I think there's a problem with the phrase "their own land". I think it's weird to have a system where a private citizen can just "own" all possible uses of a section of the planet forever. I understand that libertarians are really into this, and I understand that our government often emits this situation as a supported outcome, but I still think it's wrong.
What is the fair price for "all possible uses of this section of the planet forever"? I don't know what someone originally paid for it but there's no way it was enough.
Anyway I think it's entirely ideologically consistent to allow people to use "their" land for some purposes and not others. And we already do quite a lot of this, and some of the existing land-use regulations are pretty bad, but that doesn't mean we should throw out the whole concept.
For the extreme opposite ideologically consistent view, I'd be interested in what a Georgist take on billboards might look like! Maybe something like, "You can put up a billboard if you want, but all the money you get from it goes to the public, so why bother?"
Even hard-core libertarians are open to discussing alternative ways of sub-dividing property rights.
And with current law, most home-owners don't own the mineral-rights below their homes, or air-transit rights above. In some cities the vertical view rights are owned separately as well. When I lived in Denver, they had very interesting water-rights. For example you weren't allowed to use rain-barrels because that was water-theft of those with water-rights downstream in the watershed. The exception was if you were on well-water because in that case you "owned" the local water rights. (side note: I think they since have passed sane laws to allow your normal residential style rain barrels).
As someone who used to work in a neighborhood with a haphazard mix of two-way and four-way stops, I can confirm that drivers will often just assume that the next intersection works the same way as the previous one. "Whoops" and/or "ha ha", depending on your perspective. Eventually the city figured out that this was bad and just made every intersection into a four-way stop.
This isn't as good as the quebecois example, but in the US it is very common to see "4-Way" below the stop sign, in the 4 way case. Sometimes it reads "All Way." More rarely I've seen orange or white warning signs below the 2-way stops warning about the cross-traffic.
These (or the little ALL-WAY add-on where true), should be everywhere though for sure. Wondering if this is just an ambiguous sign or a possible 2-way stop is a bad situation.
I am really wondering if the entire existence of the 4 way stop is more useful then not. It it is really not a thing in most countries (except the US and Canada apparently). In most places stop sign means yield to the intersecting traffic and that's it, no room for confusion.
You're not wrong, but 4-way stops are used in practice as a speed control device in most/all residential neighborhoods, especially older ones where they are part of the through grid pattern. Putting 2-way stops on them would in many cases result in small residential streets becoming expressways.
It's interesting, because while drivers basically don't respect speed limits, they do respect stop signs, because speeding seems victimless. Those same drivers will rarely blow a stop sign at speed, knowing that there is a serious possibility of a heinous T-bone accident anytime they do. So we use stop signs to actually impose a practical maximum speed on such streets. If we could ask people to keep it under 30mph (in residential areas) and have it be followed religiously, we could probably change all stop signs to a 2-way yield for one street and no sign for the other street.
2. Words sometimes have several different meanings. The word "berry" has one meaning in botany and another in culinary. There's nothing wrong with that.
5. That's why stop signs are 8-sided and not round. You can see that it's a stop sign even from the back.
Yes, I will have a T-shirt made, "Fuck the BillBoards". Was just in a work meeting and thought Fuck the Billboards was the correct answer to every issue discussed. :)
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
I can't recall when I first came across this post of yours, but I think about it Every Single Time I encounter a 2-Way stop sign situation and think how much better this could be. There's one in my neighborhood that most folks assume is a 4-way stop and there are regular close calls.
Hahahaaa...A post of pure wondering. My answer to all questions will now be “fuck the billboards!”
Now I'm worried that I've helped spread some kind of mind-virus.
To be human is the strangest! Whee!
Billboards:
I think there's a problem with the phrase "their own land". I think it's weird to have a system where a private citizen can just "own" all possible uses of a section of the planet forever. I understand that libertarians are really into this, and I understand that our government often emits this situation as a supported outcome, but I still think it's wrong.
What is the fair price for "all possible uses of this section of the planet forever"? I don't know what someone originally paid for it but there's no way it was enough.
Anyway I think it's entirely ideologically consistent to allow people to use "their" land for some purposes and not others. And we already do quite a lot of this, and some of the existing land-use regulations are pretty bad, but that doesn't mean we should throw out the whole concept.
For the extreme opposite ideologically consistent view, I'd be interested in what a Georgist take on billboards might look like! Maybe something like, "You can put up a billboard if you want, but all the money you get from it goes to the public, so why bother?"
I think my theory is pretty consistent with Georgism.
I would argue "you don't ever own land, you just rent it from the city".
Henry George would argue "you can own land, but you pay value-equivalent-to-the-rent to the city in tax".
It's two paths to the same effect.
Would the billboard revenue not be taxed since it’s a structure you built on the land and not the land value itself?
Right ... except that that the land becomes more valuable because of the revenue derived from its use.
Even hard-core libertarians are open to discussing alternative ways of sub-dividing property rights.
And with current law, most home-owners don't own the mineral-rights below their homes, or air-transit rights above. In some cities the vertical view rights are owned separately as well. When I lived in Denver, they had very interesting water-rights. For example you weren't allowed to use rain-barrels because that was water-theft of those with water-rights downstream in the watershed. The exception was if you were on well-water because in that case you "owned" the local water rights. (side note: I think they since have passed sane laws to allow your normal residential style rain barrels).
As someone who used to work in a neighborhood with a haphazard mix of two-way and four-way stops, I can confirm that drivers will often just assume that the next intersection works the same way as the previous one. "Whoops" and/or "ha ha", depending on your perspective. Eventually the city figured out that this was bad and just made every intersection into a four-way stop.
After getting T boned by a truck due to mistaking a 2 way stop as a 4 way, I thought of a potential improvement to stop signs:
If another direction has a stop sign, add a second white line to the corresponding position on the sign in front of you.
The sign at an intersection where the street across from you and the street to the left have a stop sign would look like this:
https://imgur.com/a/cTU6w2S
This design would be able to handle roads intersecting at odd angles and 5+ way intersections by using diagonal lines.
It's easy to retrofit, and a gradual roll-in would be safe since the lack of lines on unmodified signs would make people more cautious.
That's an elegant design, although I'd vote for a special marking for intersecting roads that *don't* stop.
Apparently Canada (or just Quebec?) sometimes has diagrams for how stop signs work, which is the ultimate in explicitness: https://i.cbc.ca/1.5363157.1574082650!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_1180/rosemont-stop-signs-2-november-18-2019.jpg
This isn't as good as the quebecois example, but in the US it is very common to see "4-Way" below the stop sign, in the 4 way case. Sometimes it reads "All Way." More rarely I've seen orange or white warning signs below the 2-way stops warning about the cross-traffic.
Looks like the sign you're referring to is MUTCD approved:
https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2003r1/part2/part2c.htm#section2C50
These (or the little ALL-WAY add-on where true), should be everywhere though for sure. Wondering if this is just an ambiguous sign or a possible 2-way stop is a bad situation.
I am really wondering if the entire existence of the 4 way stop is more useful then not. It it is really not a thing in most countries (except the US and Canada apparently). In most places stop sign means yield to the intersecting traffic and that's it, no room for confusion.
You're not wrong, but 4-way stops are used in practice as a speed control device in most/all residential neighborhoods, especially older ones where they are part of the through grid pattern. Putting 2-way stops on them would in many cases result in small residential streets becoming expressways.
It's interesting, because while drivers basically don't respect speed limits, they do respect stop signs, because speeding seems victimless. Those same drivers will rarely blow a stop sign at speed, knowing that there is a serious possibility of a heinous T-bone accident anytime they do. So we use stop signs to actually impose a practical maximum speed on such streets. If we could ask people to keep it under 30mph (in residential areas) and have it be followed religiously, we could probably change all stop signs to a 2-way yield for one street and no sign for the other street.
2. Words sometimes have several different meanings. The word "berry" has one meaning in botany and another in culinary. There's nothing wrong with that.
5. That's why stop signs are 8-sided and not round. You can see that it's a stop sign even from the back.
Yes, I will have a T-shirt made, "Fuck the BillBoards". Was just in a work meeting and thought Fuck the Billboards was the correct answer to every issue discussed. :)
Banksy on advertising:
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
– Banksy
I can't recall when I first came across this post of yours, but I think about it Every Single Time I encounter a 2-Way stop sign situation and think how much better this could be. There's one in my neighborhood that most folks assume is a 4-way stop and there are regular close calls.