The hackers lament the existence of free public transport because "sharing close quarters with aggressive, smelly, intoxicated, unstable people is stressful and unpleasant"
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21807602)
posted on December 17, 2019 04:45 AM by
u/sue_me_please
54
u/sue_me_please43 pointsat 1576558050.000000
One time a homeless person had the gall to be present in the sight of
a hacker, and dear god they will never let anyone on the internet ever
forget about how it made them feel
I spend a lot of time on BART, the homeless people are the best part,
you get to talk to somebody with a completely different outlook on life
than you.
though this guy gets it
it’s the abysmal lack of shelter options and the attempts by cities
to criminalize encampments and force people to find somewhere indoors to
avoid arrest
But then you have comments like the one below which make me lose
faith in people
Yep, I personally would much sooner use public transportation that
charged 0 (with no exceptions) than free public transportation. Sharing
close quarters with aggressive, smelly, intoxicated, unstable people is
stressful and unpleasant
It’s like this guy is an Aristocrat who wants to avoid being around
Plebians.
What counts for mainstream economic dogma about housing crises makes a lot more sense when you account for the fact that a majority the people writing about and voting on it are grossed out nerds who are frightened of getting poor people cooties
> It's like this guy is an Aristocrat who wants to avoid being around Plebians.
It's easy to mock but I kind of think this is a valid impulse? It's ~~human nature~~ EDIT: *normal cultural conditioning* to want to create spaces that have some barriers to entry, where not any random drunk off the streets can just wander in.
Of course you could start with an open-door policy and then throw people out if they're loud/aggressive/troublemakers, but especially in a mass context it's often better to stem the flow of troublemakers getting on in the first place. Charging money is a crude but unfortunately very effective way to put up a threshold.
(Case in point: the railways in my country noticed a significant drop in aggression against train personnel since the gates on several major stations were closed. Those gates require you to check your transit card to pass, putting up physical barriers to fare-dodging. It *just so happens* that "habitual fare-dodgers" and "people who would assault conductors" are groups with significant overlap.)
Yeah OK that was poorly worded. Obviously it's not "natural", but rather cultural/social. I was trying to say that the tendency as such is not inherently silly or wrong.
Note also that the original poster being mocked wasn't saying there shouldn't be free public transport; they were saying that, if there were a paid option, they'd rather use that (because of the lower number of "plebeians" who would use it). And I cannot blame them for that. I would probably prefer the same.
> I would probably prefer the same.
Since you're a fan of exclusive clubs to keep out the smelly riffraff I'm sure you'll sympathize with the moderator action I'm about to take.
----
Also, general recommendation for this thread: go watch Bong Joon Ho's *Parasite*.
That's a reflection on you, not on the film.
But if that was your gut response then you definitely could benefit from watching it all the way through.
Edit: lol I am so unsurprised to learn you're an r/SSCer.
> It’s human nature to want to create spaces that have some barriers to entry, where not any random drunk off the streets can just wander in.
bro you just posted cringe
Generally, most people who are “pro-homeless” or talk about treating
them with respect don’t actually live near or otherwise interact with
the homeless on a regular or even occasional basis, which lets them feel
superior and cast moral judgments on those of us who do live near the
homeless and try to do something to contain the problem.
you metropolitan liberal city-dwelling coastal elites just haven’t
met enough homeless people to no longer view them as human
Like half of these people would support the police just opening fire on a homeless encampment if it meant they weren't forced into an uncomfortable situation on their daily commute. They are completely amoral alien bug people
A couple months ago, I saw someone on /r/Portland say that the city should "rake up and get rid of" the homeless like they do leaves in the fall; when I asked them exactly what they meant by that, and noted that once you rake up leaves you've generally got to do something like compost or burn them, they responded that the second option sounded good to them. "Amoral alien bug people" is probably too charitable.
I haven’t spent a lot of time in America, but whenever I read
Americans’ accounts, I’m struck by how aggressively anti-transit the
mainstream attitude is. Is this the product of 100 years of propaganda
and the automotive industry actively destroying public transit
initiatives? Is it the American obsession with independence and personal
freedom?
In countries where functioning transit systems are the norm, odours
and unstable people are just a basic fact of life, a minor irritation
that pales in comparison to the convenience of mass transit.
All those things, but the big unspoken factor is racism IMHO: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/traffic-atlanta-segregation.html
Also google 'exclusionary zoning,' and it's not hard to see how that attitude towards dense neighborhoods translates into hating public transit.
[Robert Moses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Criticism_and_The_Power_Broker) did the same thing in NY -- he built overpasses that buses couldn't go under but cars could. Even better, he was openly proud of this:
>In response to the biography [Caro's The Power Broker], Moses defended his forced displacement of poor and minority communities as an inevitable part of urban revitalization, stating "I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without moving people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs."[38]
No, the only rational thing is to have have half your city taken up by parking spaces.
It straight up sickens me how many cities don't have public transport. It is a surefire way to completely ruin a city.
> Is this the product of 100 years of propaganda and the automotive industry actively destroying public transit initiatives?
It's this, and the fact that when you take public transportation you can't delude yourself into believing that you're any better than the other "undesirables" traveling with you, especially when you can't make them sit at the back of the bus anymore.
One time a homeless person had the gall to be present in the sight of a hacker, and dear god they will never let anyone on the internet ever forget about how it made them feel
I spend a lot of time on BART, the homeless people are the best part, you get to talk to somebody with a completely different outlook on life than you.
though this guy gets it
But then you have comments like the one below which make me lose faith in people
It’s like this guy is an Aristocrat who wants to avoid being around Plebians.
you metropolitan liberal city-dwelling coastal elites just haven’t met enough homeless people to no longer view them as human
I feel the same way about sharing public spaces with Hacker News users
I haven’t spent a lot of time in America, but whenever I read Americans’ accounts, I’m struck by how aggressively anti-transit the mainstream attitude is. Is this the product of 100 years of propaganda and the automotive industry actively destroying public transit initiatives? Is it the American obsession with independence and personal freedom?
In countries where functioning transit systems are the norm, odours and unstable people are just a basic fact of life, a minor irritation that pales in comparison to the convenience of mass transit.
Somebody never went to a fun music festival.
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