[DRAFT] Lots o' Lots

[New Ethyrea]

Description: The people of @@NATION@@ are up in arms after rich landowners and tycoons all across the country are buying plots of land in the cities and charging ridiculously high fees for citizens to park on them. You exit your vehicle, pay the one thousand @@CURRENCY@@ parking fee, and enter a conference room where numerous lobbyists and activists swarm around you.

Validity: Nations must have automobiles and capitalism.

Option 1: "This is simply unacceptable! Us citizens can no longer tolerate this exploitation!" shouts underpaid fast food worker @@RANDOMNAME@@. "My parking fee costs nearly my entire day's wage! The solution is clear - the government must regulate prices to ensure no unfair rates can be set."

Effect 1: parking lot owners make less money than five year olds selling lemonade and cookies.

Option 2: "This like, wouldn't be a problem if you just received a higher salary, dude," mumbles @@RANDOMNAME@@, a college student wearing a tie dye shirt. "If the government like, increased the minimum wage, everyone would have enough dough to pay the parking fees."

Effect 2: parking fees continue to increase as landlords are forced to pay their workers double their original wage.

Option 3: "More intervention and regulation is a step in the right direction, but we should be pushing for full socialized control of the economy!" announces @@RANDOMNAME@@, the editor of a local socialist newspaper. "The root of the problem is those greedy capitalist pigs! If the government - I mean, the workers, had full control over the land, this wouldn't be a problem!"

Effect 3: going outside is now considered trespassing on government property.

Option 4: "Everyone 'ere is just overreactin'. It's MAH land! I should be able tah do whatevah I want with it," argues @@RANDOMNAME@@, CEO of Large Lots! Parking Lot Company, while sipping on a glass of champagne. "Yah dun' have to park on mah land. If yer unhappy with mah parking fee, then just park somewhere else that charges lowah!"

Effect 4: drivers are forced to park across the city from their destination in order to avoid bankruptcy from parking fees.

Option 5: "The best solution is to lower our absurd income tax and institute a land value tax in its place!" suggests economics George Henry, scribbling another graph on a chalkboard. "The average @@DENONYM@@ could keep their hard earned @@CURRENCY@@, while rich landlords will be encouraged to sell off their land to somebody who will use it to help the common people."

Effect 5: landlords are often poorer than the tenants that rent from them.

Option 6: "These evil landowners can't set ridiculous parking fees on their land if it's not their land!" says a random teenager from within the crowd. "If I decide to fill the potholes on a parking lot, I'm applying my labor to the land, meaning I should be the rightful owner! Money shouldn't determine what belongs to who, labor should!"

Effect 6: asking your neighbor to help with yard work is now legally recognized as a transfer of ownership.

[Tinhampton]

I honestly thought this overlapped with Parking Pandemomium for a few seconds until I remembered that it's the least descriptive name ever given to an issue. (Authoritaria-Imperia was offered plenty of alternative titles that would have clearly indicated that his issue would be about women-only parking spaces and instead he went for a bit of alliteration that had even less to do with sexism than his original choice, "No Place for Safe Spaces?".) "Lots o' Lots" next to this issue, which is most assuredly not about there being too many car parks, would rather incredibly take that particular crown.

Of all the things that "rich landowners and tycoons" could be buying out random "plots of land in the cities" for, why would they want to buy them so that they could construct unaffordable car parks - rather than luxury apartments or obnoxious statues of themselves - on them? Are there not any car parks anywhere in any of @@NAME@@'s cities? And if you assume there are, why would five-star luxury car parks be a beneficial addition? (I'm assuming they are: you never say whether or not the teenager in Option 6 is having to deal with potholes at a Large Lots!-brand car park.)

There are plenty of fast food restaurants with parking spaces: many of the McDonalds restaurants in Cornwall I can be bothered to remember do (although they're largely out-of-town venues), as do all of the ones at motorway service stations. What is stopping the "underpaid fast food worker," from parking @@HIS@@ car in those spaces? Even if there were none, why can't @@NAME@@ just park on the street - or has the street magically been privatised so that you could come up with a semi-convincing premise?

Options 1 and 4 appear to be a convincing, relevant solution to the problem of... whatever the hell your problem is. The remaining four(!) options are not; they focus on minimum wages, "full socialized control of the economy," land value taxes and a libertarian theory of ownership. Why?

Why is George Henry in Option 5 not a @@RANDOMNAME@@? (Georgist reference?)

[New Ethyrea]

There are plenty of fast food restaurants with parking spaces: many of the McDonalds restaurants in Cornwall I can be bothered to remember do (although they're largely out-of-town venues), as do all of the ones at motorway service stations. What is stopping the "underpaid fast food worker," from parking @@HIS@@ car in those spaces? Even if there were none, why can't @@NAME@@ just park on the street - or has the street magically been privatised so that you could come up with a semi-convincing premise?

Options 1 and 4 appear to be a convincing, relevant solution to the problem of... whatever the hell your problem is. The remaining four(!) options are not; they focus on minimum wages, "full socialized control of the economy," land value taxes and a libertarian theory of ownership. Why?

Thank you for your response, and sorry for this late reply. Honestly, I kind of just wanted a situation where rich people were buying land and using it to earn a ton of money, and I just thought of parking lots. But honestly, your idea of having them build mansions and apartments for themselves sounds a lot better, and ties in with the other options, too. I might change it so that the situation is that landlords and buying land and then building apartments and charging a ton of rent.

Also, yes, George Henry is a Georgist reference.