PaulNUK
Dan LykeStop asking how the poor are going to get to work without cars, and start asking why the rich won't let the poor live close to their jobs.
Malaclypse@danlyke My grandfather spent the last 20 years of his career walking 2 miles each way to his unionized factory. I think about that a lot.
Rachel Rawlings@danlyke Or why the rich won't let the poor telecommute when they and many in the middle class can.
Martin Rundkvist@danlyke Also ask a European what they think about US town planning where there are no bike paths and only really scanty public transport.
@mrundkvist hell yes. But/and mostly this is pointed at Marin & Sonoma Counties lobbying for more lanes on 101 and 37 so that they can avoid allowing housing to be built locally.
Which, true, is part of the same "prioritize cars, make them mandatory, and then say 'nobody walks or bikes' while making upper middle class white folks tsk tsking noises about the climate" problem.
El Satánico Dr. Katow@danlyke Give us the cars and then ask whatever you want.
@katow one step better, we're gonna make it so you can't survive in society without owning a car!
@danlyke You don't get it. We want cars and we are gonna get them one way or another.
@katow yep, that certainly is the current situation.
Though I think a strong case has been made that we want cars largely because of social manipulation, and they don't make us happier.
@danlyke Lets see what happen when we have our cars. Let's get sciencey.
@katow pretty sure we're seeing that. It's a disaster, with externalities of at least half a buck per mile, probably actually over a buck, and a bunch of entitled whiners complaining about traffic.
But, because the loud voices win, we'll keep killing people so that we can live in isolation. Sigh.
@katow well, y'all do what ya gotta do, but we in the United States can no longer afford to structure our society around them, and there rest of the world bears the weight of our car dependence arguably as much as we do.
@danlyke Give us your cars.
Everybody happy!
Everybody happy!
@katow I suspect the better solution is to help countries and populations which need a leg up to do so without becoming car dependent. That way everyone ends up happier.
Giving out cars just increases the global unhappiness.
@danlyke Why is that rich people always 'know' what poor people need to be happy? Just try to listen next time.
@katow why do you think you have to remake the same mistakes rather than learning from a century of failure and destruction?
@katow looking at a century of US history and saying "I want my society dominated by cars" is like looking at the history of WW1 and saying "I wish I had more mustard gas in my neighborhood".
@danlyke why do you think all the world is like you. Just listen.
Is you don't listen, you are a problem for the world. Stop patronizing.
Is you don't listen, you are a problem for the world. Stop patronizing.
dragonfrog
clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛@katow @danlyke That mental mode is what research is now referring to as #motonormativity .
www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/235…
♲ norden.social/@SheDrivesMobili…
www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/235…
♲ norden.social/@SheDrivesMobili…
Frans Veldman ⁱ ᵃᵐ ᵃⁿᵗⁱᶠᵃ🚩Maybe the/some poor have some other preferences than living close to their jobs?
The next thing we would be hearing is that the poor remain in an unfavorable/bad paying job, because otherwise they have to relocate once again, which would upset the social life of their family.
The solution to the car problem is not to dictate where people have to live, but to facilitate more and better public transport.
@FransVeldman mmmaybe, though my particular issue that spawned this is more of Marin and Sonoma County lobbying for more highway lanes while fighting like hell any attempts to build dense walkable housing that might make those areas affordable.
It's pretty much explicitly a "keep the poors out" set of policies, designed to make service workers commute.
Samhain Night@danlyke @FransVeldman A friend of mine pointed out that commuting from bedroom communities in Sonoma to get to Marin and the City for work wouldn’t be a problem if we simply decentralized big business and had them spread out to places like Sonoma, Napa and what not rather than having them concentrated in one area.
@samhainnight @FransVeldman yep. Although, Petaluma has 20k people commute out every day, and 20k people commute in. I believe that most of those are income and skills mismatches, and if we had more lower income housing here we could have a lot fewer commuting in.
@danlyke @FransVeldman True. It needs to be addressed on both ends. I know of people who live in Ukiah (more affordable housing but few jobs) who commute to the mall in Petaluma because that’s where the jobs are. Ukiah could really use business investments, too.
@samhainnight yep. Adding lanes to 101 so people can commute in from Ukiah vs adding housing in Petaluma should be a no brainier, but here we are, making it all worse.
Gayle J. Greenlea 🇺🇦🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@danlyke Or pay them a living wage.
@GJGreenlea yeah, and: I suspect that if we have to live side-by-side with our services workers rather than importing them via long commutes, there'll be more empathy and community.
SabreToothTigress/ZenDragoness@danlyke Short and great thought!
Urban Hermit@danlyke I have read this entire thread, I would like people like you to get the underlying problem fixed first before refusing to build anymore roads. I was poor enough that I could not afford to buy a car until I was 26, I took the bus everywhere in Portland, OR, and I would not willingly go back. My wages went up $2/hr almost immediately, my commute to Community College went to 30min from 2hr, and I had the immediate freedom to go to the coast, forests, and rivers.
@danlyke You see, I was basically a wage slave, trapped in the city with no where to go except work, supplies, and home. And because busses stop every 2 blocks they take an enormous amount of time to go anywhere, which comes out of my personal time. Now with a car I pay for insurance whether I use it or not, which means it does not make economic sense to ever use the bus. Also with a car I can transport groceries, healthier raw foods, and bulk quantities.
@danlyke You see I, and millions of other poor and poorish people make the best choices we can, and we know our situation better than anyone. If you want fewer cars, you need to change the underlying economics. Road building follows road demand, you need to address the demand first, then road expansion will stop. Otherwise you are just making things harder for poor people who have to live where they can save $200-$400/month on rent.
@Urban_Hermit As long as we're subsidizing automobile-focused roads to the tune of subsidies that run over half a buck a mile, probably over a buck, much of that subsidy in negative health impacts, the demands for roads will remain insatiable and unsustainable.
A developed country is one in which the rich use public transit too.
@Urban_Hermit @danlyke But road building creates demand too. So part of breaking the cycle is just not adding more roads.
Wales is the pioneer here:
"all future roads must pass strict criteria [ . . . ] they must not increase the number of cars on the road"
www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-6464…
♲ spore.social/@PeterRu/10988617…
Wales is the pioneer here:
"all future roads must pass strict criteria [ . . . ] they must not increase the number of cars on the road"
www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-6464…
♲ spore.social/@PeterRu/10988617…
Natalia@danlyke or why people with a job can't afford a car!
@NataliaArmyOf1 cars have huge negative external impacts. From collision deaths to tire dust pollution to the space needed to park and drive them, we as a society pay at least half a buck to subsidize every mile driven, probably over a buck, all so we can hide behind large angry grills.
We should be pursuing fiscally sustainable mobility policies that make us happier rather than angrier.
@danlyke I agree and where I live, Lisbon Portugal, we have invested so much and well that I don't have a car because I don't need one. I live in a city that gives me access for 40 euros per month to every bus, train and metro I want 🤷♀️. That's not the point I was making. People who need a car to work should be able to own one. They are not being paid enough at said work if they don't.
@NataliaArmyOf1 100% agreed. And if we stop subsidizing automobiles so heavily and lay that cost back on those benefiting from the imposition of the automobile on the public space, we all win.
#SCIENCEMATTERS@danlyke or fund light rail and other reasonable transportation alternatives
@ottawatts Yep, though public transit makes more sense when we have saner development patterns. But we've gotta start somewhere, and light rail can be a catalyst for station area density.
realamyI heard in Germany they have mixed income neighborhoods on purpose so the poor aren’t excluded from community and services
I don’t know how they accomplish it or what “on purpose” means but we should learn and do better in the US (in my opinion)
Some US neighborhoods work this way, but almost anywhere an interstate plows through there is a big problem. They are dividing lines
@realamy Exactly. Interstates are a policy decision, and often deliberately broken up poor neighborhoods. The history of car-oriented infrastructure is the history of racism and classism.
Yeah definitely
LG Media@danlyke or let people work remotely. A majority of office cubicle jobs can be done from home, with few exceptions.
@LGmedia Yeah, the particular examples that I'm looking at are things like retail and personal services jobs, and things like poultry processing (from my town). We've got 20k people leaving town every day (probably mostly for jobs that could be telecommuted) and 20k people coming in (probably for jobs which can't so.much), and the solution seems to be more highway miles. Not walkable bikable housing.
Meow.tar.gz 
@danlyke Or even why the rich won't let the poor work from home, FFS! We have had VPN for at least 23 years now. It's been time tested
@ablackcatstail yep, although as other folks have pointed out in this thread, the kinds of jobs that are work from home tend to be pretty middle-class.
In my area, much of the push for more lanes seems to be to allow service workers (retai) and manual labor (construction, poultry processing) to commute in from further away.
The fact that we mandate that all of those workers can afford cars is pretty awful and is a deliberate barrier creation.
@danlyke I have a job where I could do it basically working from home and live paycheck to paycheck. Still you're quite correct.
@ablackcatstail yeah. globally, owning a car puts you in about the top 10%. Doesn't make it feel any less paycheck-to-paycheck though, especially since in the US we've created a world where it's very hard to participate in society without owning a car.
@danlyke Life in the US is difficult enough and honestly made that much more so by needing a car. 😿
@ablackcatstail yep. We're a developing nation with an automobile fixation and a severe housing undersupply problem.
@danlyke The thing is we always were a developing a nation. Many of us just bought into the propaganda that we were sold by the rich. I feel it's really hopeless.
@ablackcatstail Yep. And I'm still resentful of the upbringing and education that sent me through a big ol' Ayn Rand phase back in my 20s.
These days I'm getting into local politics, though as my friend who was recently elected Mayor observed, if we're asking people to choose between staying up late for city meetings and going to their kids' evening activities, we're still doing it wrong.
@danlyke That's quite possibly true. I actually went through a similar phase. It took me becoming disabled to realize just how wrong I really was.
@ablackcatstail @danlyke It took me reading the increasingly embarrassing Ayn Rand wizarding fanfiction to start moving out of it.
@clacke my turning moment started when I read her Letters articles about patents, and in support of the space program. Those two bits of writing weren't consistent with her epistemology and started the "aha". Of course as I learned more economics and gained more work experience the rest of it came crashing down.
CellyBlue@danlyke amen. The state of Alabama decided against mass transportation even though they knew this would assist with people getting better jobs. It’s ridiculous. Montgomery blocked a mass transit deal with Atlanta.
@celset2 yep. Building policies which essentially mandate car ownership, with all of its costs and random repair surprises, is definitely a way to fight against social and economic mobility.
Unprecedented 2023@danlyke Public transportation. Work from home when possible.
@Mallulady yes, and: public transportation is more usable when we build livable neighborhoods that people can walk in. If we're bussing in people from 20 miles away, we still have economic segregation which lets us ignore the deeper social problems.