The problem is that this isn’t a good faith argument. It’s like whenever the perennial outrage about homeless veterans comes up and you start seeing “why should we be paying all this money to x thing when we have all these homeless veterans on the street?!” But, it’s not a good faith argument because if you ever actually call them out on it and say “okay, let’s get these veterans housed”, they go silent or start shrieking about socialism. They don’t actually mean that we should help homeless vets, what they really mean to say is “we would never pay for this thing, and your thing is way less important than that”, but they dress it up in the vague threat of actually doing a patriotism to make it sound better.
Of course, these same folks are all crickets when we cut a trillion dollar bailout to save some mega corps from the natural consequences of fucking around and finding out on the free market.
Alright, so, I’m going to assume that you’re coming from a good faith position. There’s two things that I need you to understand:
First, political borders are the tools of tyrants. So many outrageous humanitarian abuses can be justified because of invisible lines plotted on a map, and the lottery of being born on one side or another supposedly dividing men and women that might have just as easily been neighbors if but for a few miles in another direction. Balk at me if you like, but research has found that there’s something like seven or nine distinct cultures in the US that could easily be their own nations, but we allow unrestricted travel and trade between them and we’ve somehow miraculously not been brought to ruin by just allowing midwesterners to move around and trade with us pel mel.
Second, car based infrastructure is a trap. Now, I know this is missing your point, but I really want to take this chance to point out that we will always and forever have crumbling bridges in spite of exponentially increasing infrastructure bills every five to eight years or so. It’s because car infrastructure destroys itself very quickly; in fact, it’s the fastest-deprecating transit infrastructure there is. What’s more is that it’s wildly expensive; for every dollar a driver spends, there’s a $10 cost to society in terms of government subsidies, infrastructure, clean up, regulation, enforcement, and externalities. Just one good example of automative externalities microplastics. Did you know that just driving one kilometer on a highway releases trillions of microplastics, and tires are responsible for 1/3rd of all oceanic microplastics and possibly the extinction of the coho salmon from San Francisco bay? Anyway, the cost to society is enormous, and our cities and towns are so sprawled due to car dependency that we’ve hoisted ourselves by our own petard, and we’ll never be able to be finished fixing this mess. The only real fix is to do what every other sane country has done and implement good mass transit both in and between cities and towns.
The problem is that this isn’t a good faith argument. It’s like whenever the perennial outrage about homeless veterans comes up and you start seeing “why should we be paying all this money to x thing when we have all these homeless veterans on the street?!” But, it’s not a good faith argument because if you ever actually call them out on it and say “okay, let’s get these veterans housed”, they go silent or start shrieking about socialism. They don’t actually mean that we should help homeless vets, what they really mean to say is “we would never pay for this thing, and your thing is way less important than that”, but they dress it up in the vague threat of actually doing a patriotism to make it sound better.
Of course, these same folks are all crickets when we cut a trillion dollar bailout to save some mega corps from the natural consequences of fucking around and finding out on the free market.
Removed by mod
Alright, so, I’m going to assume that you’re coming from a good faith position. There’s two things that I need you to understand:
First, political borders are the tools of tyrants. So many outrageous humanitarian abuses can be justified because of invisible lines plotted on a map, and the lottery of being born on one side or another supposedly dividing men and women that might have just as easily been neighbors if but for a few miles in another direction. Balk at me if you like, but research has found that there’s something like seven or nine distinct cultures in the US that could easily be their own nations, but we allow unrestricted travel and trade between them and we’ve somehow miraculously not been brought to ruin by just allowing midwesterners to move around and trade with us pel mel.
Second, car based infrastructure is a trap. Now, I know this is missing your point, but I really want to take this chance to point out that we will always and forever have crumbling bridges in spite of exponentially increasing infrastructure bills every five to eight years or so. It’s because car infrastructure destroys itself very quickly; in fact, it’s the fastest-deprecating transit infrastructure there is. What’s more is that it’s wildly expensive; for every dollar a driver spends, there’s a $10 cost to society in terms of government subsidies, infrastructure, clean up, regulation, enforcement, and externalities. Just one good example of automative externalities microplastics. Did you know that just driving one kilometer on a highway releases trillions of microplastics, and tires are responsible for 1/3rd of all oceanic microplastics and possibly the extinction of the coho salmon from San Francisco bay? Anyway, the cost to society is enormous, and our cities and towns are so sprawled due to car dependency that we’ve hoisted ourselves by our own petard, and we’ll never be able to be finished fixing this mess. The only real fix is to do what every other sane country has done and implement good mass transit both in and between cities and towns.