ajsadauskas

@ColeSloth "Your entire population has no city over 100,000 people that doesn’t live near the coast"

Canberra's population is 456,692, but it's only the national capital.

Ballarat's population is 117,240.

Bendigo's population is 103,818.

Albury-Wodonga is around 100,000 and growing.

"and almost all of those are in the southeast and east side of the country."

Perth, Adelaide, Mandurah, and Darwin say hi.

"All you need to get around by train there is essentially one track shaped in a funny looking circle."

You mean to reach all the major coastal capital cities?

You do realise Australia is roughly the same size as the continental US, right?

And it would have to be a bloody funny looking circle to have Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, and Albury-Wodonga.

All with over 100,000 people or more (in the case of Melbourne and Geelong, much more).

All have a direct rail line with regular passenger services to Melbourne, as does Gippsland and Shepparton.

By the way, Dubbo has a population of 43,516. It's inland, and 392 km (244 mi) NW of Sydney. You know what else it has?

Trains: https://transportnsw.info/regional/book-sydney-to-dubbo-by-train

Bonus fact. You know what Alice Springs, in the middle of the continent with a population of 25,912 and nothing but desert for miles around has?

Trains: https://www.journeybeyondrail.com.au/journeys/the-ghan/

C'mon son, you can do better...

@exocrinous @Longmactoppedup In a number of key industries — supermarkets, telcos, banks, airlines, electricity — Australia doesn't have genuine competition.

Instead, we have two to four big companies that own the industry and basically act as a cartel.

They saw the supply shortages and skills shortages, and jacked up their prices.

Then when those shortages cleared, instead of lowering prices, they kept raising them and raked in record profits.

All this led to skyrocketing inflation.

Here's where the Reserve Bank comes into play.

Back in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was a number of years where there was a wages spiral.

Basically, this was where prices were rising, so unions demanded and received higher wages, which led to companies putting up prices, which led to higher wage demands...

The thing that eventually ended that cycle was the Reserve Bank lifting interest rates to 17% and causing a recession.

At its simplest, this caused people to lose jobs and stop demanding wage increases and businesses to stop raising prices.

The Reserve Bank acted like a wage spiral was happening again, and put up interest rates.

But this time, it didn't work particularly well, because in most industries, wages weren't rising.

And because housing prices were one of the root causes of the inflation, and higher interest rates made it more expensive to borrow to build houses, it actually made the problem worse.

Instead, people just cut their spending right back.

Which brings us to the almighty catastrofuck of an economic mess Australia's in right now.

At the same time, the same sorts of issues are happening across the world.

There's global skills shortages. Housing prices are skyrocketing across the world. Inflation is surging, even as supply shortages clear. Wage growth is stagnant and isn't keeping pace with the economy.

So in the US Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, and house prices in — say — New York are hitting record highs. Inflation there is surging, but wages are stagnant.

And that's the simple version — there's even more to it, but I'm already on the second post.

It's basically the end product of 30 or 40 years of short-sighted economic policy.

We simultaneously need more skilled migration to fix this mess, but it will also make the problem worse.

The Reserve Bank is lifting interest rates to slow inflation but it's also making the problem worse.

Consumer spending has fallen off a cliff and simultaneously inflation is running rampant.

Households are in a recession while the overall economy is overheating.

And the same things are happening in China, in Europe, in the US, in Canada.

So even if we can solve some of these issues domestically, some of these issues have a global dimension.

In short, it's a mess. (2/2)

@exocrinous @Longmactoppedup I think there's a few big pieces of this puzzle that you guys are missing.

Housing is too expensive.

Why? Australia doesn't have enough housing.

To build more housing, we need skilled tradies, structural engineers, etc.

But there's a problem.

Australia has skills shortages in those areas.

Okay, so we'll bring in more skilled migrants to fill those skills shortages to build more housing.

Those skilled migrants need somewhere to live.

But there's a problem.

Australia doesn't have enough housing.

So we need more houses for the skilled migrants we need to build more houses to fix the problem of not enough houses.

It gets worse.

For around two years during the pandemic, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade needed more staff for things like hotel quarantine and border pass applications.

So DFAT basically took all staff off examining skilled migrant visa applications.

The problem is that when the borders reopened, there was a roughly two-year backlog of skilled migrant applications.

Also, Vlad decided to invade Ukraine, which meant most Western countries blocked Russian exports.

The problem is that a lot of — for example — the timber for the formwork used in concrete came from Russia. So the countries that had domestic supplies were hoarding them, while the rest of the world was scrambling to find alternative supplies.

So developers were waiting weeks or months to hire tradies, the tradies would show up on site, the parts they needed still hadn't shown up because of the supply shortage, so they'd go home. A few weeks later, the parts would show up, but the developer would then need to book the tradies again...

Russia is also a big oil and gas supplier, so as it was shut off from the world market, energy prices surged.

So building projects were being delayed, costs were increasing, new housing supply was delayed.

But wait — what about our higher education system? Why are there skills shortages to begin with? Why aren't our TAFEs and unis producing enough skilled workers?

Well, starting with the Keating government and accelerating under John Howard, the federal government discovered that full fee paying international students are a great way to fund higher education without raising taxes.

So higher education went from primarily training students to fill local skills gaps to exporting education.

Student migration dried up during the pandemic, but it kicked off again just as border restrictions were lifted.

Those students need housing.

At the same time, delays in processing skilled migration visas meant there were massive skills shortages in construction. And supply shortages.

It still gets worse. (1/2)

@ColeSloth @epistatacadam I noticed you didn't respond to @LovesTha after they mentioned they're from Australia.

Yeah, Australia is "built different" to the US in that we have less than 1/10th the population in a land mass roughly the size of the continental US.

Yet despite that we still somehow manage to have better public transport than most of the US.

Long commutes? One of my colleagues at my current job travels from Bendigo to Melbourne at least two days a week. That's a 186 mile (300 km) round trip.

In a previous job, one of my colleagues commuted from Katoomba to Sydney. You wouldn't have heard of it, but it's a town of around 8,268 people in the mountains. A 126 mile/102km round trip.

And in my previous job I semi-regularly had to commute from Sydney to Newcastle. That's 324km (202 miles).

The difference is that all those commutes are by train.

Yes, we have towns like Katoomba in the mountains with less than 10,000 people that have a half-hourly peak and hourly off-peak train service: https://transportnsw.info/documents/timetables/93-BMT-Blue-Mountains-Line-20230708.pdf

Why not drive? Well, because the (by world standards) slow trains from Bendigo to Melbourne travel at 160 kp/h, compared to 110 kp/h at best for driving: https://vicsig.net/index.php?page=passenger&section=rollingstock&subs=railmotors&rmtype=VLocity

(Of course, you won't consistently get those speeds driving, because of traffic jams.)

So how can Australia do it while America can't?
Because the US federal government has literally spent trillions of dollars subsidising roads, subsidising the auto industry, and subsidising fossil fuels.

Because governments mandate that business owners subsidise drivers by imposing minimum parking requirements.

Because zoning codes explicitly outlaw mixed use development and higher density developments in many parts of the US.

Because US governments at all levels have imposed this on its citizens for the past 70 years, while hardly investing in public transport infrastructure.

@joannaholman @degoogle Good point.

If it were run as a private company, I think the solution might be just to pay actual humans as employees.

If it's a community-run project, the challenge would be to come up with a robust moderation system...

@bsammon And this Archive.org capture of Lycos.com from 1998 contradicts your memory: https://web.archive.org/web/19980109165410/http://lycos.com/

See those links under "WEB GUIDES: Pick a guide, then explore the Web!"?

See the links below that say Autos/Business/Money/Careers/News/Computers/People/Education /Shopping/Entertainment /Space/Sci-Fi/Fashion /Sports/Games/Government/Travel/Health/Kids

That's exactly what I'm referring to.

Here's the page where you submitted your website to Lycos: https://web.archive.org/web/19980131124504/http://lycos.com/addasite.html

As far as the early search engines went, some were more sophisticated than others, and they improved over time. Some simply crawled the webpages on the sites in the directory, others

But yes, Lycos definitely was definitely an example of the type of web directory I described.

@pendulum_ @Zagorath Clearly you didn't read the article.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp wanted a law that says Facebook and Google have to pay News Corp for the privilege of allowing links to News Corp websites.

So Google has to pay News Corp for the links to News Corp in Google search results.

So Facebook has to pay News Corp for the links to News Corp sites that appear on Facebook.

The previous Australian federal government, under the previous Prime Minister Scott Morrison, gave him that law in 2021.

Google and Facebook struck deals to pay News Corp and other Australian media companies.

Facebook says it won't renew those agreements.

Yes, it is a stupid law. News Corp and other media companies profit from the traffic they get from Google and Facebook.

Look, here's the relevant part of the article right here:

"The Australian government wanted local publishers to benefit when links to their news content appeared on sites like Facebook and Google.

"It argued that there was significant advertising revenue being generated from this "premium content" and media organisations were missing out on their cut.

"So in 2021, the Morrison government introduced the News Media Bargaining Code, which aimed to address "bargaining power imbalances" by requiring tech giants to pay for displaying news on their platforms.

"Under the code, the government can "designate" digital platforms like Facebook and Google and force them into mediation to set terms for a revenue-sharing deal.

...

"Instead, Meta and Google struck a flurry of independent deals with news companies, all of which are due to expire in the next few months.

"The deals, with organisations including the ABC, Nine and News Corp, have brought around $200 million to the sector, according to the government.

"Now Meta says it's not renewing the agreements because news isn't a priority for Facebook users and it wants to invest its money elsewhere."

@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 I think we're broadly on the same page. It's definitely not a hard line in the sand at my end.

I tend to view transport and urban planning policy as being deeply connected. There's a number of tools in that policy toolkit that should ideally be used together to reduce car dependency. And pricing is one of them.

And I get the impression that for a number of pragmatic reasons, there might be some differences in what good policy looks like in the US versus Australia.

As an aside, country areas are an interesting side case. I think in many country areas, it is possible to get much better services than currently exist, but that's a different discussion.

@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 Here's where there is a big difference between the US and Australia.

The wealthiest parts of Australia's capital cities are in the inner-city, which already have access to good public transport.

The poorest areas tend to be the outer suburbs, where public transport is a half-hourly bus, and cycling involves navigating a six-lane stroad with no protected bike lane.

It's the opposite to the US, where in many metro areas the wealthiest white residents live in outer-suburban gated communities and the (often Black) working class have traditionally lived in the inner city.

The wealthiest suburbs in Melbourne are served by the (mostly inner-city) tram network. Toorak, Brighton, Kew, Camberwell, and increasingly Fitzroy.

And the poorest tend to be in the outer suburbs.

There's a whole history of why it played out differently to the US.

But the big factor for why someone lives in, say, Carrum Downs in outer southeast Melbourne (where the local public transport is by bus) is because it's all they can afford.

In the US, where the wealthiest people live in the outer suburbs, raising gas prices to encourage them to move to the inner city where there's better public transport would probably work.

The difference is that in Australia the wealthiest people actively avoid the outer suburbs.

It's the working class who tends to live in the outer suburbs.

Most Carrum Downs residents would gladly choose to live somewhere like Brighton or Toorak with good public transport. If they could afford it.

That means there needs to be decent alternatives to driving if you're going to increase the cost of driving.

@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 The answer is definitely not never.

I'm all for increasing the cost of driving, including fuel excises. And taxes on cars. And potentially congestion taxes.

But most people — at least in the mainland capitals — should be within comfortable walking distance of a public transport service that runs every 10 minutes first.

That's not currently the case.

Price mechanisms aren't as effective as they could be at changing behaviour if there are no viable alternatives in place.

So my answer is ideally petrol prices should be increased at the same time as decent bus services are rolled out across the capital cities.

And I think where public transport services are already at a decent standard, or as services are improved, we should be rolling out more localised disincentives to driving, such as pedestrianising streets.

We should be doing that right now.

@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 The really big missing piece of the puzzle in Australia — even the major capital cities — is the frequency of suburban bus services.

Here's the timetable for a typical Melbourne suburban bus route: https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/stop/15701/allambanan-drdorset-rd/2/bus/#StopPage:::datetime=2024-03-02T21%3A00%3A00.000Z&directionId=193&showAllDay=false&_auth=f308870091d891540e8a71291593644d70d97c0fb737e7cc29342c6a7802e96d

If you want to financially penalise people for driving, I think at a minimum you need to get that service up to a 10 minute all-day frequency.

Regional and rural transport services are another weak spot as well.

And I think you're more likely to get the results you're after if the increase in driving costs (however it's implemented) comes either at the same time, or after services are improved to a reasonable standard.

@owen @heatofignition @mondoman712
"Also this isn't a difference between Australia and the US. The US also has a federal gas tax."

Okay, I stand corrected on this point.

But my core point remains.

Look at the oil price shocks of the 1970s, early 2000s, and two years ago.

Just increasing the price of driving alone doesn't create sustained modal shifts, unless public transport and cycling are viable alternatives.