I used to pirate video games, but Steam basically ended that for me. The sales no longer make it worth it for me to pirate a $60 game, instead, I can buy it for $12 on sale.

For software, I used to pirate Adobe products and Sony Vegas, but there are alternatives for those now.

For something like sports, I think the cost can be hundreds of dollars per season. I watch the NFL and NHL, and to watch every game that I'd like to watch, it would cost me something like $600+ per year. There aren't really viable alternatives. I'd have to get three services to watch all of the NHL games I want to watch, and I don't even know how many services I need for the NFL. Amazon Prime, Sunday Ticket, CBS, Fox? Or cable/YouTubeTV with additional packages?

I'd happily pay $100 or $200 per year to watch all games in a league for a year if it was through a single service. Or a lump sum for all sports. But in the same amount of time to enter my payment information, create an account, etc. I could have easily found a stream and have it on any TV in my house.

Road funding is a big reason. Federal, state, and local taxes are used for roads, and more driving. Parking minimums required land to be dedicated to parking, further encouraging car usage for transportation and spreading out development with parking lots in between developments.

> Why didn't anyone choose to develop density on existing sites?

Existing sites would have had to not be developed enough to trigger a rezoning. If a different use was being proposed for land, then a zoning hearing would be needed, and parking minimums would have to be enforced. Thus requiring adjacent lots to be bought and redeveloped into parking unless exceptions were made. You can see remnants of this in some cities where amongst historic buildings and skyscrapers there are large surface parking lots.

> We built that stuff just fine from 1870 through the 1940s. What changed?

Quite a few things. Parking minimums as mentioned, euclidian/single use zoning, etc. I think one of the core things that changed is something that Strong Towns mentioned. Up until the early 1900s, municipal planners would try to project how much tax revenue per acre of land was being generated and how much tax expenditures were made for those areas. Over time, tax per acre or per parcel was deprioritized, and level of service for roads was used as an economic metric. More vehicles in an area means more economic activity (in theory), so municipalities started optimizing for more vehicular movement.

In the end, it was a lot of government regulation that resulted in this. From the federal level, to states, counties, and municipalities. It worked for a large portion of the voting populace, so it was generally favored.

It was cheaper to simply let things fall into disrepair, and build shiny new buildings and developments further away from the city center. Rinse and repeat. This is why a lot of inner ring suburbs are filled with strip malls that can't maintain their parking lots, don't have the residential density to support nearby businesses, etc.

It's kind of an interesting development pattern that's been pervasive since the 1950s, and some towns and cities are trying to reverse it with infill.

It's a very fuzzy practice, and I think as we continue towards an automated driving world, we need to be more critical of how speed limits are set.

Using the 85th percentile as a means to determine speed limits ends up with 15% of all drivers exceeding the speed limit, or worse, more drivers exceed the speed limit than those original 15% because they know consequences may be rare.

https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/speed-managem...

It sounds kind of similar to the legalization of certain recreational drugs. For example, alcohol prohibition resulted in a massive black market with organized criminal gangs, and many places realized it's better to regulate it rather than prohibit it.

I think for gambling, we need better regulations, and the Australian government seems to think so too.

The only use we have for streaming apps is finding what we want to watch.

We don't really need as much oil for walking paths, trains, or bike trails, and potholes are a different problem with different solutions for those.

As long as we have cars as we know them, we'll have oil. Road construction require s oil, all of the plastics in cars require oil, trucks require oil, shipping vessels require oil, it's oil all the way down.

It would require a seismic shift in life as we know it to live in a post oil world. Our stockpiles are pretty low (maybe a month in the US).

Basically, instead of someone going from point A (current location with own car nearby) to point B (destination), Point A becomes the destination of the previous passenger, and point B and C were the previous points A and B. So a single trip adds one more leg.

It might reduce the need for parking... potentially. But there will still need to be a certain amount of time dedicated to charging for these cars that requires parking.

If private car ownership continues increasing in cost, and households become increasingly cost burdened (transportation is already the second highest cost for households), then I wonder how this will impact demand for housing in areas dependent on cars.

Curious on the outcomes here. I think the best thing we can do for city transportation is increasing the number of viable transportation options. Waymo is one option amongst the options dependent on roads, but walking, biking, and transit should still be a priority so that we maintain competition amongst transportation modes.

It doesn't really matter what I think when 5% of the population are controlling policy that impacts 100% of the population.

> Because they are more in line with what you think?

No, because they will be impacted for a longer period of time, and are less engaged locally.