Jen Burton
Warren G. Harding 
If you think it’s horrible one billionaire bought up the public square and killed it, wait until you find out why your city doesn’t have a trolley system
Velocirooster adminensis 
@popeawesomexiii Red Cars: never forget
Phil Landmeier@theropologist @popeawesomexiii I remember riding it with my grandmother before it was shut down. (I'm olde).
JJ Krawczyk@popeawesomexiii As a native Detroiter, I know this saga well.
Yuri Was Very Brave@popeawesomexiii @martin_hamilton
Collusion between tire and car companies bought them all up and shut them all down.
Francis@popeawesomexiii We used to! 
Berend de Boer@popeawesomexiii the public square that was losing $3 million/day?
@berend Citation needed.
@popeawesomexiii LOL, citation needed for a public Q2 2022 earnings report??? https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/twitter-announces-second-quarter-2022-results-301591530.html
@berend First, I suppose that depends if you believe Twitter's primary purpose was to make money or not.
Second, it had 400 million active users, and here we are, having this conversation on Mastodon. 🤔
@popeawesomexiii the purpose of a public company is not to make money? That's not a serious statement. And I suspect a lot of Mastodon is supported by the taxpayer.
@berend Twitter is not a public company anymore, perhaps you read the news. Furthermore, siding with the billionaire who wants more money, and not the users trying to inform, educate, and connect— now who’s being silly?
Though your second statement is interesting, EM did use taxpayer money to enrich himself during the Tesla bailout. Mastodon is run by donations. You didn’t even Google the site you’re on, how embarrassing for you.
Max Leibman has moved!@berend @popeawesomexiii A corporation, publicly held or not, can be formed for any legal purpose. It is not under a legal obligation to make money, though that is commonly one of most corporations’ chief aims (and shareholders with voting shares can compel them to try to).
While Twitter was ostensibly a for-profit corporation, I think the spirit of the comment was more that the world received value from the service Twitter provided that far exceeded its losses.
TrismegistusMx@popeawesomexiii Cuz this guy robbed a bank and spent a gazillion Simoleans buying up toon town and the red line.
Bill Ricker@n1vux @popeawesomexiii Absolutely terrifying. The silent genocide of Toon Town. This is the history they don't teach in schools.
Brooks Smith
Ursa Borealis@popeawesomexiii Hell, mine doesn't even have a public square!
日本語版 🏴@popeawesomexiii why doesn’t my city has a trolley system?
@ep1 because automobile companies bought them up and shut them down
@popeawesomexiii maybe thats the case fore your city..
lisawborden@popeawesomexiii Racism a key factor in that.
@lisawborden oh INDEED
Ein… best of Bebop 
@popeawesomexiii as a representative of the rubber, oil, steel, & automobile lobby I have fact checked this claim & found it to be false. Reported for fake news 
@Eins_Corgi_Butt And yet here it remains 💪😂
smartwatermelon 
@popeawesomexiii there was a great movie about this
MOVED:They faux'd around & found out!@popeawesomexiii - Because they can’t get through the pile of dead bodies, caused by another billionaire, just so he could spout ignorance and hatred?
LPS
Richard Welty@popeawesomexiii there was a nice electric trolly here (Albany NY) once. Then it became mostly power right of way. Now 100 years later some of it is becoming bike-hike trails.
woolie@popeawesomexiii because it was entirely owned by the city and the city removed the lines because of the maintenance costs and it impeded automobile traffic?
Bill Seitz
Ultraklystron (Karl Olson)@popeawesomexiii also explains the lack of city to city rail in a lot of places too.
@karlrolson Part of that is car companies and the highway system being built in the 1950's, yes, but remember airlines are also huge lobby groups to our politicians too 😢
@popeawesomexiii Yep! And it's not like the remaining private rail entities helped that either, focusing on a very specific vision of freight decades ago, never modernizing themselves nor investing in fresh infrastructure to make other options even possible. Also IIRC, Reagan killed the funding for more passenger rail, which, yeah, was at least partially lobbying driven.
Shannon Curtis@popeawesomexiii when I learned how the old train system was ripped out of Los Angeles by corporations selling cars and oil I just about blew my top … just like my radiator while sitting in bumper-to-bumper when I COULD HAVE BEEN TAKING A GODDAMN TRAIN.
RadicalWoman111@popeawesomexiii
If people watched period dramas based on historical novels instead of...what do they watch now? still reality TV?...they wouldn't be voting for and worshipping the billionaires whose daily aim is to grift them into homelessness.
I'm surprised the GOP's banned book lists don't begin with Dickens and Trollope...or do they? 🤔
Sam Clifford@popeawesomexiii @milesmcbain at least in the case of Brisbane, Australia, it's because the Lord Mayor took a look at the freeways that Los Angeles had in the 1960s and thought that was a pretty good system to emulate.
@samclifford Not sure the history of public transporation in Oz, I know we have a billionaire problem but then you guys have Rupert Murdoch, so...
Thad Humphries@popeawesomexiii Or an independent local newspaper.
@johnthad You said it. 😎
James Kierstead@popeawesomexiii Can you explain how allowing more people to join a social media site equates to killing the public square?
@Kleisthenes Why, who were the people not allowed to join before
Nate V.@popeawesomexiii
Hey, my city had an electric trolley system that connected the whole city as well as electric lifts to the elevated parts of the city.
It was all torn out for those same reasons. 😔
@maxlords Billionaires, eh? Those scamps. ☹️
J L Gatewood (StarrWulfe)@popeawesomexiii I wish I could hijack Doc Brown’s DeLorian to the month before National City Lines was incorporated and dredge up all kinds of bullshit against them and play it on the radio/post in newspapers nonstop 21st century political ad style until the powers-there-be cry uncle and the DOJ breaks up the consortium of GM/Goodyear (also get a whole coalition to talk Eisenhower out of ramming freeways through every metro inner city somehow.
@jlgatewood Yeah, money talks in this country. I'll pick a Democrat over a Republican any day, but they both sure love to take campaign contributions from corporations. 😥
Eastbaynian
Josef 'Jeff' Sipek@popeawesomexiii Is it because of a bunch of philosophers got together and made sure nobody would ever face one of the worst ethical dilemmas?
Chad McCullough@popeawesomexiii This! So much this!
Rockario@popeawesomexiii
"Having rich people means that they can make sure things get built and everyone benefits!"
You know, except when they decide not to.
"Having rich people means that they can make sure things get built and everyone benefits!"
You know, except when they decide not to.
@rockario Indeed. What they do or don't destroy is just as important as what they do or don't build.
@popeawesomexiii Like, um, Los Angeles, for example.
@shuttersparks Must’ve missed the trolley car down La Cienega
Brian Danger Hicks
Jon A. Cruz@popeawesomexiii Who Framed Roger rabbit answered that for my area.
Tomasz Mazurek 🇵🇱@popeawesomexiii *irritating European has joined the server* What do you mean it doesn't have one?
@Mazurek64 we spent all that money on (checks notes) … Blackhawk helicopters
ricketson@popeawesomexiii There's also a good chance (in the USA) that your city doesn't have a literal public square anymore either -- that most spaces where people congregate are privately owned with heavy restrictions on how people can interact.