A whole lot American view themselves as one brief windfall away from being a millionaire, and these are the ones who shape the dominant ideology. The core American ideology is shaped by white suburbs all gritting their teeth and fuming over their 6 figure incomes because all they want in life is to see their bank account reach that magical 7 digits, yet it never quite does. Every public good like transportation is interpreted as a barrier away from seeing that million dollars. Every business regulation is interpreted as a conspiracy to keep them down, every person walking by in the street is an interloper, every inch of public transportation is interpreted as an annoyance dedicated solely to interrupting their focus on their money.
Even the ones who reach the million don't become satisfied, because now they become aware of the strata even above them, the billionaires with 10+ digit bank statements. And then by the time they reach billionaire status, their brains have been hollowed out by their chase to power and influence they become desperately aware of their own mortality. They realize they aren't gods, but that doesn't stop them from trying.
If you live in America and you make less than $120,000 per year, in terms of the ideology you might as well be a wisp of smoke or a hypothetical thing to joke about.
Had to do this just earlier this week. Got back by train at like midnight and I had to bike back to my appartment. I was really tired especially in my legs, so you'd think that would maybe be a bit annoying, but it was actually really refreshing. It was nice and quiet, and the air was cool. Definitely wouldn't have taken a car even if I had the option.
I think libs are under the (false) impression that roads are both completely mandatory in society AND somehow cheaper to build and maintain than public transit. Per person moved public transit is significantly more efficient per dollar but libs just don't want to know stats when they don't agree with their worldview
I think libs are under the (false) impression that roads are both completely mandatory in society
They kinda are in local transport to be fair. You can't transport truck loads of stuff by bike to grocery stores. This necessitates some level of automobile road to get there. What's unnecessary is regional/national roads for commerce. Most cities would still require road maintenance just for EMS and local commerce even if they had a robust public infrastructure. The good news is that buses can use these roads as well so a post-personal-car future is still viable. Roadless cities are not.
don't you know? roads build themselves with the labour of poor illegal immigrants
FWIW road has similar cost to standard rolling stock, which ends up being substantially cheaper than urban subway tracks... so... it's not entirely wrong? building a road in the city is cheaper than building a subway because of... tbh I'm not too sure, but it is in practice
Well, it's a subway, you have to excavate an entire tunnel system for that. But in return you get an entire traffic infrastrucutre that takes up next to no space on the surface, which means a lot in densely built areas. I guess if you'd compare subways to underground roads like that stuff Musk had built in Las Vegas, or if you'd compare roads to cable car tracks, costs would be fairly similar again.
Tens of millions of people live in cities with passable subway systems in the US and have for like a hundred years. And small towns were connected with rail all over. This fantastical scenario was completely normal.
Kind of crazy how these people just accepted public transport as a normal thing until like...3-4 years ago? Now suddenly trains and buses are driven by Lucifer himself apparently.
Totally agree. Isn't this one of the oldest instances? It doesn't really matter when it federated - that just means it had more time to get distilled into its own special version. But this is an OG strain - whatever else this is, this is Lemmy.
Edit - and I say this as a pretty new user to the instance. I wasn't here from the beginning, this is my take as an instance-hopping reddit refugee.