this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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Fuck Cars

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The United States, with its enormous highways, sprawling suburbs and neglected public transport systems, is one of the most car-dependent countries in the world. But this arrangement of obligatory driving is making many Americans actively unhappy, new research has found

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[–] [email protected] 98 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Everything is about money in this fucking country. Every single decision the government makes HAS to revolve around profit and is powered by bribes. We are a dry pie that the shareholders are trying to squeeze even drier. We will never be like the rest of the world until we get money out of politics. Nothing will ever get done. Only what the rich wants done. . Fuck this country.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not everything; some things are about racism. Suburban sprawl and car dependency owe a lot to white flight to suburbs with racial covenants and racist urban-planning decisions like Robert Moses making overpasses on roads to suburbs too low for buses to keep the minorities contained in the ghettos. The idea of retreating to defensible space (in a suburban cul-de-sac or a personal car) also raises the question of who one is expecting to defend against.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The stratification of society is also about money. You need to have an underclass to scare and motivate the workforce.

[–] aesthelete 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Some of it is subject to human frailty. Even the rich are too busy being racist to make the most money they possibly could. Human biases affect and infect even the systems we produce in ways that are difficult to untangle or even perceive at first glance.

The fictional, optimal economist version of people doesn't exist in boardrooms or secret societies either. It exists nowhere.

It's important to understand that because otherwise you lend credence to the mystifying, unempowering idea that they are all part of an unstoppable plot full of perfect agents and not just a cohort of self-centered, biased, and routinely misguided mortals just like the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Yes, it is not a statistical oddity the wealthy are shit humans. This system is guaranteed to produce these oligarchs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"see, if you don't slave your ass day and night, there are those who are desperate to work double your work for half the wage". Again, fuck this country and on top of that, fuck capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

there are those who are desperate to work double your work for half the wage

And if there aren't, we'll get some people like that. See the recent H1B debate.

[–] JubilantJaguar 5 points 4 days ago

We are a dry pie that the shareholders are trying to squeeze even drier

A dry lemon, shorly?

[–] crystalmerchant 2 points 4 days ago

Love seeing Represent.Us show up on here! Been volunteering with them for many years

[–] Coreidan 43 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I have news for you. Literally everything about the United States is making people unhappy.

[–] Sanctus 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A society of inconveniences.

[–] Coreidan 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Ya inconveniences. Like affordable housing and affordable healthcare. Or affordable anything. Who needs that shit anyway.

Let me go die from cancer cuz of inconveniences.

[–] Sanctus 3 points 4 days ago

Yeah, this is what 40 years of stacking inconveniences looks like. They turn into massive problems.

[–] verdantbanana 21 points 4 days ago

do logistics and it takes me sixteen hours to get to work and sixteen hours back to home with lots of driving while at work

only way out is for the United States to become an actual United States that have the same living wages and worker rights in all states, caps on housing and food costs in all states, require same environmental protections across all states, up education standards across all the states to the same levels, upping the funding amount on public transportation inside and out of states

car dependency is centered around where you live as travel is intentionally hobbled by high costs and other barriers because people that are stuck where they are at and dependent are unable to travel to see or share to other people and ways of life thus keeping the old ways going and the populace contained

[–] tamiya_tt02 14 points 4 days ago (2 children)

But that driver is on the wrong side to be American.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

This is a British news outlet writing about US Americans and using local photographers

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Just imagine he's a letter carrier.

[–] aesthelete 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Seems right because he definitely looks angry enough to be a USPS employee.

[–] Jimmycakes 2 points 4 days ago

I just uber if it's rush hour. I'm not driving in all that mess.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Must read (or listen: https://youtu.be/4tcl5JOzDrQ) is Gorz’s Social Ideology of the Motorcar