4 ms·
Germany is distracted with its version of “the gun debate” aka speed limits. Like every school shooting, every energy crisis brings opportunity to saturate the
by gmerc 7mo ago
Germany is distracted with its version of “the gun debate” aka speed limits.
Like every school shooting, every energy crisis brings opportunity to
saturate the airwaves with shallow noise that gets people overly
upset and they’ll ignore everything else.
Every player on both sides is abusing this mechanic for all eternity.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo ago> every energy crisis brings opportunity to saturate the airwaves with shallow noise that gets people overly upset and they’ll ignore everything else. At least their version has an obvious solution: Make electric cars and solar panels and then stop having oil problems.
- lukan 7mo agoThe speeding debate won't go away with this, though, as speeding is not about oil.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo agoYou still can't get people upset about gas prices every time there isn't peace in the middle east once they stop buying gas.
- ArnoVW 7mo agoI believe the idea is that friction and resistance is proportional to the square of the speed. After a certain speed, every 10 mph extra starts to really count in your mileage.
- krater23 7mo agoThe idea is that some green ideologists think that when they don't need to drive a car because they don't leave their city, no one needs to drive a car. Because car driving creates CO2 which means car driving is bad. And they search for ways to implement that or make driving a car as bad as possible. Because they can't make the Deutsche Bahn better, they have to make driving your own car worse.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo agoBut then why not just make car driving not create CO2?
- kyboren 7mo agoBecause that doesn't play to Germany's industrial and economic strengths (precision machining, metallurgy, basically the whole ICE automobile supply chain). EVs are just mechanically much simpler, with a shorter BOM that largely centers around Asian (particularly Chinese) battery, REE, and semiconductor supply chains, so hundreds of thousands of good jobs that supported Germany's industrial model are now economically obsolete.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo agoThat's the Kodak business model: New thing arrives that will disrupt the old thing, so don't build it. Problem is then someone else will build it anyway and instead of losing 2 jobs making ICE cars and getting 1.5 jobs making batteries and solar panels, you just lose the 2 jobs and get nothing, which is how Kodak went bankrupt. Also, LFP batteries don't contain rare earths.
- kyboren 7mo agoI agree with you, generally speaking. I was being descriptive, not prescriptive. > LFP batteries don't contain rare earths. No, but good motors do. And probably GaN FETs to handle megawatt-class charging currents.
- kuerbel 7mo agoAn EV is the superior vehicle in every aspect. Cheap fuel, reliable, nice to drive, less maintenance costs, less noisy and yes, no local emissions.
- whilenot-dev 7mo agoI think this view is too reductionist, as people can (and usually do) debate more than one topic at a time. The problem is that technological dependence isn't gaining enough precaution when commodity products are being discussed. What worries me is that it's a real global problem in all of our non-autocratic societies. On a positive note, I can see how this is actually becoming a common understanding and gaining traction, as hyped AI products are seen by some as 3rd-party- or SaaS-killers. It seems like we know how to differentiate between independence and dependence, and evaluate any risks affiliated with such a decision. But it baffles me that this differentiation manages to float as some ironic stream in our Zeitgeist, and just barely manages to be taken seriously.
- bluecalm 7mo agoImagine we had real democracy where people vote on issues. Speed limits? Vote once every 7 years or so on it and be done with it. Same for abortion laws, drug laws, gambling laws. Have a debate, vote, come back to it in 7 years if there is public interest. Preferably vote locally on issues that can be applied locally (like speed limits/enforcement etc.). Public debate and assessing politicians and parties would be so much cleaner then if they couldn't use polarizing issues to rally their support and do w/e they please on all other issues.
- heavyset_go 7mo agoPopular vote would have made sure civil rights legislation never passed and everything down to the schools and bathrooms would still be segregated.
- rcbdev 7mo agoWhat German civil rights legislation are you referring to?
- bluecalm 7mo agoI think you are wrong but it's hard to guess what would would happen in the past. Meanwhile a lot of unpopular policies are implemented right now. You are hoping "good minority" will get its way ahead of "evil majority" in indirect democracy but if anything I see the reverse happening in a lot of Western countries today.
- jahnu 7mo agoI would hate to live in that political system. Just imagining the ways it would be gamed and the billionaire press would leverage these votes makes me shudder. So far the best modern improvement I’ve seen (and it could be further improved of course) is the increasing use of citizens assemblies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_assembly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_assembly
- bluecalm 7mo ago
- looperhacks 7mo agoNobody is seriously discussing speed limits right now ...
- CrimsonRain 7mo agoall speed limits in highways are stupid. It should be follow distance enforcement instead.
- dboreham 7mo agoSingle-vehicle accidents exist.
- CrimsonRain 7mo agooh no! accidents exist!! Must ban all cars then?