Just spitballing: Defund the meter maids to de facto legalize ignoring the meters. Or tell the cops to look the other way while everybody smashes the meters up with sledgehammers. Or ban street parking to screw the meter company.
If the city just flakes on the contract and lets parking be free. Then everyone will be happy. The company will fight back in the courts and the city can just grind down that process for as long as possible. It doesn't have to settle, it can investigate back and do all sorts of things to cause trouble.
- people were really PO'ed for getting parking tickets in the mail, days or weeks later.
- cheating husbands were getting caught by their wives: "What's up with this parking ticket from downtown when you told me you were visiting your mother in Big Bear?"
- vandals (heroes?) were spray painting the cameras, then parking for free.
Why would they be heroes for unfairly preventing others from using the parking spaces?
It's the exact same thing as with scientists. Any time some lay person on HN or Reddit or wherever asks about some research or a new phenomenon or whatever (textbook example: dark matter) a question of the form "but have they considered <some very obvious idea>?" the answer is "yes, they have because that's their job and they're not stupid!"
But actually I think the contract accounts for this though, my memory is there's some kind of year-over-year value promise. (Plus inflation!) If true, moving the parking meters to a low demand location means the city would have to pay the difference in potential revenue, on top of the relocation costs.
As much as people might be annoyed by their city’s foolish agreement, most people nevertheless believe that a deal is a deal, because that is fundamentally what our society is based on. If you abandon that, you revert to the tyranny of the strongest, and that’s no good for anybody except the strongest. And to head off the argument that strength comes from the people, well, history has shown time and time again that that’s only true in societies where a deal is honored as a deal; in the vast majority of cases, a deal doesn’t mean anything to those who wield absolute power.
I am not proposing anything. I am surprised I have to say this, but it is best to read the comments before replying.
> I am surprised I have to say this, but it is best to read the comments before replying.
You’re not serious here. You know full well I read your comments; to pretend otherwise to prove some weird point is downright insulting. I assume you now intend to play word games about the meaning of “propose”. I have no interest in debating an obvious troll. Kindly take your semantic quibbling elsewhere.
Not even close. In fact, even if somehow there was a misinterpretation earlier, I just got finished explicitly clarifying that this is not the case – literally stating "I am not proposing anything." The only possible way you can still hold onto this is if you haven't read the comments. Read the comments first.
If the city honors this terrible beast of a contract according to the rule of law, that bodes well for all the good contracts the entire government of the States has.
Obviously in the real world it is unlikely that the people would think that the above is a good idea, but if they did then the contract is only as worth as much as the paper it is written on. It can simply be ignored. It is not like there is some kind of supernatural power that enforces contracts.
Obviously, the people of the US can choose to reduce that perception, but there are tradeoffs. See Somalia and their currency’s purchasing power at the other other end of the spectrum.