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This isn't the take away from the page nor the documentary linked below. > It wasn't just some crazy scheme cooked up by a few oligarchs in a smoke-filled back

This isn't the take away from the page nor the documentary linked below. > It wasn't just some crazy scheme cooked up by a few oligarchs in a smoke-filled backroom. It was literally this. GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. Macroscale effects are systemic, projecting individual choice into is mostly always a smoke screen. It is the same tactic that the plastics industry used to shift blame onto the individual "litter bug" and not the prevalence of single use plastic packaging. Your comment history is littered with similar reinforcing tropes.

jcranmer 4y ago
> GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. No. They colluded to monopolize supply of buses--this is what the court case that involved the conspiracy held. The streetcars were already failing when they were acquired.
- sitkack 4y ago
  Then why were the streetcar lines being bought by what effectively was a shell company owned by the corporations that would profit the most from the sale of those buses?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bobthepanda 4y ago
It was real, but it's not sufficient to explain the mass movement away from streetcars in general. They didn't even purchase a majority of streetcars in the US, and this movement away from streetcars happened in most of the Western world. US streetcars had real systemic disadvantages mostly stemming from when they showed up in our society; at the turn of the century in uncongested roads when the dollar was strongly tied to gold. This had a couple effects: * they showed up at the turn of the century, so just in the '40s and '50s as investment started in highways they needed expensive lifecycle replacement. Buses were seen as more flexible and could use this new infrastructure being built with no additional work, so many municipalities willingly switched to buses to take advantage. * they showed up at the turn of the century, when having a paved road in a city was not a norm, and so contracts allowing for the construction of streetcar lines also expected the streetcar companies to pay maintenance on the paving. Gas taxes usually only pay for major interstate and state roads, but streetcars paid for local streets. Undoing this was not popular since it would require cities to raise new taxes, and would relieve evil streetcar monopolies of a burden. * they showed up when roads were not terribly congested, so they weren't built with the expectation of needing to be separated from heavy traffic. Cars changed this equation, but dedicating road space to streetcars was just either not on the radar or seen as a giveaway to evil companies. * they showed up when the dollar was very strong and tied to gold. Laws authorizing streetcar operation also usually involved explicitly tying their operation to a specified flat fare (usually a nickel). This fare was not tied to inflation, and raising the fare or eliminating limits on fares was politically DOA, a tax on the working man and a giveaway to the evil streetcar monopolies.
- sitkack 4y ago
  I am not making any statement about streetcars in general. You also don't have to purchase the majority of something to then show it as a PR piece, "LA is modernizing its transportation system with the fast and flexible bus" ... The commons then as now had a bunch of selfish people pushing their own agendas and mass transportation is one of those things that suffers under capitalism, it doesn't extract the most profit from the system. It maximizes efficiency, which isn't the same thing.

jcranmer 4y ago

> GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. No. They colluded to monopolize supply of buses--this is what the court case that involved the conspiracy held. The streetcars were already failing when they were acquired.

sitkack 4y ago
Then why were the streetcar lines being bought by what effectively was a shell company owned by the corporations that would profit the most from the sale of those buses?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bobthepanda 4y ago

It was real, but it's not sufficient to explain the mass movement away from streetcars in general. They didn't even purchase a majority of streetcars in the US, and this movement away from streetcars happened in most of the Western world. US streetcars had real systemic disadvantages mostly stemming from when they showed up in our society; at the turn of the century in uncongested roads when the dollar was strongly tied to gold. This had a couple effects: * they showed up at the turn of the century, so just in the '40s and '50s as investment started in highways they needed expensive lifecycle replacement. Buses were seen as more flexible and could use this new infrastructure being built with no additional work, so many municipalities willingly switched to buses to take advantage. * they showed up at the turn of the century, when having a paved road in a city was not a norm, and so contracts allowing for the construction of streetcar lines also expected the streetcar companies to pay maintenance on the paving. Gas taxes usually only pay for major interstate and state roads, but streetcars paid for local streets. Undoing this was not popular since it would require cities to raise new taxes, and would relieve evil streetcar monopolies of a burden. * they showed up when roads were not terribly congested, so they weren't built with the expectation of needing to be separated from heavy traffic. Cars changed this equation, but dedicating road space to streetcars was just either not on the radar or seen as a giveaway to evil companies. * they showed up when the dollar was very strong and tied to gold. Laws authorizing streetcar operation also usually involved explicitly tying their operation to a specified flat fare (usually a nickel). This fare was not tied to inflation, and raising the fare or eliminating limits on fares was politically DOA, a tax on the working man and a giveaway to the evil streetcar monopolies.

sitkack 4y ago
I am not making any statement about streetcars in general. You also don't have to purchase the majority of something to then show it as a PR piece, "LA is modernizing its transportation system with the fast and flexible bus" ... The commons then as now had a bunch of selfish people pushing their own agendas and mass transportation is one of those things that suffers under capitalism, it doesn't extract the most profit from the system. It maximizes efficiency, which isn't the same thing.