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People went places before cars were invented, and then General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only t

by drekk 3y ago

People went places before cars were invented, and then General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only to dismantle it. Now car companies are offering not "a better way" but "the only real way" unless you want to get hit by a suburbanite driving a Ford F-150 while sitting in an unprotected bike lane. I'm really tired of people acting like it's just a free market where everyone is an equal, rational actor. There was a concerted effort to redesign Americana around cars that was not replicated globally, and you see the consequences of it play out in real time.

ta8645 3y ago
> I'm really tired of people acting like it's just a free market where everyone is an equal, rational actor. It's never been a free market. There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I'm really tired of people acting like the only thing standing in the way of utopia, is capitalism.
- astrange 3y ago
  > There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I think you're thinking of Skyrim and not the actual world, but there are certainly historical periods that were famously bandit-free even in antiquity like the Mongol Empire.
gumby 3y ago
> General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only to dismantle it I know this story and for a long time believed it. But it appears that developers building new towns (urban expansion) in the mid 20th century put in streetcars to get people to move in (connected to city networks etc) and ran them at a loss. As the new town filled up and the developers went on to the next one, the streetcars became the uneconomic responsibility of the town.
- astrange 3y ago
  The cities put price caps on streetcars because they thought it would make it cheaper, which ended up bankrupting them, and then more recently cities have infinite amounts of pro-car policies like parking minimums that make it unreasonable to use any other kind of transport. Funny enough, this is being repeated in modern times because a lot of transit activists want to force all transit to be free and instead be funded by theoretical rich peoples' taxes.

by drekk 3y ago

ta8645 3y ago

> I'm really tired of people acting like it's just a free market where everyone is an equal, rational actor. It's never been a free market. There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I'm really tired of people acting like the only thing standing in the way of utopia, is capitalism.

astrange 3y ago
> There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I think you're thinking of Skyrim and not the actual world, but there are certainly historical periods that were famously bandit-free even in antiquity like the Mongol Empire.

gumby 3y ago

> General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only to dismantle it I know this story and for a long time believed it. But it appears that developers building new towns (urban expansion) in the mid 20th century put in streetcars to get people to move in (connected to city networks etc) and ran them at a loss. As the new town filled up and the developers went on to the next one, the streetcars became the uneconomic responsibility of the town.

astrange 3y ago
The cities put price caps on streetcars because they thought it would make it cheaper, which ended up bankrupting them, and then more recently cities have infinite amounts of pro-car policies like parking minimums that make it unreasonable to use any other kind of transport. Funny enough, this is being repeated in modern times because a lot of transit activists want to force all transit to be free and instead be funded by theoretical rich peoples' taxes.