Never Trust Bureaucrats (or Journalists) Always Verify
Don't Wait Until It's too Late
The Anointed Ones insist there be bicycle lanes on Convoy Ave in San Diego, per the Master Plan.
According to this Andrew Bowen of KPBS (the area’s local NPR arm) article, they're coming soon.
The main question is the details...
Bureaucrats forget they are public servants.
That is they work for you and me.
In California (much like Argentina) they seem to forget that simple fact, however and in reality they are far closer to thieves.
And we, who provide the real labor, give them more and more of our money each year yet get less and less. Many Californians seem to give a pass to this parasitic, rent-seeking nonsense. Especially the so-called educated, elite, “progressive” types.
author the the book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities , described this apathy earlier this year as “Big Lebowski Syndrome”But one of the biggest and least discussed reasons that Californians don’t demand change is what one might call “Big Lebowski Syndrome,” or BLS, for short. In the Coen Brother’s 1998 cult classic, the main character, Jeffrey Lebowski (played by Jeff Bridges), calls himself “the Dude” (“or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing”). The Dude captures the liberal slacker energy of many Californians when it comes to homelessness. His signature catchphrase is, “The Dude abides.”
When I would raise the issue of, say, people camping on sidewalks with my progressive friends in Berkeley, many would say the equivalent of, “Just take it easy, man,” another of the Dude’s aphorisms. When I raised a concern about a guy sleeping under a tarp on the sidewalk next to a children’s playground, a guy I play soccer with said, “Take it easy, Mike! He’s probably mentally ill!” When I pointed out that it was neither compassionate nor safe to let mentally ill people, or addicts, or both, to sleep on sidewalks, many progressives would just shake their heads. Take it easy, man
Shellenberger here is narrowing his focus mostly to the state’s notorious homelessness issue but it, IMO, extends to the state’s general issues with unhinged, unaccountable bureaucracy that’s cheered on both by a likely small, yet vocal portion of the population and the Corporate Press.
But back to bike lanes.
"Engineer" Brian Genovese of the City once used the Bicycle Master Plan as his "get out of jail free" card to justify the installation of the hazardous door zone bike lanes in Bird Rock. And such insults to the profession of engineering exists in the energy sector as well.
The local bicycling advocacy organizations did nothing to counteract this grotesque violation of elementary engineering ethics either. Instead they tried to rid their organization of those they deemed undesirable.
The main question here is: has anyone questioned the bureaucrats on these details?
One always should.
The mantra in open source software, Bitcoin, and similar communities is: don’t trust, verify.
Let’s consider applying that to all claims made by both bureaucrats.
Well, and the Corporate Press.
P.S.
FWIW, never assume that just because some journalists write in favor of bicycling that the won’t advocate for things that will do you harm.
