thx-2718

"Speaking as a Black man from America, which is a racist society, no matter how much you hear it talk about democracy, it's as racist as South Africa or as racist as Portugal, or as racist as any other racialist society on this earth. The only difference between it and South-Africa: South-Africa preaches separation and practices separation; America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference. They don't practice what they preach, whereas South-Africa preaches and practices the same thing. I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil"

- Malcolm X

With Churchill I suppose people knew how he felt about them.

I think if anything is clear from all this is that freedom of speech and a free press is of vital importance for accurate and useful information that concerns the welfare of our entire species.

Marriage isn't a good contract to enter into unless you're both going to stick it out (or there's a good life insurance policy).

Also from a purely fitness perspective, if you're male and want an opposite sex partner, be liberal. Vice versa.

"Margaret Wertheim, reviewing that book in The Los Angeles Times, called it “lucid and poetic.

In this time of sectarian wars, when theists and atheists are engaged in increasingly hostile incivilities,” she wrote'

Does that mean there's groups of atheist and theists actively trying to slaughter one another?

> Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things because that would save the government money from spending money on transportation.

Yeah this is something I think about & was going to ask about.

Visited LA during the pandemic so bus rides were free.

Getting around LA via busses and rail was incredibly smooth and affordable.

The stench of shit in the subway car though was off putting and I have to presume as long as people can afford to avoid that they will.

That said, paying people to keep these things cleaned would supply people with a potentially life long employment by a city (so receiving public retirement plans) which ought to be a net benefit for the city as a whole.

Plenty of people are happy to say we should do this or do that.

When it comes time to vote though people tend to go with the person telling them they'll have more.

Except those plumbers are not going to get anywhere faster now because there's pedestrians and bikes everywhere but I digress since it's not relevant.

Regardless what you're saying completely ignores my actual objection here. Which is paying for infrastructure through something that you just eliminated.

> The fewer miles people drive, the more money the government has available for other things.

Yes if everything else is kept the same. People's income. Business profits. Etc.

However you're overlooking the point spending on transportation infrastructure which is to get resources from one location to another.

People drive to work where their income is taxed. Businesses have things delivered to them to sell and have ways to get customers to them. So now the business is paying taxes. And people use that income they earned to pay for rent or own a home so there's property taxes.

Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things because that would save the government money from spending money on transportation.

Oh great no one is going in to work. No one is going to business or shop. No one is paying taxes. But hey we saved a bunch of money by not building roads.

Please read that I am not opposed to changing our society to be less car dependent (obviously for the environment it is better)

I am objecting to the notion that you can pay for a carless society by just not paying for roads or by imposing taxes on cars more without raising taxes or fees elsewhere.

But we want to pay for tramways and bike stations and our nice carless city through raising taxes on automobile transportation (which just plummeted because of above policies).

If your over all take home is lowering though eventually you don't have money to repair the sidewalks and the bike racks and so forth because no one is driving anymore to pay for it.

Or you raise the cost to ride public transportation or pay for those things from somewhere else (like property taxes).

I don't have a problem with doing that. Of course how you get public transportation into rural communities is a bigger challenge but we don't have to have society be based around the car.

My issue is that the previous post said they would pay for public transportation and walkable carless cities through increase gas taxes and road tolls.

If you raise the price of driving higher the the number of drivers lower. Will the increase revenue from the pricehike overshoot the loss in revenue from less drivers on the road?

You've also effectively eliminated owning a car in the city. So now you're asking rural residents to pay for more expensive gas and more expensive toll roads while giving all that money to people living in the city.

I have a feeling politically that would be rather unpopular.