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Comment by giaour | Hacker News Reader

I have personally watched very rich people spend 30 mins circling and looking for a meter spot in Manhattan, which saved them ~$15 at a cost of ~$50 worth of their time. (I was also in the car having my time wasted, so the true cost was higher.)

People are not good at making rational decisions when hit with nominal fees.

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Parking meters in the USA are criminally underpriced.

In SF we have parking meters that adjust to meet demand. I paid $5 for an hour once, and was happy to pay that to get a spot right where I needed to be.

And thats how you know it's priced correctly: you find the spot right where you want to be. (RIP Donald Shoup, you sweet king)

What's crazy is that I doubt the people who live in the area understand why it's so expensive there. It's right next to a pet hospital. Let me tell you, if you're taking you injured pet in and out of a vet clinic, you're going to be willing to pay a lot (as if $5 is "a lot," lol) so the injured pup doesn't have to move very far.

That's exactly the reason why pricing should drive services. The underlying reasoning is so complex, that most of the time you'd never actually be able to understand why things are going for the rates they are.

Oh no no, our planning process knows that people that live in a place know everything about it and have 100% perfect insight in how to best use the place. There's no need for things like "markets" where opinions can be expressed outside of the highly anti-democratic political process of giving voice only to those who show up to "public" meetings and spend hours waiting to scream at commissioners.

How rich are they if their time is worth $100/hour?

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