Is the trap that Ohio sucks to live in or anything more specific?
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Housing might be cheap but…
- Car centric design (sprawl)
- Shitty weather year round (hot and muggy or just snowy)
- Pollution
- Terrible local cops
- Low worker pay
- Gerrymandering
- Nothing to do
- C o r n
When I was an exchange student there, it was so painful. In my country I could walk places... Like, damn, going to the store to buy a snack or something. In Ohio I needed to ask someone for a 30m ride to the nearest location. It was just farm after farm after farm.... Damn... It sucked.
That's the same for most of US though. Not Ohio specific. They don't know how to City over there. Just parking lots connected by highways and the buildings needed to support the parking lots.
It's worth actually doing the comparisons to see whether car-centric living is a net positive or negative in practice in particular situations. Urban density should be a pure benefit, with economies of scale making everything cheaper. Unfortunately, cities in practice have some downsides that reduce that benefit. One major one is that centralizing services means that it's more useful to try to get a cut of the cash flowing through the institution, and so some of the gains get siphoned off. As a trivial example, exactly zero percent of car commute expenses go to a bus driver's union.
Okay, so for your example, the money you'd spend on buying and maintaining a car, and all of the gas you have to buy to fuel it is clearly orders of magnitude more than the percent of you bus ticket price that goes to paying the percent of the bus driver's wages than then goes to their union dues. Like, hundred or maybe even thousands of dollars per month vs. a few cents a month. Many people have already done the math many, many times, and it always works out to be a lot cheaper to have dense urban areas. It's not even close in any scenario. This is not a new idea, and there already over a century of data all coming to the same conclusion.
Also, just the idea that unions are "siphoning off" money is really creepy. They are providing a very important service, and exactly zero percent of those union dues go to lobbying by oil companies to continue using fossil fuels even as global warming is becoming our present, not just our future. It is a much better use of funds than, for instance, paving 2/3 of the real estate in every city in America until we have 4 times as many parking spots as we have cars. Which is a thing we have done.
Many people have already done the math many, many times, and it always works out to be a lot cheaper to have dense urban areas.
I just moved from a dense urban area to a rural area. Taking everything into account - yes, really - things are unambiguously cheaper here. That's a common result in the US. If you want to blame a single thing, I'd go with lack of housing supply in cities due to exclusionary zoning, but I hit some other weird figures like municipal water+sewer being more expensive than a well and septic system (again, yes, taking everything into account including construction costs).
You are correct, but we're not talking about urban vs rural, we're talking about dense urban with mature mass transit vs car-centric suburban sprawl. There it is unambiguous that dense is better, and can it be done well enough to even be cheaper than a lot of rural communities. There are no cities in America that are currently doing that though. They vary from pretty bad to terrible, and the ones that are only pretty bad are preposterously expensive due to crazy unmet demand for cities that don't suck. That's not a city problem, that's a North America problem.
I understand you're trying to be nuanced here. I think that realistically things are so very skewed toward suburban and exurban development, car centricity, that any movement toward urbanity is better at this point in time.
It's really bad to support specific policies just because they sound like a kind of policy that you broadly support. I personally broadly support pro-density policies. But many specific policies that are proposed either have fatal flaws or are useless as long as a century worth of accumulated NIMBY policies exist that super-redundantly ban the sort of density increase that would actually be useful.
And to be clear, only allowing density increases without cars would be exactly the sort of nonsense restriction that would be a fatal flaw, at least in the US.
When I vote, I read up on the candidate’s positions. I make sure to do my research for decisions I make in the real world. When I’m on Lemmy? I’m going to stage a broad vague opinion because the level of nuance at play here is generally not attainable when not speaking about a specific local policy
That discussion tactic results in groupthink to a level that even coherent positions on the broad issues get obscured by conformance to factional stereotypes.
I think if someone is that unable to think critically, my comments on Lemmy are not going to have much impact. You don't need to throw a thesaurus at me either, friend. I assume everyone I talk to on here is at least as smart as me or smarter, no need to prove anything. :-)
I love the dichotomy of different kinds of states that tell technical truths about moving there. Ohio: I'll tell you the truth because you actually don't want to move here, trust me. An unnamed western state: weather or animals will killl you. Twice (please don't move here, because it's awesome without you here).
Also sometimes the sky touches the ground and removes your house from existence
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Sadly accurate.
State politicians are getting worse and worse
Only thing I care is, gigabit internet
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Do Not Let Your Children Play In THe Corn.
That’s…that’s not what children of the corn is about.
OUTLANDER!
Don't correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe that word is ever used in the short story, only the movie, SO THERE!
He wants you too, Malachi
The cost of living in Ohio is very good. The housing market is a bit of a mess in general but definitely in Ohio. It's a seller's market that still hasn't recovered from the pandemic.
Unless they're talking about Children of the Corn (which is a short story, not a book) I don't know what King book they're referencing. And as a Grade A certified pedantic asshole SHORT STORIES DON'T COUNT.
Adding to that; doesn't "Children.." take place in like Iowa or something? I can't think of a King book that takes place specifically in Ohio, but I also haven't really read his stuff the past decade
I was thinking Desperation but that was Nevada
I'm not a big fan of Stephen King but I love ass books. So conflicted.
The thiccer the better
Oh yeah, I love them thick and spread them... pages.
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I hear Cleveland is nice
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I love how Ohio has become the go to meme state
Meh, Ohio is for emo kids.
No, Ohio is for lovers. 🖤
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No, Ohio is on fire
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He wrote many of his books in Bolivia/Colombia... in his nose.
Ohio? Where the fuck is that, somewhere in Mexico?
ohayo gozaimasu bitches, I'm moving
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