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

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

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

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

> US/Colorado money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also ignoring the political implications of a country spending tax money to buy services from a highly political company from a country whose politics and world influence are in flux right now.

Starlink is good because it is easy to deploy quickly. But the entire constellation and service will be dead within 5 years without constant launches of new satellites.

Forget efficiency. That sounds like a very poor investment of tax dollars to me. The fiber laid will provide lower latency and higher bandwidth connections for the next 40 years.

If the goal of the USPS was to turn a profit, then serving rural addresses is inefficient and the jobs and infrastructure to do so is bloat. Luckily that’s not the goal of the USPS.

I hesitate to mention Mamdani in this forum but it seems like he has done a lot to make NYC’s government “more efficient” in many ways. But also many people disagree on who that government should primarily serve.

I feel that a lot of government spending on roads is inefficient and would be better spent on transit systems. Many people disagree with my values tho.

This problem is solvable and people in this thread saying that it’s not are absurd.

It is a difficult problem to untangle, but not impossible. Accepting this level of tragedy and violence because cars are sometimes “economically necessary” is very sad. And again they are not nearly as necessary as is perceived. I drive my car maybe once or twice a week now and I live in a suburb of about 40k people, not in a major city.

The purpose of the system is what it does. Or in this case, the actions of the billionaire class and their capital are their values and morals.

I generally reject this litmus test that someone has to be “better” and an LLM in order for the human interaction and effort to be worthwhile.

You’re now part of the journey of this novel. They will thank you in the acknowledgements section. It’s this foundation upon which our lives, communities, culture and societies are built.

You do not need to be better. This act you did for a friend is not suddenly pointless and meaningless upon the release of the next model.