About 20% of drivers in the US are unlicensed. Car dependency means you can revoke someone’s licences all you like and they’ll still drive anyway (because they need to).
Your #1, urban planning with viable car alternatives, is necessary to make driving a privilege again. Until then people will drive, legally or otherwise.
To be fair, that’s a quote from a custom bike shop with a particular and specific style. It’s akin to showing up at a high end European car dealer and asking for a Ford Focus. You’ll be laughed off the lot.
Sorry about your injury. It’s a bummer to lose out on something that brought joy.
I’ve talked with the shop folks about checkout notes. They said they can try to pick out but cannot guarantee it. For the most part it’s highschool/college kids at the front desk and will grab the first sandal for an ordered SKU.
It’s further complicated by their logistics. The last time I was in the shop there was only one pair of sandals in the model and size I wanted, and the source models were all mixed together (no made-in USA wall; that wall was a new special release). If I wanted a different color, then I’d have to buy a foreign made sandal. The quality is still great, but I like to support locals if at all feasible.
My trick is to make a trip to the factory store. I have family in socal and the sandals last so long that I just buy a spare pair to keep in my closet once every year or two. More hassle, but it comes with the benefit of great beaches and downtowns. ;)
All that said, they do maximize their US production. The reason they’re limited in capacity is the glue that’s used. VOCs in the glue are restricted in quantity and hence they can only make so many sandals a day before they run out of their daily limit of glue. The family made a choice to expand their brand and the only way to do that was to build another factory. China makes sense in this context.
I love my Rainbows. They’re great.
FYI, most of their sandals are made in China now because of their limited production capacity.
You have to look for the “USA” mark in the middle of the sole at their factory store for their locally made sandals. Online orders don’t allow you to specify a country of origin.
Funny, I just watched Evan Edinger’s video on this tunnel. It’s shocking how poorly thought out it is.
Keep fighting the good fight, Londoners!
I’m out of the loop. What’d WotC/Hasbro do this time?
Frankly, if we’re going to be fucking with people’s property rights anyway, I think it would actually be better public policy to confiscate the whole car.
I agree and would happily vote yes for any measure adding such language to our state and federal laws.
Property seizure, especially with cars, is already a big part of many (all?) state’s law for unpaid taxes and debts. All we would need to do is tack on speeding ticket/points/whatever to allow the state to quickly and easily seize cars.
When does it end?
When we can get our act together to pass and enforce such laws. Until then I’ll take any legislative actions that restrict car drivers.
We can be angry about proposed laws not going far enough, but trying to stop good progress in the name of perfection will allow drivers to continue terrorizing the streets. This is especially true in purple and red states, but it’ll be a fight everywhere (California is desperately in love with cars).
That has never been a right, except on private land that the driver owns. Driving in public has always been a privilege.
That’s why I pointed out a doctor and other civil servants have the same power. We can argue about semantics, but the answer remains the same: a judge can revoke your driver’s license and is empowered for much more, like confiscating your property, sending you to jail, and removing your ability to vote.
I highly recommend reading the link I left in my earlier comment. It seems you haven’t read it. Although perhaps I should include a trigger warning: traffic violence by a driver in a brand new truck who had their license revoked multiple times by a doctor and a judge.
When does it end?
While I agree in principle, this change is a win and I hope more states legalize this method.
We give breathalyzer lockouts to DUI convicted citizens. Why? Because they’ll drive anyway. You can pull licenses all you want, but when driving is required to live, the people will drive. And they’ll do it even when they’re a raging alcoholic.
A speed monitor / limiter is a tool for a judge to use. Judges don’t have the power to pull city, state, and federal money and force building better street designs. I don’t believe they should have that power as political issues should not be addressed by a single branch of government. That’s how we got here after all: cities dictating minimum parking, civil engineers pushing terrible designs and refusing to change them, fire departments mandating minimum lane widths, etc.
However, judges do have the power to remove a person’s property and privacy rights. Ergo a good judge will restrict a convicted person’s rights in a way that could feasibly prevent societal harm.
Judges can remove a person’s right to drive too, as can doctors and other civil servants, but that usually ends in death. Literally.
These tariffs are not brand specific. Replace “SILCA” with your preferred brand and you’ll see similar results: products not available in the US, moving factories outside of the US, and increases to retail prices without new features or better quality.
You’re correct.
"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 6.35 oz bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profts in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.
And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon."
That department has been RIFed.
I wanted to upvote this twice. Instead I’ll leave this comment.
Great rant. Would read again.
Aquaman.
Broadcast TV is already going that way. ATSC 3 requires an internet connection to get decoding keys. For your protection, of course.
That’s a great question. My guess is the bandwidth comes from bonding those extra modes and from the lower signal-noise ratio. That lower SNR means they could modulate with more sensitive but faster modes.
If you like the idea of taxing rent, then you definitely need to read up on Land Value Tax. It ignores all the complexity of trying to figure out the economics of specific practices (it works for retail, commercial, sports areas, etc) into taxing the rent value of the land.
It also encourages building and maintaining housing when compared property taxes (those discourage improvements as improvements increase the landlords taxes).
Perhaps today you’ll also learn about Hellschreiber. Old tech is really clever!
Yep. My consumer concerns are less of retail sticker-shock than people not realizing how dependent they are on consumer surplus. Even a few thousand a year in tariff related expenditure can be quite impactful on comfort.
Sticker-shock will happen with the tariff-adjacent removal of de minimis. Right now it’s China, but it was threatened against Canada and Mexico too (officially delayed, whatever that may mean). A $50 per-item charge is going to be quite a surprise to many.
E.g. if Canada is going to be levied like China, then my plan of getting a pair of oversized Cam-Lock kits for my Canadian-made Arkel bike panniers is gone out the window. There’s no way I’ll buy small parts when the total package cost is the same as getting a whole new set of panniers.
Correct, tariffs are not a consumption tax. That fact doesn’t mean prices will not increase, nor does it mean that small increases don’t have a big impact. We, the common people, will have have to go about our lives with less. Maybe wear your shirts an extra day because laundering more regularly consumes more soap. Perhaps it’s going without avocado on your lunch sandwiches. You’ll still have shirts and sandwiches, but you certainly wouldn’t be as clean or as filled. (See the “surplus” chapter of your high-school/undergrad econ books.)
They do, if you know where to look.