the restaurant fails is because people eat at other places instead. but that doesn't work at all with roads - people aren't going to pick between roads because of how sharp the turns are or how smooth the surface is. they pick their route for 2 primary reasons:
1) brevity. this is a no-brainer - people want to pick the shortest route between points A and B
2) traffic. nothing is more frustrating than sitting in a traffic jam while late for work, so people often pick physically longer routes if it means there are less horrible human beings sharing the road with them
in both of these cases, privatisation offers no advantage over public planning. adding extra lanes and bypasses is a no-brainer.
once you remove the whole concept of competition the whole thing falls apart. you even say it yourself:
[quote]What would private entities come up with? That can't be known[/quote]
your blind adherence to this idea that the market will solve everything is the same mindset that you often call people out on (rightly I might add) when they blindly support socialism as the solution to everything. it's a kneejerk spouting of rhetoric without regard to the actual circumstance, as seen by your flawed analogy.
as for your cancer analogy, please read up on how clinical trials are performed. nobody has ever suggested that only one cure should be worked on, so bringing that in is just a strawman.
besides, as for solutions to the problem, OP, it's a good idea to look at the way ant colonies are structured. they are extraordinarily efficient, and are (surprise, surprise) not geared around the success of an individual ant, but of the survival of the entire colony. this article may also be interesting, though you'll need to create an account to view it:
[url]http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928051.400-starting-over-rebuilding-civilisation-from-scratch.html[/url]
Do I get paid for my opinion?
Seriously but, build more tunnels.
Sigh... the dity i live in was going to build a light rail to seattle / sea tac - we paid them 10 mil
3 more mil and 4 years later they said - NOPE! not gonna do it...
I really wanted that light rail :(
Our wifi here - we have public wifi but nobody and no devices can connect
Im not sure why but they fucked up and even standing next to the router you can't connect
It a pain in the ass...
The new bus bay here is nice...
I'd like to see more buildings and better ways of geting around - right now everything is too spreadout
Also my city counsel are fucking morons...
There building a art center ( or want too )
As for water, im in washinton state - were good on water and we have a fairly nice clean supply
sadly tho the city below us is a flood plane and is currently flooding
Fucking kent... Y U BUILD ALOT OF HOUSE'S N STUFF NEXT TO A RIVER THAT LIKES TO FLOOD
and thus i have to take the LONG way to get to anywere... doesnt help everything connects to kent / auburn around here...
I'd like to see more underground power lines - 68% of our lines are underground and its really nice.... cars hiting poles area huge problem with us being so hilly and steep...
Hope this helps
Our roads are being redone - there really shitty right now but... there going to be better
I'd like to see better internet too... no reason why we cant have fiber to every house here....
[QUOTE=Pepin;32779977]Privatization. The issue is central planning, the assumption that a small group of people is able to come up with good ideas with the motivation of doing good for the people.
[/QUOTE]
Well actually a central government is very capable of setting up and maintaining infrastructure. Perhaps the best example of this from history is the Roman Empire. Not only did they build a very high quality road network covering their entire empire but they also maintained it excellently to the point that a great deal of roads in Europe today still run along on top of the old Roman roads. This was also done in an empire where the idea of private enterprise barely existed.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;32782744]This was also done in an empire where [B]the idea of private enterprise barely existed.[/B][/QUOTE]
not true. hell we even get the word "merchant" from latin
[editline]14th October 2011[/editline]
but otherwise yes the empire was quite efficient with its infrastructure, especially its aqueducts.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32783181]not true. hell we even get the word "merchant" from latin
[editline]14th October 2011[/editline]
but otherwise yes the empire was quite efficient with its infrastructure, especially its aqueducts.[/QUOTE]
Well capitalism didn't really exist in the Roman Empire. Most people either got free bread or lived on agricultural estates, a great deal of work being done by slaves and most settlements or agricultural estates being very self-sufficient. (Meaning little in the way of trade.)
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;32783244]Well capitalism didn't really exist in the Roman Empire. Most people either got free bread or lived on agricultural estates, a great deal of work being done by slaves and most settlements or agricultural estates being very self-sufficient. (Meaning little in the way of trade.)[/QUOTE]
wrong
[quote=the first fucking result for a google search of "roman merchants"]Roman trade was the engine that drove the Roman economy of the late Republic and the early Empire. Fashions and trends in historiography and in popular culture have tended to neglect the economic basis of the empire in favor of the lingua franca of Latin and the exploits of the Roman legions. The language and the legions were supported by trade while being at the same time part of its backbone. Romans were businessmen and the longevity of their empire was due to their commercial trade.[/quote]
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32780279]how exactly would privatisation lead to a better infrastructure? your restaurant argument sums up the fallacy perfectly - the reason the restaurant fails is because people eat at other places instead.[/quote]
The example you gave shows you don't understand the difference between ultimate and proximate causes because that is clearly a proximate cause. The principal of ultimate and proximate causation gets applied to many scientific matters in a much more complex way, but on a more basic level it is pretty easy to understand.
[quote=Wiki]In philosophy a proximate cause is an event which is closest to, or immediately responsible for causing, some observed result. This exists in contrast to a higher-level ultimate cause (or distal cause) which is usually thought of as the "real" reason something occurred.
[B]Example[/B]: Why did the ship sink?
[B]Proximate cause[/B]: Because it was holed beneath the waterline, water entered the hull and the ship became denser than the water which supported it, so it couldn't stay afloat.
[B]Ultimate cause[/B]: Because the ship hit a rock which tore open the hole in the ship's hull.
In most situations, an ultimate cause may itself be a proximate cause for a further ultimate cause. Hence we can continue the above example as follows:
[B]Example[/B]: Why did the ship hit the rock?
[B]Proximate cause[/B]: Because the ship failed to change course to avoid it.
[B]Ultimate cause[/B]: Because the ship was under autopilot and the autopilot's data was inaccurate.
Separating proximate from ultimate causation frequently leads to better understandings of the events and systems concerned.[/quote]
Assume the ship wasn't on autopilot and a captain was steering it.
[B]Example[/B]: Why did the ship hit the rock?
[B]Proximate cause[/B]: Because the ship failed to change course to avoid it.
[B]Ultimate cause[/B]: Because the captain failed to navigate the ship.
Assume the ship was on autopilot.
[B]Example[/B]: Why did the ship hit the rock?
[B]Proximate cause[/B]: Because the ship failed to change course to avoid it.
[B]Ultimate cause[/B]: Because the captain didn't know the autopilot data was inaccurate.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32780279]but that doesn't work at all with roads - people aren't going to pick between roads because of how sharp the turns are or how smooth the surface is. they pick their route for 2 primary reasons:
1) brevity. this is a no-brainer - people want to pick the shortest route between points A and B[/quote]
There are a lot of bad assumptions here. The quality of a road has a lot do to with whether you take it. This has a big interplay with the person and their vehicle, as someone with a truck and likes to go mudding would not mind going down a bumpy muddy dirt road, while someone with a BMW is more likely to find an alternative. A lot of this is dependent upon how far the alternative is away, it isn't likely that someone would go 15 minutes out of their way to avoid a dirt road, but they are likely to increase their total time by maybe 3-5 minutes to avoid a dirt road. The same could be said of bad roads. It depends on many factors with roads, a big one being the car, and another big one being the driver's preferences.
Another thing to take into account is what is between A and B. It is quite common for people to make choices that will give them more opportunities, and this is quite obvious if you take a second and look at how people plan their trips.
To make my point a bit clear, there are to homogenous stores that are equidistant from you, but they are on opposite sides from you. You someone has a grandmother who has a history of falling down and needing help. She lives right on the road to one of the stores. What road would someone choose?
[IMG]http://i54.tinypic.com/2qbf329.png[/IMG]
The answer depends on the subjective value someone has on their grandmother. If someone doesn't like their grandmother they are likely to take the route to the left. If is apathetic about their grandmother, they might go either route. If someone cares about their grandmother, they are likely to take the route to the right. This assertion seems is pretty agreeable. Now the question is how much closer does the store to the left have to be for you to start going to it? The two variables being judged here are how much you value your grandmother, and how much you value your time. When the amount of time saved is valued more than the opportunity of one route, that is the turning point. Keep in mind that the value of things change, especially grandmothers.
Now I give grandmothers as an example here because it makes what I'm saying more clear, but think about this and don't just make a reply. Apply this concept to other things, how you plan your route, how other people do plan their route. I really suggest not making a retort to this, and rather that you just think about it.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32780279]2) traffic. nothing is more frustrating than sitting in a traffic jam while late for work, so people often pick physically longer routes if it means there are less horrible human beings sharing the road with them[/quote]
Much of the issue with traffic is that supply and demand is not allowed to work.
[IMG]http://i55.tinypic.com/2d9pysz.png[/IMG]
As the the demand increases the price of a good or service is suppose to rise in junction. This plays an essential role in preventing shortages. Fixed prices have this effect in that they have no way of reducing the quantity demanded which necessitates a shortage. A shortage requires a waiting time to meet the excess demand. This waiting time as far as public roads is known as traffic. If there were public toll roads that increased there toll as demand for the road increased, then shortages wouldn't be an issue as quantity demanded would decrease, but as far as I know public toll roads only take into account the supply side (total cost).
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32780279]in both of these cases, privatisation offers no advantage over public planning. adding extra lanes and bypasses is a no-brainer.[/quote]
I made arguments as to why they would, you could at least offer a rebuttal. I suppose an easy way to get about this is getting into monopoly theory.
In this case of a single firm, this is the most common kind of graph. The supply curve is said to be more flat in competition as for homogenous products the price can't exactly be raised. To imagine this way, if two stores are selling iPods that are right next each other, one for $200 and one for $100, you're going to shop at the store that charges the lower price. This gets into the marginal cost, and the producers in competition will typically produce their products at a marginal cost that is most profitable. There is a lot to this, but it in competition, in order to make a profit a firm has to stay profitable by improving their product and adopting new technologies.
[IMG]http://i51.tinypic.com/r0ysgn.jpg[/IMG]
Now most industries have many firms because they are self regulating in that they are impossible to monopolize for various reasons. Now there is an argument that starts getting into why certain industries won't self regulate and will instead monopolize. This is argued to cause stagnation in that there is no longer competition and therefore no reason to gain an edge and adopt new technologies and so forth. It then it goes into a public vs private good type debate. I'm not going to explain this in detail, but I am going to say that there is a monopoly and there is stagnation and the reason why follows: there is no competition. When there is only one firm and no profit incentive, what else would be the result?
If I lost you, look into basic economic theory.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32780279]once you remove the whole concept of competition the whole thing falls apart. you even say it yourself[/quote]
Why would you remove the concept of competition? I'm having a hard time understanding this because my argument centers around that there is no competition in government monopoly and there is competition in privation. Is the purpose of the "you even say it yourself" to make it clear that I understand what I'm saying?
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32780279]your blind adherence to this idea that the market will solve everything is the same mindset that you often call people out on (rightly I might add) when they blindly support socialism as the solution to everything. it's a kneejerk spouting of rhetoric without regard to the actual circumstance, as seen by your flawed analogy.
as for your cancer analogy, please read up on how clinical trials are performed. nobody has ever suggested that only one cure should be worked on, so bringing that in is just a strawman.[/quote]
None of the first paragraph is an argument or relevant.
The second paragraph is worse in that it completely misses the point. I'm not at all suggesting that cancer research is done is such a manner, but rather I'm suggesting that it would be bad if it researched in such a manner.
Experimentation is needed to save lives
What experiments will succeed is unknown
The more experimentation done simultaneously the more lives saved
Under central planning, this condition conclusion cannot be met as only one experiment can be run at a time. This is quite obvious if everyone is testing the same cure for cancer. The same applies for infrastructure. The government applies the same rule across the board for which limits the amount of experimentation. This goes back to the idea of many firms and why economists are against monopolies.
[QUOTE=Pepin;32784246]I really suggest not making a retort to this, and rather that you just think about it.[/QUOTE]
you only get the privilege to say that when what you say is actually coherent
please clarify what the whole grandma charade means for privatisation, because to me all it proves is that people take suboptimal routes in certain circumstances, which if you note, I didn't actually deny in my post.
I'll respond to everything else once I get what you're even trying to say
[QUOTE=Pepin;32784246][/QUOTE]
awesome thanks
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32783971]wrong[/QUOTE]
The Romans didn't have a bourgeoisie class develop though. The land and power became concentrated with agricultural estate owners who gradually became more self sufficient and powerful with a large number of slaves and poor persons who worked and lived on his land. Trade was mainly the importing of goods but rarely exporting anything of worth. Their empire slowly ran out of money and stagnated as production of goods went down and their armies became weaker and more poorly funded as the empire declined. Rome was never a trading power. It was merely a empire of looters that fed off other peoples through military conquest until it could no longer do so, and lived off its financial reserves until it declined into poverty and faded away.
They had slaves to do all the work, the free men were unemployed and the rich were unwilling to spend any money, preferring to live decadent lives in their agricultural estates until the medieval era forced them to depend on other estates and implement feudalism.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raubwirtschaft[/url]
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