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Comment by sevensor | Hacker News Reader

My 96-year-old grandmother has macular degeneration in her eyes and neuropathy reducing sensation in her feet. She can neither see the road very well nor feel the pedals accurately. The state of Florida just renewed her license for six more years.

I'd say it's irresponsible of her to keep up the license, except she has no options. The town she's in recently made it illegal for residents of her park to drive their electric carts across the street to Publix or down the sidewalk to the doctor's office. Those are the only two places she needs to go. Some of her friends who had given up their licenses in favor of electric carts are now SOL. They have to rely on favors to buy food and go to appointments.

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> The town she's in recently made it illegal for residents of her park to drive their electric carts across the street to Publix or down the sidewalk to the doctor's office

This right here is the problem - how? Why? Doesn't this violate disability discrimination law? I thought seniors were quite an effective voting bloc in cases like this?

Everybody in her park is furious about it, and you'll see people risking tickets. No idea about discrimination law. Supposedly it was for safety -- old folks in golf carts were deemed a hazard to pedestrians on the sidewalks. So they incentivize them to drive cars instead, at much higher rates of speed. Seems crazy to me too.

They aren’t road legal and aren’t insured.

The UK exempts them from these requirements, so you'll occasionally see people driving them along the road. At 4mph. I'm not sure whether this is a good idea or not.

When my grandmother became too old to drive safely, we sold her car and had her use the proceeds for cabs to where she needed to go. When that ran out, her kids and grandkids covered the cab fare. It wasn't all that much more expensive than the car itself. I can imagine it being a hardship, though, for those with less means.

There should be county sponsored transportation for medical appointments. Also it seems uber could work?

Uber has a lot of negative press, but if there's one way for them to turn all of that around, it's to pander to the older generation and to provide senior citizens either heavily subsidised or a subscription-based system.

They won't do it because it'll hit their bottom line, but being the ride option of both the young AND the old would go a long way towards repairing their reputation.

More importantly, old people actually vote in local elections.

Absolutely. They vote in numbers, they put money towards traditional media, and as such they have a lot of power.

Regardless of their "political" power, it'd just be a nice thing to do. Getting old sucks, and if Uber could do something as simple as making sure that an older person doesn't have to sacrifice their freedom then it's something a lot of people would get behind.

Historically churches and other community groups, including the Masons, would help in this regard. It appears as if this gone now. For example, black churches use to have get out the vote buses that helped people register. They would work with their paritioners and the large community to make sure that people could get to DMVs or wherever the locality required people to sign up. It appears like that is largely gone. Masonry and church attendance are on the wane. The government as god seems to have grown in its place. Unfortunately, many of the new adherents don't understand community nor civics. It will be interesting to see what happens as millennials gain more power.

I feel like there's a void to be filled here. Something that allows people to build a sense of community without all the make-believe crap.

There might be. I don't know what it is.

As a former Mason, the teachings are symbolic. Few people think they are historical. People don't really do symbolic anymore. We do TV.

Not be too much of a curmudgeon, but I don't think our society at this time has much of a philosophical bone left in it. As a result, we mostly reflect on ourselves as narcissists. Look at Facebook. It's use is a known cause of depression. We feel bad because others make their lives look so perfect or interesting. We get in flame wars on political topics. We no longer appeal to traditions like Locke or Rousseau. We don't reason about things. We feel and are offended.

If what I said is even mostly true, how do you build a society on that? At this point we've stared too long into the abyss. Perhaps we need the "make-believe crap" to bind us. Perhaps its not crap, but rather what the world is and our ignoring is leading to our own demise?

Believing it is what got us here in the first place.

Belief boosted community. Black churches, unified by a belief in the intrinsic value of humanity, got people to vote, to march, and to change. Whites, Asians, and others, unified by a common core belief pushed against the violence and racism of their day to improve the lots of their fellow man. At the forefront was not a scientist, not a technocrat, but a preacher, surrounded by preachers.

At its zenith, as with all things lofty, religion started to fade. In its setting the government rose. It took up the mantle of diety. It became father. We live in its world now. We are poorer for it.

Government takes power from the people and apportions it to its acolytes. Organization for its own sake is the status quo. To streamline government is to unemploye millions. Our calf requires total subservience with little benefit.

Perhaps we’ll find a way to control our new leviathan. Maybe we can yoke it to till the soil of communal need. We could even do that by trying to preserve the dignity of man. To do that we might have to abandon our new truth that life is an accident. That man has no more importance than a rock. This might be a noble lie. We need something for we have only straw to grasp now handed to us by our new religion postmodernism.

There are quite a few countries with much lower rates of religious affiliation than the US, and decent societal values. NZ, Aus, Nordics, Swiss, Germany etc. And even if they have non-trivial rates of religious belief, its not the kind of fundamentalist and extractive religion that grips the US. If anything, the decoupling of religion from official institutions in the US has given it free reign to accumulate ever more soft power and wealth.

Those countries usually have "stronger" Governments too, with stronger social safety nets, and healthcare systems that don't try to shaft you for $40k when giving birth.

More to the point, someone should visualise the relationship between rates of religiosity and quality of public transportation, across a range of geographic areas. I can imagine the general trend, though there may be some outliers like Poland and Italy.

Content aside, this text sounds like a street-preacher in Battlestar Galactica or The Expanse.

Do you have any more writing on this subject? I have been working on an essay discussing the lack of this philosophical backbone in our ideologies we build up - the new religion of the intellectual liberals of today (traditional dictionary definition of liberal, of course). I can feel a similar emotion in your writing.

See also _The Metaphysics of democracy_: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/02/the-metaphysics-...

thank you for sharing this.

Mostly it’s from high school philosophy classes and YouTube. Watch enough Jordan Peterson and YouTube will feed you more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson

It does have a similar ring as Jordan Peterson, you are correct.

Could be the "make believe crap" serves a useful function as social lubricant and adherence factor.

Perhaps have more obvious and better make believe (flying spaghetti monster)?

I think that's what Universal Unitarianism is meant to be - I certainly know atheists who have joined one for the community and felt welcome.

You mean Unitarian Universalism? :-)

> There should be county sponsored transportation for medical appointments.

How's your experience been with that kind of service? There's a reason lawbreaking octogenarians still ride golf carts down the sidewalk to get to the doctor's office, hoping they won't get ticketed.

> Uber.

I'm sorry. Did I mention my grandmother is 96? Ninety-six?

> I'm sorry. Did I mention my grandmother is 96? Ninety-six?

HN forgets that not everyone has coastal tech money a lot.

That is true, but periodic Ubers are also way cheaper than owning a car. If you only need to travel once a week it would likely be far cheaper than car taxes, gas, and maintenance

There are also a lot of old folks where Uber is not.

The average social security pensioner makes like $1200/mo. Even with subsidized housing, not much cash for a smartphone.

1200/mo is about what I took home for a year after college. It wasn't great but I was still able to afford a budget smartphone to use things like a GPS. I do understand the position of senior who are not doing well financially and I think we should support them, but supporting them doesn't mean they get to live the exact same lifestyle they became accustomed to when they were younger while the rest of society has to deal with reality.

I've got my 96-year-old grandmother using Uber - https://www.gosmartride.com :)

It could also be worth looking into GoGoGrandparent.com! 24/7 operators and they automatically monitor and file disputes if drivers go on joy rides. (Full disclosure: I work there.)

Yes, but you or another relative could order the uber for her. Are you sure there isn’t county based medical transport? Also since she is 96 she might be able to get away with an ambulance! It may take someone advocating for her but it’s not disallowed de facto.

Even if we want to preserve people's independence, we all tend to go blind (and deaf) eventually. As people get older, there will inevitably be a larger population that needs to be driven.

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