Also of note: I've updated the Consensus Big Board twice now — from 103 to 110 to now 125 boards.
As always, the Consensus Big Board itself is free. But I'd encourage people to subscribe to support the work and subsidize the cost of acquiring the data.
www.wideleft.football/p/2026-nfl-d...
As someone who doesn’t actively follow the NBA and knows next to nothing about the current state of the league: I’d bet $20 it’s the Lakers.
The 2026 RSP Pre-Draft Publications Is Ready for Download!
Matt Waldman’s 2026 Rookie Scouting Portfolio (RSP) is ready for download. If you pre-ordered, go to mattwaldman.com and use your login and password to download the pre-draft publication. Here’s the “tale of the tape for this…
April fools?
Political cartoonists have been doing this one since Trump’s first term. Here’s one from Tom Toles for the Washington Post in 2017: theweek.com/cartoons/716...
They just forgot to inform the LAPD it was satire.
Free parking does a bad job allocating resources to those who want or need them the most. Reserved parking helps remediate. Paid parking does, too. Neither are perfect. (Reserved parking can’t cover every possibility and often results in waste, paid parking falls prey to massive inequalities.)
Similarly, I don’t always value units of distance the same. I’m normally happy to park at the back of a lot and walk. But if I’m carrying a 30lb box of files, or I hurt my foot exercising? Suddenly I want a much closer spot.
Just giving the most extreme version of “I value my time very highly”.
Could as easily be “I’m arriving to work 15 minutes early and there’s nothing going on today” vs. “I’m 10 minutes late and have a huge presentation”. Main point is I don’t value every 5min chunk of my life equally.
The OP (me) who said free parking distorts our transportation system? Also true everywhere, though size of effect is tied to opportunity cost, so bigger effect in denser areas.
But in general the poor pay a higher share of the cost and receive a lower share of the benefit—on average—everywhere.
Depends on which OP. One that said poorer people disproportionately take the bus? That’s true everywhere… proportionately. (Note that even quite rural places still often manage some bus service… for schools. Not 100%, but we’re talking rates. *Any* service is disprop. adopted by the marginalized.)
Did not realize Harstad was on Bluesky, got to discover that by stumbling across a convo about free parking where he laid out an explanation that has completely changed my mind about free parking lol
Sorry, I guess you’re an urbanism account now.
That parking spot costs the hospital something to provide, so they’re going to recoup that cost one way or another—either at the meter or on your bill.
(Though capitalist systems aren’t great for healthcare—we don’t need price signals to discover how much people value their continued existence.)
A better norm, a more capitalistic norm, would be that people should expect to bear the costs of their own consumption.
(Technically they’re not necessarily mandating the parking be free on private land, but when you mandate an oversupply, you drive the marginal cost down to zero.)
Ancillary to this, free parking as a norm is bad—the expectation that parking will and should be free everywhere all the time.
The problem is when the *government* is providing “free” parking on public land. And additionally when the government is using things like zoning and parking minimums to mandate that all new construction provide free parking on private land.
There was a Mexican restaurant growing up that provided free wings on Tuesday, figuring they’d make the revenue up on alcohol sales. That’s fine, loss leaders are a thing, though understand that they’re not actually free—that’s why beer is $1 at the grocery store and $6+ at a restaurant.
Well I’m thrilled to hear that eastern Kentucky has somehow managed to solve the problem of poor people not being able to afford things (for all things except, apparently, parking).
The problem is parking costs money to provide, so “free parking” is a myth. There’s no magic parking fairy, someone always has to pay for it.
Which do you think is more expensive, a 180sqft paved rectangle in eastern Kentucky or one in downtown Cleveland?
Free parking isn’t *as* big of an issue in areas with lower land value because the opportunity cost is lower. But it’s a problem everywhere because there’s really no such thing as “free parking”.
Parking costs money to provide, so someone has to pay. If not the person using it, then someone else.
In rural eastern Kentucky:
1. Poor people are less likely to own cars than rich people.
2. If they do own cars, they likely own fewer per household.
3. If they have the same per household, they likely struggle more to afford gas.
All of this results in less proportionate consumption of parking. No?
This wouldn’t be a problem if we priced all externalities so that drivers actually realized the full cost of their driving. (Suddenly a lot of people would discover how much they loved public transit.)
The biggest subsidies are not to the poor, but to the suburbs.
For capitalism to “work” (insofar as capitalism does work), people should bear the costs of their choices so they can make informed decisions about how much those choices are really worth to them.
Maybe they’d take transit more or carpool more if they actually realized the full cost of driving.
Imagine if the government decreed that, say, pork would be “free”. People would love the free pork, and government could point to the massive spike in pork consumption and say “see, this proves that people love pork and hate beef!”
But it would distort the entire agricultural system.
The complete disconnect from price signals results in stuff like massive parking lots designed to handle demand on the absolutely busiest day of the year that sits 80% empty on the other 364. Incredibly wasteful and costly!
Because it’s “free”, people dramatically overconsume. And the reality is it’s *not* free; parking costs a lot to provide, and if the people who use it aren’t paying, someone else must—taxpayers and businesses, who pass along to consumers in the form of higher prices.
The whole idea behind capitalism is using price signals to determine what something is “worth” to people. If people pay a lot, new market entrants increase supply. If people don’t, supply decreases. Through this, we optimize resource allocation.
“Free” parking completely severs those price signals.
Also poorer people are disproportionately likely to take transit in the first place. And rich people will just pay for off-street parking or uber or valet. Typically the distribution of “free” parking is less about them and more about those in the middle.
bsky.app/profile/adam...
Set aside the inequality issue for a second and consider at the individual level: everyone has times they value their time less (I’m heading out for a leisurely weekend brunch) and times they value it more (I’m taking my kid to the hospital). When would we most want parking available to me?