![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Shocking Controversial Political Opinion
What with the Great Health Care Debate in full swing, the role of government is receiving much philosophical attention (accompanied by hollering and raving). As such, I feel like it's about time I weighed in on this mighty subject. My opinion might shock and scandalize you.
Let's talk about parking meters. Some cities will ticket you for using broken parking meters. I think this is selfish and mean spirited of them and contrary to what government should be doing.
Parking meters are a community resource. It is logical for the city to "tax" them to provide for their upkeep, or even turn a profit off them to fund other community functions. However, when the city forbids their use solely because it's unable to collect a fee on them, the city is of course denying the use to the public of a commodity it wouldn't cost the city anything to allow the use of. Basically its like saying "If I can't have (some money from this) no one can (have the use of it)!!" ...which you'd tell the children on the playground is immature.
So cities should not spitefully deny the public use of things just because the city can't extract money from them.
And the City of Huntington Beach in particular can suck it.
This is not an analogy to the health care debate. This is just about parking meters. :*
Relatively Unrelated Photo of the Day
Pelcat has nothing but icey stares for this kind of behaviour.
And now when this imports to facebook I'm going to do that thing where you tag a bunch of people who aren't in the note just so they'll read it, just to be saucy. Muahahaha.
no subject
Lots of stuff got paid for in quarters and dimes, as I recall.
Took them an incredibly long time to change the locks on the meters.
Then there was the ubiquitous pay parking lot with the board with a bunch of slits on it, you'd fold up your two dollars and put it in the slit, the guy would come around and whoever hadn't paid, he'd attach a 55 gallon drum to your axle.
There were a couple of problems with this. One was that anyone and a pair of hemostats could get enough money off one of those boards to buy whatever it was that he wanted to buy, and the other one was when you came back and someone had done that and now you have a 55 gallon drum.
Fortunately, I had a pair of boltcutters. You never know when you might need a pair of boltcutters.
.
no subject