Korean Job Discussion Forums

[postfundie]

[ontheway]

[mateomiguel]

I think you're forgetting one important thing - people like the suburbs. Despite how much inner nerd rage that may give you, its true. Heck *I* like the suburbs. I've lived in the big city of Seoul for 4 years now and its made me appreciate the suburbs even more. I appreciate living in a quiet, out-of-the-way place with a lot of other houses. I appreciate NOT having the din of the city surrounding me when I'm living it up. I LIKE having a yard. I ENJOY having a car and using it to travel everywhere. Living like a very tiny lord in a very tiny manor with a very eonomical carriage is GOOD. This is why people do it.

People who want to get rid of cars, destroy suburbia and change the face of the US as we know it often forget that people have a choice of where to live - an apartment in the city vs a house in the suburbs - and the majority have chosen a house in the suburbs. Cuz they like them.

[mises]

And that is fine. Preferences are fine. But your suburban preference is subsidized by others who don't share that preference, to their significant financial harm. It ought to be much more expensive.

[ernie]

it's sad how so many staunch "conservatives" rally against welfare reforms, public housing initiatives, and public health care while driving their GM SUVs on publicly funded roads burning gas paid for by the US war in iraq.

[Rusty Shackleford]

[ernie]

umm... have you been reading the thread at all? the idea is to get people to pay for what they use. people who live near their workplace (i.e. in cities) should not be subsidizing the roads and gas used by people who live in the suburbs.

[Rusty Shackleford]

[Cheonmunka]

Auckland, NZ, has hills like the San Bernadinos, I guess, but covered in subtropical lush ferns and bushy trees. Tell you what, so glad that the city council put a resource stamp on the hills so no building goes on in them. The developers would have clear-felled it all if they got their way.

[harlowethrombey]

[ernie]

most libertarians would say that people's earnings should never have been taxed away from them in the first place. i don't believe that 'socialism is evil' but that, with a few exceptions, it's stupid, wasteful, and doesn't get the job done.

i guess i'm a moderate libertarian. i believe that if something is an absolute necessity, then it shouldn't be controlled by the marketplace because its value is infinity. the pharmaceutical industry should be highly regulated because if people will die without their medication, then the company can charge whatever it likes regardless of how much it cost to produce. the customers can't really act according to economics because their lives are on the line.

transportation is not an absolute necessity. it's a means to an end. you use transportation to get somewhere, e.g. to work. you can choose to use less transportation by living closer to your workplace. you can choose to use a cheaper mode of transport (the bus) or a more expensive mode (an SUV) depending on what you prefer. in a free society, a person who chooses to be more economic doesn't pay for someone who chooses to be less economic.

publicly funded roadways, petroleum, and policing takes money away from people who use more economic forms of transportation (or simply LESS transportation) and gives it to people who choose to live in the middle of BF nowhere. our socialized transportation system is uneconomic, undemocratic, and is polluting the hell out of our planet.

[ernie]

double post

[Hater Depot]

If the suburbs are declining, it maybe for demographic reasons -- there are simply fewer of the people who like suburbs.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/04/the-declining-demographics-of-suburbanism.php

[Fox]

[ernie]

i agree that calling suburban policy 'undemocratic' is debatable. however the fact that 'democratically elected representatives' make a law does not necessarily make that law fair, constitutional, or democratic. hitler and kim jeong il were both 'democratically elected', after all!