What's your take on separating an ideology from its proponents? Because while centrism in principle isn't necessarily bad, I most frequently see self-described centrists equating people, usually on the left, protesting against a bad thing with people, usually on the right, doing the bad thing that's being protested against, as a way of arguing that nothing should be done about those bad things. And that is a position that ultimately only runs interference for people doing bad things.
teuast
joined 2 years ago
then there's a simple compromise: i'm against people who've done bad things getting away with it, and i'm also against people who have not done bad things receiving punishments as if they had.
That's not an argument against mass transit as much as it's an argument against building car-centric infrastructure.
- it won't be in a few hours 2. if only we had some way of storing electricity for later use
Fair with regards to Chattanooga, and regulatory capture is certainly a problem to account for. But I also mentioned the United States Postal Service, whose existence demonstrates that it doesn't have to be that way.
E: Also, I shouldn't neglect to mention that the entities that would carry out regulatory capture on the US government also tried and continue to try it with Chattanooga, and have been unsuccessful, which also demonstrates that it doesn't have to be that way.
why? did it seem relevant somehow?
I use this one frequently. That and "you're not wrong, you're just an asshole."
and you know when i'm down to just my socks, what time it is
Compared to capitalist corporations, unironically yes. It also has the distinct advantage of not being explicitly profit driven by design.
The government might not be able to build Estonia-level broadband infrastructure to the whole country overnight, but put it in the hands of capitalists and you get Comcast, and I think I speak for all of us when I say fuck Comcast. Put it in the hands of government, even a local city government, and you get Chattanooga municipal gigabit on a publicly owned fiber network that's faster and cheaper than pretty much anything you can get anywhere else in the country. Imagine what the USPS could be if we'd given it an ISP division in 2006 instead of doing the IRL Postal Act of 2006.
who the fuck said anything about including scholars and intellectuals
I don't think you'll meet a transit/urbanism advocate who will tell you to ride transit that doesn't exist where you are or that is wildly impractical for you. I certainly won't. For me, it's more about doing what makes the most sense for you, while also pushing to change the infrastructure where you are to make transit and urbanism better and more feasible for more people.