Here’s a piece from New York’s Curbed vertical about the efforts of the Eric Adams administration to address ongoing community safety concerns about various types of motorized, two-wheeled vehicles.
It's all show business. It's about covering up the divide-and-conquer. Ever since Marx pied-pipered the Left away with outrageously one-sided normatives, the real movers-and-shakers behind "Leftists" don't give a damn about "the marginalized" -- they care about heading up and winning intra-national wars. Long gone is having "liberté (the Right), égalité (the Left), fraternité (the culture)" all in the same breath (even though it lives to this day as the French motto).
But the big tell was that the so-called "Left" had already blown their cover as they completely abandoned class as a dimension of marginalization -- by stealth in the 50s, openly by the 90s, crushingly and outrageously today.
You must pay attention to a very different Left than I do if you think they have "abandoned" class as a dimension of marginalization. It sounds like you're mad at a lot of Internet progressives who never identified as Leftists, and a handful of Twitter assholes. I don't think the balance has been correct (Freddie's theses seem correct to me) but The Left is far larger than the one noisy Twitter group that is finding itself less and less powerful as that platform dies
"You must pay attention to a very different Left than I do if you think they have 'abandoned' class as a dimension of marginalization."
Probably. There are certainly many left-wing oriented groups. In fact, the whole Left-Right discourse can fairly be characterized in 2024 as FUBAR. (I'm confident this is by design, but I don't see a need to talk about that here.)
I would rather just go all the way back to origins, where, risking oversimplification, Left = equality (I think better expressed as 'fairness', but that's another philosophical discussion), and Right = freedom. These two components of a democracy that, with a little open-mindedness, one should see are *both necessary* for healthy societies. Which one is dominant at a point of time, and which one an individual will decide to promote as a participant in democracy, would, and should, vary over time, depending on how the structure of the society evolves. In Leftism's case, as it was, originally, about promoting equality among people, democracy, then, is at the very heart and/or foundation of Leftism.
So, what concerns me the most is the "Leftists" who find ways to grab power, nearly always *without* clear democratic support. In which case, of course, they defeat the entire purpose right out of the gate. I called them the "so-called 'Left' ", because they wear the current-majority mantels -- of the Democratic Party, of the academy, of the government bureaucracies, of the courts, etc. -- and have no interest whatsoever in the *necessarily-perpetual discovery and respect* of democratic will. Instead, they have ossified "answers" -- and they'll move heaven and earth to impose them. Hence the current madness, Wokism.
That's why I started with the complaint about Marx and followers, over more than a century and a half, who epitomize these pretenses with their claims to demand communism/socialism (to pull the mid-20th century civil rights phrase) "by any means necessary". This is the same movement applying in the US for decades, increasingly in more extreme and lawless fashion, yet with very little need for civil disobedience except at the beginnings of civil rights in 1950s-60s. Civil rights reform *was* majority-accepted by the mid-1960s after media coverage, unlike the extremes of Wokism today (which actually tried to emerge in mass media c.1990 but was beaten back for a time).
And, yes, it is this same population, the ones now wholly *in power*, who have abandoned class as a relevant dimension, while their "thought-leaders" try give it lip service now and then when pushed against a wall. Ordinarily, though, they happily play three-card monte with the words "race" and "class". Before launching into any even more long-winded exposition on that, I wanted first to clarify what I mean at first here by quote-Leftist-unquote.
There is too much to disagree with in your post to make discussion worthwhile I think. You seem to wholly conflate the entire band of ideologies left of, idk, George Bush as "the left" though that group of people has never broadly agreed on anything (and then seem to expand that group to include everyone "in power" and it's not clear if you just mean people on "the left" with power or literally everyone with power). The idea that equality and freedom are left and right domains, the idea that they are in some kind of inherent conflict, not really things I can agree with but certainly don't want to argue about. The idea that things are substantially different now than they were 50 years ago in regards to how politicians campaigned (I can't remember any politician in my lifetime who didn't "have all the answers" and that weren't just promising to make those things happen). The idea that "Civil rights reform *was* majority-accepted by the mid-1960s after media coverage" seems hand-wavy and ahistorical, the idea that the Civil Rights reform movement had "very little need for civil disobedience"... all in service of complaining about Wokism, undefined. Americans really like imaging politics as a balance between two extremes, and are eager to believe that simply being in between two extremes is prima-facie proof of the goodness or the rightness of the idea. That "moderation in all things" can apply just as easily to our politics as to eating chocolate or drinking alcohol. Seems silly to me, but is often asserted as so obvious as to be undebate-able.
Remove the incentive to drive recklessly in order to complete as many deliveries in as short a time as possible by making Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. pay them a real hourly wage.
My understanding is on average they make less than minimum wage when you take into account gas, servicing the vehicles, times when they're waiting for an order to come in, etc.
In a market economy this is necessarily can-kicking because at some stage in the production process someone has to be motivated by the clock. Productivity and efficiency have many metrics but time is key among them in almost all businesses. Checkout staff at Walmart aren't paid by the hour but they're still measured by the hour because consumers demand convenient service. The same is true of delivery drivers (and I worked as one, not just for a summer job either for what it's worth.) If they are no longer a major vector of time efficiency* that will be made up elsewhere in the supply chain. What kind of externalities will emerge if now a new efficiency is found in, say, cooking meat for 10% less time? Being less stringent in kitchen hygiene?
Alternatively we just raise the price of food delivery, which is obscenely cheap, but that's very unpopular with almost everyone. There's an RW meme that it's sheltered pronoun leftists ardently defending cheap delivery, and maybe they're just the ones vocal about it, but nobody actually wants to pay $20 for bespoke meal delivery door to door.
*I don't think this would happen, in any case. Even if the percentage of a driver's income that is tips drops from 80% to 20%, a certain type will continue to hustle for that 20%. I know I would, and did, when I was hourly as a driver.
Yes, raise prices for food delivery. In DC and New York (the cities with the moped problem) there is no excuse for ordering delivery anyway, any able bodied person can easily walk to a number of restaurants. GrubHub and Uber Eats aren't even profitable businesses and they are pure middlemen.
That puts a bunch of delivery drivers out of a job and makes the government responsible for raising rates for a service that a lot of people clearly want.
Uber as a business is now profitable as it achieved market dominance via rapid expansion and selling rides at a loss before pivoting to profit over growth. I expect the same to be true of whatever food "middlemen" (as if this is something without value - Publix is a middleman between Hormel and me, and I like it that way) still remain after consolidation. Price rises will occur as part of this process.
The clear answer is regulation and enforcement. It’s less about consumer demands—which are as you correctly state—than about the fact that if a driver decides on his/her own to follow traffic laws, they will be slower and out of the job because the other scooter delivery person will cut the corner, run the light, blow through the crosswalk, etc, to make more deliveries. That’s why it’s up to government and, yes, law enforcement, to enforce the law—to protect both the pedestrian’s life and the delivery worker’s job.
I was a delivery driver for years. Not once did I encounter anyone getting fired for not being fast enough due to their obeying traffic laws. I did it for years, never ran a light or a crosswalk. I parked illegally many times but that was to spare my own having to walk as much as anything. As much as time is of the essence, apps and even restaurants simply aren't looking for reasons to fire people in what is already a hugely high-turnover business. If you're egregiously slow, always getting lost, yeah, you will be, but it simply isn't the case that people who drive normally are fired. It's simply that most delivery drivers want to make money and will do what they get away with.
Even if you’re 100% correct—then fine, it’s recklessly greedy workers rather than recklessly greedy employer. My main point about enforcement still stands.
The street-level worker economy is insane here. The app delivery drivers are all immigrants, mostly undocumented, by definition poor, and, thus, exploitable. I haven’t had a chance to speak about this subject with any directly, but I have been told by Uber/Lyft drivers that their rating is their livelihood, and a low rating—which, insanely, mean lower than like 4.9–is detrimental to your earnings. Can it really be different for delivery workers? Where the volume of work is much higher and the bar for entry is so much lower?
It's an idea but I think you need to establish why actually they speed. Is it always to make more deliveries? Or to get off work early? or they like to drive fast?
Or because they are from chaotic 3rd world countries where everyone drives like a crazy person because there's no traffic enforcement? I haven't been to NYC for a while but you guys make it sound like Bangkok.
Delivery workers can receive a real wage and still be pressed to meet expectations that are incompatible with public safety. They don’t get tenure; they get replaced.
I am constantly vexed by annoying delivery riders too, but there really isn't enough enforcement available to make a big dent in the problem. You would need way more cops, at a big expense to taxpayers, to meaningfully change the incentives for riders.
The "pay per job" gig approach means the rider is not only incentivized to go as fast as possible, but as the rider is an independent contractor, I'm pretty sure the employer can't be held liable for injuries resulting in the rider's dumbass behaviour.
I used to be an app delivery rider back in the day (on a regular bike). I generally did follow the rules of the road, partially because I'm conscientious, but mostly because the job was just a side hustle for me. I wasn't desperate, and didn't need the money to pay rent or groceries. If I did? Probably would be doing some sidewalk riding if it cut off a few minutes here and there and meant I could get an extra delivery in.
“Of course they’re exploited, by the delivery app companies and the restaurants and their customers”
Weird way to describe voluntary economic relations by recent immigrants, of all people.
“… the Bolsheviks did not defund the police“
Incredible sentence.
As something of a “law and order libertarian,” I’m more forgiving by default of violations that involve willing participants conducting positive-sum economic transactions, but a crowded place like NYC needs to avoid total chaos on the streets.
It would be a much more coherent world if progressives were actually good at running the cities they tend to totally control.
Your last paragraph is such a silly argument that I hear all the time from conservatives and libertarians, and it makes no sense. Do you think a conservative mayor has the power to create a libertarian utopia in their city? Or are they maybe bound by the same systems that also make local socialist and progressive electeds less effective than they would like to be?
It reminds me of the conservative canard "well you can do socialism as an individual, and others can be capitalist, because a capitalist system provides that freedom for everyone." It represents not only a fundamental misunderstanding of both capitalism and socialism, but a hand-waving away of every institutional and systemic barrier that prevents change of most any kind from happening.
“Do you think a conservative mayor has the power to create a libertarian utopia in their city?”
Obviously not. For starters, conservatives aren’t libertarians, and that divide has grown a lot in these MAGA times.
But your argument is remarkably bad for a different reason. We aren’t talking about a single mayor here. A place like San Francisco has been totally run by progressives for progressives for decades, and with a very ample budget and no constraints from a conservative state legislature. You seem to be operating under the delusion that SF’s problems are somehow because the politicians can’t quite do what they want, instead of the result of doing what they wanted with no political opposition from anyone left of Elizabeth Warren for nearly a century. It didn’t become a progressive dystopia by accident or from mysterious systemic forces holding back politicians.
One obvious policy choice relevant to the present post is choosing not to enforce laws against turning some of the most valuable real estate in the world into an open-air homeless encampment. Another is the choice to try freezing SF in amber by making it incredibly hard to build anything.
"well you can do socialism as an individual, and others can be capitalist, because a capitalist system provides that freedom for everyone."
I don’t think this is what someone said. I think this is what you think they said. Freedom for everyone is good though.
Thank you for laying all that out in better terms than I would have. Great examples of the kinds of forces that act here, and makes very clear how few of them anyone at the municipal or even state level have any control over.
The "kinds of forces" causing these problems is government policy restricting the supply of housing over decades, and refusing to enforce the law.
This is not some national problem where SF is somehow blameless and helpless to confront.
Either way, progressives and their policies have been bad because they haven't dealt with the challenges they face well at all. You can try pretending it's not a self-inflicted wound, but they're still ineffective in that case. What progressive ideas could a NYC or SF implement at this point that haven't been tried already?
Never said "municipal government officials are the absolute rulers of a fiefdom." What I said was that progressives have run SF for nearly a century at all levels and so trying to talk about "what could one mayor do" is a really stupid way to respond regarding the fruits of their policies.
Your B and C are remarkable. You think SF is a VICTIM of national and local market economies? You think the "unique challenges" of the richest city in the history of the earth are imposed upon it? SF's failures are a policy choice, not otherwise insurmountable challenges it faces through no fault of its voters and leaders.
You think NYC is not a progressive stronghold? No true progressive stronghold I guess.
NYC and SF both have extremely expensive housing for one major reason: They don't build enough housing to meet the high demand brought on by their economic activity, for a half century at least. They do not build enough housing as a policy choice through extremely restrictive zoning , burdensome regulations, and arbitrary permissions. NYC used to build a lot until roughly the '70s. SF cut off most density before it could get very high. They do not want more chairs in their game of musical chairs.
This is the dumbest thing I have read on the internet in quite some time:
"Developers have been incentivized to build large, horizontal luxury housing for tech workers instead of vertical affordable housing, even where zoning isn’t a hurdle. I guess they like money or something!"
What do you think has "incentivized" these developers? Perhaps it's zoning that bans the vertical housing? The developers WANT TO EARN THE MONEY OF WILLING BUYERS BY BUILDING AS MUCH AS THE MARKET WILL PAY FOR. This is not a market failure. It's the most goddamn obvious policy failure I know of, and economic illiterates like you somehow try to blame capitalism for hurting the poors, when it's actually the RICHEST PROGRESSIVES AND LEFTISTS IN HISTORY THAT RESTRICT SUPPLY TO RAISE PRICES AND THEN PRETEND GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IS NEEDED TO FIGHT INEQUALITY.
(I'm trying a bit of ALL CAPS there to see if it will help your reading comprehension and basic logic. Probably won't, but you've demonstrably avoided employing those things on this topic heretofore, so the experimentation seemed worth it.)
New housing is expensive. "Luxury" is a marketing term, but imagine if the government made it so auto makers couldn't make as many cars. Of course they'd focus on the ones that brought them the most revenue.
This is why we can't have nice things. We choose to light money on fire to solve problems caused by government policies restricting supply.
"… so changing zoning laws, booting out businesses, and restructuring the tiny city is, in fact, extremely complex and expensive."
Completely delusional. All you gotta do is stop banning density. You have a severe case of "planner's brain" instead of just letting people figure things out. The way we used to, back when we built more. If Tokyo can do it, so can SF and NYC.
All this is to say that you're tying to make developers the bad guys in an environment where they are highly constrained by policies. It's like blaming farmers for a famine when the government won't let them grow as much food as they could for paying customers.
"SF is a permanent seller’s market that favors landlords"
Increase housing supply.
"No fault evictions”—where the tenant did nothing to violate their lease agreement"
Increase housing supply.
"Job loss is the number one cause of homelessness in SF."
Increase housing supply.
"The pandemic increased homelessness EVERYWHERE."
Increase housing supply.
You can't be a sane person and blame markets for problems caused by governments intentionally fucking with the market.
The black guy that died because a cop kneeled on his neck: the city where that occurred was Minneapolis. The last time that city had a Republican mayor was in the 1970's, and then only for a month or so. It's a city where Democrats/liberals have had an absolute lock on local government for literally decades. Blaming the Republicans for police brutality in cities like Minneapolis or San Francisco makes zero sense because the GOP has been completely locked out of government in those places for the same period.
On Sunday, on my way to do my grocery shopping, I found myself having to move an illegally parked e-scooter and an illegally parked e-bike from the pavement at my local bus stop. The people who are most inconvenienced by this sort of inconsiderate behaviour are people who walk and cycle, and in particular people with disabilities - all categories of people that the Left should be concerned about.
In fact it is almost an iron law that the negative consequences of rule-breaking by some of the marginalised will fall almost entirely on others of the marginalised, or simply on ordinary people wanting to live peaceful and reasonably orderly lives.
The electric scooter scofflaws I see putting innocent children’s lives most in danger daily, are about as un-marginalized as it gets: parents at my kids’ bourgie, UWS, public elementary school. K, 1st, and 2nd graders standing in front of their dads on a scooter, gripping the handlebar post as the machine weaves around traffic on pothole-riddled streets at 25 mph is a horrific accident waiting to happen. One guy rolled up with 2 kids the other day, one a toddler. Sure, this sounds like a Next Door post but I’m truly terrified about a kid getting killed or maimed.
Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in NY, with a statute of limitations that would have expired two years after commission of the crime (2018). Are you sure about your answer?
And now you are delivering the exact same argument that Trump's supporters are making. They do indeed want to take it up with the state of New York precisely because the statute of limitations expired, among other issues.
Not so long ago, I was dating a French man long distance. He and his friends were livid about the scooters taking over the streets of Paris. They chatted about it a lot. They were cool city people, but saw the inherent problems of these too-quiet, too-ugly, too-fast things on the sidewalk. A few visits later, the scooters were gone. Now I live in D.C. and the scooter problem is just as real here as it is New York. Often, they are cluttered around the bus stop areas too, making it impossible to wait near the bus stop. They also make it really difficult to stroll around listening to music, because you need to be on the look out for the scooters. I feel the scooters also incite more bikers to ride on the sidewalks too. This problem, plus riding public transit -- which I do at least twice a day -- where at least one person every ride is listening to their own music or scrolling TikTok loudly makes my commute much more unpleasant than needs be. I am a staunch defender of city living, but where is the community spirit? How can someone sit on a crowded bus and not care that every other person is forced to listen to their phone? Why am I treated like a MAGA-supporter for wanting things to be better, because I know they can be?
I'm not sure what the answer is for the scooters because when they ride in the middle of the street, they are also causing traffic to slow down considerably.
TLDR: The scooters are awful--too slow for the rode, too fast for the sidewalk.
The desire for the service workers of elite coastal cities to be excluded from these kinds of regulations just inherently comes from a place of seeing them as a subaltern and distinct class.
To view these folks as social equals necessitates (among many other things) imbuing them with the culpability and responsibility of upholding community standards.
All of that said, the root of this evil is ordering from two blocks away on Doordash. You're not Immortan Joe, get out of your fuckin' pods, people.
I am pretty sure there's a generational schism in terms of who is ordering delivery versus who is willing to go to the drive through, one that almost nobody is interested in discussing. Maybe because it plays to stereotypes about younger generations being shut-in's and socially timid.
eh idk how generational it really is or how much you can really read into the rise in takeout overall.
Like. I’m a millennial and a shift worker and I 100% have ordered/would order delivery from 2 blocks away after my 12 hour shifts not because I’m either a grandma who can’t drive or a socially awkward young ‘un who needs to get out of her pod but because my goddamn feet hurt after 12 hours on them, I’m totally exhausted, I’m out of premade dinners, l can’t bear the thought of standing long enough even to make a quesadilla or some eggs because did I mention the feet hurt part, and I couldn’t find street parking near the place I wanted takeout from.
Yeah I'm sure Rosemary was just too dumb to think of "stop on the way home", thanks for the condescending "I'm better than you" that adds nothing. She's explaining a perfectly plausible reason why many people might want delivery food to ease their suffering for a few minutes. Others have given the obvious explanations like disability. Maybe someone lives in a dangerous area, or needs to eat but need to stay at home for a million reasons (children, waiting for a service person or other delivery, etc etc).
The remarkable thing to me is that everyone on this thread can imagine these and many more scenarios, but rather than simply assume that any given person has a reason for doing what they do, we're happier to assume the worst of everyone around us. That seems far more pernicious to society than people being a little lazier than you would personally prefer
I can understand if somebody wants to avoid a day or two of suffering, maybe even a few hours of suffering. But a few minutes? Come on.
Look, the picture I have in my head isn't of people that are lazy, it's people who are socially awkward to the point of being unable to interact with other human beings--especially strangers. A few years back hotels introduced the ability for guests to check in and unlock their rooms without having to visit the front desk to get a key. I found it convenient because prior to the pandemic I traveled for work, a lot. But the feature apparently proved wildly popular with younger people who found it excruciating to make small talk with a clerk during the check in process.
That’s sad, but I don’t think that’s driving the food delivery economy. Maybe a small component.
A “fix” is to require companies like DoorDash to pay a living wage. In Seattle they did just that, but I don’t think it’s popular among the public or the drivers because people are much less likely to order DoorDash now.
The generational divide is going to be much more because of the fact that younger people grow up with conveniences that older people did not have. My mom doesn't ride in Ubers, not because she's of a different (implied better) generation than me, but because she's not interested in installing a new app and trying a new service that she doesn't understand on a phone she's still getting used to, and doesn't feel like she needs it enough to even try.
In years past anyone could pick up a phone and call delivery. What's changed is that now the country has access to what is essentially a permanent underclass of brown people who can be counted on to perform menial labor for middle class whites, even middle class whites of very modest means, for essentially slave wages. To a large extent that's what has made these services affordable compared to the past.
This reminds me of the argument that voter ID laws are discriminatory. It implies that poor and or people of color are too incompetent to figure out how to get an ID. It’s insulting AF.
Many of them are. Even for 100 IQers a lot of modern life is pretty challenging. A Dollar Tree clerk with a 79 IQ will really struggle. Hence it's good for them to have assistance. This assistance is readily given when it comes to voter *registration*, of course, but there's no real motive to get someone a license unless they want to drive.
Many people of *any* "identity" dimensions are incompetent (about many things modern life demands).
The dirty little (political) secret is that large portions of the public don't actually grasp the things Jenn cites, which is how they fall into the (Democratic Party's) intergenerational abuse scheme. Barring serious educational and/or mass media reform -- you know, where thought leaders/teach actually lead/teach because they actually care about peoples' welfare -- they also likely never *will* understand. (Just to position where I'm coming from here, I readily admit I'm genuinely below-average stupid and/or ignorant about plenty of things, and acknowledging hard limits to both is no vice. Nor does admitting this make me, or defines me as, "lazy".)
This is because the underlying modern cultural problem here is the high association of intelligence/knowledge with virtue -- as if we are fully the authors of our minds, and thus each choose how mentally competent we can be, so, therefore, must be held fully accountable for all performance. Admitting otherwise is, in many contexts, completely taboo. That's how an assertion of low intelligence / low knowledge is now the supreme insult, in a way one would rarely or never take, say, poor muscular strength as an personal insult. This, despite the fact that all sorts of things, of causes both from nature and nurture, interfere with performance and achievement to impose real ceilings, high and low, on everyone.
I'm talking specifically about the low IQ, nothing to do with identity. No, low IQ people generally struggle with anything cognitive, whereas people very smart in one sphere are more likely to be at least competent in others, which is why a PhD will, all els being equal, be better at working in a McDonald's kitchen than someone with an IQ of 100 who in turn out ranks the 85 (albeit nowhere near enough to make it logical to hire anyone but the latter two.)
No idea what else you're talking about and not interested in it either.
"... poor and or people of color are too incompetent ..." -> "Many of them are. "
That's where I saw identity. (That there exists any POC struggling with low intelligence is an utter taboo to assert, as you know). No problem for me, but also I didn't want to see you tarred with "racism".
"low IQ people generally struggle with anything cognitive"
Agreed. And until we reverse the status implications, life will continue too often for too many of them to be unbearable. This is the most important *ism of our age.
Obviously you’ve never had to pack up a house with a PhD. SOOOO much dithering, and they have to examine every book before putting it in a fucking box.
There are many kinds of intelligence. If you have a PhD, you are probably a narrow/deep thinker. Probably not a doer. I do not think a PhD would necessarily outperform an organized doer in a McDonald’s kitchen.
Complete category error. They're not dithering because they can't figure out that books go in boxes. They're dithering because they're interested in the books, and it's their books. If you set a PhD and someone with mild cognitive impairment up with boxes, furniture, books, whatever, and told them to array the items in such a way that they'd be easily packed, found, stored, loaded, unloaded etc, we know who would (all else being equal) perform better. We know it for fast food too and the studies bear it out, and above all else we know from the one body in American life where de facto IQ ranking and testing are still legal for now: the army.
You are being disingenuous. Of course they know books belong in boxes but they are useless at quickly packing books because they need to open and examine each book because books are fascinating. Pro tip: if you are moving have your book nerd friends pack up the kitchen and the linens.
Yup. At someone else’s house I could pack up and clean no problem, but if I try to do anything productive at my house I end up rereading an old book or going through old photo albums instead lol
Except you can’t get a job at the Dollar Tree without an ID! You can’t cash your paycheck without ID!
And I’ll probably get crucified for this, but if “modern life” is “too challenging” do you really want somebody who is incompetent to navigate basic modern life voting?
Get a job at a chain that actually checks these documents: Show up with two letters addressed to who you say you are at the address you say you live it. (The far likelier scenario is they don't check if you're a cashier.) To cash your check: is it a paper check? If so, cash it at the issuing bank with an endorsement. Is it direct deposit? If so, it's trickier, but usually in this case it'll be paid into a family member's account. If not, you can be paid via check (see previous), Venmo, even cash. Not all stores will do this, of course, but many will. Indeed, there are huge sectors of the economy that still pay via paper check for this exact reason - it's just easier then expecting everyone to have a bank account. (The Mexicans and Central Americans who make up so much of our workforce have a mistrust of banking. Way fewer than half of Mexicans have a bank account, and only around 30% have a debit card, and of those the VAST majority use it only to withdraw their salary each week. The percentage using them for transactions is low; outside of CDMX and other major cities it's practically zero.)
Your comment doesn't fully make sense to me. We are talking about being able to get a job at a chain and cash a check without an ID, neither of which is possible. You can't get a job at a chain without an ID. No if's, and's or but's. No chain would take that risk. I work with homeless people who often lose their IDs. When they receive their SSI paper check, they can't cash it until they get an ID. No check cashing place allows them to cash it without their ID, even if I, an attorney, vouches for them. Because if there's any fraud, and they cash the check, the check cashing place is on the hook for the money. Even if someone is "illegal", places will still require some form of picture identification to allow them to cash a check.
Maybe in Mexico, people have mistrust in banking, but in America, according to 2016 data, only 16% of Hispanic households don't have bank accounts.
You should get (metaphorically) crucified for saying that. People of all intelligence levels are subject to the laws of our society, so they should get to have a say in those laws, because that's what democracy is. You're welcome to not support democracy but I'm pretty skeptical of whatever you think will work better instead (keeping mind that socialism, communism, and even libertarianism are fundamentally democratic systems)
(1) there are still, like, old af country people that never really needed an ID and for whom cost, transportation, and most importantly getting the supporting documents are a big deal
(2) people lose their IDs and their supporting documents, especially those with unstable housing situations but also just folks who lose their wallet; and it takes time, money, and stability to get those things back. That doesn’t mean that they’re too stupid to navigate modern life, they could’ve gotten robbed
(3) the price of an ID is equivalent to a poll tax, which is unconstitutional
And to answer your question: so long as they vote Democrat in national elections, we do want them voting
Twenty years ago those arguments may have been true, even if they are edge cases. Old AF people I assume go to the doctor. You cannot go to the doctor without showing ID anymore…this started about 20 years ago…because of fraud-uninsured people would steal the health insurance ID’s of insured and use them, so now doctors and dentists routinely ask for ID.
If you just had your ID stolen and your have an unstable housing situation…would voting really be top of mind? Again……edge case.
It’s insulting to voters for Democrats to assume that people are too incompetent to figure out what to do to cast a ballot, and it may be counterproductive given the realignment due to MAGA. The less educated and less financially secure have been drifting away from the Democratic Party. It would be delicious if voter suppression backfired on Republicans and created Democratic-leaning electorates.
With old people, it’s gotten less important over the years, sure. I figure that they don’t really need to check IDs if you have your Medicare card. Ive been asked for an ID after recent wallet theft at urgent care and it’s been fine. Because I always used the same bank branch to get a cashiers check to pay my rent, they let me access my money without an ID, too. Old farm folks without IDs may rely on people knowing their faces. Sure, it’s definitely a waning edge case.
But I’ve known several homeless or couch surfing people to have pretty strong political beliefs and vote regularly. It’s why Seattle has voting locations even though nearly everyone votes by mail.
I’m not saying voter ID is a bad idea, especially if they let you cast a provisional ballot in case of loss/theft of your ID. I was just detailing the arguments against it. There are pros and cons to voter ID laws, that’s all. I’m not even sure where I stand on it, somewhere in the middle. Really everyone should just be able to vote by mail, with signature checking, like we do here in WA.
Most states have reduced or even free IDs if you are low income. In CA, homeless people can get free IDs and low income people get reduced fee IDs for like $15-25. Once you get an ID in a state, you no longer need supporting documents to get another ID in that state. If you move to another state, and you have never had an ID in that state, they will ask for supporting documents, like ID from another state, a birth certificate, and/or a social security card.
Very few people actually think anarchy is an ideal policy. They just think if the choice is between the permissiveness you describe, and oppressive enforcement of inequitable rules, permissiveness is the far lesser evil.
But moderation is a non starter when people come to believe maximalism/absolutism is the most successful political posture for preventing bad policies from getting enacted. If you think you’re in a zero-sum tug of war with your political enemies, you pull as hard as you can in your direction, even if the outcome isn’t what you would actually prefer. Compromise is not seen as potential movement toward good policy, it’s just ceding territory to your enemies, who also think maximalism is the best strategy to get what they want.
So we’re all being yanked back and forth toward ridiculous extremes, with a predictable overreaching and overcorrection cycle, because everyone thinks that’s the only way to achieve even partial success.
There's something even less flattering to that same set of NYC liberals ( a crowd I know better than I wish I did) lurking in all this. The idea that this crackdown on small motorized vehicles means customers will have to walk to the local take-out place for dinner and pick it up rather than having an underpaid moped driver bring it to them. If these laws make food delivery no longer economically viable then that's the cost of safety. It's like the old Dead Kennedy's record "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death," probably the true motto of America. I have sympathy for the drivers, obviously, being caught in the midst of economic forces that are working against them at every turn, but if you can't DoorDash a burger to your apartment at 11pm at a price you want to pay without the delivery guy speeding down a sidewalk on a moped, maybe that option needs to go away.
I loathe leaving the house as much as the next guy, but let's not pretend the insatiable demand of New Yorkers to have food brought to them in their pajamas isn't what's making all that necessary in the first place.
I seriously doubt that most receivers of delivery care about the 5 minute difference in delivery times that enforcement and law-following would actually create. I don't see any compelling evidence to assume that enforcement of these particular laws would lead to noticably higher delivery times, OR that those delivery time increases would actually result in fewer customers. Feels like a lot of Econ 101 abstract analysis
Well, clearly there is an economic reason they deliver food via scooter rather than on foot. 5 minutes is an arbitrary number, but even if I just accept the hypothetical difference you threw out there it's 5 minutes longer for the food to get there and an additional 5 minutes for the driver to return, and then that double process is repeated for every single delivery in a shift. It adds up fast. If it would have been a 10 minute trip on a moped you've just doubled the delivery time by walking the delivery there.
Yea, verily. Much like MAGA types bemoaning lawlessness in Mexico, Muh Cartels, etc. while forgetting that there would be no drug trade in Mexico worth mentioning, were it not for the Yanquis' insatiable appetite for drugs.
This drives me crazy all the time. 'X is bad but no, I'm not going to suggest any actual alternative which could be implemented/critiqued/discussed,' drives me up the wall
The current cause célebre is the fruit stands in the subway. No sanitary facilities to speak of. In one video the lady licks her knife by way of cleaning it between fruits. I'm sure a certain type of high-openness person genuinely *is* enriched by having what amounts to Mayan market vendors on their own doorstep, complete with exotic fruits and seasonings and an exciting language and culture to learn from. And these are indeed the kind of things that, should they be anywhere, should be in New York City, capital of Earth. But these people would defend regulation in any other circumstance and seem willing to cast aside the kind of hygiene a ten-year-old boy would adhere to in favor of this exoticism.
All this is to say every one of these unlicensed carts should be shut down today. I'm all for a discussion to make such licensing easier, but they need to be shut down first pour encourager les autres.
Heh, I have a co-worker who grew up abroad. The local equivalent of drinking fountains was a spigot with a literal glass. You put in a penny, the spigot filled the glass with water and then you drank. If there was a crack in the rim? You just rotated the glass so that the crack faced away from you.
Going to be a massive hypocrite here and say this is based. This hits the sweet spot between a high trust society and not understanding your theory. Such fountains require public infrastructure and upkeep, which suggests some respect for the commons and ones fellow citizens. It would also require people not drinking from the cup if they knew they were sick, and given just how prevalent these were across much of Central and Eastern Europe, it is presumably the case that this was adhered to. RETVRN to thr germ cup.
In the Soviet era there were also vending machines for cheap, low quality wine - the sort of stuff we Aussies call "goon" and drink from bladders inside cardboard boxes.
I was thinking in terms that most of the time sharing saliva with your fellow citizens is probably not going to make you sick, hence the knife cleaning trick.
True but the scenario is different. If you feel sido you just avoid the cup until you're better. If you are working to literally put cash in your pocket you'll cut more corners.
I don't. I think what's happened is you're appointed yourself as "America's expert on Eastern Europe" but have pretty limited experience of it. Rural water fountains very commonly have a shared cup throughout the Continent, or at least did until fairly recently.
As has been pointed out over and over the last time the US was suffering through a major crime wave the population driving the call for more cops and longer sentences was poor blacks. It makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it because they were the actual victims, not the middle and upper class whites for whom BLM and "Defund the Police" are convenient vehicles for virtue signaling.
Well this is just part of the bigger sickness called Luxury Beliefs:
"ideas or opinions that confers status on members of the upper class at little cost, while inflicting costs on persons in lower classes.
The term is often applied to privileged individuals who are seen as disconnected from the lived experiences of impoverished and marginalized people. Such individuals supposedly hold political and social beliefs that signal their elite status, yet which are alleged to have negative impacts on those with the least influence."
So elites like Mark Healy virtue signal this idea that we need special handling protocol for marginalized breakers of the bike laws... and thus these marginalized groups normalize their law-breaking behavior to the detriment of their ability to assimilate into the higher social strata of law-abiding behavior people.
It becomes a self-fulfilling sort of cycle. Marginalize people are corrupted by the soft bigotry of low expectations and they stay marginalized people so well off white people like Mark Healy have plenty of luxury belief virtue signaling material.
This is one consequence of a morality whose sole tenet is "We must defer to the [putatively] marginalized."
"We must defer to the [putatively] marginalized."
It's all show business. It's about covering up the divide-and-conquer. Ever since Marx pied-pipered the Left away with outrageously one-sided normatives, the real movers-and-shakers behind "Leftists" don't give a damn about "the marginalized" -- they care about heading up and winning intra-national wars. Long gone is having "liberté (the Right), égalité (the Left), fraternité (the culture)" all in the same breath (even though it lives to this day as the French motto).
But the big tell was that the so-called "Left" had already blown their cover as they completely abandoned class as a dimension of marginalization -- by stealth in the 50s, openly by the 90s, crushingly and outrageously today.
You must pay attention to a very different Left than I do if you think they have "abandoned" class as a dimension of marginalization. It sounds like you're mad at a lot of Internet progressives who never identified as Leftists, and a handful of Twitter assholes. I don't think the balance has been correct (Freddie's theses seem correct to me) but The Left is far larger than the one noisy Twitter group that is finding itself less and less powerful as that platform dies
"You must pay attention to a very different Left than I do if you think they have 'abandoned' class as a dimension of marginalization."
Probably. There are certainly many left-wing oriented groups. In fact, the whole Left-Right discourse can fairly be characterized in 2024 as FUBAR. (I'm confident this is by design, but I don't see a need to talk about that here.)
I would rather just go all the way back to origins, where, risking oversimplification, Left = equality (I think better expressed as 'fairness', but that's another philosophical discussion), and Right = freedom. These two components of a democracy that, with a little open-mindedness, one should see are *both necessary* for healthy societies. Which one is dominant at a point of time, and which one an individual will decide to promote as a participant in democracy, would, and should, vary over time, depending on how the structure of the society evolves. In Leftism's case, as it was, originally, about promoting equality among people, democracy, then, is at the very heart and/or foundation of Leftism.
So, what concerns me the most is the "Leftists" who find ways to grab power, nearly always *without* clear democratic support. In which case, of course, they defeat the entire purpose right out of the gate. I called them the "so-called 'Left' ", because they wear the current-majority mantels -- of the Democratic Party, of the academy, of the government bureaucracies, of the courts, etc. -- and have no interest whatsoever in the *necessarily-perpetual discovery and respect* of democratic will. Instead, they have ossified "answers" -- and they'll move heaven and earth to impose them. Hence the current madness, Wokism.
That's why I started with the complaint about Marx and followers, over more than a century and a half, who epitomize these pretenses with their claims to demand communism/socialism (to pull the mid-20th century civil rights phrase) "by any means necessary". This is the same movement applying in the US for decades, increasingly in more extreme and lawless fashion, yet with very little need for civil disobedience except at the beginnings of civil rights in 1950s-60s. Civil rights reform *was* majority-accepted by the mid-1960s after media coverage, unlike the extremes of Wokism today (which actually tried to emerge in mass media c.1990 but was beaten back for a time).
And, yes, it is this same population, the ones now wholly *in power*, who have abandoned class as a relevant dimension, while their "thought-leaders" try give it lip service now and then when pushed against a wall. Ordinarily, though, they happily play three-card monte with the words "race" and "class". Before launching into any even more long-winded exposition on that, I wanted first to clarify what I mean at first here by quote-Leftist-unquote.
There is too much to disagree with in your post to make discussion worthwhile I think. You seem to wholly conflate the entire band of ideologies left of, idk, George Bush as "the left" though that group of people has never broadly agreed on anything (and then seem to expand that group to include everyone "in power" and it's not clear if you just mean people on "the left" with power or literally everyone with power). The idea that equality and freedom are left and right domains, the idea that they are in some kind of inherent conflict, not really things I can agree with but certainly don't want to argue about. The idea that things are substantially different now than they were 50 years ago in regards to how politicians campaigned (I can't remember any politician in my lifetime who didn't "have all the answers" and that weren't just promising to make those things happen). The idea that "Civil rights reform *was* majority-accepted by the mid-1960s after media coverage" seems hand-wavy and ahistorical, the idea that the Civil Rights reform movement had "very little need for civil disobedience"... all in service of complaining about Wokism, undefined. Americans really like imaging politics as a balance between two extremes, and are eager to believe that simply being in between two extremes is prima-facie proof of the goodness or the rightness of the idea. That "moderation in all things" can apply just as easily to our politics as to eating chocolate or drinking alcohol. Seems silly to me, but is often asserted as so obvious as to be undebate-able.
May I suggest you find the truth you can, then, because, mistakes or not, you won't convince me it is not there.
Remove the incentive to drive recklessly in order to complete as many deliveries in as short a time as possible by making Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. pay them a real hourly wage.
How much do you think would do it?
My understanding is on average they make less than minimum wage when you take into account gas, servicing the vehicles, times when they're waiting for an order to come in, etc.
So how much do you think would do it?
If they make so little, why do they take the job?
here in DC they almost all recent Venezuelan immigrants and it's one of the few jobs they can easily get.
Any hourly wage rather than commission would remove the incentive to deliver as fast as possible.
So ban tipping?
In a market economy this is necessarily can-kicking because at some stage in the production process someone has to be motivated by the clock. Productivity and efficiency have many metrics but time is key among them in almost all businesses. Checkout staff at Walmart aren't paid by the hour but they're still measured by the hour because consumers demand convenient service. The same is true of delivery drivers (and I worked as one, not just for a summer job either for what it's worth.) If they are no longer a major vector of time efficiency* that will be made up elsewhere in the supply chain. What kind of externalities will emerge if now a new efficiency is found in, say, cooking meat for 10% less time? Being less stringent in kitchen hygiene?
Alternatively we just raise the price of food delivery, which is obscenely cheap, but that's very unpopular with almost everyone. There's an RW meme that it's sheltered pronoun leftists ardently defending cheap delivery, and maybe they're just the ones vocal about it, but nobody actually wants to pay $20 for bespoke meal delivery door to door.
*I don't think this would happen, in any case. Even if the percentage of a driver's income that is tips drops from 80% to 20%, a certain type will continue to hustle for that 20%. I know I would, and did, when I was hourly as a driver.
Thank you for writing this so I didn’t have to.
Sensible laws and liability should be enforced, but the underlying desire and motivation for efficiency aren’t going away.
Yes, raise prices for food delivery. In DC and New York (the cities with the moped problem) there is no excuse for ordering delivery anyway, any able bodied person can easily walk to a number of restaurants. GrubHub and Uber Eats aren't even profitable businesses and they are pure middlemen.
That puts a bunch of delivery drivers out of a job and makes the government responsible for raising rates for a service that a lot of people clearly want.
That’s maybe why Jacobin wants a government jobs program.
Uber as a business is now profitable as it achieved market dominance via rapid expansion and selling rides at a loss before pivoting to profit over growth. I expect the same to be true of whatever food "middlemen" (as if this is something without value - Publix is a middleman between Hormel and me, and I like it that way) still remain after consolidation. Price rises will occur as part of this process.
The clear answer is regulation and enforcement. It’s less about consumer demands—which are as you correctly state—than about the fact that if a driver decides on his/her own to follow traffic laws, they will be slower and out of the job because the other scooter delivery person will cut the corner, run the light, blow through the crosswalk, etc, to make more deliveries. That’s why it’s up to government and, yes, law enforcement, to enforce the law—to protect both the pedestrian’s life and the delivery worker’s job.
I was a delivery driver for years. Not once did I encounter anyone getting fired for not being fast enough due to their obeying traffic laws. I did it for years, never ran a light or a crosswalk. I parked illegally many times but that was to spare my own having to walk as much as anything. As much as time is of the essence, apps and even restaurants simply aren't looking for reasons to fire people in what is already a hugely high-turnover business. If you're egregiously slow, always getting lost, yeah, you will be, but it simply isn't the case that people who drive normally are fired. It's simply that most delivery drivers want to make money and will do what they get away with.
Was this in New York City that you worked?
Even if you’re 100% correct—then fine, it’s recklessly greedy workers rather than recklessly greedy employer. My main point about enforcement still stands.
No, not NYC. And everyone's greedy if they can get away with it, so yes. Traffic laws should be enforced.
The street-level worker economy is insane here. The app delivery drivers are all immigrants, mostly undocumented, by definition poor, and, thus, exploitable. I haven’t had a chance to speak about this subject with any directly, but I have been told by Uber/Lyft drivers that their rating is their livelihood, and a low rating—which, insanely, mean lower than like 4.9–is detrimental to your earnings. Can it really be different for delivery workers? Where the volume of work is much higher and the bar for entry is so much lower?
It's an idea but I think you need to establish why actually they speed. Is it always to make more deliveries? Or to get off work early? or they like to drive fast?
Yes
Yes to what?
Or because they are from chaotic 3rd world countries where everyone drives like a crazy person because there's no traffic enforcement? I haven't been to NYC for a while but you guys make it sound like Bangkok.
Delivery workers can receive a real wage and still be pressed to meet expectations that are incompatible with public safety. They don’t get tenure; they get replaced.
The urge to fix prices will never die, I guess. This will not work! (wage is price of labor)
Absolutely yes.
I am constantly vexed by annoying delivery riders too, but there really isn't enough enforcement available to make a big dent in the problem. You would need way more cops, at a big expense to taxpayers, to meaningfully change the incentives for riders.
The "pay per job" gig approach means the rider is not only incentivized to go as fast as possible, but as the rider is an independent contractor, I'm pretty sure the employer can't be held liable for injuries resulting in the rider's dumbass behaviour.
I used to be an app delivery rider back in the day (on a regular bike). I generally did follow the rules of the road, partially because I'm conscientious, but mostly because the job was just a side hustle for me. I wasn't desperate, and didn't need the money to pay rent or groceries. If I did? Probably would be doing some sidewalk riding if it cut off a few minutes here and there and meant I could get an extra delivery in.
“Of course they’re exploited, by the delivery app companies and the restaurants and their customers”
Weird way to describe voluntary economic relations by recent immigrants, of all people.
“… the Bolsheviks did not defund the police“
Incredible sentence.
As something of a “law and order libertarian,” I’m more forgiving by default of violations that involve willing participants conducting positive-sum economic transactions, but a crowded place like NYC needs to avoid total chaos on the streets.
It would be a much more coherent world if progressives were actually good at running the cities they tend to totally control.
Your last paragraph is such a silly argument that I hear all the time from conservatives and libertarians, and it makes no sense. Do you think a conservative mayor has the power to create a libertarian utopia in their city? Or are they maybe bound by the same systems that also make local socialist and progressive electeds less effective than they would like to be?
It reminds me of the conservative canard "well you can do socialism as an individual, and others can be capitalist, because a capitalist system provides that freedom for everyone." It represents not only a fundamental misunderstanding of both capitalism and socialism, but a hand-waving away of every institutional and systemic barrier that prevents change of most any kind from happening.
“bound by the same systems”
Are these systems in the room with us right now?
“Do you think a conservative mayor has the power to create a libertarian utopia in their city?”
Obviously not. For starters, conservatives aren’t libertarians, and that divide has grown a lot in these MAGA times.
But your argument is remarkably bad for a different reason. We aren’t talking about a single mayor here. A place like San Francisco has been totally run by progressives for progressives for decades, and with a very ample budget and no constraints from a conservative state legislature. You seem to be operating under the delusion that SF’s problems are somehow because the politicians can’t quite do what they want, instead of the result of doing what they wanted with no political opposition from anyone left of Elizabeth Warren for nearly a century. It didn’t become a progressive dystopia by accident or from mysterious systemic forces holding back politicians.
One obvious policy choice relevant to the present post is choosing not to enforce laws against turning some of the most valuable real estate in the world into an open-air homeless encampment. Another is the choice to try freezing SF in amber by making it incredibly hard to build anything.
"well you can do socialism as an individual, and others can be capitalist, because a capitalist system provides that freedom for everyone."
I don’t think this is what someone said. I think this is what you think they said. Freedom for everyone is good though.
Thank you for laying all that out in better terms than I would have. Great examples of the kinds of forces that act here, and makes very clear how few of them anyone at the municipal or even state level have any control over.
The "kinds of forces" causing these problems is government policy restricting the supply of housing over decades, and refusing to enforce the law.
This is not some national problem where SF is somehow blameless and helpless to confront.
Either way, progressives and their policies have been bad because they haven't dealt with the challenges they face well at all. You can try pretending it's not a self-inflicted wound, but they're still ineffective in that case. What progressive ideas could a NYC or SF implement at this point that haven't been tried already?
"Even for a Substack power user …"
Right back atcha.
Never said "municipal government officials are the absolute rulers of a fiefdom." What I said was that progressives have run SF for nearly a century at all levels and so trying to talk about "what could one mayor do" is a really stupid way to respond regarding the fruits of their policies.
Your B and C are remarkable. You think SF is a VICTIM of national and local market economies? You think the "unique challenges" of the richest city in the history of the earth are imposed upon it? SF's failures are a policy choice, not otherwise insurmountable challenges it faces through no fault of its voters and leaders.
You think NYC is not a progressive stronghold? No true progressive stronghold I guess.
NYC and SF both have extremely expensive housing for one major reason: They don't build enough housing to meet the high demand brought on by their economic activity, for a half century at least. They do not build enough housing as a policy choice through extremely restrictive zoning , burdensome regulations, and arbitrary permissions. NYC used to build a lot until roughly the '70s. SF cut off most density before it could get very high. They do not want more chairs in their game of musical chairs.
This is the dumbest thing I have read on the internet in quite some time:
"Developers have been incentivized to build large, horizontal luxury housing for tech workers instead of vertical affordable housing, even where zoning isn’t a hurdle. I guess they like money or something!"
What do you think has "incentivized" these developers? Perhaps it's zoning that bans the vertical housing? The developers WANT TO EARN THE MONEY OF WILLING BUYERS BY BUILDING AS MUCH AS THE MARKET WILL PAY FOR. This is not a market failure. It's the most goddamn obvious policy failure I know of, and economic illiterates like you somehow try to blame capitalism for hurting the poors, when it's actually the RICHEST PROGRESSIVES AND LEFTISTS IN HISTORY THAT RESTRICT SUPPLY TO RAISE PRICES AND THEN PRETEND GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IS NEEDED TO FIGHT INEQUALITY.
(I'm trying a bit of ALL CAPS there to see if it will help your reading comprehension and basic logic. Probably won't, but you've demonstrably avoided employing those things on this topic heretofore, so the experimentation seemed worth it.)
New housing is expensive. "Luxury" is a marketing term, but imagine if the government made it so auto makers couldn't make as many cars. Of course they'd focus on the ones that brought them the most revenue.
This is why we can't have nice things. We choose to light money on fire to solve problems caused by government policies restricting supply.
"… so changing zoning laws, booting out businesses, and restructuring the tiny city is, in fact, extremely complex and expensive."
Completely delusional. All you gotta do is stop banning density. You have a severe case of "planner's brain" instead of just letting people figure things out. The way we used to, back when we built more. If Tokyo can do it, so can SF and NYC.
All this is to say that you're tying to make developers the bad guys in an environment where they are highly constrained by policies. It's like blaming farmers for a famine when the government won't let them grow as much food as they could for paying customers.
"SF is a permanent seller’s market that favors landlords"
Increase housing supply.
"No fault evictions”—where the tenant did nothing to violate their lease agreement"
Increase housing supply.
"Job loss is the number one cause of homelessness in SF."
Increase housing supply.
"The pandemic increased homelessness EVERYWHERE."
Increase housing supply.
You can't be a sane person and blame markets for problems caused by governments intentionally fucking with the market.
As I suspected, low literacy abilities are in play.
The black guy that died because a cop kneeled on his neck: the city where that occurred was Minneapolis. The last time that city had a Republican mayor was in the 1970's, and then only for a month or so. It's a city where Democrats/liberals have had an absolute lock on local government for literally decades. Blaming the Republicans for police brutality in cities like Minneapolis or San Francisco makes zero sense because the GOP has been completely locked out of government in those places for the same period.
Aren’t sheriffs and police chiefs separately elected?
NYC isn’t progressive or conservative, just corrupt at all levels, since Tammany or before
Here are the rules for these things in my part of the world.
https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/rules/wheeled-devices/personal-mobility-devices
On Sunday, on my way to do my grocery shopping, I found myself having to move an illegally parked e-scooter and an illegally parked e-bike from the pavement at my local bus stop. The people who are most inconvenienced by this sort of inconsiderate behaviour are people who walk and cycle, and in particular people with disabilities - all categories of people that the Left should be concerned about.
In fact it is almost an iron law that the negative consequences of rule-breaking by some of the marginalised will fall almost entirely on others of the marginalised, or simply on ordinary people wanting to live peaceful and reasonably orderly lives.
The electric scooter scofflaws I see putting innocent children’s lives most in danger daily, are about as un-marginalized as it gets: parents at my kids’ bourgie, UWS, public elementary school. K, 1st, and 2nd graders standing in front of their dads on a scooter, gripping the handlebar post as the machine weaves around traffic on pothole-riddled streets at 25 mph is a horrific accident waiting to happen. One guy rolled up with 2 kids the other day, one a toddler. Sure, this sounds like a Next Door post but I’m truly terrified about a kid getting killed or maimed.
>>We still have to make and enforce laws regulating the conduct of people<<
Interestingly, this is precisely the same argument I use to refute Trump supporters who argue his recent felony conviction was a sham. 😀
What law precisely did Trump break? That's the difference.
Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in NY, with a statute of limitations that would have expired two years after commission of the crime (2018). Are you sure about your answer?
And now you are delivering the exact same argument that Trump's supporters are making. They do indeed want to take it up with the state of New York precisely because the statute of limitations expired, among other issues.
Not so long ago, I was dating a French man long distance. He and his friends were livid about the scooters taking over the streets of Paris. They chatted about it a lot. They were cool city people, but saw the inherent problems of these too-quiet, too-ugly, too-fast things on the sidewalk. A few visits later, the scooters were gone. Now I live in D.C. and the scooter problem is just as real here as it is New York. Often, they are cluttered around the bus stop areas too, making it impossible to wait near the bus stop. They also make it really difficult to stroll around listening to music, because you need to be on the look out for the scooters. I feel the scooters also incite more bikers to ride on the sidewalks too. This problem, plus riding public transit -- which I do at least twice a day -- where at least one person every ride is listening to their own music or scrolling TikTok loudly makes my commute much more unpleasant than needs be. I am a staunch defender of city living, but where is the community spirit? How can someone sit on a crowded bus and not care that every other person is forced to listen to their phone? Why am I treated like a MAGA-supporter for wanting things to be better, because I know they can be?
I'm not sure what the answer is for the scooters because when they ride in the middle of the street, they are also causing traffic to slow down considerably.
TLDR: The scooters are awful--too slow for the rode, too fast for the sidewalk.
Pretend it’s a city!
The desire for the service workers of elite coastal cities to be excluded from these kinds of regulations just inherently comes from a place of seeing them as a subaltern and distinct class.
To view these folks as social equals necessitates (among many other things) imbuing them with the culpability and responsibility of upholding community standards.
All of that said, the root of this evil is ordering from two blocks away on Doordash. You're not Immortan Joe, get out of your fuckin' pods, people.
I am pretty sure there's a generational schism in terms of who is ordering delivery versus who is willing to go to the drive through, one that almost nobody is interested in discussing. Maybe because it plays to stereotypes about younger generations being shut-in's and socially timid.
eh idk how generational it really is or how much you can really read into the rise in takeout overall.
Like. I’m a millennial and a shift worker and I 100% have ordered/would order delivery from 2 blocks away after my 12 hour shifts not because I’m either a grandma who can’t drive or a socially awkward young ‘un who needs to get out of her pod but because my goddamn feet hurt after 12 hours on them, I’m totally exhausted, I’m out of premade dinners, l can’t bear the thought of standing long enough even to make a quesadilla or some eggs because did I mention the feet hurt part, and I couldn’t find street parking near the place I wanted takeout from.
Sometimes takeout is just takeout.
Agree with the rest of the OP, though.
If it's two blocks away I stop and get dinner before I go back home, saving myself the delivery fee plus tip.
Yeah I'm sure Rosemary was just too dumb to think of "stop on the way home", thanks for the condescending "I'm better than you" that adds nothing. She's explaining a perfectly plausible reason why many people might want delivery food to ease their suffering for a few minutes. Others have given the obvious explanations like disability. Maybe someone lives in a dangerous area, or needs to eat but need to stay at home for a million reasons (children, waiting for a service person or other delivery, etc etc).
The remarkable thing to me is that everyone on this thread can imagine these and many more scenarios, but rather than simply assume that any given person has a reason for doing what they do, we're happier to assume the worst of everyone around us. That seems far more pernicious to society than people being a little lazier than you would personally prefer
I can understand if somebody wants to avoid a day or two of suffering, maybe even a few hours of suffering. But a few minutes? Come on.
Look, the picture I have in my head isn't of people that are lazy, it's people who are socially awkward to the point of being unable to interact with other human beings--especially strangers. A few years back hotels introduced the ability for guests to check in and unlock their rooms without having to visit the front desk to get a key. I found it convenient because prior to the pandemic I traveled for work, a lot. But the feature apparently proved wildly popular with younger people who found it excruciating to make small talk with a clerk during the check in process.
That’s sad, but I don’t think that’s driving the food delivery economy. Maybe a small component.
A “fix” is to require companies like DoorDash to pay a living wage. In Seattle they did just that, but I don’t think it’s popular among the public or the drivers because people are much less likely to order DoorDash now.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-council-may-make-u-turn-on-delivery-drivers-pay-as-fees-increase/
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-council-pushes-toward-rollback-of-delivery-driver-minimum-wage/
The generational divide is going to be much more because of the fact that younger people grow up with conveniences that older people did not have. My mom doesn't ride in Ubers, not because she's of a different (implied better) generation than me, but because she's not interested in installing a new app and trying a new service that she doesn't understand on a phone she's still getting used to, and doesn't feel like she needs it enough to even try.
In years past anyone could pick up a phone and call delivery. What's changed is that now the country has access to what is essentially a permanent underclass of brown people who can be counted on to perform menial labor for middle class whites, even middle class whites of very modest means, for essentially slave wages. To a large extent that's what has made these services affordable compared to the past.
Yeah I have an aunt in DC that just figured out Ubers. She rode in cabs until last year (she has mobility issues that preclude transit, sadly)
This reminds me of the argument that voter ID laws are discriminatory. It implies that poor and or people of color are too incompetent to figure out how to get an ID. It’s insulting AF.
Many of them are. Even for 100 IQers a lot of modern life is pretty challenging. A Dollar Tree clerk with a 79 IQ will really struggle. Hence it's good for them to have assistance. This assistance is readily given when it comes to voter *registration*, of course, but there's no real motive to get someone a license unless they want to drive.
Many people of *any* "identity" dimensions are incompetent (about many things modern life demands).
The dirty little (political) secret is that large portions of the public don't actually grasp the things Jenn cites, which is how they fall into the (Democratic Party's) intergenerational abuse scheme. Barring serious educational and/or mass media reform -- you know, where thought leaders/teach actually lead/teach because they actually care about peoples' welfare -- they also likely never *will* understand. (Just to position where I'm coming from here, I readily admit I'm genuinely below-average stupid and/or ignorant about plenty of things, and acknowledging hard limits to both is no vice. Nor does admitting this make me, or defines me as, "lazy".)
This is because the underlying modern cultural problem here is the high association of intelligence/knowledge with virtue -- as if we are fully the authors of our minds, and thus each choose how mentally competent we can be, so, therefore, must be held fully accountable for all performance. Admitting otherwise is, in many contexts, completely taboo. That's how an assertion of low intelligence / low knowledge is now the supreme insult, in a way one would rarely or never take, say, poor muscular strength as an personal insult. This, despite the fact that all sorts of things, of causes both from nature and nurture, interfere with performance and achievement to impose real ceilings, high and low, on everyone.
I'm talking specifically about the low IQ, nothing to do with identity. No, low IQ people generally struggle with anything cognitive, whereas people very smart in one sphere are more likely to be at least competent in others, which is why a PhD will, all els being equal, be better at working in a McDonald's kitchen than someone with an IQ of 100 who in turn out ranks the 85 (albeit nowhere near enough to make it logical to hire anyone but the latter two.)
No idea what else you're talking about and not interested in it either.
"... poor and or people of color are too incompetent ..." -> "Many of them are. "
That's where I saw identity. (That there exists any POC struggling with low intelligence is an utter taboo to assert, as you know). No problem for me, but also I didn't want to see you tarred with "racism".
"low IQ people generally struggle with anything cognitive"
Agreed. And until we reverse the status implications, life will continue too often for too many of them to be unbearable. This is the most important *ism of our age.
It’s one thing for status and another thing to just not be shat on
Obviously you’ve never had to pack up a house with a PhD. SOOOO much dithering, and they have to examine every book before putting it in a fucking box.
There are many kinds of intelligence. If you have a PhD, you are probably a narrow/deep thinker. Probably not a doer. I do not think a PhD would necessarily outperform an organized doer in a McDonald’s kitchen.
Complete category error. They're not dithering because they can't figure out that books go in boxes. They're dithering because they're interested in the books, and it's their books. If you set a PhD and someone with mild cognitive impairment up with boxes, furniture, books, whatever, and told them to array the items in such a way that they'd be easily packed, found, stored, loaded, unloaded etc, we know who would (all else being equal) perform better. We know it for fast food too and the studies bear it out, and above all else we know from the one body in American life where de facto IQ ranking and testing are still legal for now: the army.
You are being disingenuous. Of course they know books belong in boxes but they are useless at quickly packing books because they need to open and examine each book because books are fascinating. Pro tip: if you are moving have your book nerd friends pack up the kitchen and the linens.
Yup. At someone else’s house I could pack up and clean no problem, but if I try to do anything productive at my house I end up rereading an old book or going through old photo albums instead lol
Except you can’t get a job at the Dollar Tree without an ID! You can’t cash your paycheck without ID!
And I’ll probably get crucified for this, but if “modern life” is “too challenging” do you really want somebody who is incompetent to navigate basic modern life voting?
You can do both of those things without ID. It isn't as easy, but it can be done.
Please explain how.
Get a job at a chain that actually checks these documents: Show up with two letters addressed to who you say you are at the address you say you live it. (The far likelier scenario is they don't check if you're a cashier.) To cash your check: is it a paper check? If so, cash it at the issuing bank with an endorsement. Is it direct deposit? If so, it's trickier, but usually in this case it'll be paid into a family member's account. If not, you can be paid via check (see previous), Venmo, even cash. Not all stores will do this, of course, but many will. Indeed, there are huge sectors of the economy that still pay via paper check for this exact reason - it's just easier then expecting everyone to have a bank account. (The Mexicans and Central Americans who make up so much of our workforce have a mistrust of banking. Way fewer than half of Mexicans have a bank account, and only around 30% have a debit card, and of those the VAST majority use it only to withdraw their salary each week. The percentage using them for transactions is low; outside of CDMX and other major cities it's practically zero.)
Your comment doesn't fully make sense to me. We are talking about being able to get a job at a chain and cash a check without an ID, neither of which is possible. You can't get a job at a chain without an ID. No if's, and's or but's. No chain would take that risk. I work with homeless people who often lose their IDs. When they receive their SSI paper check, they can't cash it until they get an ID. No check cashing place allows them to cash it without their ID, even if I, an attorney, vouches for them. Because if there's any fraud, and they cash the check, the check cashing place is on the hook for the money. Even if someone is "illegal", places will still require some form of picture identification to allow them to cash a check.
Maybe in Mexico, people have mistrust in banking, but in America, according to 2016 data, only 16% of Hispanic households don't have bank accounts.
You should get (metaphorically) crucified for saying that. People of all intelligence levels are subject to the laws of our society, so they should get to have a say in those laws, because that's what democracy is. You're welcome to not support democracy but I'm pretty skeptical of whatever you think will work better instead (keeping mind that socialism, communism, and even libertarianism are fundamentally democratic systems)
“socialism, communism, and even libertarianism are fundamentally democratic systems”
Surprised you left off fascism since Hitler was elected, after all.
Thank you, wtf are these people talking about?
I thought the basic drawbacks to voter ID were:
(1) there are still, like, old af country people that never really needed an ID and for whom cost, transportation, and most importantly getting the supporting documents are a big deal
(2) people lose their IDs and their supporting documents, especially those with unstable housing situations but also just folks who lose their wallet; and it takes time, money, and stability to get those things back. That doesn’t mean that they’re too stupid to navigate modern life, they could’ve gotten robbed
(3) the price of an ID is equivalent to a poll tax, which is unconstitutional
And to answer your question: so long as they vote Democrat in national elections, we do want them voting
Twenty years ago those arguments may have been true, even if they are edge cases. Old AF people I assume go to the doctor. You cannot go to the doctor without showing ID anymore…this started about 20 years ago…because of fraud-uninsured people would steal the health insurance ID’s of insured and use them, so now doctors and dentists routinely ask for ID.
If you just had your ID stolen and your have an unstable housing situation…would voting really be top of mind? Again……edge case.
It’s insulting to voters for Democrats to assume that people are too incompetent to figure out what to do to cast a ballot, and it may be counterproductive given the realignment due to MAGA. The less educated and less financially secure have been drifting away from the Democratic Party. It would be delicious if voter suppression backfired on Republicans and created Democratic-leaning electorates.
With old people, it’s gotten less important over the years, sure. I figure that they don’t really need to check IDs if you have your Medicare card. Ive been asked for an ID after recent wallet theft at urgent care and it’s been fine. Because I always used the same bank branch to get a cashiers check to pay my rent, they let me access my money without an ID, too. Old farm folks without IDs may rely on people knowing their faces. Sure, it’s definitely a waning edge case.
But I’ve known several homeless or couch surfing people to have pretty strong political beliefs and vote regularly. It’s why Seattle has voting locations even though nearly everyone votes by mail.
I’m not saying voter ID is a bad idea, especially if they let you cast a provisional ballot in case of loss/theft of your ID. I was just detailing the arguments against it. There are pros and cons to voter ID laws, that’s all. I’m not even sure where I stand on it, somewhere in the middle. Really everyone should just be able to vote by mail, with signature checking, like we do here in WA.
I live in WA too, and I appreciate the system here.
Most states have reduced or even free IDs if you are low income. In CA, homeless people can get free IDs and low income people get reduced fee IDs for like $15-25. Once you get an ID in a state, you no longer need supporting documents to get another ID in that state. If you move to another state, and you have never had an ID in that state, they will ask for supporting documents, like ID from another state, a birth certificate, and/or a social security card.
Very few people actually think anarchy is an ideal policy. They just think if the choice is between the permissiveness you describe, and oppressive enforcement of inequitable rules, permissiveness is the far lesser evil.
But moderation is a non starter when people come to believe maximalism/absolutism is the most successful political posture for preventing bad policies from getting enacted. If you think you’re in a zero-sum tug of war with your political enemies, you pull as hard as you can in your direction, even if the outcome isn’t what you would actually prefer. Compromise is not seen as potential movement toward good policy, it’s just ceding territory to your enemies, who also think maximalism is the best strategy to get what they want.
So we’re all being yanked back and forth toward ridiculous extremes, with a predictable overreaching and overcorrection cycle, because everyone thinks that’s the only way to achieve even partial success.
There's something even less flattering to that same set of NYC liberals ( a crowd I know better than I wish I did) lurking in all this. The idea that this crackdown on small motorized vehicles means customers will have to walk to the local take-out place for dinner and pick it up rather than having an underpaid moped driver bring it to them. If these laws make food delivery no longer economically viable then that's the cost of safety. It's like the old Dead Kennedy's record "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death," probably the true motto of America. I have sympathy for the drivers, obviously, being caught in the midst of economic forces that are working against them at every turn, but if you can't DoorDash a burger to your apartment at 11pm at a price you want to pay without the delivery guy speeding down a sidewalk on a moped, maybe that option needs to go away.
I loathe leaving the house as much as the next guy, but let's not pretend the insatiable demand of New Yorkers to have food brought to them in their pajamas isn't what's making all that necessary in the first place.
I seriously doubt that most receivers of delivery care about the 5 minute difference in delivery times that enforcement and law-following would actually create. I don't see any compelling evidence to assume that enforcement of these particular laws would lead to noticably higher delivery times, OR that those delivery time increases would actually result in fewer customers. Feels like a lot of Econ 101 abstract analysis
Well, clearly there is an economic reason they deliver food via scooter rather than on foot. 5 minutes is an arbitrary number, but even if I just accept the hypothetical difference you threw out there it's 5 minutes longer for the food to get there and an additional 5 minutes for the driver to return, and then that double process is repeated for every single delivery in a shift. It adds up fast. If it would have been a 10 minute trip on a moped you've just doubled the delivery time by walking the delivery there.
Yea, verily. Much like MAGA types bemoaning lawlessness in Mexico, Muh Cartels, etc. while forgetting that there would be no drug trade in Mexico worth mentioning, were it not for the Yanquis' insatiable appetite for drugs.
"Bolsheviks did not defund the police" wow, there's an understatement!
This drives me crazy all the time. 'X is bad but no, I'm not going to suggest any actual alternative which could be implemented/critiqued/discussed,' drives me up the wall
The current cause célebre is the fruit stands in the subway. No sanitary facilities to speak of. In one video the lady licks her knife by way of cleaning it between fruits. I'm sure a certain type of high-openness person genuinely *is* enriched by having what amounts to Mayan market vendors on their own doorstep, complete with exotic fruits and seasonings and an exciting language and culture to learn from. And these are indeed the kind of things that, should they be anywhere, should be in New York City, capital of Earth. But these people would defend regulation in any other circumstance and seem willing to cast aside the kind of hygiene a ten-year-old boy would adhere to in favor of this exoticism.
All this is to say every one of these unlicensed carts should be shut down today. I'm all for a discussion to make such licensing easier, but they need to be shut down first pour encourager les autres.
Heh, I have a co-worker who grew up abroad. The local equivalent of drinking fountains was a spigot with a literal glass. You put in a penny, the spigot filled the glass with water and then you drank. If there was a crack in the rim? You just rotated the glass so that the crack faced away from you.
Going to be a massive hypocrite here and say this is based. This hits the sweet spot between a high trust society and not understanding your theory. Such fountains require public infrastructure and upkeep, which suggests some respect for the commons and ones fellow citizens. It would also require people not drinking from the cup if they knew they were sick, and given just how prevalent these were across much of Central and Eastern Europe, it is presumably the case that this was adhered to. RETVRN to thr germ cup.
Although Russia had them and it's very low trust, so what do I know? In fact it even had them on fruit drink vending machines.
Kudos for knowing what part of the world I was referring to.
In the Soviet era there were also vending machines for cheap, low quality wine - the sort of stuff we Aussies call "goon" and drink from bladders inside cardboard boxes.
This is what they took from us
I was thinking in terms that most of the time sharing saliva with your fellow citizens is probably not going to make you sick, hence the knife cleaning trick.
True but the scenario is different. If you feel sido you just avoid the cup until you're better. If you are working to literally put cash in your pocket you'll cut more corners.
I'm an Eastern European and never saw this. Why do you make up stuff?
They must have seen you coming and hid them.
Very funny reply! So again, why do you make shit up?
I don't. I think what's happened is you're appointed yourself as "America's expert on Eastern Europe" but have pretty limited experience of it. Rural water fountains very commonly have a shared cup throughout the Continent, or at least did until fairly recently.
As has been pointed out over and over the last time the US was suffering through a major crime wave the population driving the call for more cops and longer sentences was poor blacks. It makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it because they were the actual victims, not the middle and upper class whites for whom BLM and "Defund the Police" are convenient vehicles for virtue signaling.
Well this is just part of the bigger sickness called Luxury Beliefs:
"ideas or opinions that confers status on members of the upper class at little cost, while inflicting costs on persons in lower classes.
The term is often applied to privileged individuals who are seen as disconnected from the lived experiences of impoverished and marginalized people. Such individuals supposedly hold political and social beliefs that signal their elite status, yet which are alleged to have negative impacts on those with the least influence."
So elites like Mark Healy virtue signal this idea that we need special handling protocol for marginalized breakers of the bike laws... and thus these marginalized groups normalize their law-breaking behavior to the detriment of their ability to assimilate into the higher social strata of law-abiding behavior people.
It becomes a self-fulfilling sort of cycle. Marginalize people are corrupted by the soft bigotry of low expectations and they stay marginalized people so well off white people like Mark Healy have plenty of luxury belief virtue signaling material.