Colored Glass With One Flaw

“If you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary. I ain’t giving up. I swear.” 

That’s the 72, the most-ridden bus route in the entire state. It’s also the most-delayed bus route in the entire state, because half of its run is up and down 82nd Avenue, which is historically a high-traffic and high-crash “orphan highway”.

See, in its early days, 82nd Avenue was a state-owned highway outside of town – OR 213 – designed to carry high speed traffic across the state. Eventually the city of Portland expanded across it and it got renamed to 82nd Avenue, but the state continued to own it and manage it as a highway. The surrounding city neighborhood was heavily Asian and Asian-American, known as the Jade District, full of housing and restaurants and schools and community centers, but even though this vibrant community existed all along 82nd Avenue, the state continued to manage it as a highway, not as a neighborhood street. Unsurprisingly, it became the deadliest street in Portland, so many pedestrians were killed while trying to cross it. If you look at heatmaps of crashes in the city of Portland, there 82nd Avenue is, bright as day, lit up brighter than almost anything else on the map.

For twenty years, activists in the Jade District tried to get 82nd Avenue transferred from state to city authority, so that it could be managed as a street that ran through a neighborhood where people live, rather than a state highway. It was a major effort, which finally required getting an Asian-American caucus elected both to city government and the state legislature, but they finally did it! 82nd Avenue is finally owned by the city! And the first thing the city did–in consultation with the Jade District activists!–was put in a slew more lighted and signaled crosswalks. Already they’ve started building other things: medians, to slow traffic down and give pedestrians a safe place of refuge when they’re crossing the street. Protected bike lanes. And there’s plans for giving the 72 bus – the most-ridden bus and also the most-delayed bus in the state! – its own dedicated transit lanes, so it can run on time, without being delayed by traffic.

This is a major win, and it will absolutely save lives. All because two generations of neighborhood activists worked for it, and worked for it, and worked for it, and worked for it.

Or as someone wrote on this bus stop for the 72:

there's obviously a difference between say, putting a poster up on a public noticeboard, airing something on the radio, and making posts on a internet blog with a niche audience that you have to actively follow to see the content of, but all of those fall under the word "public"

Some desperate remnant of his soul knows what he needs. As soon as his debt is cleared, he goes on to live what many would call an utterly charmed life: working no more than 20 hours a week, travelling and spending time with friends (which he, at $150,000 a year and no mortgage, has ample money to do). He has a loving relationship also.

But his brain is so rotten that he cannot understand happiness anymore. He is incapable of conceptualising it other than in money.

A man who has everything except the ability to feel it.

How poetic.

Which means that when he says he regrets the months he didn’t pick up more hours to earn more money, what he’s describing here is boredom. He’s doing it in the crassest, shallowest, most income-obsessed and unattainable for most of us way possible, yes. But this man is expressing that once he achieved a certain financial goal he relaxed, enjoyed himself, got bored, realized on some level he was understimulated, and then started working more hours to meet whatever stimulated activity threshold he personally needs. 

This is infuriating because this man experienced the counter-argument to that nonsensical talking point that if we meet people’s financial needs with a universal basic income they’ll grow lazy and won't do anything. 

Anyone trying to develop $200,000 in passive annual income is not working three minimum-wage jobs to live paycheck-to-paycheck. This man’s basic financial needs were met. Working more hours to make more money is just his own personal code for ‘I still needed to use my mind to do things’ (using what might be the only metric of personal achievement he might actually have). This man lived the argument for universal basic income and I genuinely don’t think he realizes that. Once his basic income needs were met he still needed to do things to keep himself stimulated and engaged with his own life.

On June 8th, 1795, Louis Charles de France, the second son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, died while imprisoned in the Paris Temple. Louis Charles had been kept separated from his family for two years and suffered from ill health which was exacerbated by periods of severe neglect and abuse.