So you want to reverse the development in Romania over the last 3 decades [1] ? I agree that the way the transition from the Ceauşescu regime was handled was less than ideal to say the least. But let's not forget that rampant nationalism and isolism was what got Romania into the mess in the first ace. I would even argue that every time a government/regime is bringing out the nationalism card it is to cover up for rising inequality, decreasing quality of life and all sort of other issues. An appeal to the "nation" is just not necessary otherwise.
> So you want to reverse the development in Romania over the last 3 decades [1]
Not sure that "reverse" is the best word for it, but, yes, I want the huge societal inequalities that have been created during the last three decades to be "levelled" again. I know that this will probably suck (to use light language) for the winners of those last 3 decades, but that is life.
So you're saying giving a speech with war-like symbolism ("if you don't fight like hell", "we will never give up. We will never concede" "we will stop the steal", "we are going to the capitol") to a crowd which he knew contained people ready for violence, is escalation? Where is the proof that there were federal agents inciting violence (I thought it was Antifa agents? The story changes all the time...).
Does similar Democrat language around BLM at the time of CHAZ/CHOP mean Democrats encouraged insurrection?
Unlike Jan 6th, the CHAZ rioters brought rifles, organized a standing militia, and murdered someone to assert control of the area they seized — which seems distinctly more violent.
I call b*t. The reality is that the there is a outrage campaign in the right wing media trying to drive anger about some perceived victimhood in people who have largely been privaledged all their life. They would have found something else instead.
>There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously," and retweeted a false claim that 81% of white murder victims were killed by black people.
> "We've just seen many, many crimes getting worse all the time, and as Maine knows—a major destination for Somali refugees—right, am I right?"
Are you talking about raw material costs? Or is that one of these extrapolations of if we scale everything to millions of cars and realise no inefficiencies and nobody making any money in the supply chain?
I'm talking about the current cost of the self-driving system, that is already produced by companies that charge a significant markup. With volume, it will go down more.
I'm not including the base vehicle in the cost. It's highly variable, and can be as low as $10k for small personal intra-city taxis.
Why does it blow away any other public transit? That can't be true because if you put the same self driving tech into a bus, you already am an order of magnitude cheaper per passenger (likely more). Moreover let's assume robotaxis are cornering the market and make all other forms of transport non viable. Why would the public then maintain the roads? So at that point at least costs are suddenly going to explode.
Sigh. People are WAAAY too accepting of urbanist propaganda.
Buses are _barely_ more effective than cars. A regular passenger car with 4 people is more efficient than a city bus. An EV needs 2.5 people (these numbers are for the US).
The explanation is simple:
1. Buses have to drive _all_ _the_ _time_, even when there are few passengers. As a result, the average bus load tends to be around 10-20 people. And you can not increase the bus interval to compensate for it because it makes off-rush-hour bus commutes impractical.
2. Buses have INCREDIBLY polluting components: 2-3 drivers for each bus needed to provide the service. They are by far the dirtiest part of the bus. This part can be removed with the self-driving hardware, but...
A full self-driving bus also makes no sense. It defeats the main advantage of self-driving: door-to-door transportation.
That being said, self-driving mini-buses seating 6-10 people are a good idea for rush hour transit.
> Sigh. People are WAAAY too accepting of urbanist propaganda.
>
> Buses are _barely_ more effective than cars. A regular passenger car with 4 people is more efficient than a city bus. An EV needs 2.5 people (these numbers are for the US).
>
> The explanation is simple:
>
> 1. Buses have to drive _all_ _the_ _time_, even when there are few passengers. As a result, the average bus load tends to be around 10-20 people. And you can not increase the bus interval to compensate for it because it makes off-rush-hour bus commutes impractical.
>
> 2. Buses have INCREDIBLY polluting components: 2-3 drivers for each bus needed to provide the service. They are by far the dirtiest part of the bus. This part can be removed with the self-driving hardware, but...
>
> A full self-driving bus also makes no sense. It defeats the main advantage of self-driving: door-to-door transportation.
Even if you focus only on emissions this completely ignores the cost of congestion, which is huge.
Your complaint about self driving buses makes no sense either. If the most polluting part of the bus is the driver then removing the driver makes the bus far, far less polluting.
When your arguments don't even make sense on their own terms it suggests that you're making them from an emotional position instead of a rational one. That's ok: if you don't like buses just say so, but be honest about it instead of making spurious arguments.
> Even if you focus only on emissions this completely ignores the cost of congestion, which is huge.
Congestion should be fixed by removing buses, de-densifying city cores, and forcing companies to build offices in a distributed fashion.
Meanwhile, replacing buses with shared taxi-style vehicles will do most of the job, while _reducing_ congestion. It's a bit complicated, but it's entirely possible.
The reason is simple, there is an unavoidable tension between the density of bus stops and the average speed. As a result of frequent stops, in most cities buses move at an average speed of less than 20 km/h.
For example, in Seattle it's 15 km/h. This is just 3 times faster than a rapid walk!
If we reduce the number of cars by 2x by adding mild car-pooling during the rush hour, then we'll have more than enough throughput to eliminate congestion _and_ buses in Seattle. This does not generalize to all cities in the US (e.g. Manhattan needs a serious demolishing to become sane) but usually, it's in the same ballpark.
> Your complaint about self driving buses makes no sense either. If the most polluting part of the bus is the driver then removing the driver makes the bus far, far less polluting.
Sure. But why stop there? Buses have an INCREDIBLE impact in the number of lifetimes wasted during commutes.
> When your arguments don't even make sense on their own terms it suggests that you're making them from an emotional position instead of a rational one. That's ok: if you don't like buses just say so, but be honest about it instead of making spurious arguments.
Nope. There are no rational arguments _for_ urbanism. It's a failed obsolete ideology, and it's leading to the downfall of democracty and the rise of populism.
> Congestion should be fixed by removing buses, de-densifying city cores, and forcing companies to build offices in a distributed fashion.
Yes, let's solve congestion by forcing urban sprawl. Forget any efficiency gains by using denser infrastructure, just make everyone drive 10x as far so there's 10x as much road and therefore 1/10th the congestion!
We already do this. You just described the city of Houston. I've been there, it's ass. And the 14 lane Katy highway does it no favors.
Bus stops are often set too close by municipalities, but that’s driven by the lack of density in US housing. Density drives efficiency.
> Manhattan needs a serious demolishing to become sane
Ah yes, lets demolish one of the most economically productive regions of the USA, both in GDP / capita and GDP / km^2 in order to make it easier for people to drive through it.
> Bus stops are often set too close by municipalities, but that’s driven by the lack of density in US housing. Density drives efficiency.
Doesn't matter, dense cities start having their own issues. Instead of taking "the bus", you'll need to wait for the correct bus to arrive. Also, density drives up misery and nothing else. Proven by the birth rate.
> Ah yes, lets demolish one of the most economically productive regions of the USA, both in GDP / capita and GDP / km^2 in order to make it easier for people to drive through it.
Yup, exactly. There's no freaking reason so much GDP has to be crammed into several square miles of space, sucking the life from everywhere else.
> Sigh. People are WAAAY too accepting of urbanist propaganda.
>
Sigh people just like to make statements without evidence to back them up.
> Buses are _barely_ more effective than cars. A regular passenger car with 4 people is more efficient than a city bus. An EV needs 2.5 people (these numbers are for the US).
>
Evidence? Moreover you know that average occupancy rates of cars are around 1.5 [1], for short trips like commuting it's more like 1.1 [1] so that's a factor 2 off from your 2.5. So even if we believe your numbers you have to explain how you're going to increase occupancy rate by a factor of 1.5 to 2 before they become just better (not even blowing out of the water).
[1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/ENVISSUENo12/page029....
Note I could not find numbers on buses, but trains in the above source have occupancy rates of 50%.
> The explanation is simple:
>
> 1. Buses have to drive _all_ _the_ _time_, even when there are few passengers. As a result, the average bus load tends to be around 10-20 people. And you can not increase the bus interval to compensate for it because it makes off-rush-hour bus commutes impractical.
>
And robotaxis have to drive empty to and from the person they are picking up.
> 2. Buses have INCREDIBLY polluting components: 2-3 drivers for each bus needed to provide the service. They are by far the dirtiest part of the bus. This part can be removed with the self-driving hardware, but...
>
Not sure how we should account for bus drivers, considering that even if they are not working as bus driver the person is still around (also should we include the emissions from all the engineers working on self driving tech at the moment then) . However your statement is also false in most western countries, at least green house gas emissions of private households are dominated by transport (i.e. Cars).
> A full self-driving bus also makes no sense. It defeats the main advantage of self-driving: door-to-door transportation.
>
You're contradicting yourself. If the bus driver is the most polluting part of the bus (according to your statement above), then it would definitely make sense to get rid of them.
It would be great if your statement was true and robotaxis are the most efficient thing ever. I'd love to see well laid out evidence for this, but from what I just found your statement is not supported by reality.
Others have largely dealt with your arguments, but to this:
> > And you can not increase the bus interval to compensate for it because it makes off-rush-hour bus commutes impractical.
Most transit systems DO operate different intervals during rush hour. Most places I've lived there's been anywhere from 3-5 different intervals at different times of day: At a minimum a night schedule which might be once an hour or not at all, a rush hour schedule, and 1+ day-time non rush-hour schedule.
I do agree that mini-buses would be an advantage though, once you don't need drivers, and that'd further reduce the advantage of small self-driving cars by allowing for far more routes.
You mean it's very difficult to compete with a company that is massively subsidised by public infrastructure? That's what really killed freight rail in most of Europe, make the train companies pay for track maintance (often the rail companies even want this because it keeps competition out as well), while trucks atpapy very little of the cost they impose on the public (i.e. much higher road usage, causing most of the traffic issues).
> A government agency will have less incentives to be corrupt, in theory. On the flip side, it will be incompetent and demotivated.
And you have what evidence for this? The reality is, is that government departments often achieve much with very little. Case in point the interview with the former dodge engineer on HN earlier today. I think the reason why the myth persists is because everyone wants to have their demands prioritised while at the same time pay the minimum amount of tax, leading to continuous understaffing and everyone being unhappy (I would exclude defense from that assessment, because they suffer much less from cuts than most other spending).
> JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR joins,
dissenting from the grant of application for stay.
Today the Court grants “emergency” relief that allows the
Social Security Administration (SSA) to hand DOGE staff-
ers the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans. The
Government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this
personal, non-anonymized information right now—before
the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is
lawful. So it asks this Court to stay a lower court’s decision
to place temporary and qualified limits on DOGE’s data ac-
cess while litigation challenging DOGE’s authority to ac-
cess the data is pending. But the Government fails to sub-
stantiate its stay request by showing that it or the public
will suffer irreparable harm absent this Court’s interven-
tion. In essence, the “urgency” underlying the Govern-
ment’s stay application is the mere fact that it cannot be
bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes.
That sentiment has traditionally been insufficient to jus-
tify the kind of extraordinary intervention the Government
seeks. But, once again, this Court dons its emergency-re-
sponder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable
power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them. See,
e.g., Noem v. Doe, 605 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (JACKSON, J.,
dissenting from grant of application for stay) (slip op., at 5)
(explaining that, by granting a stay, the Court was allowing
the Government to terminate the lawful parole status of
half a million noncitizens before the courts could determine
whether such agency action was lawful). Once again, re-
spectfully, I dissent.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but non of your links refer identity theft in Europe (Turkey might be considered Europe in some geographic definition, but when people talk politics/law they typically mean the EU).
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/fig3_330480915
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