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Comment by niccaluim | Hacker News Reader

It's the correct legal analysis, sure, but does it encourage considerate behavior? Does it help or hurt the goals behind zoning laws and traffic engineering? I think it's one-sided to write the whole problem off this way.

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The implication that people who have more knowledge about a local area have more right to publicly maintained resources than those who don't is even more troubling. Maintaining unequal access to public resources is a form of corruption, discrimination, or both.

A traffic engineer whose designs are only effective when there's information asymmetry is either

A) dealing with impossible project restraints/requirements B) terrible at their job

I agree that all information should be free for everyone, but your assessment is too harsh. Impossible projects are probably pretty common in many dense cities.

100% agree, it's usually not the fault of the engineers. But in a better system, they wouldn't face political pressure to tell people that indefinite growth without inconvenience or long term investment is possible.

Not entirely sure I agree with that. Roads are not paid for by "everyone's taxes." Many roads are paved/maintained using funds provided by a local municipality. Thus, by that definition, in many instances, a "local road" is indeed paid for and, in a sense, "owned" by the residents who pay taxes to the local municipality that uses their tax dollars to improve said roads.

It is entirely one-sided to side with the general public, and I am firmly for looking at the broad scope. The US is stuffed with local control, and it's produced a global minima as people attempt to optimize for local maxima. Time for that to end.

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