Car centric cities. Cities can and should be designed for people, keeping cars mostly out. The result is beautiful cities designed for people that make governments lots of money but the car companies will be earning a little less, ooffff
Make cities walkable, create actual safe roads for bikes, create 15 minute cities.
Public transport is unacceptably slow and/or prohibitively expensive in suburbs. It may work well in densely-packed cities, but that requires you to live in a densely-packed city, and that’s straight-up dystopian in my book.
If you live in the suburbs and commute into a major city then traffic going into said city is also unbearably slow. But to quickly counter this point, millions of people commute using the NYC suburban spurs for metro north, and south and I can assure you the desnity falls of a cliff as soon as you pass the NYC border.
Likewise there are plenty of alternatives even for suburbs involving things like park and rides and train stations with garages that can help funnel people into roads and on public networks. Ideally a good station should be centralized in the town and but walkable(Ive seen some NYC train stations literally be a random parkinglot in the woods and then there’s GoTransit in toronto) but as it will take a long time to right the ship I think making sure theres spots to park your car is important too.
Moving forwards though there should be improvements in zoning law to help right the ship when it comes to car-centric american infrastructure and urban planning.
The frustrating thing is decent density doesnt mean high rises and big city concrete jungle. There are tons of east coast and midwestern neighborhoods that are mostly single family homes on lots, with some multifamily and low rise apartments mixed in on tree lined streets near parks and shopping areas that have densities of more than 11,000 people per sqmi.
The problem with multi-family housing is that it’s ripe for abuse by building managers. Unless you own the entire building you live in and the entire plot of land it sits on, you don’t own anything, and your home can be taken from you at will without meaningful recourse.
I gather this isn’t an issue in Europe, where people have actual protections under the law, but as long as real estate in America remains the Wild West, living in single-family housing is and will remain an absolutely necessary act of self-defense.
Mixed zoning would be good, though. Being able to walk to at least a convenience store would be, well, convenient. If the prices there aren’t ludicrously high, anyway, which is a serious problem with convenience stores today.
10s of Millions of people in the united states live in multifamily housing. You’re responding to concepts like multifamily housing and public transit as if these are abstracts that huge numbers of americans rely on. There are plenty of areas with bad infrastructure today for this, but thats all the more reason to improve. More missing middle density housing is important to make housing more affordable and improve density and supply.
We can certainly use better and actual proper public housing options like in places like the netherlands, and better renter protections to keep a landlord from upping your rent too much, but thats all the more reason to push forwards.
10s of Millions of people in the united states live in multifamily housing.
And every last one of them is made to abide by unnecessary and cruel rules, like prohibiting the use of air conditioners because they change the exterior appearance of the building. Renters are also getting fleeced like sheep and regularly evicted to make room for richer tenants.
Building more non-single-family housing will only exacerbate this problem, not solve it.
We can certainly use better and actual proper public housing options like in places like the netherlands, and better renter protections to keep a landlord from upping your rent too much, but thats all the more reason to push forwards.
No, it’s not. Those protections have to happen first, and in this country, they never will.
Yeah, park and ride, bike and ride, complete public transit, or even driving on less crowded highways to cities with more available parking because other people chose other modes.
Ultimately how anyone would commute depends on their own personal factors and what’s available. In the future we’ll have more multimodal transport and that should make things nicer for everyone.
It’s funny people always act like it’s impossible for this to work when millions of people do it to NYC from as far north as Dutches county, way down long island, and into Connecticut. Millions more also drive sure enough, but suburban trains are viable the problem is they just dont exist or when they do have poor schedules.
True, I could solve that problem. I have another problem, though: I live in a small apartment, I’m not allowed to store anything on the patio, and storing a bike just about anywhere else would get it stolen, so…where would I put a bike?
Well I’d say it’s easier to store a bike than it is to store a car. Where exactly, I don’t know but buy a good lock. A good lock will easily set you back 100-200 dollars but they’re worth it.
On where to store the bike at the destination, There a lot depends on (local) governments. In the Netherlands there are bike parkings everywhere, and you start seeing it more and more in Canada (Vancouver at least) but I guess tou can just out it against a light post?
Hate to break it to you, but cars too are trivial to steal for the right person, just like bikes. I’ve seen too many “gone in 60 seconds” type of videos (but then the real thing) to have the illusion that any lock will stop everybody.
If there is a car parking garage, then bikes are trivial to park there, unlike cars. Put good locks on the bike, and you’re risking 500 insurable dollars versus 20000-60000 more expensive insurable dollars.
Lol no it’s not. Been there once, and it’s an ugly shithole. Compare Montreal to any people first city and you can either agree it’s shit or lie. Give me trees, give me places I can walk, give me nice clean fresh air, give me silence, give me cities designed for humans.
The problem is, our cities (most of them) are already designed for cars. To change them to accommodate walking and public transit would be somewhere near the largest sociological project the world has ever seen. It would require upending every single aspect of everyone’s lives in order to refit them around walking and public transit. I think it’s unreasonably infeasible at the current time.
Eh, no, surely not. Pool the risk and only pay for your share of the risk. Somebody takes some risk in that, because statistics don’t always pan out, even at large, so the risk taker gets a return. Literally couldn’t be further from a “scam” - it’s one of the few amazing upsides to using money instead of bartering.
Ah right. Yeah US healthcare is utterly fucked. I’m very happy to live in a place with decent public healthcare, even if the local government is trying to screw it over.
Well, luggage is weight, and weight means more fuel burned. That’s not the scam.
The scam is advertising your plane ticket as $20 cheaper than the competition with luggage included, and then make you pay $30 for the luggage at checkout.
Traditionally, airlines would not charge for the first two pieces of checked luggage unless they exceeded weight limitation. But in February of 2008, United Airlines began charging $25 for the second checked bag. In July of that year, US Airways (LCC, Fortune 500) started charging $15 for the first checked bag
This one, every time. Imagine buying a product or service for an agreed price, and then being guilt-tripped into having to pay 20% or more on top because the owners don’t pay their staff enough salary to survive on. It should be fucking illegal. Pay your staff a proper salary and charge your clients the price you published on your menu/price-list etc. Running a business isn’t a god-given right, and if you can’t do it with fucking your employees over, then you’re not capable of running a business period, and you should fuck off and let someone who is capable, and who isn’t an empathy vacuum have a go.
Haha I thought it would be funnier to say that and not elaborate further. But yeah, even though I use it, essentially it’s a western thing - a large portion of the population use bidets or “bum-guns” that are installed into toilets. It’s actually a lot cleaner, environmentally friendlier, cheaper, but arguably at first hard to get used to from a western perspective. But yeah toilet paper has huge industry and money behind it so capitalism perpetuates it.
Bidets are amazing. I had one for years until I moved (current toilet would be rather difficult to install an attachment to) and holy crap do I ever miss it.
I went to Thailand for a holiday, came back a bum-gun convert. For ~$50, we installed one onto our toilet and haven’t looked back - there’s no need when everything’s spotless.
Honest questions. Why do you seem unable to change anything of this? If you leave in a democratic country, why the majority of people won’t change the second amendment, the college tuition scam, swap to a free healthcare system, and vote people that won’t start another war in the name of democracy?
EDIT: I reckon is complicated, but you must have some opinions about the final motive(s) of this. Who/what is keeping things like this?
Lobbyists lobby politicians so they won’t make changes that hurt their business. Politicians in turn engage in brainwashing so the population agrees with them even if it actually goes against their best interests.
Trust me, nobody likes paying thousands for college tuition. But colleges lobbied politicians so now politicians won’t do a damn thing about it, and the politicians that won’t do a thing are now actively telling their base lies about how it’s a good thing that they have to pay more than rent on tuition.
America isn’t actually a democracy. The views of the average person have no influence on what the state actually does. The senate is anti-democratic by design (see James Madison: “[The Senate] ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”), and all of the founding documents were created by a bunch of slave-owning rich assholes to be as favorable as possible to themselves (reminder that slavery is still legal under the 13th amendment). The elected “representatives” do not accurately represent their constituents; compare the median wealth of a US congressperson (over $1 million) vs the median wealth of a US citizen (~$121k).
The people who actually hold power in America (and indeed all capitalist nations) are the ultra-wealthy capitalist class, which is to say those who own the means of production (the factories, tools, raw resources, etc that a business needs to produce a product or service). In “bad countries” (Russia etc), they would be called oligarchs. Since its founding, the US state’s primary purpose has been to perpetuate and grow the wealth of this capitalist class above all else. The interests of this capitalist class run counter to the interests of the working class, the common citizen. The capitalist wants their employees to work for as long as possible for as low a wage as possible, while the working class wants to work for as short a period as possible for as high a wage as possible. With this in mind, let’s now go through policies you listed.
Changing the second amendment. The capitalists generally aren’t effected by this, as they live in a safe and secure world separate from the general populace. However, this (and many other things, such as abortion rights and LGBT+ rights) serve as ways to divide the common people against each other, distracting them from the fact that their true enemies are the capitalist class. Between them, the state and the capitalists control almost all of the media in the country, so they are able to push the issues to the forefront. To be clear: I am not minimizing these policies. Things like gun rights reform, abortion rights, and LGBT+ rights are incredibly important; they just don’t matter to the capitalists.
The college tuition scam. This one is simple: the financial capitalists make loads of money by giving out predatory loans. They want that money, so the policy will continue.
Free healthcare. As above, the capitalists are making money hand over fist, and do not want to stop. Consider also that “Obamacare” and other policies primarily ease the burden on the common citizen NOT by regulating the healthcare sector to charge lower prices, but rather by simply handing tax-payer funds to the capitalists directly through subsidies.
In general, when looking at the policies pursued by a capitalist state, one should always ask “how does this benefit the capitalists?” America’s foreign policy, for instance, largely revolves keeping the “developing nations” of the world poor and their markets open to “free trade” such that their wealth can be extracted by American (and allied) capitalists at a lower price. Similarly, the US refuses to address climate change because the fossil fuel capitalists would stand to lose money.
The only way to achieve a better future is through the abolition of the capitalist class, which can itself only be achieved through a revolution.
So, in your opinion, what are the conditions the US people wait/need to start this revolution? What’s holding people back? The newer generations seem to have almost nothing to loose, and a lot of older people barely can keep up.
In short, the working class need to be better organized, class-conscious (IE aware that they are members of the working class and opposed to the capitalist class), and militant, and the repressive organs of the state need to be much weaker. Organization is trending up with things like increased unionization rates (though many of those unions are collaborationist and not revolutionary) and increased membership in revolutionary orgs like the PSL or even reformists like the DSA. Class consciousness is increasing naturally as the social contract that bought of the working class of the USA is torn up and people begin to look outside the status quo for alternatives. Likewise, militancy will come once people have nothing to lose, and as you say, the younger generations are well down the path, but the key element missing is the aforementioned organization.
Unfortunately, it’s not all good news. This mass radicalization will be slowed, and worse, redirected towards fascism, by that omni-present multi-billion dollar propaganda network controlled by the capitalists. Further, any increases in worker organization will be met with increasingly brutal crackdowns by the cops, FBI, and other alphabet agencies. Ultimately I find it far more likely the US will descend into fascism; it would not be unreasonable to argue that it’s already there. That said, we must still fight for the better tomorrow we know is possible.
Because that’s not the government works. The populace doesn’t choose who the candidates are, introduce legislation, or (with relatively rare exceptions) vote on it directly.
Okay, but why do you not take a more radical approach? I mean, Trump followers were not right, but even they took the capitol by assault to accomplish essentially nothing. Most of these things exposed in this thread seem to me like legitimate causes to emulate some Malcolm X-esque actions.
I do support that, at least morally. In practice, a bunch of disorganized, untrained, and poorly equipped people who are already struggling to get by day to day are not going to win a fight against human history’s most powerful police and military force on its own home territory.
Some are afraid, others don’t know how, others feel like there’s no use in trying. A whole lot buy into the American exceptionalism propaganda that gets shoved down our throats from birth and think there’s nothing wrong with this country and that the people who are suffering deserve it, and that the people who want to make it better are literally trying to destroy it for Satan, or for the Jews, or for the reptilians.
I would argue that feudalism is a lot more time tested than this garbage system that even in theory is so flawed that it regularly results in global economic crises. Feudalism on the other hand has been considerably more stable throughout the centuries and whether or not you are forced to serve a nobleman or a CEO is not a big difference. So, stop getting scammed and get back to the fields, peasant.
There is no stable alternative. There is always going to be class struggle. Materialist conditions and human rights must always be fought for and defended, else you’re gonna lose them.
There is a reason I reply to lemmygrad and hexbear people, and follow some of the communities. Sometimes I get interesting responses. Not your response, but sometimes.
No, but you didn’t need to engage in circle-jerking with your friends either. You are capable of more, and I look forward to reading your future contributions.
Me? I’m pretty open minded, while trying to apply critical thinking. Make a good argument, and I’ll digest it. You seem to be jumping to conclusions, which may hurt your cause.
Which communists? The USSR was infiltrated and the US then spent millions getting the bumbling mass of ethanol known as Yeltsin to win an election. They (the new capitalist government) even sieged the parliament building and sent tanks in Moscow to disperse the huge waves of protestors. It then lead to one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the modern age almost overnight.
And in China they are assuredly not capitalist, this becomes very clear once you read Deng Xiaoping. It’s Schroedinger’s China: when they do something bad they’re communists, and when they do something good (like lifting people out of poverty) they’re capitalists.
Cuba is still socialist, DPRK is still socialist, Vietnam is also reforming and opening up kinda like China did but a bit differently so still socialist
Are we really denying that the “Chinese Characteristics” of the PRC’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” is Capitalism? Btw, I think the good parts of China are the socialism bits.
capitalism is not bits and pieces here and there, it’s an entire mode of production with its own base and superstructure. In that sense China can’t be called capitalist. At best we could say it has “capitalist elements” but even then that’s a stretch when getting down into the details of what these elements actually are.
I mean, some (most? Idk) of the means of production are owned by the state (ostensibly a proxy for the people, I’d rather it was more direct but the government has consistently high approval so I’ll give it a pass) and those are clearly socialistic.
But there are certainly factories and what not owned by capitalists, and as that accounts for much of the production that goes on in China, and as these products are not destined to serve the public weal but rather to be sent abroad as bits and bobs to be sold and promptly thrown away as serves global capital, I really don’t get the desire to not call this capitalism.
China, to me, has a very clear mixed economy with elements of both socialism and capitalism.
But as I’ve argued, having elements of capitalism like commodity production (and the subsequent export of these commodities) does not make China capitalist by themselves, which is also the original point I was making, that China has not “turned” to capitalism* like OP might have implied.
Markets are not inherently capitalist, and these capitalist elements in China allow them to build their productive forces which are required to achieve socialism, they’re also the same commodities they build for the Belt and Road initiative, for example 😁
Capitalism can be summed up in many ways, and one of them is production for the sake of finding a market and making money. There is capital in China (in the marxist definition) and people can make money, but while these capitalist want to simply make more money, for the Chinese government the goal is to build up production and achieve socialism, hence why the superstructure of China vs. any country in the imperial core is different. In the first case (capitalism) we’ll just keep producing and creating markets infinitely, the “anarchy of production and socialisation of labour”, and in the second case they’re using some methods (with the consequences that come with it -> if you make a factory to produce stuff, you will have to find a market to buy that stuff so you can produce more stuff) as a stepping stone until they don’t need to any more.
Of course the superstructure is predicated on the base, and in China for example land is leased to businesses, but never sold, and the government can take back their property at any time, including whatever is on it. It’s fundamentally different to capitalism in the west.
The CPC controls all capital in the country. They are coordinating and intervening in the economy with the goal of building a socialist society. This is very different from the US and it’s client states. Capital is controlled by the bourgeois, with no obligations other than a gluttonous desire to accumulate.
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