There isn’t a train running from where I live to anywhere. And even if I lived in the nearest metropolitan area, trains only run to a couple destinations that are 300 miles away.

Don’t get me wrong, we should build trains going everywhere. That’s a huge expensive goal that has no foreseeable date for completion. I’m talking about why do people view cars as a source of freedom? It’s because they offer something not easily accessible by other means. The original post was talking about how great bikes are and why do we think cars are a symbol of freedom?

I think bikes are great, and I’m glad to ponder the nice benefits they offer. To displace cars requires understanding why people want them.

I had waited a long time to have any kind of personal experience of God, and finally gave up. Like they said, the holy spirit was supposed to work in you, I prayed for it and looked for it for a long time. Since it didn’t appear, no reason to excuse the problematic passages or shitty people.

On this point it makes sense people are eager to explicitly identify slave owning as the primary driver for secession, because it’s the truth and there is still an active attempt to cover it up

The lost cause argument is something racist losers came up with after the war where they try to say it was more about states rights (and oh by the way slavery wasn’t so bad, many slaves like being slaves)

Some schools still teach this, I went to a “Northern” school and still had textbooks making this argument.

Your post seems to echo this by saying the South’s main thing was they wanted to be separate, even though that happened to include slavery, there were other reasons too. That’s not the case. When they seceded the south explicitly identified slavery as THE reason why they were doing it.

I’ve seen you say a few places in this thread that reducing caloric intake is related to eugenics. That’s a pretty strong claim to make without any evidence. Can you share any?

How is it seizing power?

There’s definitely an opportunity cost. If you build a road or a parking garage that’s taking space and funds that could go to something else. The same could be said of a park or firehouse or factory. And I’d agree that in many cases something better could have been done than car centric infrastructure.

But an individual owning a car isn’t taking something from someone who doesn’t own a car.

Besides, my point is that cars should not be prioritized over pedestrians, cyclists and public transit. Just that to displace cars we should try to understand what people see in them, contra the last line of the OP image

You’re right there are a lot of negative things about the U.S. And even if it became a biking/public transit utopia, it would still suck to be homeless. We’d still need to address wealth inequality.

I’m addressing the last line of the OP image, why do we hold up cars as a symbol of freedom? It’s because they do provide personal empowerment. They provide specific benefits.

It’s possible for a situation to have terrible outcomes without it being a conspiracy. Some people, like Robert Moses, did design certain places to be accessible by car but not by bus. But I’d argue the main reason the car is dominant in the U.S. is because individuals who saw benefit from their own car use pushed and bought into that system.

Imagine we’re playing chess, we have to understand the pieces on the board, what their abilities are. I get it’s a fun thought experiment to list all the ways a bike is great. I’m just saying it’s useful to understand what people see in a car if we want to create an alternative.

You don’t know about my thighs!

Jokes aside, it’s one thing to say it’s possible to recreate some aspect of car ownership with a bike. But it’s making the individual responsible for something that requires a societal solution.

Suggesting impractical alternatives to what are easy benefits with cars isn’t a serious alternative. And we won’t fully replicate everything a car does. But understanding where the trade-offs are is essential to approaching the problem.

You’re right, not every box has to be checked before it starts making sense for some people to switch to bike. I just commented because the original post was saying “why do we say cars are the ultimate symbol of freedom?” If someone can’t see why people like cars, they may have a hard time creating an environment where people move away from them.

To create a pedestrian first world I think we need to legitimately understand what advantages a car has. A car is a true source of empowerment.

Sure, I can ride a bike, but I could never ride a bike 300 miles for a weekend trip to any arbitrary destination. I can take a bus but not at any moment, and not the middle of the night. I can take public transit, but not to the place I need to go.

A car is a portable personal space. I can eat lunch in my car, I can take a nap.

A car is a space protected from the elements - I’m not getting rained on. Protection from wind, snow, sun.

Its locked doors are a barrier between me and potential (and sometimes imagined) threats.

I don’t need to list out for this community all the negative things associated with cars. I just list these pros to highlight it’s a challenging task to displace cars. It’s a list of benefits to replicate.

What the fuck kind of comment is this?

I liked how pez tasted back in the day at least

One advantage as I understand it between a worker cooperative and an ESOP is that the worker cooperative has a one person one vote system. It avoids the issue you mention about not having voting shares. I worked at a place with an ESOP and just the managers had shares. And even there they didn’t prevent the business being sold to private equity. Sure they got paid out but now that previously family owned business is part of a monopoly in our industry.

First, I think OP is making a big deal where it’s not necessary. And the US as a nation has done many fucked up things.

That said, thinking about people not nations, I’m American and I didn’t elect a felon. Yes, 77 million voters picked Trump, which is shitty and doesn’t make sense. 75 million voters chose Kamala. And around 110 million people of voting age didn’t vote at all. (Which also doesn’t make sense to me)

But you can imagine for those 75 million people it’s not going to feel good to be painted with the same brush, and it’s not kind to do so.

Wow that’s a crazy story, thanks for linking

You’ve got a point, but I’m not sure many johns want to be filmed in the act…

Right, there’s also a constitutional amendment saying insurrectionists can’t stand for office

For reciprocal holidays like Christmas, giving cash maybe gets a little too close to exposing the pointlessness. I give you cash, then you give me cash, what are we doing here? And what if I gave you less than you gave me?

A gift card does indicate I thought a little bit about what the recipient might like, even if I know it would be impractical for me to make a choice on the recipient’s behalf, or that my gift wouldn’t be sufficient to cover a typical purchase in whole. (Thinking like gaming systems, expensive handbags etc)

All that said, I generally agree, I’m not crazy about gift cards.

Nothing because I would punch the nerd bookseller and take the book rather than answer a riddle

Congrats on reaching 91!

I wouldn’t listen to this advice, personally. Driving with an expired license is more black and white than speeding. With speeding could have been other cars around that the radar was picking up, the radar might not have been calibrated recently, the cop might decide it’s not worth showing up.

I’ve pleaded not guilty to several speeding tickets and got some dismissed and some reduced (I lived in a rural area as a college student and they made a lot of money that way)

One time my sister got a ticket and asked me the process to expect when you plead not guilty so I told her - but I didn’t know she got the ticket in a school zone. When she got there the cop got up on the stand and ran through his certification to operate the radar and when it was last inspected and they asked her how she could explain that she could possibly be not guilty and she got whatever the big fee was. (Which I assume she would have had to pay anyways but without the embarrassment)

It’s not in dispute that your license is expired, and I would think hard to dispute that you got pulled over while driving. Given those two facts I don’t see an advantage to pleading not guilty, you might just annoy the judge, which decreases likelihood of lenience.