No one ever asks "how will roads pay for themselves or make a profit". But they do it with the post office and public transit. It's a brilliant messaging strategy to make people forget that their gas guzzling monopoly loses money paid for by taxes, but the other services are held to another standard entirely
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CelloMom On Cars
in reply to anubis2814 • • •This part of #CarBrain also bugs me.
I point it out at every opportunity. CarBrain just looks at me with incomprehension: What is she even *talking* about?
But I'm mom, and I know that if I just say it often enough, the kids will eventually eat over their plates. Town council people are next, heh. (I mean I don't care how they eat but I do want them to budget less for cars and more for life).
Gourd
in reply to anubis2814 • • •anubis2814 likes this.
busticated
in reply to Gourd • • •David Mitchell :CApride:
in reply to Gourd • • •A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Li…
GoodreadsGeorge Wiman
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Allan Chow
in reply to anubis2814 • • •FinalOverdrive
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robreed
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Inspired by this post…
Narratives are… stories. It seems obvious but for some reason we let ourselves, even embrace, the idea that narratives are information. And then then narrative shapes not just the discussion, but our thinking about an issue. That’s how that works.
If we’re serious about unbiased information we need to start over from first principles.
Andy Daitsman
in reply to anubis2814 • • •I once had a privileged and libertarian undergrad at Dartmouth College snicker at me when I said the US had subsidized the Detroit auto industry.
When I asked him who paid for the interstate highway system you could see his entire life pass before his eyes. He simply had no answer for the question.
I like to think the question challenged his entire existence and that he subsequently changed his perspective on everything. But, alas, I never saw him again.
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Briana
in reply to anubis2814 • • •anubis2814 likes this.
Stefan Monnier
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Yup, same strategy as insisting that people worried about privacy must have something to hide: for companies, OTOH, secrecy is just normal business
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Quincy
in reply to anubis2814 • • •... and in many towns, public transit is misused as a vehicle for extremely aggressive advertising ... guess what the rationale is? "but it pays for the bus stop shelters" 🤡
a particular bugbear of mine.
("basic public infrastructure paid for by taxes", apparently an alien concept ...)
Sebkha
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Rev. Roger BW 😷
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Colin
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Zak
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Roads in many countries do make a profit by way of fuel taxes. In most of Europe, the fuel tax revenue significantly exceeds the cost of building and maintaining the roads.
It seems that in the US, they break even at the federal level and usually lose money at the state and city level, suggesting that higher state fuel taxes and a means of distributing some of the revenue to cities would be appropriate.
LisPi
Unknown parent • • •Also, weight-based fees to compensate for the damage inflicted upon roads.
The least damage you can inflict is with a bike, which is negligible-enough you might as well just make them exempt from paying.
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anubis2814
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Kyle Malloy, PE
in reply to anubis2814 • • •https://www.amazon.com/Strong-Towns-Bottom-Up-Revolution-Prosperity/dp/1119564816/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=strong+towns&qid=1685218314&sr=8-1
anubis2814
in reply to Kyle Malloy, PE • •esthetic nightmare
in reply to anubis2814 • • •