Roody

No. I still think you're weaseling. And I still hope you'll answer the question. It was something you brought up in the first place, and I asked for more information because I'm genuinely interested in the subject. Follow-up questions are allowed, and when you won't answer them, people naturally will think the worst. But asking in the first place--that was because I wanted to know, not because I wanted to upset you. But I'm pretty sure that I'll never ask you anything else, now that I know how upset you become. There are plenty of people who have been to China and don't mind answering questions about it.

Machka 

Um ... no******************************???

Bandera

Actually you did not ask "the question":

My reply to clarify a vague un-answerable "question" :

With no clarification forthcoming the "answer" remains: It Depends.

Your lack of a more detailed or different "question".

Once again the "answer" to a simplistic and undefined "question" about complex systems as previously noted is: It Depends.
I do not think that "We can understand nuance and shades of gray" at all since essential terms of the "question" remain undefined and metrics to measure them are absent.
A thoughtful and balanced time phased analysis of China's transportation network using TCO methodology I prefer would be a PHD project, not a posting on BF.

Roody, you never asked me any "question" at all, just tried to give me a hard time. Weak effort too.

If you and Ekdog are fishing for "Old China w/ mandatory bicycle transport: Good. New China w/ private automobiles: Bad." you are not getting it from me since there is no simple "answer" to comparing evolving complex transportation systems that fits the official LCF dogma.

Man-up, of course you meant to be insulting, see below.

That's more honest, but still really weak and with the backpedaling quite weasely.

-Bandera

cooker

That may have been true in the Mississauga or those days, (if that's where you lived then) but the Mississauga of the present is going through a planned period of intensification and urbanization, and it's likely that in the Mississauga of the future there will be lots of people with more than one job all within car-free commuting distance. Certainly this is true for lots of young people in Toronto. It's not ideal that they they can only find part-time work and have to have more than one job, but at least it's do-able without a car for many.

cooker

Can't find the quote but I will keep searching, You said something along the lines that if your employer sometimes asked you to leave your desk and run an errand you would see it as a good health-promoting activity.

wolfchild

The problem is that a lot of these jobs which are within a short commuting distance here in Mississauga don't provide a living wage, many of them are almost minimum wage or part-time. It's not easy to find an ideal well paying job within an ideal commuting distance. It would be very difficult for a car-free person to juggle two different jobs, unless those two different jobs are close to each other and along the same commuting route. Logistics and work/life balance would be difficult.

kickstart

In this harebrained scheme where the the privileged would work "low level jobs", they would certainly take all the attractive, decent paying jobs leaving only the miserable, low paying jobs for the "low level workers" to fight over.

It all seems like nothing more than a spiteful scheme motivated by jealousy to take the "privileged" down a notch or two, and disdain of the "low level" to further isolate them from polite society.

Walter S

I'm not getting why we have to have more than one job. I have just one. I can't see anything wrong with that.

wolfchild

You're doing good, nothing wrong with one job. I too like working only one job. Having more then one job has a negative effect on work/life balance and majority of people prefer working at just one job. It was originally tandempowers idea that everybody should be toiling at multiple jobs and using a bicycle to get to all those different job locations.

cooker

Maybe I was thinking of this post where you thought it might be a good idea to have a printer assigned to you that was far from your desk. But I thought there was another one about running errands too.

cooker

It's not their responsibility, but it is in their interests. Employers make choices based on projected profits and productivity, and there is a trend for them to relocate to urban centres and lobby for better public transportation and maybe even bike facilities, because they benefit from a fit and relaxed workforce, not a gridlock-stressed workforce.

see eg: https://www.wsandb.co.uk/wsb/feature/...ycling-to-work
https://wfpl.org/louisville-engineeri...cing-bicycles/

Roody

I'm going to backpedal a bit more and apologize to you for the snideness of my remarks. Of course, if you think a question is poorly worded or poorly conceived, yuo have no obligation to answer it. I shouldn't have put you in the position of having to explain this. Again, I'm sorry.

Bandera

I accept your apology, we are good.

-Bandera

tandempower

You shouldn't think in terms of status. The point is people could have more varied work routines. They could do unskilled labor on monday and skilled labor tues-thursday, and then do unskilled labor on friday again. What would be negative about that?

It's sort of arbitrary whether you define your work routine as existing of one or more 'jobs.' Let's say you were an Optician at Walmart and you alternated between a few hours of shelf-stocking or cashiering and a few hours of optician work. This would mean hiring more opticians, which would help an optician to get a job closer to home and thus live car free, reducing traffic congestion on the roads.

Given more flexibility in job-placement, people could coordinate their different 'jobs' in ways that allowed them to only work one job per day or coordinate different shifts at different workplaces within a reasonably close distance to allow for a short bike ride after lunch.

The question is could it ever be possible to coordinate work schedules in this way, with employees' health and happiness as important factors in how managers organized their work schedules?

Machka 

A) Was that really the original question?

B) Haven't we talked this topic to death already? Do you really not get that we like the way it works now ... where we go to our single job ... the job we've chosen, the job we're qualified for? And that if we want to pick up a second job, or work part-time at two different jobs, we are free to do so?

See Post 93

tandempower

It was a rhetorical question in reference to the rest of my post.

I was just responding to three different recent posts about it.

If you have some other ideas for lessening traffic congestion, why don't you post them? You mentioned biking and LCF generally, but you didn't address the reasons biking and LCF are currently failing to eliminate/relieve all traffic congestion.

Since one of the problems is long work commutes, I raised mixed work schedules as a potential solution. Do you have any ideas about how people can shorten their work commutes short of getting a new job or new residence closer to work?

Machka 

See Post 93


See Post 118


And now the topic is just repeating itself.

kickstart

How about just getting on with one's own life instead of trying to mold everyone else's to conform to some preposterous fantasy novel story line.
Civilization isn't static, it will continue to evolve for the better..........The wild, unworkable schemes of megalomaniacs are not needed.

gregf83 

Because, for many, unskilled labour is boring and uninteresting. Why would someone want to spend 40% of their time doing something they don't enjoy?

Machka 

And similarly, for many, a professional office job is boring and uninteresting. Why would someone want to spend 60% of their time doing something they don't enjoy?



Why not just have a system where people can apply for the job(s) they figure they might be skilled at and like to do? .............. Oh wait .............. that sound familiar, almost like a system I've encountered in real life .............

I-Like-To-Bike

There is no reason except for deluded fiction writers to address such a "failure" or the reasons for it.
AFAIK, nobody, except YOU, ever suggested in this thread that biking and Living Car Free will eliminate/relieve all traffic congestion.

kickstart

And all the people who's abilities and resources limit them to such work will be left with only few bottom of the barrel devalued opportunities to fight over. TP's scheme is dependent on simply ignoring this issue.

kickstart

..........Or a fate worse than death.

That I would joyfully sit in traffic for hours to avoid.

Walter S

Telecommute.

cooker

There is some potential negative, in that if you have a highly skilled worker like an engineer, both they and society have invested a lot of time, effort and money into that training and both they and society want to maximize the payback. So if you expect the engineer to operate a jackhammer one or two days a week, you are not optimally utilizing that investment. Plus they wouldn't do it as well as an experienced jackhammer operator. Specialization of labour increases efficiency.

The counterargument is that if the engineer mixes some mindless physical work in with their highly specialized intellectual work, it might keep them healthier and more productive when they do focus on actual engineering. But it wouldn't need to be anywhere near 40% of their work week.

So as usual there are pros and cons that have to be weighed.