@yarrriv @Alon @davidzipper yes. that’s an excellent point. the trouble with transit is that it’s a big push kind of thing, if you get to an equilibrium where it actually provides ubiquitous frequent reliable service then discovery will catalyze adoption but if it’s third rate transportation for perceived-to-be third rate people, discoverability won’t help that. you have to jump expensively to quality before you can collect evidence of good results.
@BenRossTransit @Alon @rst @davidzipper impulse trips on transit are rare, precisely because there’s a fare boundary. if everybody knows you can just pop on and off a bus, no hassle no questions, when you are walking downtown you might just do that. touristy places get nontypical transit riders on their shuttles by making them entirely free. there’s no reason cities can’t do the same.
@Alon @yarrriv @davidzipper i agree with the thrust of the @davidzipper piece that the most important thing is frequency. (i’d add space too — one the dumbest things transit agencies do is go for an efficiency that means buses should be near full which means often they are crowded and standing room only which means why the fuck didn’t i just drive?) but easing discoverability (for the most inequitable) is important too.
@rst @davidzipper @Alon yeah. i think any kind of fare gate is terrible if you want to build towards completely new cohorts discovering transit. it was a big deal in the history of shopping malls, eliminating doors to shops entirely, a whole wall of the store is an entrance you can diffuse through. i think we want the same welcoming ethos with transit.
@Alon @rst @davidzipper if there are fares at all, it’s great for there to be prepaid discount cards. it’s just the barrier for impulse entrants should also be as minimal as possible. everywhere in the world you can tap a credit or debit card to get lunch, there’s no reason you couldn’t also tap that to get on the bus.
@Alon @davidzipper i don’t know what will work to get people to ditch their cars. (i’m the problem: i ditched transit in SF post-COVID out of hygiene nervousness, now i live in a transit desert in Florida.) But getting car riders to make recreational trips on transit seems like a step towards making transit a real option for people rather than some charity they subsidize for others but would never use. you don’t ditch your car for essential travel first.
@rst @davidzipper @Alon if there are going to be fares, a hover or tap of a standard credit card until something beeps is probably the best way to do it by far. i guess enforcement then becomes inspectors with a machine you scan again, that knows if the card has been seen here recently?
@Alon @davidzipper that you can get away with stealing something under certain circumstances is quite different from feeling that its yours. it’s not i think a question of price. non-transit-riders mostly can afford, are not put off, by the $3 or whatever. but if there’s even a 1¢ fare, there’s a point of control, a hassle, a thing to scan or punch or whatever, maybe you’re doing it wrong there’s a line to get in why the fuck didn’t i just drive or take an uber?
I don’t think the case for fare-free transit is about equity really at all. It’s about reducing the barriers to entry of transit, particularly to infrequent travelers who usually travel by car and don’t keep a fare card. It’s about making it posssible to float in and out of buses on impulse, making transit feel like an option all enjoy rather than just some service other people pay to use. cf @davidzipper https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23653855/covid-transit-fares-buses-subways-crisis
@mike805 i think there are a lot of parallels.
in #Israel we are witnessing perhaps the first human capital strike.
(with all the neoliberal-ish implications of the term "human capital" as distinct from old-fashioned labor and old-fashioned capital.)
[new draft post] Banks should fail much more often https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/03/26/banks-should-fail-much-more-often/index.html
On egalitarianism without welfarism. #BrankoMilanovic https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-equality-without-welfare
@CoolerPseudonym i hope not! but i think stock market valuation multiples are maybe something whose fluctuations we can live with and skip the apocalypse.
@CoolerPseudonym if you think that, you’ll probably prefer passive, why play a very arbitrary zero-sum game, negative sum after trading and active management costs? and you’ll contribute to the rotation into passive, maybe enjoy the updraft if you are not in too late a cohort!
@CoolerPseudonym yeah. it only works while passive share is increasing, relative to active share and/or nonequity investment. can’t go on forever, but can have a big effect for a while! (and could go into reverse, too, if there’s a rotation from passive equity back to more cash-heavy active or something else).
@stephenjudkins In the context of the current, very hot war in Ukraine, that’s an understandable reaction. But much as “tankie”-ish perspectives are understandably (and correctly) infuriating at the moment, I think it is worth thinking about the games great powers have and do play, and how the justifications for individual wars can hide important patterns. 1/
@stephenjudkins Was Iraq ginned up as part of a hegemon’s strategy for ensuring supremacy by chaos in a restive region? I don’t actually think so. (I think in fact the hegemon’s strategy was a mix of unfinished business and genuine belief in a remarkably convenient end of history.) But it’s not a ridiculous question. /fin
is the success of a shift from active management to index funds (mechanically, temporarily) self-fulfilling?
“If active managers are redeemed and replaced with passive managers who want to hold less cash, the ONLY solution is for equity prices to rise.” ~#MichaelGreen #ProfPlum99 https://michaelwgreen.substack.com/p/an-ode-to-a-burning-urn-of-cash