Regarding the forcing issue, I understand we’re talking about more than just mass transit here, we’re talking about city planning. But I still don’t agree that there’s anything wrong with that. This discussion is about more than just mass transit or city planning to me. Here’s the heart of my disagreement:

I reserve the right to promote any public policy that I believe would improve society, even if it is unpopular. If 20% of the population is able to push through public policy that 80% don’t agree with, I blame the 80% for being apathetic, not the 20% for supposedly being arrogant.

So I fundamentally disagree that Ygelias drawing a map of how he thinks and ideal community should be laid out is arrogant. In fact, I wish more of us took the time to think about the problems our society faces and come up with possible solutions. City planning already exists. I cannot go out and start building roads and houses wherever I want. I assume city planning people already take into consideration what is best for the community when deciding what to build were. So what Yglesias is arguing for is not some new authoritarian forcing committee, but just that we modify what we consider to be best for society in order to take into consideration current and future challenges that our communities face.

And you continue trying to police what others are allowed to say and how they are allowed to say it even at the same time you claim very broad expressive rights for yourself. Very presumptuous of you. And hypocritical too.

Anyway, I have explained the reasons for my criticism of Yglesias’ post and the tradition from which it arises. The fact that you find such criticism intolerable while you find even the most extreme and off-topic criticisms of the other side of the ideological spectrum permissible is a problem on your end, not mine.

“latent authoritarianism that forms the core attitudes of the people who want to tell us what is good for us”

I am still not OK with this broad judgment. Some people are capable of rationally feeling that some people can’t have some choices, without having some latent kernel that lies within them.

If the approach is, “let’s build mass transit more broadly and make sure it is clean, safe, and reliable so that people will want to use it and build communities around it”, that is a positive approach that respects individual choice.

If the approach is, “let’s ban the construction of any community that fails to contort itself around our existing dirty, unsafe, and unreliable mass transit system”, then I will maintain that is an arrogant and disrespectful way to approach the issue.

From my perspective, Yglesias and some of the commenters on this threat appear to be leaning more toward the latter approach than the former. Note, for example, that on his map the mass transit line does not vary between his “bad neighborhood” and his “good neighborhood”, the organization of the community’s roads and houses does. Hence, my criticism of their underlying authoritarian ideology. (And that is true regardless of whether you want to snark about “scary” words in your continuing effort to muddy the topics of threads.)

The reality is that mass transit is sometimes avoided because it is dirty, unreliable, and/or unsafe. Instead of dealing with those concerns, people like Yglesias start thinking in terms of social engineering and mandates. I don’t think it is unreasonable to characterize the direction of their thinking as “forcing” even if it hasn’t yet arrived at that point.

I assume conservatives are not upset about mass transit-backing people winning democratic elections and then having the power to tilt city planning towards it. I think they are a bit miffed with the notion that mass transit is NEVER wrong and should ALWAYS be chosen no matter what. Whether liberals have actually had a record of forcing mass transit onto people and cities despite it not being the best idea to pursue, I do not know.

“Every public policy changes the incentives that would exist if they were absent.”

I guess that some conservatives are dumb enough to disavow the idea of mass transit even when appropriate, and some liberals are dumb enough to try and create mass transit even where it is not the best solution.

One question I have: several comments on what I guess is the conservative side of the debate have argued that liberals are seeking to “force” them into particular lifestyles. I assume that they mean that certain city planning decisions to favor mass transit would alter the make-up of the city and make a suburban lifestyle more difficult. But I don’t understand how this is forcing a particular lifestyle on you. City planning is nothing new. Couldn’t you just as easily argue that those who oppose mass transit in favor of more roads are “forcing” a particular lifestyle on those who would prefer mass transit?

Or are you referring to more sinister version of “forcing” that I’m not getting? Arguing that public policy will make your lifestyle more expensive is not sufficient, in my opinion. Every public policy changes the incentives that would exist if they were absent. And so every public policy encourages some behavior and discourages others.

And populism isn’t all flowers and sunshine either. The ignorance of the mob can be just as dangerous as the convictions of the ideologues. I’ve been particularly distressed at the degree to which populist rage during this economic downturn has caused movement towards deeply dangerous policies, including efforts at unconstitutional bills of attainder. And the populist ideal that we can simply take away everything from the rich to give free benefits to “the people” is a proven disaster for organizing economic policy. Even de Tocqueville saw that one coming, and with his experience during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, he knew the dangers of out-of-control populism first-hand. I am surprised that an apparently well-educated person such as yourself would seem to be unaware of those dangers.