Try getting mental health appointments through the NHS. Mental health “services” in the UK are a travesty given the so-called commitment to “universal” care.
>driven in part by the effects of the opioid epidemic on younger adults in the U.S. and the impact of a severe flu season on older adults in other nations, two new studies suggest.
More likely we need to fix the socioeconomic circumstances that drive people toward opioids. Personally, I believe there is a complex cultural problem in the first world. We have it too easy, can subsist without working, and now that people are increasingly less religious, with nothing to do all day and nothing to replace god or community but vapid, consumerist materialism. So poor people turn to drugs to numb the emptiness in their lives.
M
Though I'm sure there's more involved.
Opioids are also a cheaper fix to chronic pain problems than extensive therapy. And then when it gets too expensive to get prescription drugs heroin is cheaper.
Unfortunately I was a few minutes too late to direct this reply to the right place before it got eaten by flags.
Regardless, if anyone here thinks that the character "Thanos" would ever make a good exemplar among humans, then I encourage them to watch this rebuttal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV18Xx5EkaE
One big problem is that we've created a culture where there is literally nothing else other than labor and productivity, literally for productivity's sake. So when we run out of meaningful, productive jobs for everyone, people get depressed because we've drilled into their heads that if you're not being productive, you're worthless.
We need to create a society that values happiness over productivity and efficiency. It means not stigmatizing "laziness". It means not punishing doing something for its intellectual sake rather than for profit or productivity.
Basically, we need to start to discard the 20th century models of capitalism and communism and start focusing on what we want the 21st century to be about.
Are opioids actually an epidemic when measured as a cause of death? 64,000 annually in the US (2016.) That’s not even in the top ten of causes of death.
Deaths of despair makes it sound like people need more of their paycheck to go into their pocket so they aren't despairing that they can't afford modern life. Universal healthcare would make that profoundly more difficult.
That's not the way to go about it. You want to control a pop's growth before reproduction has happened, else you're just increasing "despair" and hurt. It's not the humane way.
I suppose "people should die so that climate change is less severe" is an easy position to take if you imagine the people being killed won't be you or your family.
I find it astounding that the opioid epidemic is so severe that there's a measurable reduction in life expectancy in the USA.
Interesting that "deaths of despair" have also had a measurable impact. It seems that since the Global Financial Crisis, we've been locked in this sort of terminal pessimism. Hunter S. Thompson wrote back in 1971, "We are all wired into a survival trip now". Are we locked in the same survival trip from almost 50 years ago, or is it a cyclical thing?
Is the world really worse than the 60s? Or are we just more aware of our helplessness?
Wages were rising until the 70s and they've been stagnant since then; in the mean time college, health care, rent, houses, etc. have gotten more expensive in real dollars. People who had well-paying jobs with strong benefits are now often, if not unemployed, in jobs with less pay, fewer benefits, and more precarity. In short: yes, things are worse for many of the people who are turning to opiates.
From the many statistics I saw usually the breaking point is the middle to end of eighties. I'm thinking the fall of Soviet Union had a large impact on the middle class Americans. Basically the middle class was discarded as something that served its purpose as a shield from communism.
How has anybody been "robbed"? Per capita income has gone up for everyone, yes the top has gone up faster but at the end of the day the lower tiers still have increased in wealth. Honestly I don't understand how you come to your conclusion.
It's not a lie. The US welfare state has massively expanded since 1980. The percentage share of GDP transferring via welfare state policies has doubled in 20x years.
Both poverty and homelessness are near 50 year lows.
Healthcare coverage is near an all-time high, thanks in part to the vast expansion of the welfare state.
All of that is being paid for by the rich. The US has one of the most progressive taxation systems in the developed world. The US middle class is among the least taxed of any middle class in the developed world, which is also why the US median disposable income is among the highest.
If you go back to 1980, the inflation adjusted per capita income transfer going to welfare policies, was close to $3,500. Today it's near $9,000. That's a dramatic expansion of the social safety net in the US, and it has had very tangible, very dramatic positive results (including a large reduction in homelessness).
Inflation adjusted per capita median income was about the same in 2016 as it was in 2000. The last significant increase was in the 90s. Income shares of the top 1% and top 0.1% have doubled and tripled respectively since 1980. Maybe calling it robbery is hyperbole, but it certainly doesn't seem fair.
So the poor can now have smartphones and financed cars but their education and healthcare is prohibitively expensive and they have no chance of owning a home.
All the while those GDP increases have gone to fewer and fewer people.
I'm sure they'll feel reassured when you tell them GDP per capita has gone up.
It's not about the poor being a bit better off with things like luxuries. It's about their piece of the overall wealth and stake in the economy gradually shrinking.
Anecdote, companies received bailouts during the financial crisis for being “too big to fail.” Meanwhile, people and families were kicked out of their homes and forced into bankruptcy. Companies rebounded and increased profits long ago. Meanwhile, workers didn’t see a wage increase until very recently (last 3-6 months or so - IIRC). And the increase for people was not very large.
First as tragedy, then as farce, or something like that. If the banks are right about what they've been saying recently, Warren is going to be elected against the threat of seizure once the recession hits its stride.
If you look at union membership rates, that's when they begin to falter. Countries with strong social democratic safety nets usually have high union membership (in the range of ~80%.) Working class power was built on militant labor movements in the first half of the 20th century. Without the threat of strikes (essentially the only tool in labor's pocket) there's no incentive to pay higher wages or to not seek rents in industries that serve basic needs like healthcare, education, etc.
This is a mix-up of cause and effect. Union membership is down mainly because the jobs are gone. We lowered our tariffs and most of the union jobs got offshored. Automation didn't help.
Strikes are not required for higher wages. What is required is a labor shortage. That is all the incentive needed: wages will be exactly as high as required, no more and no less. We got a surplus of workers for many reasons: the demand was cut by offshoring and automation, while the supply was increased by women entering the workforce.
Demand is picking up now, and with it wages are starting to move.
That's a surprising thing to say, given that software engineers are always in demand, companies are complaining they can't find candidates and yet salaries aren't growing at a high rate.
Companies like Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe even broke the law and colluded to keep SW engineer salaries down and then paid a pittance when they got caught.
And SW is an abnormally in-demand field. According to HBR "Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen, growing only 0.2% per year" in the US.
So not only is the market not fixing anything, sometimes even the law is not enough.
I think you have an idealized view market forces. Offshoring was a way to break the back of unions in the US by seeking out unorganized, cheap labor overseas. The power dynamic remains the same, the people who owned capital wanted more profit than could be made in the US. We agree on that much, but your version of the story strips out all of the agency from the equation.
At any rate, I don't think labor shortage is an adequate counterweight to wage suppression. Wages are beginning to inch up, yes. But cyclical economic crises ensure that the unemployment rate never goes so low as to require the kind of meaningful wage increases that would counteract the trends we're talking about. Look at the op-eds in the Wall Street Journal -- wage increases are seen as a huge liability and a reason to pull back on investment. Better to throw out a couple of one-time bonuses to keep the mobs from revolting.
This isn't some starry-eyed optimism about the working class. Wages are negotiated by the balance of power between management and labor.
You're ignoring that total compensation has continued to climb.
Those wage increases are going into healthcare, which has gone from 6% of GDP to 18% of GDP in terms of spending. That has consumed all wage growth for a generation. 12% of GDP is $2.4 trillion - year every. Or more reasonably, match it to a nice European nation's spending, around 11%. That 7% difference is $1.4 trillion.
If you want wages to climb again, you'll have to destroy the US healthcare system as it exists, and decimate the pay of millions of well paid nurses, doctors, scientists, sales reps, et al. You'll need to abolish several hundred thousand jobs in the insurance industry and find those people new careers. It's ultimately a wealth redistribution question, a certain block of millions of people have been enriched by the healthcare system plundering the economy, while many more have suffered because of it.
The world, by almost every measure, is better today then the 60's. What has changed in my opinion, and especially in the US, is the explosion of wealth celebrity which is creating dissatisfaction in our lives.
Pensions don’t exist anymore. China’s gunning for the US in as many non-war triggering ways as possible - and they actually outnumber the US. I can think of two states that used to get snow around Christmas and no longer do. Etc.
compared to the 60s clearly not but compared to the 70s or 80s, to the average worker without qualifications, you had a lot of things which were better back then (and of course some other things which are better now but people never focus on those).
Well, broadly I'd associate "death from despair" with rising income inequality in advanced nations.
The 1960s were somewhat unique time, where you had both the US competing with the USSR and the postwar boom. Together, this helped create a situation where a significant chunk of workers could buy small but functional houses and consider themselves "middle class".
Today, we have a return to the gilded age, which might be more like a return to median.
We have an entire region of our nation suffering from the rust belt.
Some say the last 40 years have been the greatest theft in human history. The american people have been robbed blind and we are too stupid to realize it and now we ( the children of the blind fools ) are suffering for it.
Even in NYC, look at the housing prices and look at the wages. It's ridiculous.
People don't need a reason to escape; they need better reasons to stay. Traditionally that's been the role of religions, but what's the replacement? How can we give humanity a reason to live, in a scalable manner, without relying on fictional axioms?
If people only live to make more people, then that's not scalable; it's a pyramid scheme. Earth doesn't have the capacity for everyone to start a family.
Some people take drugs out of curiosity or just for fun. Many drugs make you feel good. A sense of euphoria is nice even if you have nothing else wrong. Not every drug user is trying to escape something.
Anybody else felt that the study is kind of too broad and they kind of say, yes it is partly because of the opiods but at the same time there is another study that say it isn't.
So I feel I literally read noise.
Outside the US and possibly the UK it is noise; it's not news and the cause is well understood to be the flu. Fluctuations of a few months in life expectancy should not be a surprise in countries where it is well above 80 years. The question is why the decline didn't revert the next year in two of the 18 countries.
This is starting to become a bit of a meme on Hacker News, that LSD, or ketamine, or MDMA is some kind of miracle cure for all your problems in life.
It's not. I've taken my fair share of drugs in all kinds of different settings, so I'd consider myself at least experienced in the subject. Drugs don't solve the problems in your life, they're escapism. To quote (again) Hunter S Thompson:
> That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit.
Drugs aren't going to save the world. The hippies thought that they could save the world in the 60s with positive energy, wishful thinking, pot, and LSD. How well did that work out? You could give the whole world a dose of acid, and the very next day they'd be straight back to killing each other.
I'm all in favour of legalisation, sure, but it's not going to save the world.
Upon saying that, in the correct supportive environment, LSD can be an incredible tool for healing past trauma. It's a shame that Timothy Leary and his lot managed to basically kill all scientific research into its therapeutic benefits for decades.
When did I say it was going to save the world? I’m suggesting it is an infinitely safer alternative than opioids and perhaps if it were legal then people vulnerable to opioid addiction would be taking something much safer and non-addictive.
I think that suggesting that people who are vulnerable to opioid addiction take LSD instead is a pretty reckless suggestion.
I've had the misfortune of taking LSD when I was in the wrong headspace, in the wrong place (i.e. bad set and setting). It was not a very pleasant experience.
If your life is so desperate that you're taking opioids to try and dull the pain of existence (which is a something different situation to progressing from prescribed opioids to heroin addiction), then taking LSD really isn't the solution and isn't necessarily a safer alternative. Physically safer, sure, but LSD can fuck with your psyche in pretty nasty ways.
I'm not saying "poor people shouldn't take LSD", because I'm not a hypocritical elitist. But I don't think it's really an alternative to opioids, and don't think it would stop opioid abuse, you'd just be throwing more shit into the mix.
Weed is a far more appropriate drug. At the end of the day though, drugs are readily available wherever you are. People will take what they want to take. Obviously people are taking opioids (or methamphetamine in some areas) despite the ready availability of marijuana. If people wanted to take LSD, they'd be able to find it easy enough (or it would find them).
> Life expectancy declines seen in U.S. and other high-income countries
You didn't qualify what you were saying, so don't be surprised when someone ascribes a meaning for you. The topic was about a western-societal problem, so effectively...the world for most readers and your comment implies something about it.
I find it very counter-intuitive that they would cite an ”ageing population” as a contributing cause of a drop in life expectancy. I suppose there might be some way that that could be true, but it’s not straightforward.
I'd like to provide my anecdotal evidence from a 26 year old American white male making $37,000 per year in NYC:
It's not income inequality that drives my depression. I'm happy as a clam at my job and I'm able to pay my food, rent, car, and make a little savings.
It is the "bullshit" factor that comes with nearly everything in life these days. Parking tickets, identity thieves, regulations that hurt small businesses, crowding in cities, crazy drivers on the road, being taken to court for nearly anything...
... everyone is out here just trying to exploit the common citizen and it really, really needs to stop.
An HN member suggests that someone may just not enjoy urban living, and your response is to relate that suggestion to lawlessness and wanton murder. Their logic isn't scary at all, it's not even the slightest bit unusual; your response however, is extremely bizarre and off kilter.
While I do not regard it as an accurate view of cities, I also do not regard it as “extremely bizarre and off kilter” — I have noticed similar patterns of hyperbolic anti-city thoughts amongst many people who prefer rural areas to cities.
In this town here there almost isn't even parking enforcement and it's rarely the case that you are looking for an open spot. When there is a big event at the park, the nearby streets can be full for a couple of blocks.
>It is the "bullshit" factor that comes with nearly everything in life these days. Parking tickets, identity thieves, regulations that hurt small businesses, crowding in cities, crazy drivers on the road, being taken to court for nearly anything...
A lot of these (though not all) become easier to deal with as your income goes up, either because it has a minimal impact on you, or you can have people deal with it.
Yeah I agree with this but the problem is that it exists, period. It's extortion. If left unchecked, they'll just raise the price of the fine.
That's why a speeding ticket used to be $25 in North Dakota with no court date, compared to $400 in NY with a mandatory court date and points without reaching a plea.
15MPH over in Seattle will run you $159 iirc, with the option of a deferment every 7 years. Or, they'll often bump it down to ~$50 if you go to the pre-trial meeting. No mandatory court though!
Dammnnnn Seattle the land of speeding protections!!
Doing 72 in a 55 (17mph over limit) came with a sticker price of $400 fine, 6 points on the license, plead guilty by mail or in person pre-trial hearing in the absolute middle of nowhere in NY. Plea bargained to $225 "parking violation" that went straight to the town's budget. Sickening considering most roads in MA have a 70 mph speed limit
I've seen Too Fast For Conditions (a ticket for crashing basically) plea bargained to a parking violation (without much of a discount), but yet to see the same for a speeding ticket. No points or counter for accidents that may affect your license here in WA State tho.
> That's why a speeding ticket used to be $25 in North Dakota with no court date, compared to $400 in NY with a mandatory court date and points without reaching a plea.
I’m sorry but for this particular problem I have no sympathy. Don’t speed. It doesn’t matter if most people speed occasionally and it doesn’t matter if there are legitimate obstacles to time management in your life that make not speeding difficult. Speeding is statistically more likely to cause death. It’s one of the leading causes of vehicular manslaughter and the mortality rate increases superlinearly as speed increases.
If I could I would make the penalties for speeding, not using a blinker, etc. significantly more onerous than they are now. We live amidst an epidemic hysteria that fosters the belief that a speed limit is a speed minimum. I would happily make someone’s life extremely difficult if they demonstrated a disregard for the dangers of speeding (and unfortunately it seems a majority of drivers do). I would be thrilled if speeding more than 5 mph above the limit incurred mandatory community service for every offense in addition to a fine that scaled aggressively with the offender’s income.
But don’t let this screed of mine detract from your broader point. I agree people are taken advantage of for things like parking tickets. I just won’t extend that sympathy for things in the category of, “Most people do this, and it’s frustratingly arbitrarily enforced, but it recklessly endangers the lives of other humans.”
Negative. I am in fact saying those two speeds are nearly equally dangerous, such that fining one and not fining another is arbitrary and extortionary.
A pedestrian will die or be gravely injured at nearly any speed. A car crashing into another car, especially in opposing directions, is extremely dangerous above say 45mph.
You either go on the road and accept this risk, or you don't.
Or of course, you end the multi billion dollar car lobbyist industry and I will happily ride a moped to work instead.
People who drive 110mph on the highway in traffic are objectively dangerous. Most cars don't brake well from that speed.
70 mph is not fast if I am leaving adequate distance between me and everything else.
I'll acknowledge that the probability of death increases more slowly after you pass 65 mph [1], but it still increases. Human life is not negligible just because you want to get somewhere negligibly faster (e.g. by a few minutes at best, if you're going 70 in a 65 zone).
More generally the graph from that first source is telling: look at how sharply it increases, even after 50 mph. Other than interstates, most roads aren't 65 mph zones! And simply allowing any speed limit above 55 mph has a meaningful increase in vehicular collision mortality [2].
I can empathize that you consider the fines to be arbitrary and extortionist, and I understand that you think you're leaving adequate distance between yourself and other cars. But 96% of American drivers believe their driving ability is above average [3]; people substantially overestimate their driving skill and safety in general. Therefore though I understand why people feel the need to speed (and I used to!), I really cannot sympathize with arguments for leniency towards speeding penalties.
>I'll acknowledge that the probability of death increases more slowly after you pass 65 mph [1], but it still increases. Human life is not negligible just because you want to get somewhere negligibly faster (e.g. by a few minutes at best, if you're going 70 in a 65 zone).
By extension, you should take every back road while you drive, rather than the freeway, because there is a minute chance that you increase probability of human death by going 65 on the freeway rather than 35 on back roads.
There is existing reasearch which indicates two things: 1) Most people drive at the speed they feel comfortable driving at but some obey speed limits (even if they are comfortable driving faster) and 2) It is differences in speed, not speeding, which causes most accidents.
Considering these factors, speed limits can artificially increases differences in speed among drivers. When the federal speed limit law was repealed, many states who raised their speed limits saw decreases in both accidents and fatalities.
That's not to say speed limits are causing accidents, but I think it's possible that they could be in certain context. It's not as cut and dry as "speeding kills".
You could look at a speed limit as a social contract. There are other positive reasons to go slower than avoiding death (gas mileage for one). However, if there is an agreed upon legal limit, then by speeding you are violating that contract directly increasing the difference in speed therefore increasing the chance of an accident.
> By extension, you should take every back road while you drive, rather than the freeway, because there is a minute chance that you increase probability of human death by going 65 on the freeway rather than 35 on back roads.
Is it not illegal to be a pedestrian on a freeway where you are? Motorways are one of only three parts of the UK road system where pedestrians are forbidden.
OP was referring to overall probability of human death, not just pedestrian death/accident. To answer your question though, states can determine their own laws - most choose to make it illegal for pedestrians to be on the freeway in congested areas. There are places where you can ride you bicycle on the freeway, usually in rural areas (http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/paffairs/faq/faq67.htm)
> By extension, you should take every back road while you drive, rather than the freeway, because there is a minute chance that you increase probability of human death by going 65 on the freeway rather than 35 on back roads.
No, that’s not an extension to what I’m saying. That would be safer yes, but you can afford to go faster with fewer pedestrians around.
> Considering these factors, speed limits can artificially increases differences in speed among drivers. When the federal speed limit law was repealed, many states who raised their speed limits saw decreases in both accidents and fatalities.
If you read the research I cited you’ll see that no, actually most states observed higher mortality in the transition from 55 mph to 65 mph speed limits. You can forward arguments that speeding isn’t the real culprit, or that there are worse problems. But you can sidestep that entirely by simply not speeding - then all risks related to speeding evaporate.
So to be clear I agree with you that speed disparity is a problem, but I would advocate both reducing speed limits and imposing extraordinary fines (and other punitive measures) to make the risk reward calculus of speed disparity very unattractive. Speeding directly causes the traffic disparity you’re talking about.
I would correct that the 16% increase in speed leads to a 36% increase in kinetic energy, so it should be 36% more dangerous which I find much better than simply talking about increased speed (energy increases by square, even a 30kph difference, 100kph and 70kph, can double the amount of road you need to break)
> I agree people are taken advantage of for things like parking tickets
Remember that some speeding tickets come from cops raking in cash at the bottom of a hill where the speed limit suddenly drops by 15mph according to a sign that's hidden behind a tree. I think it's possible to call this out while also acknowledging that driving too fast is dangerous.
About parking tickets: one day my office mate parked her car on the street where she always did. But when she went to leave for the day, she found a ticket on her car, and its cause: a brand new parking meter right by her car. It had been installed while she was inside.
I think the money typically goes to the city, which controls both the speed signs and (at least somewhat) where cops are stationed. So its the typical US thing where there's technically no corruption but, huh, that is a bit of a conflict of interest, isn't it?
I've been in the car for 3 tickets, and I'll include one more I recently heard about from a family member. In one case, the driver took a turn on red at 2am when the streets were completely empty. In another, there was a very large and steep hill, and the driver didn't break sufficiently to not go over the speed limit. (The road was straight and the visibility was perfect.) In another, the speed limit quickly changed from 35mph to 15mph for no apparent reason.
In all these cases, these drivers weren't putting anyone in danger. I don't think the cops were waiting in these spots by coincidence; I think they were trying to make money for the city.
In the fourth case, the driver sped on a windy street, and totally deserved the ticket.
The whole idea of speeding is bullshit.
The germans have the autobahn, and as far as I know nobody really complains about the lack of a speed limit, nor people going over 120 miles an hour.
Speeding IMHO is almost never the issue, it’s careless or reckless driving, failure to obey traffic laws, and distracted driving. The idea of taking a single arbitrary driving test as a teen and never again is insane.
Speeding goes against the legal and socially agreed upon limit. That, in and of itself, is reckless as it increases the difference in speed between someone operating "legally" and yourself.
Now I must decide whether I care more about my life or the law. It's not a great position to be placed in because you need to arrive at your destination 30 seconds faster.
The socially agreed upon limit, is the speed of traffic. That is after all, the speed society is driving.
The legal limit often has no relation to it and no basis in science or common sense. Not to mention a failure to account for progress in vehicle development, tire technology, etc.
There are various streets where the social limit is higher than the legal one. In Rome there is a place where the speed limit is 50km/h but everyone (literally) drives at 90 km/h. When someone drives at 50 on thay street it endangers the whole traffic.
As another response mentioned, the "socially agreed upon limit" is the speed of traffic. I must have missed the meeting where we all got together and discussed what the speed limit ought to be.
The speed limit is often arbitrary and that's part of the problem. We become immune to posted limits because the ones posted on highways and major roads are obviously inappropriate and not updated as technology and zoning changes. Then, many drivers ignore them when they do matter e.g. neighborhoods, school zones, curves.
You're almost never going to be affected by someone simply speeding - it's drivers who speed _recklessly_. I'm fortunate enough to have never gotten into an accident even though I've driven all around the world. The person that's going to cause an accident is the one speeding AND weaving between cars or tailgating.
Either way, it's irrelevant. The point of the thread is that speeding tickets are little more than a financial instrument for local, and sometimes state, governments.
The German Autobahn has at least 50% an enforced speed limit. The remaining roads (non-Autobahn) have limits and Germans would complain for a variety of reasons if these limits would be taken away.
In southern Germany along Lake Constance I once drove through a series of towns on a main road. Each of them had a camera enforced 30 km/h (about 19 mph) speed limit. On a billboard it was explained this was because of traffic noise.
I was surprised when I spotted the first camouflage colored camera and stood on the brakes. Luckily I didn't get a letter.
None of the towns had a sign indicating the end of the low speed regime. In a biergarten I asked someone when the low speed usually ends and he told me that at the end of the town there's a sign on which the town's name is striked through. This is also the end of the low speed regime! Then I continued and I arrived at a larger town. There I seem to have missed the end of the low speed area because people started to overtake me.
I thought it's their own fault because it's the people in these towns who have asked for the low speed on their roads.
So it’s somehow not your fault that you don’t know German law and so didn’t realize that the explicit speed limit ended with signage for „end of this city“?
(And an most likely another speed limit begun depending on the number of lanes)
That was at the last town which was a bit larger. I was still inside the town and thought I had to keep the low speed till I encountered the end of town sign as the biergarten guy told me. Additionally I thought the signage less than optimal: rather small signs behind bushes and so on. Once or twice I saw the speed cameras before the sign. So that's why I felt it's their own fault.
Speed Limits in Germany are generally valid until End of Town or the next (major) intersection (not every road intersecting with the lane you're on counts as such, the sidewalk has to be interrupted). There are exceptions; Speed Limit Zones (Zones, not simple Limits, usually 30KPH) do not end at intersections and there are special Walking Speed Zones (Beruhigte Zone, usually around Schools or dense Community Areas) where the max speed is 10kph where you get much more severe fines than in other zones (especially around schools).
On the German _Autobahn_ there is no general speed limit.
There is a speed limit of 50km/h in towns and villages, which is often dropped down to 30 in pedestrian rich areas, in front of schools and so on.
There is a 100km/h speed limit on normal roads outside of settlements. These are one-lane in each direction with not separation.
On the Autobahn, you have at least two lanes in each direction with separation. There is no general speed limit but there are many speed limited stretches, usually to 120km/h. These limits are on about 50% of the Autobahn.
Fines for speeding are not really high, but you do get "point", so multiple violations can lead to losing your drivers license.
To get a license, you take a minimum of 12 driving lessons and a theoretical course. There is theoretical test and a practical test.
I think the high-quality drivers education + the safety features of cars + the mandatory inspections of the cars (yearly) help offset the safety risk of the higher speeds.
Most fines, including speeding tickets, are bullshit. Why? Because they are enforced in a random/chaotic way, they are unfair, and there's almost no proof that expensive tickets increase security on roads.
You get a speeding ticket when you drive to fast. The easy solution is not to drive over the limit.
This is not hard nor is your life at risk if you do 80 in a 80 zone instead of 90 kph. (Unless it is, which is why Ambulances don't really have to adhere to traffic law where I live)
Don't drive too fast and you don't get speeding tickets, problem solved, no?
(There may be no proof that tickets make roads safer but appropriate speed limits do)
They’re not bullshit. If you don’t speed you can’t be penalized for speeding. Claiming it’s unfair because you were caught and penalized when so many others were not is not a substantive refutatation of the system. It is unfair, but you have total control over your culpability.
Furthermore, do you have any studies supporting your claim that expensive tickets don’t reduce speeding?
Care to cite some of that research? I cited supporting literature for my claims elsewhere in this thread; what’s the utility of discussing research if we’re not thinking of common papers to review?
And no, I categorically reject your appeal to “people make mistakes.” A speed trap is a mistake unfairly penalized. Parking under a partially hidden fire zone sign is a mistake. Speeding is a willful decision that evidences either ignorance or disregard for the impact of higher speeds and traffic disparity on mortality risk.
I really don’t think calling this a “pet peeve” like when someone blocks a driveway is at all comparable.
You're totally right -- and I'm not saying you're advocating that position -- but it's a terrible answer to say to people: Just get rich enough not to have those problems.
For years I almost blew a head gasket trying to convince my mother that there is a whole industry designed to keep people poor. She didn't grow up poor, but she grew up working class in a time before that industry pervaded absolutely everywhere. My mom became very successful later in life (just after I'd left the house). I didn't grow up super poor, but I was aware at a young age of not having things most other folks had, and I could sense my parents' anxiety about finances. Then as a young adult, I hit this industry like a brick wall and spent many years dirt poor, like stealing-spaghetti-from-the-grocery-store poor, with any edge I gained pretty quickly shaved off by some damned nickel-and-dime thing. And I was raised not to ask for (or expect) help or support from anyone. My family was/is a very sink-or-swim kind of family, and incidentally I very much credit that and my own insecurities about money (and service in the infantry) with any and all of my successes in life. But anyway, in a bizarre twist, it wasn't until I had become successful that she actually took me seriously about the industry designed to keep people poor! She just couldn't bring herself to believe that it's in anyone's financial interest to keep people poor. But it's absolutely true and absolutely exists. I lived for years surrounded by it and even today, every time I login to Facebook it's like a news feed of the latest shenanigans of this industry. Lots of friends back home in my black-hole hometown stuck there with zero options. Incidentally, even though it seems like my mom sometimes lives in a completely different universe, the older I get, the more I appreciate her perspective for how much it teaches me about myself and the world.
The person you're replying to is offering a counter-point to the perspective of the person he's replying to - that despite contentment with a modest income, the things that bug him are in fact a symptom of that income. The person you're replying to is not suggesting that changing income is easy.
>She just couldn't bring herself to believe that it's in anyone's financial interest to keep people poor.
I'm not sure it is in the interests of the kinds of players that keep people poor to do so. They mostly just seem to be taking advantage of whoever they can without motivations in that direction. For example the medical industry grabs peoples money, which causes quite a lot of poverty, because they like money, not because they want their customers poor. Is there an example of an industry that does want people poor? I can't think of many examples - maybe in apartheid South Africa it was in some of the whites interest to keep the blacks poor as cheap labour but I don't think that kind of thing really applies in the US?
I chatted to a guy who worked for one of those. Apparently either wealthy or very hard up customers were not profitable - the wealthy pay to quickly, the hard up not at all. What they wanted were people on the borderline that could pay back eventually having run up some interest.
You can always pay them off with another loan... until you can't. At a typical $30 of "finance charges" for a $100 loan for 2 weeks (over 400% apr) you only need a few cycles to pay off the principal with fees... then it's all profit!
That's because there are 2014 regulations in the UK that limit interest to .8%/day and total compensation of loaned amount plus fees. Those don't exist in the US.
Lately I've been thinking of moving to a country town to get away from a lot of these problems that are systematic in cities (traffic, crime, office politics.) I don't know what its like in America, but in Australia most towns are also expensive (people take 1+ hour commutes to the city) which creates inequality and problems with methamphetamine.
Everything is expensive and the junkies are everywhere and the town government is inefficient and semi-corrupt and yeah it just all around sucks unless you are a multi-millionaire and can pay your way through all of this and set up your own private castle in the woods.
Tbh I pay like $650 to rent a room in a reasonably quiet town and I just spend my time meditating and doing free hobbies outside of work.
The most liberated I ever felt was basically living on a mountain in Chile at 14,000 feet for a week but then you run out of food and water and the -10c nights are pretty bone chilling and you start to wonder why you had to go to such a remote and physically demanding place to feel unencumbered by society for a moment
> the -10c nights are pretty bone chilling and you start to wonder why you had to go to such a remote and physically demanding place to feel unencumbered by society for a moment
Because there are 8 Billion people in the world -- wrap your head around that, seriously, like think on just how many people there are -- and understand that there is a LOT of demand for nice places, from all over the world.
If you (the broad you, I mean) want it your way you need to climb to the top of the heap, retreat to the fringes, or learn to live with all of the bullshit.
Australia was one of the few countries that reversed the trend. I think Australia cities are great, for some reason everyone things they need a huge house with a block of land and a car. And they can't figure out why their life sucks.
It's the Australian dream, we're brought up to believe that's out duty in life: find a girl, buy a house, have some kids, and settle down.
I have colleagues that commute over an hour each way to get to work, just so they can have a back yard. It is a bit different when you have kids though. I live 20 minutes walk from work on a post stamp sized section, but I wouldn't raise kids where I live. Too many heroin addicts and not enough open space.
My concern is a 2 bedroom starts at ~$600k within 20 km of Melbourne CBD and 3 bedroom is about ~$1m in most close suburbs. In tech you don't have a whole lot of choice to work for a leading company if you aren't in Melbourne or Sydney.
If you're a blue collar worker, you can usually find a job near where you live. If you're a white collar worker, you need to find a house near where your job is.
If you're a tradie in Melbourne or Sydney, you can live in the suburbs and find a job in the suburbs. But all the tech workers are stuck working in the city, so you either spend a literal fortune on a house nearby (buying or renting are both expensive), or have a massive commute.
It does give me pause for thought. I'm nowhere near close to settling down or having kids (not that I have any desire to), but if it does happen, I'm not sure what I'd do. Commuting for an hour each way doesn't sound like my kind of lifestyle.
This is a serious but off topic question: how come people I know can ingest methamphetamine once a month to catch up with work, but in rural communities, meth is an epidemic with rampant addiction?
Is it the route of administration? The unemployment/economy differences? Adulterants?
I've done meth before and though I saw the value, I really couldn't see the joy in taking it very often.
I moved out of Melbourne into a tiny country town (under a hundred people) and work primarily remotely, coming into Melbourne to spend time in the office roughly every couple of weeks (it’s a three hour journey, about 75 minutes of relaxing country driving, ten minutes total walking, and the other half a productive train ride). I love it. Paying off a mortgage in two years is feasible.
I also have the best non-commercial internet supply I’ve ever had, via Optus 4G (clear line of sight to the tower 200m away). Roughly 45/15–20Mbps, and more reliable than my experiences with ADSL2+ or HFC to boot.
A larger country town of a few thousand people is probably more most people’s cup of tea, and generally more convenient.
What would you think would help? I personally feel like more voluntary collectives could help protect people from these things, and help make life more worth living.
I agree. I feel like the only way we can rid ourselves of those people is by building a system where those people cannot benefit. A challenge worth taking on, I think.
If I could live somewhere extremely rural and remote, like the deep woods of Maine, and a drone could cheaply drop me supplies every week or something, I could get a good little set up going outside of extortionary forces. But, once that technology exists, the extortionary forces will just move in to the now-inhabitable-area.
Tbh, it's much better to just make peace with it and try to avoid thinking about it unless you have so much power and influence that you can root out corruption somehow. I aint got that tho
Vote with your feet and change environment. It's never been easier, especially for people from high income countries with tech or other white collar professional skills.
Maybe I'm wrong but the Internet, expanded government powers, cars, and frivolous litigation are definitely all things that occurred post-1914 aka after Woodrow Wilson's presidency roughly, when the executive branch began to expand massively and set a precedent for state and local governments to do the same.
Our ancestors from the 1800s weren't harassed like this unless they were Puritans maybe
> I'd like to provide my anecdotal evidence from a 26 year old American white male making $37,000 per year in NYC:
Man. My starting salary after college was $75K and I felt like a peasant. I don't know how you survive on $37K. But NYC is a big place. A dollar goes a lot further in Jamaica or Yonkers than in Manhattan.
> Parking tickets, identity thieves, regulations that hurt small businesses, crowding in cities, crazy drivers on the road, being taken to court for nearly anything...
The worst is dog feces everywhere. Nothing ruins my day more than a large pile of dog feces and a trail of dog feces shoeprints.
What about the rise of antibiotics resistant bacteria, superbugs... etc. Everyone is sounding alarm on that, but factually how many preventable deaths it caused?
I'm shocked it's not caused by all the crappy diet that is still so mainstream: sugary foods, government food pyramid made by lobbyists, meat overdose, etc.
There really is just two things that kill Americans: heart disease and cancer [1]. Despite what you hear, it isn't terrorists, depression, tickets or sharks.
IMHO. Heart disease is related to salt intake and lack of exercise. Cancer is related to a dna gamble on each cell split (the more you intake sugars & fat the better odds these deformed cells have * age). So. Basically stop eating. Fast. Give your heart a break from salt - let those deformed cells die.
I live in one of the high income economies (Australia) which I think is not in the cohort. I wish it was clearer how the cohorts line up, by economy. The chart obscures this a bit.
My take-away is that the opiod and other health crises are real, and there is a real measureable effect but I am less sure health outcomes by high-income worldwide is in net decline, measured by life expectancy.
That's the list and figure for women. For men you have to see the next graph which is slightly different. Then the next two graphs show you that outside of the US the opiod epidemic is not a big part of the reason. Then when you look at the 2016 estimates table you see that this is all just noise except for the UK and the US.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] thread[1] https://interactives.commonwealthfund.org/2017/july/mirror-m...
Mileage may vary, this is an anecdote, etc. But as an otherwise healthy, young individual, I really just want talk therapy to process my feelings.
More likely we need to fix the socioeconomic circumstances that drive people toward opioids. Personally, I believe there is a complex cultural problem in the first world. We have it too easy, can subsist without working, and now that people are increasingly less religious, with nothing to do all day and nothing to replace god or community but vapid, consumerist materialism. So poor people turn to drugs to numb the emptiness in their lives. M Though I'm sure there's more involved.
Regardless, if anyone here thinks that the character "Thanos" would ever make a good exemplar among humans, then I encourage them to watch this rebuttal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV18Xx5EkaE
We need to create a society that values happiness over productivity and efficiency. It means not stigmatizing "laziness". It means not punishing doing something for its intellectual sake rather than for profit or productivity.
Basically, we need to start to discard the 20th century models of capitalism and communism and start focusing on what we want the 21st century to be about.
Interesting that "deaths of despair" have also had a measurable impact. It seems that since the Global Financial Crisis, we've been locked in this sort of terminal pessimism. Hunter S. Thompson wrote back in 1971, "We are all wired into a survival trip now". Are we locked in the same survival trip from almost 50 years ago, or is it a cyclical thing?
Is the world really worse than the 60s? Or are we just more aware of our helplessness?
We consume junk, continuosly.
"robbed" because voters accepted capital concentration by accepting that it would trickle down, which is a lie.
Both poverty and homelessness are near 50 year lows.
Healthcare coverage is near an all-time high, thanks in part to the vast expansion of the welfare state.
All of that is being paid for by the rich. The US has one of the most progressive taxation systems in the developed world. The US middle class is among the least taxed of any middle class in the developed world, which is also why the US median disposable income is among the highest.
If you go back to 1980, the inflation adjusted per capita income transfer going to welfare policies, was close to $3,500. Today it's near $9,000. That's a dramatic expansion of the social safety net in the US, and it has had very tangible, very dramatic positive results (including a large reduction in homelessness).
All the while those GDP increases have gone to fewer and fewer people.
I'm sure they'll feel reassured when you tell them GDP per capita has gone up.
It's not about the poor being a bit better off with things like luxuries. It's about their piece of the overall wealth and stake in the economy gradually shrinking.
Strikes are not required for higher wages. What is required is a labor shortage. That is all the incentive needed: wages will be exactly as high as required, no more and no less. We got a surplus of workers for many reasons: the demand was cut by offshoring and automation, while the supply was increased by women entering the workforce.
Demand is picking up now, and with it wages are starting to move.
Companies like Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe even broke the law and colluded to keep SW engineer salaries down and then paid a pittance when they got caught.
And SW is an abnormally in-demand field. According to HBR "Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen, growing only 0.2% per year" in the US.
So not only is the market not fixing anything, sometimes even the law is not enough.
The success of complaining means that there is no shortage and thus no need to raise the pay.
At any rate, I don't think labor shortage is an adequate counterweight to wage suppression. Wages are beginning to inch up, yes. But cyclical economic crises ensure that the unemployment rate never goes so low as to require the kind of meaningful wage increases that would counteract the trends we're talking about. Look at the op-eds in the Wall Street Journal -- wage increases are seen as a huge liability and a reason to pull back on investment. Better to throw out a couple of one-time bonuses to keep the mobs from revolting.
This isn't some starry-eyed optimism about the working class. Wages are negotiated by the balance of power between management and labor.
wages are not determined between management and labor, but between the owners of means to produce and its labourers.
Most managers are also labourers and are just as much on payroll as a factory worker is, they just have authority over other workers.
The class conflict has always been between those who own the means and gain money through passively using this and those who do the actual labour.
this dynamic still has not changed in the past 150 years, and i doubt it will change.
Those wage increases are going into healthcare, which has gone from 6% of GDP to 18% of GDP in terms of spending. That has consumed all wage growth for a generation. 12% of GDP is $2.4 trillion - year every. Or more reasonably, match it to a nice European nation's spending, around 11%. That 7% difference is $1.4 trillion.
If you want wages to climb again, you'll have to destroy the US healthcare system as it exists, and decimate the pay of millions of well paid nurses, doctors, scientists, sales reps, et al. You'll need to abolish several hundred thousand jobs in the insurance industry and find those people new careers. It's ultimately a wealth redistribution question, a certain block of millions of people have been enriched by the healthcare system plundering the economy, while many more have suffered because of it.
The 1960s were somewhat unique time, where you had both the US competing with the USSR and the postwar boom. Together, this helped create a situation where a significant chunk of workers could buy small but functional houses and consider themselves "middle class".
Today, we have a return to the gilded age, which might be more like a return to median.
Depends on which part of the world. In the US, for sure. Incomes have stagnated since 1970 and income inequality has skyrocketed.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america
We have an entire region of our nation suffering from the rust belt.
Some say the last 40 years have been the greatest theft in human history. The american people have been robbed blind and we are too stupid to realize it and now we ( the children of the blind fools ) are suffering for it.
Even in NYC, look at the housing prices and look at the wages. It's ridiculous.
In any case, flooding the opioid markets with legal psychedelics would make an interesting social experiment.
It's not. I've taken my fair share of drugs in all kinds of different settings, so I'd consider myself at least experienced in the subject. Drugs don't solve the problems in your life, they're escapism. To quote (again) Hunter S Thompson:
> That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit.
Drugs aren't going to save the world. The hippies thought that they could save the world in the 60s with positive energy, wishful thinking, pot, and LSD. How well did that work out? You could give the whole world a dose of acid, and the very next day they'd be straight back to killing each other.
I'm all in favour of legalisation, sure, but it's not going to save the world.
Upon saying that, in the correct supportive environment, LSD can be an incredible tool for healing past trauma. It's a shame that Timothy Leary and his lot managed to basically kill all scientific research into its therapeutic benefits for decades.
I've had the misfortune of taking LSD when I was in the wrong headspace, in the wrong place (i.e. bad set and setting). It was not a very pleasant experience.
If your life is so desperate that you're taking opioids to try and dull the pain of existence (which is a something different situation to progressing from prescribed opioids to heroin addiction), then taking LSD really isn't the solution and isn't necessarily a safer alternative. Physically safer, sure, but LSD can fuck with your psyche in pretty nasty ways.
I'm not saying "poor people shouldn't take LSD", because I'm not a hypocritical elitist. But I don't think it's really an alternative to opioids, and don't think it would stop opioid abuse, you'd just be throwing more shit into the mix.
Weed is a far more appropriate drug. At the end of the day though, drugs are readily available wherever you are. People will take what they want to take. Obviously people are taking opioids (or methamphetamine in some areas) despite the ready availability of marijuana. If people wanted to take LSD, they'd be able to find it easy enough (or it would find them).
> If only lsd was legal.
> Life expectancy declines seen in U.S. and other high-income countries
You didn't qualify what you were saying, so don't be surprised when someone ascribes a meaning for you. The topic was about a western-societal problem, so effectively...the world for most readers and your comment implies something about it.
> Maybe this isn’t as bad as it sounds? Fewer people might
> be the best way to limit climate change.
Which has a helpful visual summary: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/suppl/2018/08/15/bmj.k3096.D...
The title of the Reuters piece is misleading, as declines in 2014 were followed by greater gains in 2015 for most countries.
It's not income inequality that drives my depression. I'm happy as a clam at my job and I'm able to pay my food, rent, car, and make a little savings.
It is the "bullshit" factor that comes with nearly everything in life these days. Parking tickets, identity thieves, regulations that hurt small businesses, crowding in cities, crazy drivers on the road, being taken to court for nearly anything...
... everyone is out here just trying to exploit the common citizen and it really, really needs to stop.
I'd posit you just don't like living in a city.
Also your logic is a bit scary. "I'm tired of seeing extra-judicial killings." "Sounds like you're just tired of living in Manila"
I don't live in a city.
We should strive to reform the parking ticket system, not spite ourselves and move out of cities.
A lot of these (though not all) become easier to deal with as your income goes up, either because it has a minimal impact on you, or you can have people deal with it.
That's why a speeding ticket used to be $25 in North Dakota with no court date, compared to $400 in NY with a mandatory court date and points without reaching a plea.
Doing 72 in a 55 (17mph over limit) came with a sticker price of $400 fine, 6 points on the license, plead guilty by mail or in person pre-trial hearing in the absolute middle of nowhere in NY. Plea bargained to $225 "parking violation" that went straight to the town's budget. Sickening considering most roads in MA have a 70 mph speed limit
I’m sorry but for this particular problem I have no sympathy. Don’t speed. It doesn’t matter if most people speed occasionally and it doesn’t matter if there are legitimate obstacles to time management in your life that make not speeding difficult. Speeding is statistically more likely to cause death. It’s one of the leading causes of vehicular manslaughter and the mortality rate increases superlinearly as speed increases.
If I could I would make the penalties for speeding, not using a blinker, etc. significantly more onerous than they are now. We live amidst an epidemic hysteria that fosters the belief that a speed limit is a speed minimum. I would happily make someone’s life extremely difficult if they demonstrated a disregard for the dangers of speeding (and unfortunately it seems a majority of drivers do). I would be thrilled if speeding more than 5 mph above the limit incurred mandatory community service for every offense in addition to a fine that scaled aggressively with the offender’s income.
But don’t let this screed of mine detract from your broader point. I agree people are taken advantage of for things like parking tickets. I just won’t extend that sympathy for things in the category of, “Most people do this, and it’s frustratingly arbitrarily enforced, but it recklessly endangers the lives of other humans.”
If 70mph is dangerous, why do many states allow it as a speed limit?
If you slam on your brakes first, starting at 60mph instead of 70mph could save a life.
EDIT: Oh, it's a troll. Wasn't as clear when I posted this. I need to learn not to feed the trolls... sorry all.
What else can we police to make everything Just That Much Safer (TM)?
1) equally safe, all else being equal,
2) equally safe, in an where one of those speeds is faster than the legal speed limit,
3) equally safe, when there is a disparity in surrounding traffic speed (possibly due to #2).
I want to be extremely clear if that's really your position, because if it is you're hand waving away the danger of a ~16% increase in speed.
A pedestrian will die or be gravely injured at nearly any speed. A car crashing into another car, especially in opposing directions, is extremely dangerous above say 45mph.
You either go on the road and accept this risk, or you don't.
Or of course, you end the multi billion dollar car lobbyist industry and I will happily ride a moped to work instead.
People who drive 110mph on the highway in traffic are objectively dangerous. Most cars don't brake well from that speed.
70 mph is not fast if I am leaving adequate distance between me and everything else.
More generally the graph from that first source is telling: look at how sharply it increases, even after 50 mph. Other than interstates, most roads aren't 65 mph zones! And simply allowing any speed limit above 55 mph has a meaningful increase in vehicular collision mortality [2].
I can empathize that you consider the fines to be arbitrary and extortionist, and I understand that you think you're leaving adequate distance between yourself and other cars. But 96% of American drivers believe their driving ability is above average [3]; people substantially overestimate their driving skill and safety in general. Therefore though I understand why people feel the need to speed (and I used to!), I really cannot sympathize with arguments for leniency towards speeding penalties.
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1. http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/r...
2. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.79.10...
3. http://heatherlench.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/svenson.p...
By extension, you should take every back road while you drive, rather than the freeway, because there is a minute chance that you increase probability of human death by going 65 on the freeway rather than 35 on back roads.
There is existing reasearch which indicates two things: 1) Most people drive at the speed they feel comfortable driving at but some obey speed limits (even if they are comfortable driving faster) and 2) It is differences in speed, not speeding, which causes most accidents.
Considering these factors, speed limits can artificially increases differences in speed among drivers. When the federal speed limit law was repealed, many states who raised their speed limits saw decreases in both accidents and fatalities.
That's not to say speed limits are causing accidents, but I think it's possible that they could be in certain context. It's not as cut and dry as "speeding kills".
Is it not illegal to be a pedestrian on a freeway where you are? Motorways are one of only three parts of the UK road system where pedestrians are forbidden.
No, that’s not an extension to what I’m saying. That would be safer yes, but you can afford to go faster with fewer pedestrians around.
> Considering these factors, speed limits can artificially increases differences in speed among drivers. When the federal speed limit law was repealed, many states who raised their speed limits saw decreases in both accidents and fatalities.
If you read the research I cited you’ll see that no, actually most states observed higher mortality in the transition from 55 mph to 65 mph speed limits. You can forward arguments that speeding isn’t the real culprit, or that there are worse problems. But you can sidestep that entirely by simply not speeding - then all risks related to speeding evaporate.
So to be clear I agree with you that speed disparity is a problem, but I would advocate both reducing speed limits and imposing extraordinary fines (and other punitive measures) to make the risk reward calculus of speed disparity very unattractive. Speeding directly causes the traffic disparity you’re talking about.
The problem then becomes others tailgating and driving into the space in front of you, effectively diminishing you braking room.
Remember that some speeding tickets come from cops raking in cash at the bottom of a hill where the speed limit suddenly drops by 15mph according to a sign that's hidden behind a tree. I think it's possible to call this out while also acknowledging that driving too fast is dangerous.
About parking tickets: one day my office mate parked her car on the street where she always did. But when she went to leave for the day, she found a ticket on her car, and its cause: a brand new parking meter right by her car. It had been installed while she was inside.
(She successfully contested the ticket.)
I've been in the car for 3 tickets, and I'll include one more I recently heard about from a family member. In one case, the driver took a turn on red at 2am when the streets were completely empty. In another, there was a very large and steep hill, and the driver didn't break sufficiently to not go over the speed limit. (The road was straight and the visibility was perfect.) In another, the speed limit quickly changed from 35mph to 15mph for no apparent reason.
In all these cases, these drivers weren't putting anyone in danger. I don't think the cops were waiting in these spots by coincidence; I think they were trying to make money for the city.
In the fourth case, the driver sped on a windy street, and totally deserved the ticket.
Now I must decide whether I care more about my life or the law. It's not a great position to be placed in because you need to arrive at your destination 30 seconds faster.
The legal limit often has no relation to it and no basis in science or common sense. Not to mention a failure to account for progress in vehicle development, tire technology, etc.
The socially agreed upon limit is the legal limit.
The speed limit is often arbitrary and that's part of the problem. We become immune to posted limits because the ones posted on highways and major roads are obviously inappropriate and not updated as technology and zoning changes. Then, many drivers ignore them when they do matter e.g. neighborhoods, school zones, curves.
You're almost never going to be affected by someone simply speeding - it's drivers who speed _recklessly_. I'm fortunate enough to have never gotten into an accident even though I've driven all around the world. The person that's going to cause an accident is the one speeding AND weaving between cars or tailgating.
Either way, it's irrelevant. The point of the thread is that speeding tickets are little more than a financial instrument for local, and sometimes state, governments.
I was surprised when I spotted the first camouflage colored camera and stood on the brakes. Luckily I didn't get a letter.
None of the towns had a sign indicating the end of the low speed regime. In a biergarten I asked someone when the low speed usually ends and he told me that at the end of the town there's a sign on which the town's name is striked through. This is also the end of the low speed regime! Then I continued and I arrived at a larger town. There I seem to have missed the end of the low speed area because people started to overtake me.
I thought it's their own fault because it's the people in these towns who have asked for the low speed on their roads.
I would argue that driving close to the vehicle in front ("close" being a function of speed) is much more dangerous than speed itself.
Yes there is. The autobahn may be roughly 50% without speed limits, but every other road has speed limits.
Unless otherwise indicated these are 100 km/h between villages, 50km/h in cities and villages.
There is a speed limit of 50km/h in towns and villages, which is often dropped down to 30 in pedestrian rich areas, in front of schools and so on. There is a 100km/h speed limit on normal roads outside of settlements. These are one-lane in each direction with not separation.
On the Autobahn, you have at least two lanes in each direction with separation. There is no general speed limit but there are many speed limited stretches, usually to 120km/h. These limits are on about 50% of the Autobahn.
Fines for speeding are not really high, but you do get "point", so multiple violations can lead to losing your drivers license.
To get a license, you take a minimum of 12 driving lessons and a theoretical course. There is theoretical test and a practical test.
I think the high-quality drivers education + the safety features of cars + the mandatory inspections of the cars (yearly) help offset the safety risk of the higher speeds.
1. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about speeding,
2. Statistically, speeding is dangerous.
This is not hard nor is your life at risk if you do 80 in a 80 zone instead of 90 kph. (Unless it is, which is why Ambulances don't really have to adhere to traffic law where I live)
Don't drive too fast and you don't get speeding tickets, problem solved, no?
(There may be no proof that tickets make roads safer but appropriate speed limits do)
Furthermore, do you have any studies supporting your claim that expensive tickets don’t reduce speeding?
Isn't that part of the problem. Lack of sympathy?
Everybody makes mistakes from time to time.. and research shows that higher penalties have little effect.
Someone else pet peeve is people parking illegally because it blocks their drive way. Or blocks emergency vehicles...
For breaking the law?
You do have a speedometer in your car, if it's not accurate you can get that fixed for cheap.
I never drive over the limit according to my dashboard instruments no matter how many people behind me get angry.
Though sometimes the speed limit is very, very low and it gets annoying to have your eyes constantly on the speedometer.
And no, I categorically reject your appeal to “people make mistakes.” A speed trap is a mistake unfairly penalized. Parking under a partially hidden fire zone sign is a mistake. Speeding is a willful decision that evidences either ignorance or disregard for the impact of higher speeds and traffic disparity on mortality risk.
I really don’t think calling this a “pet peeve” like when someone blocks a driveway is at all comparable.
For years I almost blew a head gasket trying to convince my mother that there is a whole industry designed to keep people poor. She didn't grow up poor, but she grew up working class in a time before that industry pervaded absolutely everywhere. My mom became very successful later in life (just after I'd left the house). I didn't grow up super poor, but I was aware at a young age of not having things most other folks had, and I could sense my parents' anxiety about finances. Then as a young adult, I hit this industry like a brick wall and spent many years dirt poor, like stealing-spaghetti-from-the-grocery-store poor, with any edge I gained pretty quickly shaved off by some damned nickel-and-dime thing. And I was raised not to ask for (or expect) help or support from anyone. My family was/is a very sink-or-swim kind of family, and incidentally I very much credit that and my own insecurities about money (and service in the infantry) with any and all of my successes in life. But anyway, in a bizarre twist, it wasn't until I had become successful that she actually took me seriously about the industry designed to keep people poor! She just couldn't bring herself to believe that it's in anyone's financial interest to keep people poor. But it's absolutely true and absolutely exists. I lived for years surrounded by it and even today, every time I login to Facebook it's like a news feed of the latest shenanigans of this industry. Lots of friends back home in my black-hole hometown stuck there with zero options. Incidentally, even though it seems like my mom sometimes lives in a completely different universe, the older I get, the more I appreciate her perspective for how much it teaches me about myself and the world.
I'm not sure it is in the interests of the kinds of players that keep people poor to do so. They mostly just seem to be taking advantage of whoever they can without motivations in that direction. For example the medical industry grabs peoples money, which causes quite a lot of poverty, because they like money, not because they want their customers poor. Is there an example of an industry that does want people poor? I can't think of many examples - maybe in apartheid South Africa it was in some of the whites interest to keep the blacks poor as cheap labour but I don't think that kind of thing really applies in the US?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-40044871
Tbh I pay like $650 to rent a room in a reasonably quiet town and I just spend my time meditating and doing free hobbies outside of work.
The most liberated I ever felt was basically living on a mountain in Chile at 14,000 feet for a week but then you run out of food and water and the -10c nights are pretty bone chilling and you start to wonder why you had to go to such a remote and physically demanding place to feel unencumbered by society for a moment
Because there are 8 Billion people in the world -- wrap your head around that, seriously, like think on just how many people there are -- and understand that there is a LOT of demand for nice places, from all over the world.
If you (the broad you, I mean) want it your way you need to climb to the top of the heap, retreat to the fringes, or learn to live with all of the bullshit.
I have colleagues that commute over an hour each way to get to work, just so they can have a back yard. It is a bit different when you have kids though. I live 20 minutes walk from work on a post stamp sized section, but I wouldn't raise kids where I live. Too many heroin addicts and not enough open space.
If you're a blue collar worker, you can usually find a job near where you live. If you're a white collar worker, you need to find a house near where your job is.
If you're a tradie in Melbourne or Sydney, you can live in the suburbs and find a job in the suburbs. But all the tech workers are stuck working in the city, so you either spend a literal fortune on a house nearby (buying or renting are both expensive), or have a massive commute.
It does give me pause for thought. I'm nowhere near close to settling down or having kids (not that I have any desire to), but if it does happen, I'm not sure what I'd do. Commuting for an hour each way doesn't sound like my kind of lifestyle.
Entire communities are devastated by the shit. There are places where the percentage of users is up in the double digits (it's 2-3% nationwide).
Poverty, drug addiction, and income equality are even worse in rural Australia than in the cities.
Is it the route of administration? The unemployment/economy differences? Adulterants?
I've done meth before and though I saw the value, I really couldn't see the joy in taking it very often.
I also have the best non-commercial internet supply I’ve ever had, via Optus 4G (clear line of sight to the tower 200m away). Roughly 45/15–20Mbps, and more reliable than my experiences with ADSL2+ or HFC to boot.
A larger country town of a few thousand people is probably more most people’s cup of tea, and generally more convenient.
What would you think would help? I personally feel like more voluntary collectives could help protect people from these things, and help make life more worth living.
What do you think?
A mafia is defined as a group of people who create a problem and then ask victims to pay for protection from that problem.
End the mafias in this world and we'll have a lot more happiness and entrepreneurship
Tbh, it's much better to just make peace with it and try to avoid thinking about it unless you have so much power and influence that you can root out corruption somehow. I aint got that tho
Our ancestors from the 1800s weren't harassed like this unless they were Puritans maybe
Man. My starting salary after college was $75K and I felt like a peasant. I don't know how you survive on $37K. But NYC is a big place. A dollar goes a lot further in Jamaica or Yonkers than in Manhattan.
> Parking tickets, identity thieves, regulations that hurt small businesses, crowding in cities, crazy drivers on the road, being taken to court for nearly anything...
The worst is dog feces everywhere. Nothing ruins my day more than a large pile of dog feces and a trail of dog feces shoeprints.
https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to-plas...
IMHO. Heart disease is related to salt intake and lack of exercise. Cancer is related to a dna gamble on each cell split (the more you intake sugars & fat the better odds these deformed cells have * age). So. Basically stop eating. Fast. Give your heart a break from salt - let those deformed cells die.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
[2] Fat monkey vs skinny monkey
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...
My take-away is that the opiod and other health crises are real, and there is a real measureable effect but I am less sure health outcomes by high-income worldwide is in net decline, measured by life expectancy.
https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k2562#F2 are the figures which show six economies this didn't happen in:
Finland, Japan, Norway, Australia, Canada, Denmark