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Comment by kaizenfury7 | Hacker News Reader

The author starts off by asserting that Ford never said what is popularly thought he said.

And then he starts his discussion with his own assumption: "Here are some of the things people would have responded with if you asked a mid-late 19th century city planner what he needed with regards to equine transportation:"

I think it would have been a stronger argument to just list a few sources of information.

But besides that, I think the article raises some interesting points. For me, I don't want a faster car, I want fuel efficiency. I want a car that doesn't require too much maintenance and repairs.

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Well, I made the assumption on the springboard of the World Urban Planning Summit of 1898, where horse manure was discussed for 3 of the 10 days with international city planners from all types of cities.

Granted, it's a thought piece on the abuse of "faster horses" myth that is often used to subtly circumvent user research and experience discussions.

But even today, like you say, no one says they want faster cars. I think today people might say they don't want a car at all, or a affordable Tesla, or if you go back 15 years, we thought it was a Segway.

> For me, I don't want a faster car, I want fuel efficiency. I want a car that doesn't require too much maintenance and repairs.

If we're talking about cars, my version of "horseshit" is traffic and parking. I do not want to drive in traffic, and I want parking to either be a non-issue or abundant.

Congestion-based pricing and paid parking. Or do you also want free?

I think the point is that I don't really care how it's done, I just want it to work. I'd love to pay for road use, up to the point that transaction costs swamp things (like when people have to stop or slow down when going through toll booths). Hopefully it'll be solved through pricing. Maybe there's a technological solution (potentially if short-distance air travel were cheaper you could imagine that a 3D space with very little infrastructure to maintain might solve at the very least the traffic problem).

Googling isn't immediately getting me anything and I don't recall the source, but I used to read a lot of urban planning books and I recall seeing a quote from that era to the effect of "Mud! Mud everywhere!" and complaining about it. "Mud" was a euphemism for horseshit. So that was a real complaint of the time.

Though the internet did not exist at the time so I don't know if it is even possible to find quotes/resources about it online. That may be part of why he kind of speculated rather than listing a few sources of information.

It might have become sensationalized over the last 115 years, but you can google the Urban Planning Summit of 1898 to see where it all originals from. The sentiment. I did have to make up and just guess at what real manure problems would be besides "faster horses", but they at least make some sense and paint a mental image. I'm no historian =D

Here's a classic piece of data journalism on the topic:

'This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted... “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”'

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-...

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