Favorite Rejects 2022-05-11
I hope Adam is right about this but I’m skeptical.
My fear remote work is sort of like streaming video services — so undeniably more convenient than the alternative that it wins out, but leaves us in a worse equilibrium where people are just home alone more. https://t.co/aOrrlCR8lm
Adam Ozimek @ModeledBehavior
Hopefully everyone resists that and spends more time with family (if applicable) and does regular lunches and hangouts with non-work friends and just lives a happier, less work-cd true life.
But my fear is Slacking Alone plus more Netflix.
At any rate the technology isn’t going to go away no matter what I or anyone else thinks about it.
But there’s something like a National Hanging Out Crisis afoot and we need to encourage people to lean against it and think of pro-hangout policy ideas if we can.
If road-building and upkeep was financed by user fees (VMT tax, congestion pricing, etc) we wouldn’t need to have dumb arguments about induced demand.
What you would see is that induced demand is real but also not an argument against building things — if a transportation project doesn’t induce any demand it’s pointless!
The question is whether the cost of the project is commensurate with use.
The issue with current policy is that the quest for highways that are both uncrowded and free requires massive overbuilding that’s subsidized by taxes on productive labor and capital, generating lots of wasted land and excess pollution.
We used to use the gas tax as a crude proxy for a user fee but EV adoption is making this worse and worse especially since they’re so heavy that they actually generate more wear and tear on the roads (which in turn causes pollution). Desperate need for some better ideas here.
It suggests to me that despite their differences, Democrats are good.
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
