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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Often what people consider BS is simply ignorance on the part of someone making that judgement. There’s a reason people are paid to ‘stand around’ on construction sites etc.

Post COVID supply shortages shows the critical importance of many seemingly BS jobs. Similarly a spike in cancer deaths showed up when hospitals delayed less critical procedures.

Rather than BS what’s actually going on is more often chasing diminishing returns. Half the effort may be spent chasing 1% better outcomes as long as the difference is worth the expense.

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It also assumes that everyone has the same wants in life. Yes, if we all lived the lifestyle of monastic monks, and gave up many luxuries than yeah, sure, we could live on very little levels of employment. The problem is that people want different life styles than that. It's like when the fuckcars crowd tells everyone they should just bike to work even though there's plenty of people that have deal with mobility issues, children, winter, not being in their 20s and etc. etc. One size doesn't fit all and something that one person thinks is useless and can be cut out is a thing someone else can't live without.

> if we all lived the lifestyle of monastic monks

Is asking Americans to have less than one car per adult family member really that much? Or to start buying smaller/more efficient cars instead of the monstrosities that pass for "Utility Vehicles"?

> children, winter, not being in their 20s and etc. etc.

Two kids, way past my 40s and biked year-round in Germany. Do I still use public transport and taxis? Yes. Have I spent less in a year on public transport and taxis that I would have spent on parking and car insurance alone if I wanted to have my own car? Also yes.

I must drive on a state highway to bike to where the company bus picks me up, despite being about 2 miles away. It's extremely hilly around here, so ebike is virtually mandatory. The "bike lanes" are a foot away from 30+ mph traffic on poorly-lit roads. Via public transit, my nearest friends are over an hour away in one direction. My family just bought a second car and it's freeing to be able to divide our kids and do things separately, instead of one parent being trapped near home.

You are describing a problem of poor infrastructure, not of reduced living standards due to material/monetary constraints.

Which is somewhat ironic, given that the US is the richest country in the world yet the people seems to be okay with such a miserable way of living.

I was responding to "Is asking Americans to have less than one car per adult family member really that much?". In my case, yes, it is.

And yes, I agree it's pretty miserable.

What happened with the car sharing programs in the US? Isn't ZipCar an option anymore?

None near me, but I know many went under.

I am not a fan of the fuckcars crowd because I think their abrasive approach is doomed to fail. At the same time, I'm sorry but I just don't buy that there is a human right to a car centric lifestyle. I'll take it more seriously when we seriously address the many problems caused by excessive car reliance. To name a few: severe injury due to collisions, obesity and other health problems due to inactivity, noise and light pollution, destruction of natural habitat/migration patterns as well as mass roadkill, fragmenting of communities, destruction of neighborhoods, the loss of childhood independence, the loss of mobility for those who cannot safely drive, the subsistence trap for low income workers who rely on their cars to get to work and thus can't save any money, depletion of fossil fuels and the list goes on...

And, yes, of course there are also benefits. On the net though, I think mass private vehicle ownership is one of the worst mistakes we've ever made although I don't blame any individual for their choices. The reasons people use cars are rational but the externalities of mass car ownership are significantly and ultimately I believe unsustainable and undesirable. At the same time, chill, nobody is coming to take your cars or your guns.

> "It's like when the fuckcars crowd tells everyone they should just bike to work even though there's plenty of people that have deal with mobility issues, children, winter, not being in their 20s and etc. etc."

But those are reasons to be against car-centric design[1], and in favour of public transport - the disabled, children, the elderly, those with slowed reaction times, the poor - can't actually drive, or safely drive, or legally drive, or afford to own, cars. If cars are the only option for transport then life can only be good for the healthy mostly-able-bodied car driver[2].

> "One size doesn't fit all."

In all too many places, the only size available is 'car'; that you rally against bikes - and implicitly in defense of the status quo - while reminding people that "one size doesn't fit all" is dischordant. Can we have two, three, four sizes then? Walking, bussing, biking, tramming, driving?

> "is a thing someone else can't live without."

It's not an accident that you can't live without your car. Los Angeles had the largest electric tram network on the planet, and car companies used shell companies to buy them up and scrap them. Car companies spend a lot on advertising and propaganda to sell the idea of car ownership as a kind of American Freedom, and various zoning laws came to mandate car parks around businesses - pushing everything too far away to walk. It's not all conspiracy, but it's certainly not an inevitable "the way things must be". Arguing that 'fuckcars' people shouldn't want bikes, because some people can't live without cars, is reinforcing exactly the kinds of things they are angry about. That having to have a car to live, is an unquestioned default.

[1] not cars necessarily, but urban planning, laws, town and city layout, spending priorities, traffic priorities, where all the levers have been pushed fully over to cars.

[2] and being stuck in traffic on an ugly stroad which costs vast amounts of taxes to maintain and is dangerous to drivers and pedestrians, with car fumes, is not a particularly good life for those people either.

I don't think, and in general believe people label, not things like construction work or care givers as BS jobs.

BS jobs are the ones that only exist to support hordes of people having jobs; middle managers, service industry (all the downtown office worker coffee/lunch/bar/cleaners/maint). And most retail.

Service industry jobs like bartenders are directly doing stuff customers actually want and are willing to pay for.

If that doesn’t make the cut then 100% of jobs are BS. You don’t “need” a farmer when you can just plant your own food etc.

Cleaners are a BS job? They're an unpleasant one, perhaps. But that's not a BS job. (For one thing, they often are the ones that restock the toilet paper in the office bathrooms. Think about the implications of that job no longer being done. If we're going to have offices at all, that's not a BS job.)

If you're on this board you must be in tech and you should be well aware of the sea of BS jobs out there.

I'm in medicine.

You meant vast and deep oceans of BS jobs, fueled by Big Tech (the very rich real bad guys).

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