It shouldn't be all black and white (either 100% car use or 100% public transport use).
If you're rural - of course this probably doesn't apply.
If you're suburban - "park and ride" type of thing solves a lot of problems in western Europe already. Drive to nearest hub, hop on a train (that is included in your parking ticket) that has bigger bandwidth comparable up to a 30 lane highway[1], also don't worry about parking in dense downtown as a benefit.
If you're urban, city planners should plan public transport network dense enough so you could walk - at worst do "park and ride" thing again.
Of course there are cases where car still may be fastest and most convenient way to reach your destination (e.g. if you're suburban and need to go to other suburban town), but in big cities (individual) car travel should be a minority.
Compare Japan's, China's mega cities. Whole countries like Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, to LA, SF or other USA's mega cities. It just falls to the Onion trope of `'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens`.
> Trump has a far-reaching policy stance. His thesis is that American success is due to Americans and what is distinctive about them, and our engagement with foreigners on the present terms is not good for America.
When he says success or about “you gonna be so rich you’re not gonna believe it” - he talks about himself and his billionaire buddies not you. His only policy stance is to surround himself with yes-men and enrich himself through blatant open corruption. Anything is for sale: crimes, pardons, citizenships, you name it - directly contradicting your thesis.
Also I truly believe he hates half of Americans because of wrong-think. But he will deal with them after he deals with brown people.
> Closing the border, deporting all illegal immigrants
Lets deport farmers, construction employers and business owners who “import” such workforce to essentially slave for them.
How such employers are not deeply scrutinised by public and politicians - I will never understand.
> abandoning unfounded foreign policy commitments
Abandon Ukraine, but financing Israel, Argentina, attempt truly unfounded war against Venezuela (reasons change every other day and contradict other policies like pardoning Hernandez on drug trafficking but threatening Maduro with war for same reason in the same week).
> using tariffs as a tool of trade policy
Sure if it’s deliberate, calculated and strategic. China laughs at your soy bean farmers. Coffee exporters give zero damns about your tarrifs. Canadians laugh at you when you’ll wait 30 years to grow your lumber. And on top of all of it - policy is so chaotic (who said men are not emotional?) - no actual long term commitment from industries will happen.
I always find this argument dubious at best. It's akin to saying "A dude was wrong once 2000 years ago, anything new is progress, and progress is desirable".
Maybe we are talking about the same thing, but my intent was to say that original quote was in the theme of "kids these days...".
Not all progress is desirable, of course, and smartphones have their own problems, but same was told about younger generations and internet, TV, newspapers, etc. But those generations grew up out of it and personally I'd argue that smartphone addiction is not only young people problem.
Socrates said no such thing, no writing of Socrates has survived. He was just a character is Plato's book, Phaedrus.
Please do find the original paragraphs before accusing Socrates of this. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/plato/dialogues/benjamin-j...
Of course, you can read and interpret that same book a thousand different ways, like he was talking about knowledge not being the same as writing things down, or whatever you want. But we don't even pretend to read the things we talk about. We just repeat nice narratives we have supposedly read somewhere else, digested by someone else, somehow.
And he would've been right. Any new advancement in technology brings societal change, and it is possible to reach a point of diminishing return, where the bad sides outweigh the positives.
I wish we could, as a society, have a serious conversation about this effect without resorting to name calling ("Luddist nonsense") and straw men ("but what about penicillin?")
Second that. I see that as a failure of society or democracy as a whole - that we are no longer able to have that broad, public conversation and act accordingly. Why should every "innovation" be shoved down our throats, if we don't want to?
I would place this blame on academia. They're the ones that are supposed to think difficult questions, and drive change. I guess today any serious discussion would just get lost in the ocean that is the Internet. Only echo chambers get reinforced.
Blaming academia is misguided, and "drive change" has never been in their job description until Progressivism took hold. The problem is each one of us: we want to numb out more than we want to do something hard. The problem is also philosophical/religious: we have collectively decided that virtue is following our animal desires (what makes you happy), which is the opposite of historical virtue. I think this can be traced back to the prevailing nominalist utilitarian view: matter is just what we make of it, and since there is nothing higher than matter, the only ethic is greatest happiness. So now, as a society, we do not really have any way to articulate the problem we intuitively feel, because the problem is that our underlying philosophy does not work, but we have even forgotten (societally) the other philosophy that has historically worked, so we cannot easily get back. I think this accounts for the interest in Stocism and traditional Christianity (especially Eastern Orthodoxy), since both unequivocally say that being enslaved to your passions (animal desires) is not the good life.
Huh. I blame it on the influence of money. Money flows easier when hysteria (really any level of un-rationalized fear) and its peers abound. It is hard to have honest rational objective discussions these days without the influences of earning another buck being just over the cognitive horizon.
Wasn’t it the same with covid hiring? While others over hired, Apple was modest in this position. Then everyone needed to significantly downsize, when Apple didn’t.
> Have you ever thought that you would be compared to a gasoline engine and everyone would discuss this juxtaposition from purely economic perspective?
Not sure if by accident or not, but that’s what we are according today’s “tech elite”.
Therefore, the most profitable disposition for this dubious form of capital is to convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses
Since the beginning of the year - USA is just a shell of market economy. Small government indeed…
Also some say it’s “flawed democracy”, IMHO - for last ~3 decades (or even more) it’s just a charade of democracy. Probably soon you won’t even have that.
First-past-the-post two party system, bizarre primary elections, electoral college, land votes instead of people (how many senators are from california and how many from wyoming, they also say it’s “to balance the tyranny of majority”), abhorrent and disgusting gerrymandering (so states could also force tyranny of the minority in congress too :) ), voter suppression (voting on Tuesdays, employers can control if you can go vote that day, voting booth count is getting smaller, voter registration shenanigans in marginalised communities), etc.
The fact that in US you can win the most powerful seat in the world while not even voted for by majority of its own population is properly ridiculous. Yes we all heard about historical this and that but that doesn't matter, thats not a democracy at its core and at the lowest, most important layer of building a resilient democratic society.
Then on that questionable base you build a shaky empire that is supposed to work if people behave nicely. It works till somebody comes around who doesn't care about that and it all falls down. Lets not forget current government was voted by +-half of US population, for second time. Nobody should be shocked by direction its taking again, maybe surprised by intensity of it but thats it.
I am a minority in the fact that I openly welcome the visible consistent hostility of USG towards whole Europe and Ukraine conflict when russia attacks whole western world including US and our philosophy of existence, as much as it can (luckily for us not that much). We are waking up from our deep comfy slumber, not in ideal fashion but we already have a bigger combined military than US has in many, for us the most important aspects (since we don't want to drag ourselves to remote wars unlike you guys so ie aircraft carriers are rather unimportant).
Green deal will be soon gone (good idea in vacuum but not in world where literally nobody else cares about it and we just destroy our economy and future trying to make our 10% part count), social services will get cuts to bring them to more sustainable levels based on unavoidable demographics and more focus on more practical and military manufacturing, like it or not.
I also take issue with the electoral college system, but to claim that a representative democracy is not a democracy based on the intermediary representation seems like a fairly hollow concern.
My bigger issue with regards to how democratic we are would be more related to campaign finance laws, corruption, and the immense power wielded by those in charge that can be pointed at political challengers if the politician is so inclined.
It's not a democracy to the extent that it has systematically unequal representation. That's not a problem of “intermediary representation”, its a problem of both the system of executive election (more of a problem for the US than it would be in many other systems because the US also has an extremely powerful executive branch) and the system of apportionment of the more powerful house of bicameral legislature (having a less-democratic upper house is not uncommon, but having it still be functionally more powerful is, and having that simultaneously with it being as far from democratic as the US Senate is even less common among things that pretens to be representative democracies.)
Unless I'm mistaken, electoral college representatives are assigned based on state borders and individual state laws - usually either winner take all or proportional. The electoral college itself can't be gerrymandered in the same way congress can.
Electoral college representatives are currently elected on a statewide winner-take-all basis except Maine and Nebraska, each of which assign two electors (corresponding to the votes due to two Senate seats each state gets) based on the statewide winner while assigning the other electors based on the winner in each Congressional district.
So, in those states only, electoral votes can be gerrymandered in exactly the same was as Congressional seats, because they are exactly the same districts. (Of course, both states are small enough that the gerrymandering opportunities are fairly limited, and would have limited impact on Presidentual elections, as Maine has only two CDs and Nebraska only 3.)
If you're rural - of course this probably doesn't apply.
If you're suburban - "park and ride" type of thing solves a lot of problems in western Europe already. Drive to nearest hub, hop on a train (that is included in your parking ticket) that has bigger bandwidth comparable up to a 30 lane highway[1], also don't worry about parking in dense downtown as a benefit.
If you're urban, city planners should plan public transport network dense enough so you could walk - at worst do "park and ride" thing again.
Of course there are cases where car still may be fastest and most convenient way to reach your destination (e.g. if you're suburban and need to go to other suburban town), but in big cities (individual) car travel should be a minority.
Compare Japan's, China's mega cities. Whole countries like Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, to LA, SF or other USA's mega cities. It just falls to the Onion trope of `'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens`.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity#/media/File:Pas...