Congestion Pricing & Making People Feel Your Systems
Also: Onchain Match 3, Pop-Up Cities, and Questioning Subscription Models
It’s the first week for congestion pricing in NYC and it’s pretty much gone as predicted. Backlash alongside support.
Most proponents of congestion pricing schemes (myself included) point to support usually rising after implementation. In Stockholm, prior to implementation:
On the eve of launch, fewer than 40% of Stockholm residents supported the plan, with support for people who would pay the fee often polling below 20%. In preparation for the launch, Stockholm authorities invested in increased bus service and new park and ride facilities.
Then later:
Popular support surged. After the pilot expired, a referendum to make the program permanent passed in 2007, and popular support for the program rose to over 65%, with majority support even from Stockholm- region residents who “often” paid the charge to drive in.
So far, early data is positive. Need more time, but besides anecdotes, they are attempting to track it.
Yes, some are also upset about parking (sorry, it’s a NYPost article) and having to drive in UES around the border of the zone. But, that’s the trade-offs.
Besides the interesting mechanics of variations of congestion pricing, it’s a joy to see it actually getting implemented. Mostly because it represents a society getting out of a local fitness trap despite all the expected backlash to it. We’re still just hardwired to think about our own self. We’re never *the* traffic, we’re always stuck *in* the traffic. When someone else drives poorly it’s their incompetence. When we do it, we just made a simple mistake… I’m just human!
So, this local trap stops us from imagining the second order effects of slapping on a price at one part of a complex system and seeing it change wholesale the system we’re embedded in. It sucks to have entrenched systems where people can’t imagine a better one past the personal impact to themselves. Congestion pricing schemes are windows into collective action where we make sane trade-offs for collective benefit. That’s great. We need more of it. Far more of it. Even if it’s just experiments that are then posed to the society as referendums (like they did in Stockholm).
The most frustrating part is the struggle of knowing that the majority will eventually support it and then not know how to explain or show that benefits of it to people prior. My north star in systems design is to try and close the gap where the desirable collective outcome is as close to the one that’s also the desirable individual outcome. When the individual doesn’t have to make too many trade-offs that also benefit the collective, we’re winning. And I think that sometimes, it means systems designers can help to reframe incentives in a way that gets you to the same outcome, but *feels* fair, *feels* good for the individual even when it’s ultimately theater.
My favourite example of systems design like this was the implementation of rested XP in World of Warcraft. The designers wanted to ensure that you do not fall too far behind in the game if you’re a casual player. So, they introduced the idea of being “rested”. If you logged out, your character earned “rest” over time, and upon returning would deplete into bonus XP as you killed mobs. Initially, the game put the rested state meter at earning 100% of XP per kill and then going down to 50% of XP per kill when you weren’t rested anymore. But, then, players complained during the beta that they were being punished for playing the game. So, to solve it, the designers simply relabelled it as a 200% bonus when rested and returning to 100% (normal) after playing a few hours. You still get double the amount of XP per kill, but it doesn’t feel like the player is being punished for it. Same thing, but you reframed the benefit. It’s theater.
You can, for example, design complex systems where you pay drivers to not drive, which is a benefit for individuals, or you can just try much simpler ideas. For example, renaming “congestion pricing” to something like: “Less Traffic Pricing”. When asking Claude for other suggestions, we can also use something like: “Time-Savings Rates” or “Reliable Commute Pricing”.
Systems and protocol design are often soulless out of necessity. But, like with every story, it’s also about how its implementation is supposed to feel. There’s magic that happens when a system works: when you first get a webserver running through HTTP and DNS to uploading your first smart contract to a blockchain. There’s a distinct *feeling* and protocol designers need to seriously invest far more time and energy in lessons from storytelling to make us *feel* it. Sparkle that shit. Jack me into Matrix, Morpheus. Ritualise it. Connect me. Put up billboards to show how much time has been saved. In the e-toll dashboard, show me how my $9 to cross the tunnel is funding disability access.
Make your systems make people *feel* something.
Bonus Content!
Been a busy week for me, focusing on some personal admin, and helping family move. It’s been a Southern Hemisphere summer of manual labour and it’s been nice to actually be physically active in this way. Getting my hands dirty fixing things, removing alien vegetation, and carrying desks. Thus, didn’t get around much to personal things this week.
📺 Watching - Skeleton Crew, Bourne Ultimatum, Bourne Supremacy, Bourne Legacy
Watched more of the Bourne films this week. Easy thrillers to watch! Admittedly, some of action shots (especially the car chases) felt like it approached parody at times with all the chasing, fast cuts, etc. Little did I know that the Bourne films actually pioneered this genre of action films: fast cuts and shaky cams.
💾 Links
Fully Onchain Match 3
While I haven’t had much time to work on my own projects recently in crypto, most of the fun I’ve been having is just collecting cool, niche art and experiments. Recently, I collected Eto Vass’ FOMC3, a match 3 game.
They wrote a technical explanation over on Medium. I still enjoy how one works within the constraints of the medium. Like, initial puzzle generation is pre-determined in order to generate thumbnails, but subsequent puzzles are generated from the JS stored in the blockchain.
Questioning Subscription Models
I have to agree with
. I’m not generally happy with all too many things being bundled into yet-another-subscription.But for regular people? Subscription feels like a scam. We've seen the memes: "Every app wants $9.99 a month for something I'll use twice." It's not just about the money—it's the psychological pain of potentially wasting money over and over. Adobe exemplifies this transformation: what was once a one-time purchase for Photoshop has become a perpetual monthly fee. You pay forever, and often for things you don't use forever.
Why I’m following
. While limited editions aren’t new, I think there’s still value in exploring a combination of limited edition physical works alongside free digital. Free digital is about reaching distribution. Limited edition physical is about concretizing and bundling works that supporters can buy.Pop-up Cities
I enjoyed
’s perspective on pop-up cities as he visited some of the “Edge” pop-ups.Pop-up cities are conceptually similar, an exit from rigid, highly aligned politiciking to something that is spontaneous, pragmatic and temporary. In a time when realities are fracturing and cannot be held together for an extended period of time, experiments such as Edge Lanna and Esmeralda are a temporary port of call for people to share ideas, be inspired and do bits. I think the next couple of years will show how complex these projects can get, and if they build a kaiwai like commons or go the way of great man monumentality.
Similar to my points about congestion pricing above, I think the entire movement around medium-term placemaking needs experiments around naming.
A few minutes later, I overheard the reporter talk to another guy. I didn't catch full sentences, but the words he stressed, loud enough for me to hear, were "network state", "mainstream media," etc. I suspect he too was grokking at what a pop city meant. A few days later, I read the local reporter's piece, which simply said: Edge Esmeralda, much ado about nothing.
I’ve never been a fan of the “network state” framing personally. It seems to infer that for some of these movements, it’s also about wielding power, while for me, I’m more aligned with new concepts of placemaking and community-building. It’s more about rethinking how we form communities and how we utilize our existing built environments for it. It’s not nation-building. That’s too modernist in its ideals in the same way that we didn’t invent democracies to vote for kings.
🎶 Music
Humble the Great - angie
Such an indie r&b groove. Much hat tip for my brother for introducing him to me. This song is such an earworm. Great for windows open summer driving and also cold winter inside fire vibes. As with one of Remy Bond‘s Summer Song, I’m a sucker for a strummed low-end bass. So damn warm.
Hope you get to enjoy a lovely sunset this week.
See you next week,
Simon