Comment by mothballed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mothballed | Hacker News Reader

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It applies to public transit specifically because people have freedom of speech to be assholes on public transit. If I have an uber or a private taxi or even a private collectivo which is a private system that works like public transit in much the 3rd world, if I get sick of someone panhandling for the Nth time I can kick them the fuck out.

If you look at places with nice public transit like Germany or Japan, they have much weaker freedom of speech and assembly laws so they can enforce the kind of rules private enterprises do in the USA. Americans, and I agree with them on this point, aren't going to weaken civil rights just because it would happen to make public transit more viable.

Private transport just has a lot of opportunities to deal with security or annoyance concerns you can't address with public transit. I don't think the opposition is so much to mass transit, just public transit, if the USA had something like the jeepnees they have in the philippines where I could pay $.25 to go across town and the bus driver can shove the assholes right off he bus, it'd be awesome.

I don't think that's true at all. Police in NYC are able to remove passengers who are being a nuisance, there just aren't enough of them to police every car of every subway train.

In my experience (as an NYC resident) the people causing problems on the subway aren't just being assholes for the sake of it. They're homeless, have mental issues or frequently both. I suspect when you visit Germany or Japan you're seeing the effects of much more comprehensive social nets that actually care for these people rather than let them fall through the cracks and live on subway trains.

You don't need police to trespass someone in private transit though. You can just tell them to leave, and if they don't they can be made to leave (depending on the state). If you're familiar with bouncers you understand this function.

Expecting a police to be available to every transit disturbance, I agree, is not going to end with a functional outcome.

I'm not sure why there would be a distinction, really. The NYC subway has a specific transit police force who would act as the "bouncers" in this scenario. Either way it has absolutely nothing to do with free speech. Disruptive passengers can be ejected on public transit.

You don't see the difference between every driver being able to be a bouncer, and only sworn police being able to be a bouncer?

Private citizens generally can't trespass people on public property. You have to get a policeman and the policeman has to cite a specific policy or law they have violated.

The private system in this case is way more pragmatic since every driver that is already on the bus has bouncing rights.

I don't really understand what this has to do with the original discussion. You said:

> It applies to public transit specifically because people have freedom of speech to be assholes

My response to was to say I do not believe that is true at all. Passengers on public transit do not have freedom of speech to be assholes.

Well you just admitted it applies more to public transit because they need a police to kick them out. If I can be an asshole and no one is able to show up and stop me, I have effectively the freedom 'de facto' to be an asshole even if I do not have 'de jure' freedom to be an asshole.

Personally I'm not so sure police in NYC can kick people out for 1st amendment protected activity, which was what I specifically referenced the asshole activity being under the umbrella of. That was your assertion, that while I contested how pragmatic it might be, I never stated whether I believed it was true or not.

Drivers are given the latitude to kick passengers off public transportation for a range of reasons including violating the rules of conduct.

If I'm reading this correctly, you're talking about panhandling as an example of asshole activity that you believe is protected by the 1st amendment. Specifically, in NYC, it was ruled that panhandling is not protected speech on public transportation, see Young v New York City Transit Authority.

Of course, if the passenger refuses to leave or stop, the driver can't physically force them to and must escalate to a police force. Although, I imagine that's similar in many other countries as well.

I don't think it has anything to do with free speech laws, it's simply civics and the lack of it in American society due to a multitude of factors.

American society doesn't understand collectivism in any level, your country has been built upon individualism without much care for collective living, you just reap what you've sown.

Have you considered that America is a wealthy country, where anyone with a job even flipping burgers can buy a 150cc motorcycle and then take his girl on a date without a process that involves getting accosted by a paranoid schizophrenic?

You can basically buy a small motorcycle or scooter or fast e-bike on credit for the cost of maintaining a bus pass. It's only a rational choice for elderly or people with such mental or physical disabilities they can't maintain or operate similarly cheap alternatives. The end result is public transit gets dominated by hood rats, mentally ill, homeless, and a few elderly and people with disabilities, and due to the first amendment you can't stop the first couple classes from harassing the rest so as soon as a normal person gets their 50cc scooter or whatever similarly cheap other option fixed they go right back on that.

Sweden is also a wealthy country, even more here in Stockholm, people can lease cars for cheap, can buy scooters, etc., and public transport is still great: clean, reliable, covers a huge area since it's very sprawlwd, with almost no disturbances (in more than 10 years I can count on my digits the amount of times I've seen someone being mildly disturbing to others passengers). I only cycle and ride public transport here since I never cared (nor had to care) about getting a Swedish driver's licence.

The issue is not free speech, it's how your society educates people to be citizens.

If the US builds high density corridors supported by high frequency, reliable public transit connecting desirable destinations (housing with shopping, CBDs, etc), I'm willing to bet a lot that every social class will be represented on those public transit lines.

Yeah, great.. I was recently hit by a paranoid schizophrenic on a E scooter.. More logically he could have been denied access since he had plenty of public transportation options where he wouldn't have gone on to eventually maime people.

I don't have any reason to believe a paranoid schizophrenic capable of buying and maintaining a scooter is going to be any more persuaded to use public transit than anyone else. They are going to use alternatives for the same reason the rest of us do.

The ones using public transit are generally the ones with functional issues to the point they can't even get to that point of having a functional e scooter to crash.

Court systems persuade people based on weighing rights, necessities and probable harm. Reduce public transit and their decisions change, increase it and they may make incompetent pilot free zones.

USA has many successful "collectivist" examples in its history. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_durin...

I'm not sure that's quite the case, because as a country we do tend to be rather compassionate when motivated to do so. You frequently hear from travelers "Americans are the nicest folks you'll meet" and I generally believe that's true. It's not about individualism vs collectivism, but lack of empathy enforced through transportation methods that by design create a lack of social cohesion.

Scandinavian countries for example score much higher on the individualism scale, yet you don't see as much of this behavior as you might in the United States.

> You frequently hear from travelers "Americans are the nicest folks you'll meet"

It's fake niceness, it's the American way of being "polite", most times I interact with Americans it's pretty clear it's surface-level niceness, more like a theater than genuinely being it. To me it's quite grating and makes Americans feel untrustworthy.

> Scandinavian countries for example score much higher on the individualism scale, yet you don't see as much of this behavior as you might in the United States.

I live in Sweden and usually tell people that it's the most individualistic collectivisc place I've been to, people are individualistic in the sense of self-sufficiency but care about the collective if you are acting against it. In that sense we are much more collectivisc than the USA, whenever I've been in the US it's very clear that most aren't caring for the collective aspect at all.

Yes you're right comrade. If an American is ever nice just remember they're actually untrustworthy and it's all theater.

I know you are being facetious, but its hard to get past the uncomfortable theatre of 'this is all just fake nice for tips' if you are visiting from a non-tipping country.

Being nice and being empathetic are very different things. Niceties are protocol; you can be empathetic and considerate while displaying very different types of mannerisms.

Ok. Americans are nice, kind, empathetic, polite, and considerate.

Or is there more you want to quibble about on this topic?

I’ve found a good chunk of Americans to be vacuous, self centered and obsessed with performative individualism. Other people don’t need to make a show about their kindness.

Americans might be nice, but they're not necessarily kind.

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