Building Bigger Roads Makes Traffic Worse - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand <comment><USER3> In addition to the correlation found by these researchers, I suspect the Braess Paradox[1] and other complex network phenomena are also at work.

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[1] Adding more roads to a network of roads can make traffic worse (and viceversa, closing roads can make traffic better). See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess's_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess's_paradox) or watch this friendly explanation: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiauQXIKs3U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiauQXIKs3U)

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Edits: moved links and parenthesis to footnote, and added "In addition to the correlation found by these researchers" and "other complex network phenomena" to make my point clearer.

<comment><USER4> The video doesn't do a good job of explaining this at all.

Ultimately the reason why adding more roads to a system produces more traffic is more people take cars vs. public transit.

<comment><USER5> No, its much more complex than that.

Adding road capacity makes other types of trips possible. It's not a simple "hey, I'm taking the bus today because they built a lane". It's more like "Hey, I don't need to worry about uprooting my family or spending 6 hours on the bus to get a job in place X vs Y."

Think about it in computer networking terms. Netflix and Office 365 didn't exist in 1995 because it wasn't possible to make those sorts of solutions work then. Today, we need to worry about network congestion because millions of people are streaming movies.

<comment><USER6> Very much so. New and bigger roads cause all kinds of associated growth. New businesses and home pop up because it's now practical to get to them in those locations. This increases demand for the roads, so they eventually become congested again. But not just because people like to go from place to place for no reason other than to go.

<comment><USER7> It would seem then one way to spur economic growth would be to build more roads, transit, etc. Just as building faster internet spurs more internet companies.

<comment><USER5> Been there, done that... it's called 1946-2006.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >This means raising the price of driving on a road when demand is high. During rush hour, drivers would have to pay a fee to use the most congested roads.

Drivers already pay for the cost in lost time. It's a 'natural' market.

The main problem with this article is the idea that the goal in traffic policy is to reduce congenstion. No, it should be to maximize utility. Sure, if you reduce roads, add congenstion charges then people will find alternatives to cars. That doesn't imply that utility is increased.

Public transportation is typically worse than using a private car. You can't decide when to leave, you pretty much need to plan your trips around public transportation. They don't take you directly from A to B etc. Public transportation becomes effective only when population density becomes high enough.

<comment><USER9> But that's highly inefficient. Everyone pays in the form of time, but some peoples' time is more valuable. Congestion pricing fixes that.

<comment><USER10> Well except that the people paid the least per hour are also the ones who can afford to lose time the least and have the least ability to pay for congestion.

<comment><USER11> So the people who can least afford to lose time will avoid congested traffic and lose less time? Sounds like that could work out well.

<comment><USER12> If you wait an extra hour before commuting home because of the cost, I don't call that "lose less time".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's an interesting effect, and fairly obvious once you hear the explanation the first time. This article focuses primarily on the effect that roads have on their own congestion, but I think you can do similar analysis on the effects of roads on many other things.

This sort of idea is discussed a lot in the libertarian community. I don't intend to make the conversation about that; I just want to mention the ideas because they're similar. Basically, a common and oft-parodied criticism of libertarianism is "but who will build the roads," implying that massive road infrastructure is something that can only be produced by government through taxation and eminent domain.

One common retort by libertarians is to come up with a bunch of proposals for how private enterprise could create a very similar road system to what we have today. I think that's the wrong approach. I'm more interested in the ways that government roads, no matter how well-intended they are, can lead to inefficiency and perverse incentives.

I think the biggest and easiest argument to make is an environmental one, which is somewhat ironic, considering that libertarians are generally considered (by themselves and others) as a threat to environmentalism. And yet, I wager that public road infrastructure is one of the most obvious cases where government programs lead to (probably unintended) environmental problems. The interstate highway system is a massive blow to railroads, which have a vastly smaller environmental impact than road freight. The public road funds essentially subsidize the price of fast shipping via truck. Big trucks are probably responsible for a disproportionately large portion of road wear relative to the funding of roads that they provide.

Another interesting effect is that urban sprawl probably wouldn't happen without roads which are primarily produced by government. This is probably another big threat to the environment, since I would imagine that suburbs pollute much more per capita than urban areas because of the necessity to use automobiles.

<comment><USER14> The Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel is one of the largest bridge-tunnels in existence. It's 17.6 miles long, and was financed by toll-backed bonds, and continues to be maintained with toll money. The point being that large infrastructure projects can be financed by the free market, provided they require the users to pay for them in the future, allowing investors to profit.

Here in the DC region, demand-based pricing was used in the widening of interstate 495. It works. My favorite aspect is that buses and vehicles carrying 3 or more people can use the lanes for free, while all the assholes riding by themselves have to pay handsomely for the privilege of creating congestion at rush hour. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_HOT_lanes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_HOT_lanes)

One of the funny things about the libertarian idea of making everyone pay for road use is that technology has made it much more feasible. We don't have to use toll booths anymore. Instead just stick a transponder on the window. One of the best remedies for situations in which overuse of a public good is causing environmental problems is to make people pay to use said good.

<comment><USER15> Everyone paying for road use is not a libertarian idea. It's the basis of the gas tax, for instance, which funded the Eisenhower interstate system--not usually held up by libertarians as their ideal.

Likewise the Chesapeake bridge-tunnel was built by a government organization funded by municipal bonds. Bond funding does not imply private ownership and is not really a libertarian idea.

The 495 HOT lanes were a public/private partnership, so again not exactly a libertarian ideal. Also, to date they are underperforming financially.

The best example of a libertarian-type road project in the DC area is probably the Dulles Greenway, which was built and is operated by an entirely private company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There was more or less a whole EconTalk episode about this recently; one interesting point from it was the (bad) concept of STROADs:

[http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/3/4/the- stroad.html#...](http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/3/4/the- stroad.html#.U7GEXI1dUWs)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for this; it's a valuable concept I couldn't have articulated before. It seems I see stroads _everywhere_ , and they do suck for pedestrians, cyclists, shoppers, businesses, and humans, but there isn't an obvious way to get from here to the improved future. At a certain population density, land simply _is_ less valuable, no matter the road organization. I can imagine a town trying (and enforcing!) the street concept in a couple-block area, but how effective can that area be when everyone drives to get there? I almost suspect we'd need regular bus service, but at low population densities how does that work?

<comment><USER18> Use automated vehicles to supply an on-demand middle tier of transit. That layer could possibly provide transportation bridging low-density regions to a higher capacity fixed public transit nodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Having done some grad work in this area, I'd say this is a fairly superficial take on the topic. This certainly describes _one_ area on the supply/demand curve, and perhaps even a pervasive one given that we essentially stopped building highways 40 years ago, but it's not inherent to the problem.

I think it's very possible to jump ahead of this effect, but the capital outlay would be impressive, and as a society we apparently aren't permitted to accomplish Big Things anymore, so it's likely we stay in this weird bit of the function for a long while.

<comment><USER20> Who stopped building highways? In the Dallas area we've been building and expanding them non-stop for decades now. My experience is people have simply moved further out, increasing traffic flowing into the newly expanded/built roads, and overall congestion has remained constant.

But I think many of us would agree about accomplishing Big Things. Here's the dirty little secret: the US Government has almost always funded those "Big Things" and taxed the rich heavily to do it. The Interstate highway system was funded by a massive (as a percentage of the price per gallon) gas tax, along with a 90% post-war income tax rate on the rich.

Even the trans-continental railroad was funded thanks to guarantees, loans, etc from the US Federal government (including sending the Army out shoot Native Americans and bandits who attacked the railroads). No private entity was willing to take such a large risk - it could have bankrupted even JP Morgan if it went bad. Without "Big Government" support the line never would have been built.

I'm all for bringing back much higher taxes on the rich - tax anything over $1 million income at 50%, over $10 million at 60%. Same for cap gains. Use that money to fund massive expansions of roads, build subways under every major city, heck start a government-funded bank that gives anyone who wants to start a business a loan (it's what the Chinese government does).

We could do a _ton_ of "Big Things" if we were willing to tax the uber-rich to pay for it.

<comment><USER6> Taxing the rich simply incents them to behaviors that avoid the tax. Government revenues increased dramatically when the high marginal tax rates were cut. Unfortunately government expenditures increased even more dramatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would contest that many roads are not built or expanded until they are needed and due to that the demand fills out the road on completion. If you were to take a 3 lane road that is at 70% capacity and make it 6 lanes I very highly doubt you would get a 6 lane road at 70% capacity. They reference a % thought an entire city, on a more Macro level a single bigger road can indeed ease congestion, though It may cause other roads leading into it to become congested. The only way out of the trap AFAIK would be to build excess capacity thought the entire system.

<comment><USER22> > The only way out of the trap AFAIK would be to build excess capacity thought > the entire system.

I agree. This makes a lot more since.

The authors are taking good data, but making a big leap on their assumption to the cause.

Roads don't "create" traffic. New roads in most major cities are never built until the old ones are already 300-500% over capacity.

If you wait until your 500% over capacity, and then double the lanes, your still way over capacity, so the old and new roads are still "congested". This traffic isn't "new" \-- it was always there, you just couldn't see it, because a 200% over capacity road, and a 500% over capacity road, looks like the same gridlock from the sky.

<comment><USER23> Except that roads _do_ create traffic. Your line of thinking was exactly what drove NYC's road construction boom in the 40s and 50s - new road is built, utilization briefly goes down, then, as soon as people realize that there's now a faster, more convenient way to get into the city, they start using it. Utilization goes back up.

Critically, many of those people are people who might have taken mass transit or carpooled. They are literally new demand in the system driven by new capacity.

Over a longer time period, there's an even deeper effect, where new roads and perceived availability of road transit drives more people to move to previously undesirable parts of metro areas, which increases population which increases demand.

<comment><USER22> > _Except that roads do create traffic. - new road is built, utilization > briefly goes down, then, as soon as people realize that there 's now a > faster, more convenient way to get into the city, they start using it. > Utilization goes back up._

That's not "new" traffic. Traffic was already critically underserved previously, and is now only majorly underserved. The original road was 500% over capacity, and now the new road lowers it to 300% over capacity.

> _They are literally new demand in the system driven by new capacity._

No, the demand was always there. No one went out and bought a car because a new road was built.

These are people who we're already underserved by transportation previously, but weren't counted (because demand so outstripped capacity that they couldn't be easily counted originally).

> _Critically, many of those people are people who might have taken mass > transit or carpooled._

This is a huge assumption. For instance, this can only even be possible in a handful of places like Chicago or NYC. There is no meaningful mass transit in the most of the major US cities to even pull traffic from.

If public transit is a good option, people will take it regardless of how many roads exist. (Very few people purposely want to make life more expensive or more inconvenient for themselves).

> _as soon as people realize that there 's now a faster, more convenient way > to get into the city, they start using it._

From what you've said, it sounds like your advocating for people to willingly make life more expensive and more inconvenient for themselves. Your saying "new roads make driving too convenient and nice, we should take roads out so driving becomes even more terrible than public transit already is. Force people to make a bad choice, to avoid a terrible one"

\- -

There's absolutely no need to race-to-the-bottom on transportation. We should build more roads _and_ build more public transit, simultaneously. When public transit becomes cheap and convenient, many people will willing choose it. For those who don't, new roads and additional capacity alleviates that problem as well.

Your logic assumes that driving is inherently bad, and that we should "punish" drivers as a result. That's terrible, there's nothing wrong with driving, and there's no need to punish people for driving. There happen to be some bad externalities to driving (exhaust, traffic accidents), but those problems are being worked on (electric zero-emission cars, self driving cars, etc)

\- -

What your advocating for sounds really dangerous. Imagine if we applied this logic to any other market:

"The internet is congested. We can't just add fiber lines, if people had more internet speeds, they'd just use it up! We should destroy fiber lines, and cap all internet users to 1Mbps speeds, so that people start using the Postal Service and Blockbuster more often. "

"We can't run more clean water to the bad part of town. It might 'drive more people to move to a previously undesirable part of the metro area'. We should keep the water system broken -- or actually, just start slowly cutting water off to that area. "

<comment><USER24> "There's absolutely no need to race-to-the-bottom on transportation. We should build more roads and build more public transit, simultaneously. When public transit becomes cheap and convenient, many people will willing choose it."

The problem with this is that roads take room, and have externalities (cutting up neighborhoods, noise, pollution). Some of these are being worked (as you note) but there are no full technical solutions to these problems. People won't stand for it.

For these reasons, your internet and water-use analogies are inaccurate parallels.

I'm surprised you're offering these arguments. I live in LA and the opposition to new freeways in already-built-up areas is pretty much ingrained at this point. (Conservatives hate the destruction of neighborhoods, and liberals hate the environmental consequences). Limited in-place widening is still being done (with complaints) but 50 years of experience have taught something of a lesson. People generally don't believe these wider roads will significantly lessen congestion.

<comment><USER22> > The problem with this is that roads have externalities

Public Transit does too. Cutting up neighborhoods, noise, pollution all happen with busses and light rails. The externalities are almost identical in either case. (You can bury your light rail, but you could also bury your roads, etc).

> For these reasons, your internet and water-use analogies are inaccurate > parallels.

That may be true, but I don't see how yet.

People oppose fiber lines all the time because "telephone poles look ugly" or "I don't want to be in the electromagnetic field" (even though there isn't one).

> People generally don't believe these wider roads will significantly lessen > congestion.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for _bad_ roads. I'm advocating for _more_ roads, and there is a big difference. New freeways should be far above ground (so that there's no division of neighborhoods) or below grade, just like new public transit (usually) is.

I'm also _not_ advocating for more strip-mall like roads. (4-8 lane at-grade streets typical near malls, WalMart, etc). There should be lots of big freeways, with lots of small exits to smaller urban streets (downtown) or smaller suburban streets.

A good example of this is the buried freeways near the Washington State Convention Center and Mercer Island - [http://northwesturbanist.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/lets- bury-...](http://northwesturbanist.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/lets-bury-i-5/)

<comment><USER24> I think we are too far apart on this one. The buried freeway idea seems like a boutique solution for certain niche cases (the big dig in Boston is another example).

But the freeways relevant to me (in LA) are much too large and pervasive to put underground. It's over 100 miles of freeway, 5 lanes each way! And this is only in the most densely built-up core. Undergrounding them is lunacy!

By the time that all got done, we'd be in robotic helicopters or uploaded. Underground trains would be much more realistic (less tunneling for a given throughput), but even so, we have to be content with aboveground light rail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So more lanes don't reduce congestion, but this article ignores the fact that they obviously DO increase quality of life, by giving people the freedom to live and work where they choose. We should build more lanes for that reason alone. The reason congestion doesn't get better is simply that there is pent- up demand for driving. The solution isn't "tough luck, adjust your life to fit the traffic." It's to build more lanes, so people can choose to live the life they want to live.

<comment><USER14> By all means, then pay for YOUR ROADS which get YOU to YOUR MCMANSION SHITHOLE. Those of us who choose to be more rational about where we live, rather than adhering to an absurd ideal of a homestead that simulates a farm while having a modern, urban job far away shouldn't have to finance your silly fucking lawn and your boring, awful neighborhood.

I have 2 kids, and I've made urban living work. Courtesy of Virginia's former governor (now on trial for felony corruption charges) our roads are no longer funded by gasoline taxes, and are instead funded by a sales tax that people like me, who walk to work, have to fucking pay. If I had my way, all of you commuter idiots would have to pay a toll for all roads. Its absurd that I can't ride a subway for free, but you get to use public infrastructure while the rest of us pay to maintain it.

Your "freedom to live and work" is actually a freedom to take from urban people and give to yourself to finance your unsustainable, silly lifestyle.

If you want to live in the country, then fucking work in the country. Grow something other than a useless, decorative plant that requires extensive fertilizer and watering.

The solution:

Tough luck, adjust your life to your dumbass decision to live in the suburbs.

<comment><USER26> As someone who mostly agrees, and has found other posts you've made to be a useful contribution, I think this one strays from that.

Even if it's personally satisfying, no minds are being won here.

<comment><USER14> You're right. Thanks for the much needed reality-check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have only read the linked article, not the study, but it seems to me to be a bizarre conclusion that if capacity is increased and utilization remains at maximum, that the capacity caused the utilization.

It seems to be a much simpler scenario that demand far outstrips capacity, and until you can meet the demand, saturation every lane added will continue to be saturated.

I'm sure amdahl's law applies to lane adding here, on top of the fact that all the highways I've seen merge from one side or the other. I don't think I've seen any that merge in the middle, though I guess they probably exist.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's interesting that they make the point that congestion pricing will induce people to take alternate routes.

The recent update to Google Maps seems to do the same thing. It's much more proactive now about suggesting alternate routes. Here in Seattle, I recently bypassed I-5 by taking an astonishingly complex and twisty route that was all prompted by Google Maps, and I got to my destination five minutes sooner than Google was estimating I would had I stayed on I-5 (although that's impossible to verify since traffic congestion changes throughout the duration of a drive).

All that said, while it was fun (also especially when I avoided a Tacoma I-5 snarl that I hadn't previously known how to avoid), I don't think we actually want to redirect highway drivers onto local streets. Local streets aren't designed for highway overflow; they're designed for local traffic.

Isn't the real answer to design more decentralized town areas so people have less reason to drive long distances, for reasons other than recreation?

<comment><USER29> Try the math. For a given number of people, centralizing reduces everyone's commutes. The key is to not separate housing from commerce and business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Funny to see this on the HN frontpage – the Downs who originally suggested the "fundamental law of highway congestion" being confirmed in the paper [0] is my grandfather. Thanks for submitting this, it's very interesting work.

[0] [http://www.nber.org/papers/w15376.pdf](http://www.nber.org/papers/w15376.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER31> Driverless cars have the vast vast potential to fix traffic congestion problems. Traffic mainly results from humans' inability to gauge the spacial and speed based tolerances required to prevent braking and as a result sending a backward brake wave through the cars behind it. Add to that fact that there are no game theory advantages to a single driver to driving properly (other than an altruistic realization that if you decide to drive with better tolerances and other people do the same, the congestion is abated)

<comment><USER32> That seems dubious. There are a finite number of cars you can get on the road at a given speed. If the total travel time is roughly a constant as this article implies, autonomous cars will be equivalent to adding a few more lanes, meaning there will be no long-term change.

<comment><USER31> Traffic results when car densities pass a certain threshold and the speed the cars are traveling at prevents humans from being able to react in time or appropriately.

You might have even seen this phenomenon in real life: Driving on a highway, suddenly you get stuck in traffic. As you pass through the traffic zone, there are no cars pulled over, no accident, no disruption in the quality of road. What most likely happened was that someone accidentally slammed on their brakes which caused an increase in car density. If there are enough cars that are in bound to this traffic zone before the density can disperse, the traffic zone will persist.

Also notice that traffic zones often appear in situation where there's a positive increase in elevation. What happens is that if people aren't using cruise control (or their cruise control, control system isn't tight enough) their speed will decrease as they ascend the hill, causing some congestion and as like if the density of traffic is high enough, the cars behind them will have to slow down. You may think that if the cars behind them are also ascending the hill they'll also slow down in the same way but some cars may use cruise control while others don't (resulting in congestion) or the differences in each car's torque, power-output, efficiency curves differ causing each to slow down at different rates (often leading to the least capable car governing the rate)

Use a worst-case scenario to analyze. Assume you have a network of diverless cars all linked together that maintain equidistant space between each other. If a new cars needs to join their network / pack the minimum amount of delay that the cars (behind the entering car) need to encounter is the (Length of the incoming car + gap tolerance between the other car) / (the sustained speed of the pack) =25/5280/65*3600 ~= .25 seconds per car. Now do a thought experiment that the high way you drive on was completely full (like we said in our original problem statement) do you think if you added one additional car to the highway, would everyone's (who's downstream of the merge) commute time be only increase ~.25 seconds? I'm very confident it's be much more than that.

Traffic management is a task that needs high coordination, cooperation and reaction times above what unassisted humans are capable of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A phenomenon very similar to "induced demand" was observed in 1865, when increased efficiency in coal consumption lead to increased demand for coal. It's called Jevon's paradox:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevon%27s_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevon%27s_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER34> Yet when I visit a small country town with a giant road through the middle, there is still no traffic there. If big roads induce traffic independent of any other factors then this should not be true - the mere presence of the big road should have created traffic.

While I understand there's a really point to this paradox (it really happens), I hate the simplistic conclusion people reach that it is always wrong to make a road bigger. Sometimes _you really do need a bigger road_. Sometimes you really need more public transport or something else. It's complicated, and we need better models of it. But reducing it to one line slogans doesn't help that.

<comment><USER35> That's kind of the point made about halfway through the article where he states if you expand a road to 100 lanes you won't ever see any traffic.

In those country towns with a population of 30,000 but a super road through the center that could carry 100,000 people a day the road _is_ the same as if that 100 lane highway had been built in a major city.

In the article they state that there are more factors at work but they do need a title for the article that will draw people to read it.

<comment><USER36> I think highways like the 401 in Toronto prove that the "100 lane" theory is pretty much bullshit. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_401](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_401) It's arguably the busiest highway in North America based on a number of metrics, even more volume than LA's perpetually busy Santa Monica Freeway.

They've been expanding it ever since they've built it and in parts it is 25 lanes wide. It's slammed all the time. Traffic jams at 3am aren't unheard of if they're doing road work and it's slimmed down to half capacity.

It was once merely an 8 lane highway, so the idea that tripling or quadrupling the size of a highway magically makes traffic jams go away is so far from the truth.

There's a parallel highway running north of it that's paid by tolls which isn't as busy, but only because they can adjust pricing according to demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Counterargument here: [http://pc.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/more-roads-doesnt- mean-mor...](http://pc.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/more-roads-doesnt-mean-more- traffic-jams.html)

"By comparison, building expensive transit systems aimed at getting people out of their less-expensive cars generates zero economic benefits if it generates no new travel. Only new travel generates economic benefits, so people who argue that new roads induce new travel are actually arguing that new roads create economic benefits.

If congestion is the issue, then–as Mann briefly mentions–the solution is congestion pricing. But Mann doesn't understand the difference between true congestion pricing and New York City's proposal for cordon pricing. Cordon pricing is more a way of raising revenue to fund urban boondoggles than a way of relieving congestion.

Even UC Berkeley planning professor Robert Cervero believes that the induced demand argument is "wrong headed." "Road investments by themselves do not increase volumes," he writes. "Only by conferring a benefit, like faster speeds, will traffic increase." Provided that benefit is greater than the cost–something that could be assured, Cervero says, through proper pricing of roads–then it is a good thing."

</comment><comment><USER38> Unused road space is staring everyone in the face and only a small percentage of commuters are using it: motorcyclists. If you just took 10% of the cars off the road and had them riding and lane splitting instead, congestion would be reduced exponentially. The good news for Californians is that lane splitting is actually legal unlike every other backwards ass state.

</comment><comment><USER39> Dallas is building a congested demand pricing project for the I-635 corridor. They are calling it managed toll lanes. [http://www.txdot.gov/business/partnerships/current- cda/635-l...](http://www.txdot.gov/business/partnerships/current-cda/635-lbj- cda.html)

<comment><USER40> I-495 through the VA side of the DC suburbs uses High-Occupany Toll lanes - demand pricing on top of HOV lanes. If you have passengers, you can use them for free. If you're solo, you pay the toll. They use a switchable EZ Pass transponder to make it work without toll booths at each end.

Colloquially, they're referred to as "Lexus Lanes".

As far as a I can tell, they haven't done much to reduce congestion on the non-toll lanes. But, if you can afford $12/day (peak rate, round trip) for a 10 mile stretch of interstate, you get to avoid the dirty, unwashed masses who are stuck in the poor lanes. :)

<comment><USER41> The concern when this got deployed in the Seattle area is that it would be poorer people who are most likely to use these. Example: somebody trying to get to the daycare by 6PM so they don't get charged by the minute for being late.

<comment><USER42> Why is this a concern? It sounds like a completely rational decision for someone of any income level to pay money for a faster trip to avoid an even great amount of money in fines...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I live inside the Washington D.C. beltway in Alexandria, VA. Traffic here in town is slightly better than what I had gotten used to in Philadelphia, but that's likely because A) I never have that far to go and B) I never drive during rush hour anymore. In the District, it's a fucking Boschian nightmare. DC typically ranks 2nd or 3rd worst traffic in the country, duking it out with LA and Miami.

And all around me, as I look out my windows, all I see are skycranes build condo projects.

On my walk to my local coffee shop, I see a political campaign poster touting the candidate will work to block some proposed parking garage project that I never understood why old people hated.

There is a new metro station going in less than half a mile from my place. Except it won't be done for another 5 years or something. And really, the other nearest station is only a mile away over flat road. I don't understand putting metro stations less than half a mile from each other. That just seems more likely to _cause_ traffic than it is to alleviate it, as it increases the latency of trips.

There aren't any major road projects going on. There are one or two projects to fix up a few ramps that were crumbling. There is something about an express lane all the way to the Dulles airport. But nothing about the 95 expressway seems to be addressed.

Clearly, someone is planning to pack a LOT more people into this area, but has given no thought whatsoever where to put their cars, either while in use or not.

So I've just accepted that this is reality now. There is absolutely no reason to complain about traffic, because nobody is doing anything meaningful about it. I try to work my life to not be involved with it at all. I do most of my shopping online. I am a freelancer who works 100% from home. I live in walking distance of a bar and a coffee shop, and I'm even cutting back how often I go. Unless I can finally convince my wife to move out of this place, I'm not traveling anywhere during daylight hours.

</comment><comment><USER44> I see it as basically Malthusian: people will keep driving until it is so unpleasant that they don't want to do it any more. The tipping point for most people is around 45 minutes. Here's a book with a footnote that mentions that the same 45-minute rule applies worldwide and though out history: [http://books.google.com/books?id=uuqIA- ce1CoC&pg=PA408&lpg=P...](http://books.google.com/books?id=uuqIA- ce1CoC&pg=PA408&lpg=PA408&dq=ancient+romans+commute+45+minutes&source=bl&ots=W_4 --bDOo5&sig=uNYXKSxadR3pUeZ3epHuKgvI0GQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xLGxU- vIHoiTqgaUhIDYDQ&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=ancient%20romans%20commute%2045%20minutes&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER45> Dolts like the article author completely miss the point. Yes, the number of people on the road will increase as we add lanes, but that doesn't mean that adding more lanes is useless. More people are able to get where they want to go, that's a good thing.

<comment><USER46> Building alternative high-volume modes of transportation is more effective than building larger roads.

Adding more lanes is useless from a urban planing point of view because it doesn't alleviate congestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47>
        Finally, businesses that rely on roads will swoop into cities
        with many of them, bringing trucking and shipments.

Indeed, roads are most often built to bring in new large corporations that create jobs. Depending on how one measures "quality of life" this could be considered a very good thing.

I was expecting something more interesting such as the correlation to car driver behaviour and inefficiency with stop-go traffic when not leaving a buffer in front of the next car (something that was written up very well a year or so ago) and how this logic is effected with wider roads. Instead, got some pretty worn out theories.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm not sure I'm a buyer of the congestion demand pricing. There's a very real cost already involved in traffic. Time lost in the car, quality of life, stress. Anybody who lives in the Bay Area, LA, NY, DC understand that timing your entire life around traffic is the regional pastime. So the argument then has to be an incremental one. If we then layer a more direct money tax of some kind on top of all the crap that already exists then that will be the straw that breaks the camels back and gets enough people off the road. Hmm.

<comment><USER49> That's a sunk cost though. When someone gets in their car to drive somewhere, they don't think "this trip is going to cost me $7.50" because they pay for their gas at a different time, they pay for their insurance at a different time, they pay for repairs at a different time, and vehicle depreciation is largely invisible. They don't equate time lost to money lost either.

However, if you have a big visual reminder that the road you're driving on will cost you money as soon as you drive on it, then people will be less likely to either take that route or drive altogether.

<comment><USER48> I hear you but I'm going to respectfully push back. When you live in a congested area you really do plan much of your professional and personal life around traffic. When to start work. When to leave work. When to schedule a meeting. When and where you'll go this weekend/vacation/kids. So this will make it more painful but it's hard to know how much this will be the final tipping point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> These guys are partially idiots. Obviously there is more demand than road if use is directly proportional to supply as they claim. The problem is the way we design cities and lay out the roads. A regular grid where we put STOP lights? seriously? Go, stop, go, stop. And then we put businesses right on the corners to increase congestion right where it's already bad. When cars get tested for EPA MPG ratings, the average speed on the city drive cycle is slightly under 20mph due to all the stop and go. Hybrid cars get better city mpg than highway by using regenerative braking to recover energy from all that stopping and making drag the dominant factor. I don't think traffic circles are relevant, but designing the layout to minimize disruptions to flow altogether. I've been contemplating this a lot, but can't write it all here right now. Imagine if every drive were 10-20 percent longer distance, but you could average twice the speed over the journey! You'd save gas and time. And if your journey takes less time, that's fewer car-minutes on the road which means less traffic and they could have fewer lanes. The problem is even if we could do the design correctly, nobody is going to build a city from scratch - except in China maybe.

<comment><USER51> It seems like you're assuming that the only priority is moving cars around - not walkability or livability. In other words it seems you're assuming the only purpose of the built environment is to move cars. I argue that it isn't and in that case we should measure other stuff besides moving cars efficiently when building our cities.

<comment><USER50> No, I advocate efficiency as a goal weather it be cars, public transit, or something else. Personally I'd like easy access to both. But public transit is only viable with high density and I don't like the way we do dense either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> They're also an eyesore.

Not to worry, over the next several decades large cities will build out effective mass transit systems. High-speed rail will eventually come to America after years of debate.

Look to China to lead the way. What's this low-speed maglev that they're building now?

[http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-02/19/content_17291...](http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-02/19/content_17291903.htm)

<comment><USER53> _over the next several decades large cities will build out effective mass transit systems_

Which, as the article points out, won't fix the traffic congestion, because as some people switch from driving to mass transit, other people will take their place by driving when they previously walked or just didn't make the trip at all. So mass transit can increase the total number of trips made, but it won't decrease road usage.

<comment><USER54> [http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-98-percent-of-us- com...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-98-percent-of-us-commuters- favor-public-tra,1434/)

It is the onion, and is flippant, but as a general belief it touches upon a basic truth -- everyone would love if everyone else used public transit, leaving the roads available for our use.

<comment><USER55> This is occasionally used as an argument in favor of cheaper or free public transit: that even from a self-interest perspective, it makes sense for road users to subsidize public transit, as a way of effectively paying other people to get off the roads and out of their way. However most road users don't seem to see it that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I wish, LA had a good public transportation network but it doesn't. I used to take the bus, I had to change twice and spend at least 1h traveling, while it takes me 12 to 20min using my car (20min on exceptionally busy days). It probably is one of biggest city that doesn't have an underground metro! I guess that's one of the rare thing I miss from NYC. Being able to move fast without owning a car!

</comment><comment><USER57> The article fails to follow the logical process to the very end. What isn't being asked is: why are humans using that road when they weren't using the smaller road before?

Humans don't just drive for the sake of doing so. They drive because they have the need to do so. Building roads lowers the perceived time cost of driving, so more people drive, and more people drive at the time that is most desirable to do so. In some cases this results in increased congestion, but if the need of the population is met or exceeded, then the result is smooth traffic flow. Even if the bigger road is more congested, it may still have a greater net traffic flow, and that increased flow results in greater economic and societal good.

For example, because of new highway XYZ, I can now work somewhere that was formerly too far a commute.

The problem isn't solved by building smaller roads, it's solved by building even bigger roads, or building roads in a more optimal fashion (selecting a route for a new road that matches the transportation needs of the population).

</comment><comment><USER58> This is exactly the sort of thing that I don't want a politician to read.

A study finds a correlation between construction of new roads and increase in driver miles. A policy-maker, never one for logic, transmutes correlation to causation. Now, it may be that they assume that increased demand for travel causes road construction, and assign resources to reduce the total cost for each trip. Good for them.

But they may also assume that more roads cause more travel, and decide to prevent trips by destroying roads. Boo. You could as easily prevent water from flowing downstream by building a dam. Then your stream becomes a reservoir, the downstream flow rate reduces while it fills, then the reservoir spills over the dam at the same rate it flowed before.

People want to move around. They want to travel freely between the places they can earn money, the places they can spend it, and the places they enjoy keeping their stuff. Making the travel more difficult makes them unhappy, while making it easier makes them more content. For the most part, the desire to move minus the cost of the trip results in economic activity. If that number is zero or negative, people stay put, and don't add to economic circulation.

Human movement is an economic engine. You can add friction to it and generate more heat, or you can remove friction and extract work instead

Generally speaking, you want people to take more trips, and you want the cost per trip to be as low as possible. That doesn't necessarily mean building more, wider, and longer roads. You may be able to get better results by siting the popular destinations more closely to each other, and ensuring that the routes between them are direct, non-viscous, and non-turbulent.

When you do something stupid like make 3000 people work in one building complex, far away from homes or other businesses, and have everyone sleep in a suburban bedroom community, far away from jobs and shopping, yes, the road that is the best available route between them will be packed every single day. You cannot economically reduce traffic by narrowing that road. The cars you see on it will go down, but that is because people quit their jobs or moved their households over the arduous commute. They went somewhere else, and will be earning and spending there, instead. It would be better to simply put the homes, businesses, and offices closer together, and diffuse the obvious trips onto roads in such a way that they are neither over or underutilized.

<comment><USER59> > But they may also assume that more roads cause more travel, and decide to > prevent trips by destroying roads.

Politicians in the city I live in are literally doing this, installing "traffic calming measures" (destroying perfectly good road lanes that were just resurfaced)

I believe phase two involves generating clean energy by harnessing the power of Bastiat spinning in his grave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I witnessed a nice microcosm of this demonstrating how fast the shift occurs.

Every day I cycle commute up the London A24/A3 (CS7) corridor. On the first day of the first tube strikes early this year, the congestion was insane. I mean the worst traffic I've ever seen in my life. An ambulance was literally stuck in traffic and no one within earshot of the ambulance able to move their vehicle enough for it to get through.

But then the second day of the strike traffic was a bit on the heavy side but mostly back to normal. I think a huge number of people realized that it was actually pointless to even attempt to go to work unless they were walking or biking. This effect even carried over to the second tube strike a month or two later.

</comment><comment><USER61> The actual paper [http://www.ademloos.be/sites/default/files/meccano_docs/The_...](http://www.ademloos.be/sites/default/files/meccano_docs/The_Fundamental_Law_of_Road_Congestion_Evidence_from_US_Cities.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER62> Sounds a bit like Parkinson's Law: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law)

"The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource."

</comment><comment><USER63> This article seems like a gross oversimplification. There are a lot more variables at play here than just what people tend to do with extra capacity. Terrain and flow dynamics, as well as driver behavior, have a lot to do with it.

Take 405 in West Los Angeles for example. On one side it has the Sepulvida pass with very steep decent going south and ascent going north. It is crossed by I-10 going to Santa Monica and Downtown, a little further in 90 goes to Marina del Rey, and then exits for LAX.

If you examine this section as an example, you have number of people either trying to get in or pass through this section during commuting hours. From the north, the sepulvida pass makes people slow down as they climb the hill. Not exactly sure why, but many drivers seem to be afraid of it. This recoils through the rest of the traffic, as each incremental car slowing down results in the car behind it slowing down slightly more.

Once you get down the hill, you have people exiting and entering with very short distances to decelerate or accelerate, causing more slow downs.

On the other side, you have a similar dynamic, but people are also trying to merge to or from 90 and I-10. With majority of the traffic heading either to Santa Monica, West LA, Century City or Hollywood/Downtown/something in between.

The city has recently completed a major expansion on the 405 in that area adding a carpool lane, but more importantly changing how you merge to/from several of the exits, including Wilshire blvd and I-10.

In my observation, the carpool lane did relatively little, but the smoothed exiting/entering with enough time to accelerate shifted the bottleneck from before Wilshire blvd, frequently spilling past the 90, to no ending around Wilshire.

The flow restriction now seems to be the dreaded 101 interchange, with a huge amount of traffic stuck in the Sepulvida pass. As the result, I can not get from the 90 to I-10 in about 10 mins, whereas before it was easily 30.

Point being, that if you maintain road size (or marginally improve it) and optimize the flow, you get a lot better returns.

<comment><USER64> apparently, correlation is equal to causation[1]

[1]entire article

<comment><USER65> I don't think that applies. Isn't the point (or one of the main points) of building more roads to make traffic congestion better? The study in this article shows that that doesn't pan out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> What about a smartphone app that helped you avoid the most congested roads. I think Waze does something like this today and I'm sure that Google Maps can as well. We just need to have it integrated into the system so that we don't have to think about it.

I think this is where projects like Andriod Auto & iOS CarPlay come into play. Just jump into your car and say "Take me to Julia's house" and the route will be mapped out for you. I would love to not have to figure out the best way to get to the mall on a busy Saturday afternoon! Even better, an auto-driving car will actually take care of the moving bits as well as planning your route.

</comment><comment><USER67> What a bunch phooey. Just more peddling of flawed studies to promote increased taxation.

If you want to reduce congestion try the obvious. 1) Mixed zoning, allowing more residential and retail to be close together. So people have less distance to travel. 2) Raise speed limits where possible so people can get to their destinations faster. 3) Build for the future. Don't just add a lane or two, add six. 4) And yes trains, do help. The problem in the States is that we hardly have any. Only the major metro areas have any sort of adequate rail system and even they are fairly slow, limited and antiquated. Which brings me to my last point: 5) Consult with Elon Musk.

<comment><USER20> I'm sorry but you are simply way off base. When a road is expanded, it does temporarily shorten commute times and reduce traffic. But that makes the cheap land farther away from everything more desirable, causing people to move out further, increasing traffic. Those new suburbs require a _massive_ infrastructure investment to install water, sewer, gas, electricity, etc. Not to mention building surface streets, schools, libraries, shopping centers, etc.

We've been building roads at a massive clip around the Dallas area, sprawling out over huge suburbs, many of which support mixed development (as does the city of Dallas itself). When I first moved here, the previous two lane highway had just been turned into a six lane toll road and there were no traffic jams, not even during rush hour. It's been 8 years and now we have stop and go traffic every day for about a 30 minute window and that window continues to grow larger.

If you think about the design of roads it should become clear why this happens... You have many on-ramps dumping cars into a fixed set of lanes. If, at any point, there are more cars that want to enter than there is room traffic must slow to accommodate them. In reality it happens before the road is full as people leave space for braking, etc. When that happens at _any_ point, it creates a wave of slowed traffic that begins to ripple backwards from that point, meaning anywhere further backward that is close to capacity begins to jam up, making it even more difficult for new vehicles to enter the roadway, amplifying the wave even more.

Even if demand were 100% evenly spread out (which it never, never will be simply by the fact that brand new areas have empty fields or wooded lots - <USER2> takes time to build offices, start businesses, etc), the friction of merging & exiting the highway would eventually require more cars to exit than are entering, the exact opposite of rush hour conditions.

Building more lanes merely delays the inevitable; that's assuming you can, which in Dallas is impossible - most of the current roads (and 100% of the worst congested ones) would require tearing down skyscrapers or 100% tunneling / elevated highways because there is no more space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I think studies which measure traffic congestion in the US based on road building over the last couple decades IMHO are flawed.

That is because I believe how and where you build the road is more important than how much road you build. For example, where I live the main roads in the city proper haven't been upgraded in the last 40 years. Yet, new roads funneling drivers from farther and farther out are being constructed all the time. This simply means that the first 1/2 of many drivers commutes involves sailing along a new road until they hit the old roads, and then puttering around at 5mph (or worse) for the last 5-10 miles of the journey.

</comment><comment><USER69> >> _If we gave drivers some extra incentive to avoid the most congested hours, we could better utilize the roads' capacities._

There is already enough incentive, the incentive is to avoid seeing your hours waste away on traffic. Most people don't really get to choose their hours, with or without incentive, otherwise they already avoid the most congested hours. So the suggested incentive doesn't really make a difference when it's not a matter of choice, except by taking money away from people without adding any value.

<comment><USER70> So we need to incentivise the people who set the hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Weird title, seeing as how the article states that bigger roads do not make traffic worse, it stays the same:

>> New roads will create new drivers, resulting in the intensity of traffic staying the same

<comment><USER48> Good point. And it's still not completely clear that the roads are keeping up with the growth vs pulling it in. There were a couple of good points around larger interstate type services picking your town for HQ if you have extra capacity but in general it still seems too abstract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wish there were a starter packet for using the metro. I hate it when people say, "where do you want to go? Oh, that's simple, you just take the Orange line to Such-and-such station. Why couldn't you figure that out? It's so simple." No, that is not simple. That's an insider's language designed to call out the outsiders. I get there and there isn't just an orange line. The orange and green lines overlap. Don't get on the wrong train at the right terminal! Or maybe it's like the purple line, where you have to take the orange line to get to it, and everyone else already knows this, but they don't tell you that, they just say "take the purple line" and I'm left standing there freaking out that I can't see a purple dot on a sign in a poorly-lit cavern.

If I drive somewhere, all I need to know is where it is and where I am and I can eventually get there within 50% of the normal time to get there. Let's take this road that points towards where I want to go. That didn't work? Okay, let's take the next road that points to where I want to go. Unless you're driving around the Pentagon, which I'm fairly certain has had its road systems designed into the shape of a PENTAGRAM, then that will get you to where you want to go in the majority of the US.

And grand total is still faster than walking to the metro, waiting in line for the train to show up, and waiting for it to stop at every spot in between.

<comment><USER72> Google maps / transit routing smartphone apps do a pretty good job of this. I've not had trouble coming into a new city, asking Google maps to give me mass transit directions and just following them.

Most cities have real time bus/train trackers now that help you plan when to leave so you don't have to wait long.

<comment><USER43> Yes, Google Maps is how I manage it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> This article is rubbish

> What's Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse

> For instance, Paris in recent decades has had a persistent policy to > dramatically downsize and reduce roadways. "Driving in Paris was bad > before," said Duranton. "It's just as bad, but it's not much worse."

Bigger roads are worse, and smaller roads are worse?

There's a point here somewhere but they've failed to make it.

<comment><USER74> I guess they get more foot traffic, and living streets (more shopping/social life etc). If you get that and less cars in traffic I guess I see a win there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Then clearly we can make traffic flow more smoothly by shrinking existing roads. Right?

What? No? It doesn't work that way? Hmm, what a coincidence, it appears we're already at the sweet spot on the traffic-flow Laffer curve.

Either that, or what the authors of the study are trying to optimize is very different from what the typical driver is trying to optimize.

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm a huge fan of toll roads. And I really like charging for use at certain times.

Perhaps you could reduce rates for each passenger in the vehicle. Maybe a four-passenger vehicle gets to drive free anytime. This encourages car pooling for those who can't afford to pay the tolls.

In fact it may create new jobs.

</comment><comment><USER77> Well yes, people are irrational.

I personally think that a lot of jobs today don't justify driving around at all. What difference does it make if you code in the crowded building of your employer or at home and use tele-conferences to talk with each other? Maybe you would even be more productive if you got rid of all the stress caused by commuting around a substantial portion of the day.

I guess a good chunk of the office work done today could be replaced by remote work, but employers insist on everyone to get into the car, commute and thereby congest roads and burn up non-renewable petrol.

I am seriously wondering why the working population don't bill the time and expenses of commuting to the employers? Most entrepreneurs do. You pay $50-$100 for the plumber to come to your place (just to come there, work is billed extra). Why not office workers?

</comment><comment><USER78> This is nothing new. Read Robert Caro's 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book THE POWER BROKER if you wanna know about roads and highways and freeways and how expanding them only makes traffic worse.

</comment><comment><USER79> I've always thought something is definitely wrong with the way we think about roads when car pool lanes end up just as busy/gridlocked as the rest of the road.

</comment><comment><USER80> I feel like there's a cause and effect relationship being presented here that isn't necessarily true, even if the correlation is true.

</comment><comment><USER81> _It's the roads themselves that cause traffic. The concept is called induced demand, which is economist-speak for when increasing the supply of something (like roads) makes people want that thing even more._

So contrary to popular belief, invention is actually the mother of necessity. The question now is how best to take a systems approach to promoting alternative forms of transportation.

<comment><USER82> "The question now is how best to take a systems approach to promoting alternative forms of transportation."

If the principle, holds, obviously: build more.

<comment><USER83> I think that it might hold, at least for me. The biggest obstacles to my use of public transportation is the first mile and last mile, and the regularity of trips.

Using Google Maps as my source, a trip home will take between 1hr, 3min to 1hr, 30min, and still includes driving for the last mile. Granted, this is San Antonio, which is certainly a driving city. The same drive home is 14-17 minutes, depending on route.

In my calculus, drive vs. public trans. is a balance of which sucks least. Right now, I would say that the cost and altruism aspect of public trans. would allow it 200% of the suckiness allotted to driving. All else being equal, I would need a public trans. trip of ~30minutes or less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Yes, I've been stuck in traffic on 405, but it's not like you never get through.

</comment><comment><USER85> Also: bigger/faster computers makes programs bloated/slower.

</comment><comment><USER86> This actually makes sense in an unintuitive way.

</comment><comment><USER87> well duh</comment>


Jobs vs Passive Income - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2012/05/jobs-vs-passive-income/

<comment><USER2> This website is junk. I just skimmed several of his articles and the only example of passive income he gives is maintaining his website--on how to make passive income.

He does though like to say things like you have to "create value". That's useful advice. Thanks Steve.

</comment><comment><USER3> I understand everyone's sentiment about Steve's blogs on earning passive income. If you look around his site he does have some interesting blog posts on things like Polyphasic Sleep.

HN readers for the most part are probably not in need of his motivational/inspirational "speeches" and articles. And most understand the desirability of passive income but understand its challenges, obstacles, and reality.

Someone similar who shares Mr. Pavlina's strong beliefs and desires for everyone to achieve their life's goals and live every day to its fullest is Ramit Sethi (<http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/>) with his own book and numerous other "programs" like Earn 1K. Ramit recognizes and addresses the reality of passive income and recommends not going after it at first.

Both Ramit and Steve are excellent reminders and motivators to keep working towards your goals similar to 21times.org's daily email newsletters for startups.

UPDATE: I like what someone else said in another comment here. Paraphrasing it: Don't think of it as passive income, think of it as delayed income.

UPDATE: Let's clarify what we all really mean by "passive". It's not really passive as in "you don't have to do anything". What we mean is that we are no longer trading straight time for income. Our income potential is no longer limited to the number of hours we are awake trading our time for money.

UPDATE: The delayed income relies upon a long tail return. Often the amount of energy consumed to setup the long term tail is very similar to the amount of time and energy early (and bootstrapping) startups invest in hopes of recouping their time and money investment at a later date (and in hopes of that return being many times greater than what a hourly rated "job" would pay).

</comment><comment><USER4> i think we all agree passive income is the bomb.

the difficulty comes in building the passive income while having to be realistic about health insurance, and well, having food to eat.

i wish these sorts of articles would spend more time on the bootstrapping portion of this journey instead of the "glorious future" when everything is all running smoothly.

i mean its just as easy to write a article about Facebook and say "just build one of those" but obviously the devil is in the startup, so to speak.

<comment><USER5> "Suppose you were already very comfortable with passive income, just like I am. Imagine that you had many thousands of dollars coming in every month, more than enough to cover all your expenses. Whether you work or not, fresh income keeps flowing to you month after month and year after year, _based on streams you set up years ago_."

Aye, _there_ 's the rub.

Not sure what his point is after that supposition. The verbose fictitious conversation is rather ... absurd.

<comment><USER6> He once posted that he has calculated every article he writes earns him $2400 in revenue[1]. From that, he can calculate that if he wants to increase his annual income by $5,000, he just needs to write 21 more blog posts.

So from that perspective, this article is just another $20 per month in his pocket. That's the point.

[1] [http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/how-much-is-a- blog-...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/how-much-is-a-blog-post- worth-would-you-believe-2400-dollars-each/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pff there is that passive income crap again. Passive income is not passive income. You have to work hard to GET to 'passive' income and when you have it, you have to grow it to make it realistic to live on. Earn so much that you can pay taxes, healthcare, mortgage, kids, pension and future (you know, when your very passive income suddenly ends). So during your first passive income you'll be working your ass off to add more streams. And, unless you hit it big with at least one of your streams, it is very likely you'll be in this loop the rest of your life; hence actually working hard. And usually harder than an actual job with more risk.

</comment><comment><USER8> How is it that "keep a blog about passive income" is such a common path to living off passive income?

<comment><USER9> To be fair, Pavlina started as a mid-level Indie game developer and moved into the self-help world. I think the first buzz he received was on thirty day trials and (in particular) polyphasic sleep.

He's always been a bit unorthodox, but he wrote a book that I found to have quite a bit of value, and was quite a bit more challenging in its exercises than the standard self-help book.

I still read him, but more for the occasional nuggets now - for where I am in life, I don't receive much value from his current set of posts because it isn't where I am right now in life. That's okay.

As for the passive income bit, I'm hoping the series gets better, but I fear it is going to be a repackaging of what he's said before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> tldr; Once you have substantial passive income, you will not want a job working for someone else.

How did this long, uninformative dribble make it to the front page?

<comment><USER11> Why don't we book a phone consult with Steve to find out? Only 997$ USD

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a little weird to post this out of context. This article is part of a long (planned) series about passive income. And this particular article is focused more on convincing the people who want to go that path but have mental barriers holding them back.

<comment><USER13> In case it's not clear -- you know all those people who want to have passive income but have mental barriers to the concept of passive income? They are _imaginary_. There is no one saying, "why would I want money coming in every month for something I did years ago, instead of going to work?" Not being comfortable with the "passive income mindset," as the author describes the problem, is not a mental barrier human beings have.

The purpose of setting up a fictional person who _doesn't_ like money coming in every month is so the author can explain at length how great his life supposedly is, and implicitly how great _your_ life will be if you reject the stupid Friend character and instead give the author some money. This is not ambiguous. It's about as subtle as those Axe Body Spray commercials.

What real people have concerns about is whether the particular strategies available to them for generating ongoing income will be reliable, lasting, or lucrative enough to be worth the effort. That's an interesting question. But this article is an elaborate pitch not to address those concerns but to make you ignore them long enough to give the author some cash. If you're considering it, here's a hint: the small percentage of people who manage to start successful businesses are the ones who don't fall for this kind of pitch when they're spending their money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure what kind of friends OP has but I don't know a single person who would argue that a day job making the same amount is better than passive income.

</comment><comment><USER15> I always read Steve's articles with a mix of fascination and horror. If I ever find myself taking him too seriously I just look at the bottom right of the page and remember that he believes that the number 11:11 has magic properties and is evidence that the universe is sending him secret messages. (Really, look at the bottom right of the page).

<comment><USER16> He's right. Link for the lazy:

<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2009/02/1111/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some people are talking about how the point of this essay was to convince those who don't understand "the desirability of passive income." But is there really anybody in the whole world who doesn't understand the desirability of setting things up so you can get money while you are doing nothing? It's not that people think that's not _desirable_ ; it's that they think that's not _possible_. And that is almost always true, from widget factories to startups. Anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell you something by deceiving you.

<comment><USER7> It's definitely possible. But not as many say it is. And it's usually not a substitute for regular income from a job. It's a nice extra, that's for sure.

And doing nothing (which all people seem to think they like...) => by far most people I have ever met would have no clue what to do with their time if they didn't have to work. You'll do 'fun' things the first year or two and then you'll start feeling worthless about yourself and get all kinds of cool mental and physical issues.

Anecdotes a-plenty: my grandfathers (who are both smart and both were managers) were bored out of their skulls after pension as is my father. A few fathers of friends of mine literally dropped dead months to a year after they started with their pension. A friend of mine (smart guy, age 40) got 'independently wealthy' so did a lot of 'fun' stuff for a few years, then he began to get ailments like pain in his stomach, back pain, headaches (migraine) and started to get depressed. Went to tons of doctors; nothing wrong physically. Recently (few months ago) he took a 9-5 job and everything disappeared; he is happy and no more vague ailments.

There are plenty of exceptions to this obviously, but a lot of people I know, poor or rich, cannot live with themselves if they would have to manage their own time. They need the pressure, the fulfillment etc of a job or career. I have passive income sounds great at parties, but mostly these people are actually working twice+ as hard as people in 'normal jobs' or they are actually not happy at all. I built a lot of sites / apps for internet marketers and have been with them in clubs in Monaco or on boats somewhere tropical; not very happy campers, almost all of them; making millions /year on auto-pilot (just mail the good 'ol 'list' and plok, another $200k) but being utterly depressed, paranoid, weird and usually having 10s of small ailments (allergies etc) which they magically acquired after years of doing almost nothing. And having full days to feel every ache in your body, analyzing the type of pain and location in detail and talking about it on cancer forums doesn't help either :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amusing dialogue but the phrase "passive income" always strikes me as disingenuous. I know a few people who technically have "passive income" in the way that this article suggests, but in reality they work harder than most other people that I know.

If you really have got yourself into a situation where you could literally take as much time as you wanted off without worrying about your income level because all your work has been delegated then congratulations; you're a parasite.

<comment><USER3> Yes, people need to realize passive income doesn't mean boatloads of income, or a better rate of dollars to hours put in. It just means, income isn't tied directly to trading time for money. So you can make income while sleeping or not actively "working" trading time directly for money.

You're absolutely correct, most people that have some passive income have invested lots of time into their endeavors and the ratio of time/$$$ is a large number (IOW, if they broke down their hourly wage it's really crappy, sometimes and often less than minimum wage). Few achieve the opposite and the end goals relies on a long tail return.

Passive income might be $2.54 per month revenue due to affiliate links (i.e. Amazon)... which might not redeemable until you accumulate a minimum dollar amount to withdraw the money...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a great read. From someone who was recently on the entrepreneur train and had to make a stop at jobville, it's giving me some serious yearnings to get back on the train.

</comment><comment><USER20> Note that there are many industries in which passive income is simply impossible. Yes, this is _Hacker_ News, but fields outside of software engineering do exist.

</comment><comment><USER21> Doddgy as all fuck any site that has a header dripping with faux iliminati symbols and appears to be punting MLM and make monney fast should not be on hacker news.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have been thinking hard about passive income lately. The more I think, the more I realize that there is no such thing. Yes, there is something called "actively working hard on your own thing using your own resources/time that helps you being able to generate the most important thing in life :Time for yourself and your family/friends". And that for me means to bootstrap something and make it profitable enough that it takes care of _your_ needs (whatever that is in your definition). Of course, that could take years of active/hard work.

</comment><comment><USER22> How about another category of income called "My needs income". An income where you set the work, the ideas, the amount of hours you put in (vs. amount of hours you spend with your loved ones/leisure etc.) and the amount of money you can make out of it. Some people are ok with maintaining a blog and making few hundred bucks a month (maintaining a day job perhaps) while some people want to take the full entrepreneurial plunge risking everything they got but hoping for a huge payout in terms of time, money and personal gratification.</comment>


Drawers Hackathon (https://drawersapp.github.io/contest/) - <AUTHOR> Drawers is conducting its first bot building event and excited to invite you to build bot. Learn latest technology and win exciting prizes.<p>Check out our event page: https://drawersapp.github.io/contest/ <comment><USER2> liked your concept. Is there any email alias where I can subscribe for updates regarding bots ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. Is it global?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Check [https://drawersapp.github.io](https://drawersapp.github.io) for sample bots.</comment></comment>


Vatican Uses Donations for the Poor to Plug Its Budget Deficit - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/vatican-uses-donations-for-the-poor-to-plug-its-budget-deficit-11576075764 <comment><USER2> I was raised a Baptist, but from my experience all churches of any size work this way, and this news will not be surprising to any church-goers.

Typically the pastor of even a small church lives mainly or at least mostly on the tithes given each week. It's common for churches to own a house that the pastor or priest lives in at no charge. All Christians I know either Protestant or Catholic know this and accept it as how the church works, you're tithing to God's work whether that's feeding the poor or repairing the church roof or buying the pastor's groceries.

I don't know as many Catholics, but from what I gather many of them see the Vatican and the bureaucracy as just part and parcel of the whole thing.

I've only met one pastor who had a full-time job in addition to pastoring, at a small church I attended in a major city for a few years, and technically he was a missionary sent to the city to plant that church. Now he has two jobs plus pastoring though, so he might just be a workaholic.

<comment><USER3> My churches (two previous were Baptist) publish their budgets. My current church has only 16% going to admin costs (building, maintenance, and salary I believe) while everything else went to mission work (we run . Everyone here volunteers their time though, which helps bring costs down. I don't recall previous budgets, but I think they were closer to 50/50\. I guess my current one is unusual, but 10% of 50 mil (according to this article) is surprising to me. That's the lowest bar I've seen

<comment><USER4> It depends heavily on the church.

I'd agree that church volunteers really do bring costs down though -- and congregational volunteering is just really healthy in general. It encourages members to exercise more agency, to think about service in concrete ways, and to spend more time fellowshipping with each other.

I had a pipe dream that I was going to get some of my local churches to collaborate more on developing/sharing OS software and technical support with each other, particularly around admin, member registries, etc... But I've had difficulty getting it off the ground. Most church members I know aren't technical, so there's just a very large education gap that has to be addressed first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a Catholic who has, at times, been involved in both local and regional Church organizations, this isn't a big surprise.

But a lot of the discussion and reaction assumes Peter's Pence (the annual call for donations from which this money comes) is intermixed with the typical 'tithe' or other charity works for all local Catholic churches, when it's not.

In local Catholic churches (parishes) there is always a standard collection, for the local parish only. The money goes to the local facilities, the school (if they have one), the pastor's residence, and if there's leftovers it can be used for special projects (e.g. new boiler, that sort of thing), and also for local charity.

Then there are often 'second collections' for specific needs... there are local charities, missionary charities, etc. (none of which are even loosely affiliated with the Vatican, and most of which have no affiliation even with the local/regional Church organizations).

And finally there are three or four 'hierarchical' collections or appeals, one or two for the regional church, Peter's Pence, and maybe one or two special collections for a one-off need.

So as a Catholic who does manage donations carefully, and also doesn't particularly enjoy money being used for things other than what it's supposed to be used for (the US Conference of Catholic Bishops say Peter's Pence is to "respond to those who are suffering as a result of war, oppression, natural disaster, and disease."), I don't currently donate to this particular cause.

The problem is, a lot of other Catholics (and this isn't an exclusively Catholic phenomenon) have a bit of a blind trust that all the organizations asking for their money are managing their donations well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coming from a religious (non-Catholic) background it seems obvious to me that tithes pay the salaries of people working for the church.

I don't think that people who are surprised by this are ignorant or that they should know better. Probably they just have a different background. But "non- Catholics misunderstand how Catholic church works" isn't exactly breaking news.

Unless there is a notable portion of the Catholic church that didn't already understand this? That would surprise me, but it's possible I'm out of touch.

As a Protestant I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to arguments that the size, age, and formal nature of the Catholic church might lead to otherwise innocuous funding structures being more problematic in practice. But if you want to make that kind of argument, I think that would need to be part of a much longer, more nuanced conversation, and it likely isn't going to fit into a single-page article.

</comment><comment><USER6> How odd to make out that this is irregular... it's called Peter's Pence as in collecting for the chair of St. Peter, i.e. the Pope. It's the one collection that's specifically for that, as opposed to countless other Catholic charities.

<comment><USER5> The USCCB website identifies Peter's Pence as helping the Pope "respond to those who are suffering as a result of war, oppression, natural disaster, and disease." (See [http://www.usccb.org/catholic-giving/opportunities-for- givin...](http://www.usccb.org/catholic-giving/opportunities-for- giving/peters-pence/)).

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that's interesting. Would that, in your experience, also tally with what the faithful think they're contributing to? I live in the UK and anecdotally would say that here it's traditionally understood to be a collection for the Pope to be used as he sees fit.

<comment><USER5> In the USA, that is the general perception, as that's how it's also stated on the little envelopes we get in the pew and the blurb pastors put in their bulletins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't apart of their budget go towards providing for the poor? Did the donators assume the money goes directly in hands of needy? Or was the act inferred to them?

</comment><comment><USER8> (couldn't read the article - firewalled)

Concerning Switzerland (other countries are probably similar, e.g. Germany) (from [https://awa.zh.ch/internet/volkswirtschaftsdirektion/awa/en/...](https://awa.zh.ch/internet/volkswirtschaftsdirektion/awa/en/standortfoerderung/lebensraum/_jcr_content/contentPar/downloadlist/downloaditems/2191_1503661875697.spooler.download.1503661503347.pdf/zuerichabisz_e.pdf) ):

 _When registering in the municipality of residence, you will be asked about your religious denomination. In the Canton of Zurich, members of the Evangelical-Reformed (Protestant), the Roman-Catholic and the Christian- Catholic Church are required to pay church taxes. Church tax is levied along with the income tax and tax on assets. It amounts to between 8 and 16 percent of the cantonal base tax ("einfache Staatsteuer") for members of the Catholic Church, between 7 and 15 percent for members of the Evangelical-Reformed (Protestant) Church and 14 percent for members of the Christian-Catholic Church._

As I already pay that, and as it's not a small amount, I was hoping that at least what I donate directly whenever I'm in the Church (the small box into which people put their donations - don't know how it's called), was used exclusively for the poor and not for something else?

<comment><USER9> The whole 'kirchensteur' thing has me pissed of to the nth degree. What other private entity has managed to get the government to do their subscriptions collection for them based on the amount the person earned? It's beyond ridiculous.

Churches should _pay_ taxes, not use the government to levy their tithe as though it is a tax.

In Germany and a bunch of other EU countries this phenomenon exists as well:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax)

The sooner this is abolished the better.

<comment><USER10> What's really wrong with that? The government already has the systems in place to collect tax so it sounds more efficient than trying to do it privately. In my country the tax system is also used to collect student loan repayments even though it's not tax, but it probably saves on administrative costs that way. Sure, student loans are also the government, not a private organization, but maybe it could be opened up to businesses as a way to collect recurring or income related payments! Imagine the accuracy of price discrimination you could achieve with access to that.

<comment><USER9> Separation of church and state is a thing.

<comment><USER11> In some countries

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some other charities ain't that top heavy as Catholic Church but on the other hand they do not last 2 thousand years.

<comment><USER13> It's a shame none of us will ever find out if the RCC will last another two thousand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want to feel good about dropping cash into the collection plate, never try to figure out the status of the Vatican's sovereign wealth fund, or assess the value of cultural artifacts kept in its private collections.

It's all taking from Paul to pay Peter.

<comment><USER9> They are a real estate company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> if they are running a deficit, maybe they can legitimately consider themselves poor? :)

<comment><USER16> As is always pointed out here wealth and income are two different things. Catholic dioceses are independent financial entities but even the nation-level parts of the Catholic church are fabulously wealthy with real-estate and art work and other assets of significant value.

The Catholic Church of Germany is worth an estimated $25,000,000,000. The Catholic Church of Australia is estimated to be worth around $20,000,000,000. Opus Dei which is a weird Catholic-supremacist group is worth $2,000,000,000 alone. The wealth of the Vatican is unknown and likely far far higher.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_organizatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_organizations#Religious_organizations)

<comment><USER17> To be clear this measure of wealth is based mostly on real estate and artwork, correct?

The Vatican itself runs a deficit every year and the budget is relatively small - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Vatican_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Vatican_City) \- as the article notes, it is plugged with donations from Catholics across the world via Peter's pence.

As a catholic I'd rather not have my church sell off all our priceless artworks and churches to private collectors and landlords...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's been going on for hundreds of years, is this surprising to anybody?

</comment><comment><USER16> They should distribute all those fantastic works of art and scholarship they've got locked up. Sell them to public institutions that will preserve them and show them to the general public.

I guess that's a bridge too far. It's more important to steal from the poor...

<comment><USER17> What exactly are the "works of art and scholarship" you think they lock up? The Vatican library and archives are open to scholars from across the world. And you can visit the churches like the Sistine Chapel to see the artwork - millions of tourists and pilgrims do so every year!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe they should bring back indulgences

</comment><comment><USER19> If true, its a despicable system and deserves universal condemnation.

In fact, it deserves legal action. What other charity is 10% efficient, and gets away with it?

<comment><USER20> For the record, I do NOT disagree with your sentiment, but because you asked: [https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=&bay...](https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=&bay=search.results&EIN=&cgid=&cuid=&location=2&state=&city=&overallrtg=0&size=&scopeid=)

<comment><USER19> Aren't many of those rated 0 because they don't report?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." - L. Ron Hubbard</comment>


Open Source Food Safety Model for Salami Production - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/undergroundmeats/underground-meats-open-source-food-safety-model

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty neat usage of a Creative Commons license for something that's outside the realm of software. It doesn't hurt that the kickstarter perks involve tasty salami.</comment>


Development at the Speed and Scale of Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Development-at-Google

<comment><USER2> That is, half of the files in their perforce are "touched in the last 30 days".

I was there, live in this presentation, more than a year ago, at Hyderabad and got this clarification from the speaker.

<comment><USER3> The title is a direct quote from the Google Engg. Tools blog post which was on HN recently - [http://google-engtools.blogspot.com/2011/12/bug- prediction-a...](http://google-engtools.blogspot.com/2011/12/bug-prediction- at-google.html)

<comment><USER2> True. Half the code can be anything. Half the characters in source, half the lines (Which seem more plausible since version control systems deal with line as a unit) or half of the files or even half the binaries. I'm just clarifying based on my own clarification, which half it is.

I don't think, this is any surprising at all. I believe the statistics would remain the same, for many companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> would they merge in head to their build before committing for code review?

<comment><USER5> Sorry misread the original post.

Before a code review you don't have to do a sync but its pretty common to sync frequently. I sync constantly as im developing because it's so easy. Occasionally i see reviews where i can tell that the person hasn't sync'd in a while and if i think it matters ill ask them to sync. This usually doesn't happen though</comment></comment>


Spanner's SQL Story - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/google-cloud/spanners-sql-story-79bda8bb632d <comment><USER2> This article should have been proofread properly, there are many grammatical errors and typos...</comment>


Bending a language to your will - <AUTHOR> http://bolddream.com/2009/05/25/bending-a-language-to-your-will/

<comment><USER2> The article is hardly about "bending a language to your will", and more about "why doesn't the sole vendor of my language implement features suggested by the greatest living language designer".

Alright, now that we have paid lip service to GLS, let's ask a question:

The author speaks of the lack of operator overloading in java, and my question is: why not use a language that allows you to add your own operators, better yet, one with _no_ concept of officially sanctioned operators? Remember, operators are just functions with syntatic-sugar (i.e. they're usually allowed to be infix instead of prefix.) why not work with a rich, expressive language that treats your "extensions" as first-class citizens?

It seems like the gripes of mainstream programmers about their tools boil down to two things: 1) lack of vendor responsiveness in implementing much needed features (which varies from one programmer to another, whence the lack of vendor response ;-) and 2) demand for solutions to augment, or make-palatable, a brain-dead design.

Don't worry about making the language "succeed" or "win" against the competition. If you're struggling with your tools, don't hesitate to look for better options.

Your tools should be so efficient that you no longer think of them consciously, much less inspire a long gripe in prose.

<comment><USER3> The problem with operators is that they have a binding strength. If you want the expression 7 + x * 4 to evaluate correctly operator * must be stronger than operator +. If programmers can define their own operators they'll either have to supply binding strength as a numeric parameter (ugly) or relative to other operators. For instance, you could have a list of operators per class type, where the first operator in the list is the strongest, and the last operator the weakest. You can then insert your operator in the "right" place in the list to specify the strength. This is a reasonable solution, but you'll run into different problems when two libraries each define operators on the same types. Either way it's not going to be an elegant solution.

It also is a problem on the grammar level. The expression 5--x is ordinarily parsed as 5 - (-x). But if you were to introduce an operator -- the meaning of that statement would change to 5 -- x. So the introduction of user defined operators can change the meaning of an expression.

Overloading and user defined operators is a hairy, hairy topic, and the "anything goes" approach is not necessarily the right solution.

<comment><USER4> Well, the main case in which people _really_ care about operator precedence is arithmetic. I'm not saying it's the only case it matters, but it may be worth having conventional infix arithmetic as a wrapped sub-language, or otherwise making an exception to accommodate it.

You can argue all you want about how order-of-operations makes things unnecessarily complicated in a parsing / syntax context, but if doing infix arithmetic in your language doesn't _just work_ (see: Lisps, or OCaml's float operators), many peoples' first impression will be that the language makes doing simple stuff hard.

<comment><USER3> > You can argue all you want about how order-of-operations makes things > unnecessarily complicated

That's not what I'm arguing. It's okay for that complexity to exist, I just don't think that exposing it to the end programmer is by definition a good thing. If you have a fixed set of infix operators then you can have a well defined grammar. If you have an extensible set of infix operators, then you need to make major changes to your grammar to prevent ambiguity.

The way infix operators work is a decision the language designer has to make early on. Bolting on a way to create new infix operators in Java (not that you're suggesting that) would be a disaster. I agree with you that sacrificing the "just work" aspect in the name of strong typing (OCaml) or in the name of uniformity (Lisp) is a bad trade-off.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you -- I wasn't refuting your point, but rather noting that it's worth considering as a major usability issue for the language, rather than strictly a technical decision. (I meant to say, "One can argue ...", but hadn't had my tea yet. I can see why you read it that way.)

I had Hexstream's glib "The solution is to use prefix notation. Problem solved!" reply in mind, actually: in that case, the language trades a syntactic ambiguity for _pissing off everyone who expects to do basic arithmetic without major problems_ , which will disproportionately be people new to the language.

Cavalierly dismissing this is hardly a solution. If I were new to Lisp, and trying to use it for something based on relatively simple arithmetic (say, totaling a categorized spending log), and a question about why "total + val" didn't work was answered with a digression about parsing, I would be pretty annoyed. If the person talking up Lisp were to then go into a spiel about how Lisp is great because you can extend the language to express things in their own terms _when I couldn't even use arithmetic_ , I would probably assume they were full of it and write off Lisp entirely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best key duplicators? - <AUTHOR> There's a bunch of sites/apps that will duplicate keys from pictures. I've had bad experiences with local locksmiths and want to try one of these. Anybody have experiences? What is pricing like for run of the mill keys? <comment><AUTHOR> Edit: Looks like there's only 1 service ([http://key.me](http://key.me)) and their app doesn't recognize the photos on my phone. Great.</comment>