Just spitballing: Defund the meter maids to de facto legalize ignoring the meters. Or tell the cops to look the other way while everybody smashes the meters up with sledgehammers. Or ban street parking to screw the meter company.
I've skimmed through the contract. The city is contractually obligated to have the meter maids but I think they could tell them to stop writing tickets. Problem is the city needs the money. There's a parking app now so smashing the boxes won't work. Anyway no matter what you come up with there's a clause that basically says "if the city does anything that causes us to lose money they have to reimburse us" so we are well and truly fucked.
The city can get out of it. They could just flake out of the contract. The company is actually holding the risk because they think they can debt trap the city. They are holding the dragon by the tail and think they are in control.
If the city just flakes on the contract and lets parking be free. Then everyone will be happy. The company will fight back in the courts and the city can just grind down that process for as long as possible. It doesn't have to settle, it can investigate back and do all sorts of things to cause trouble.
If the city just ignores the contract, it will be sued. You can't delay a court hearing forever. Eventually it would have to pay all the lost revenue plus interest plus court fees. That's a terrible idea.
Sorta related: A community near me recently experimented with "automated" parking enforcement. Basically, cameras around a parking space detected if the same car was parked longer than was paid for, and if so, the system fired off a ticket to the registered owner of the vehicle (by OCR'ing the license plate). I heard a few rumors regarding why the experiment stopped:
- people were really PO'ed for getting parking tickets in the mail, days or weeks later.
- cheating husbands were getting caught by their wives: "What's up with this parking ticket from downtown when you told me you were visiting your mother in Big Bear?"
- vandals (heroes?) were spray painting the cameras, then parking for free.
Can't they be creative and put all of them in some place where they won't be used? Example, the emergency lane of highways, roads where nobody parks, etc.
The parking meter company would have had to employ some astonishingly incompetent lawyers if they had left such an obvious loophole in the contract text.
It's the exact same thing as with scientists. Any time some lay person on HN or Reddit or wherever asks about some research or a new phenomenon or whatever (textbook example: dark matter) a question of the form "but have they considered <some very obvious idea>?" the answer is "yes, they have because that's their job and they're not stupid!"
But actually I think the contract accounts for this though, my memory is there's some kind of year-over-year value promise. (Plus inflation!) If true, moving the parking meters to a low demand location means the city would have to pay the difference in potential revenue, on top of the relocation costs.
If the people think the above is a good idea, they can also ignore the contract. It is not like there is some kind of supernatural power that enforces contracts.
That natural power is just people. Ignoring the contract is only significant if people choose to stand by the contract. But if the people believe what's contained in the original comment is a good idea, why would they stand by the contract? Without a supernatural power to uphold the contract, and without people to uphold the contract, there is nothing.
Because of the rule of law? A court does not have the power to annul a contract simply because they think it was a really bad idea. Although I guess there ought to be some sort of a escape hatch for forced renegotiating of contracts that are as detrimental to the society at large (ie. the taxpayers) as this one. I have no idea whether there is one.
The rule of law is just people. It is only as good as their willingness to uphold it. If the people believe what is told in the original comment is a good idea, why would they uphold the contract? It is not like there is some supernatural power that enforces contracts.
You can say that about anything. All laws are just enforced because people agree to do so. What you’re proposing is literally anarchy, and nothing good comes from that.
As much as people might be annoyed by their city’s foolish agreement, most people nevertheless believe that a deal is a deal, because that is fundamentally what our society is based on. If you abandon that, you revert to the tyranny of the strongest, and that’s no good for anybody except the strongest. And to head off the argument that strength comes from the people, well, history has shown time and time again that that’s only true in societies where a deal is honored as a deal; in the vast majority of cases, a deal doesn’t mean anything to those who wield absolute power.
Oh, please. You are proposing that people just ignore a contract that they don’t like, because, according to you, if enough people do so there are no consequences.
> I am surprised I have to say this, but it is best to read the comments before replying.
You’re not serious here. You know full well I read your comments; to pretend otherwise to prove some weird point is downright insulting. I assume you now intend to play word games about the meaning of “propose”. I have no interest in debating an obvious troll. Kindly take your semantic quibbling elsewhere.
> You are proposing that people just ignore a contract that they don’t like
Not even close. In fact, even if somehow there was a misinterpretation earlier, I just got finished explicitly clarifying that this is not the case – literally stating "I am not proposing anything." The only possible way you can still hold onto this is if you haven't read the comments. Read the comments first.
True but there are many other contracts that are critical to our daily functioning.
If the city honors this terrible beast of a contract according to the rule of law, that bodes well for all the good contracts the entire government of the States has.
Smashing parking meters in some "clever" attempt to evade the contract already doesn't bode well for other contracts. Once you've gone that far down the rabbit hole, the contract already means nothing.
Obviously in the real world it is unlikely that the people would think that the above is a good idea, but if they did then the contract is only as worth as much as the paper it is written on. It can simply be ignored. It is not like there is some kind of supernatural power that enforces contracts.
One of the US’s biggest assets is its trust-ability. People around the world clamor to do business in the US, and creating outsize demand for the US’s currency because of it.
Obviously, the people of the US can choose to reduce that perception, but there are tradeoffs. See Somalia and their currency’s purchasing power at the other other end of the spectrum.
Obviously the people wouldn't actually think that smashing parking meters to renege on a contract is a good idea, but, as we said, if they thought it was a good idea then it wouldn't matter if the contract states something about not smashing meters. There would be nothing to enforce the contract. It is not upheld by a supernatural force.
