• 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Carbrain is pretty unpolitical in the sense that for many people it is the axiom and then you just work backwards from there, according to your politics, to justify it.

    Conservatives will harp on about not having to sit next so smelly strangers on public transpoirt, liberals will harp on about how if car bad how come so many car???. Apart from about 100 guys worldwide the libertarians will harp on about freedom to kill other people and the leftists mostly get there on grounds of rent prices, meaning everybody who doesn’t need a car for transportation is the bourgeoisie and needs to be shot to ensure more roadspace for the proletarian individual automobile

    • Cimbazarov [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      The only somewhat effective way of countering carbrain is by travelling to different countries, and experiencing decent public transit for the first time. Still, there are people who do see it and are stuck at the idea that it just can’t be implemented in their own country.

      I almost lost my mind once when someone was telling me that a train is less scalable than a car. Like dude, do you think paved roads just spontaneously burst out of the ground?

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        Literally had a conversation with a guy who assumed that all roads were just paved over old ‘naturally made’ wagon trails, and I had to explain to him that for most American parceling, the roads usually came first, then the government parceled the lands, which is why areas without roads are usually unparceled, and that most American cities were created by proximity to either trains, harbors or highways. It genuinely escapes people that you don’t build infrastructure around development, you develop around infrastructure.

      • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        You can find people in europe living 5km away from a city center who consider themselves to be living in the remote monoglian steppe because there’s a 300m gap between the buildings of the city and their town

        Carbrain doesn’t operate on rationality as such, it doesn’t usually boil down to just not having experienced a different approach to it

    • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      everybody who doesn’t need a car for transportation is the bourgeoisie and needs to be shot to ensure more roadspace for the proletarian individual automobile

      Depending on the country this is sort of true, because many workplaces require a full licence to even be considered for work.

      But it’s also missing a few important things. What about disabled people? People who can’t afford lessons or even the tests? People with no support network (no family, friends to teach them to drive)?

      There are many such cases of these, even here on hexbear, we have users in these situations. I was one of them for a period of my life and it fucking sucks, socially it’s embarrassing to admit you can’t drive, and professionally? It limits your options so much, even in cases where it shouldn’t.

      Carbrain is awful.

      • Ildsaye [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        20 hours ago

        What about disabled people?

        I have a processing delay that makes operating a car feel way too abrupt and terrifying to me, so I’ve never had a license, I have always biked and bused. Not that I have ever been able to afford a car, I would be terribly vulnerable in a place where you absolutely need one. A cluster of hidden disabilities that make exploiting your labor unprofitable by a thousand cuts has a special sort of stigma attached to it, and it’s a special sort of mindfuck to gradually break free of the cloud of eugenicist denial you were raised under and see it for what it is.

      • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        Depending on the country this is sort of true, because many workplaces require a full licence to even be considered for work.

        love to be the homless bourgeoisie

        Point begin even this argument among class lines always ignores the low end of the working class who do not have cars because those cost a decent amount of money

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 day ago

          Personally I also hate it because cars are effectively privatization of transportation costs. The government doesn’t have to pay for your car repairs (which are inevitable given how much people have to drive), you get to pull yourself up with your bootstraps and pay for it yourself. And people wonder why this country is going to shit when there is no real support to even get people to jobs with the infrastructure we have.

          • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            Cars aren’t even really just privatization in the sense that the cost is offloaded onto the invidual instead of the state, you just both pay your private car and also for the roads, which barring things like sea-connecting canals are about the most expensive infrastructure there is. Regardless of the mode of production the entire concept just doesn’t work out on economics, like, at all.