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PoliGAF 2017 |OT2| Well, maybe McMaster isn't a traitor.

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kirblar

Member
Driving = freedom. Getting away from people, getting to events. Getting a car is lifechanging if you live in a world where it's necessary in order to access it.
 

FyreWulff

Member
https://twitter.com/retrocampaigns/status/859153288389771265

See, this is why I hate loath Republicans. They're all scum.

The "just world" ideology is their get-out card for any sort of compassion or empathy or even their own internal logic.

Everyone should bootstraps. Oh, that person bootstrapped and still didn't make it? It was because they jaywalked at 12 years old, they deserve retribution and therefore they didn't deserve it for being just.

anything really. "all you have to do is this and this and this". "okay, i did republican, why didn't it work?" "because you must have sinned or touched yourself or something. only the good get rewarded!"

Have met multiple conservatives that think no healthcare coverage is fine "because those people have probably done something bad and deserve their lot in life".
 

pigeon

Banned
Driving = freedom. Getting away from people, getting to events. Getting a car is lifechanging if you live in a world where it's necessary in order to access it.

This isn't an argument for cars, it's an argument for the importance of mass transit.

We're so bad at mass transit we literally give teenagers death machines because it's easier than fixing the problem.
 

Tall4Life

Member
This isn't an argument for cars, it's an argument for the importance of mass transit.

We're so bad at mass transit we literally give teenagers death machines because it's easier than fixing the problem.

Nothing beats just speeding down the highway, blasting your music, by yourself, to just go somewhere, not anything important

driving is the best, idiots ruin it for the rest of us
 

kirblar

Member
This isn't an argument for cars, it's an argument for the importance of mass transit.

We're so bad at mass transit we literally give teenagers death machines because it's easier than fixing the problem.
Did no one else grow up in a gigantic suburb surrounded by lots and lots of...other suburbs?
 

CygnusXS

will gain confidence one day
Nothing beats just speeding down the highway, blasting your music, by yourself, to just go somewhere, not anything important

driving is the best, idiots ruin it for the rest of us

Replace highway with mountain road and you got it. Just stay away from cliff edges.
 

pigeon

Banned
I note I'm not hearing a lot of "driving is not actually horrifically dangerous and absurd to the degree that if you suggested it today people would lock you up," just a bunch of "yeah I guess driving does result in a lot of unnecessary deaths but how else are people in Montana gonna get to the supermarket?"

Unconvincing!

Self-driving cars will help but the reality is that as long as people have convinced themselves that getting behind the wheel of a death machine is somehow awesome they're still going to endanger all the rest of us.
 
This isn't an argument for cars, it's an argument for the importance of mass transit.

We're so bad at mass transit we literally give teenagers death machines because it's easier than fixing the problem.
I thought I'd only have to make this argument to dumb hicks until today tbh
 

Tall4Life

Member
Replace highway with mountain road and you got it. Just stay away from cliff edges.
i love those more scenic drives too

though those mountain roads cant be too narrow or else i get too much anxiety going up/down them
I note I'm not hearing a lot of "driving is not actually horrifically dangerous and absurd to the degree that if you suggested it today people would lock you up," just a bunch of "yeah I guess driving does result in a lot of unnecessary deaths but how else are people in Montana gonna get to the supermarket?"

Unconvincing!

Self-driving cars will help but the reality is that as long as people have convinced themselves that getting behind the wheel of a death machine is somehow awesome they're still going to endanger all the rest of us.
i mean yeah no one here's gonna say that people don't die sometimes in cars, but you can die doing pretty much anything. And your risk of an accident greatly decreases once you're past like 16, and it goes down pretty much every year. You get close calls but that shit happens. Very little actually replaces the feeling of when you really get in the mood for driving.
 
I agree, driving is fucking intolerable. It's astonishing to me that we came up with this idea where we just give everybody two-ton metal destruction machines starting at the age of 16 and tell them they have to do an extremely tedious task with it in order to literally get anywhere in the world. Yet another example of how past generations had extremely low opinions of the value of human life and human brainpower.

We had low opinions of human brainpower because we said, "here, you're smart enough to be trusted with this"? That doesn't even make sense. If anything, we vastly overestimated human brainpower, because anyone over 25 knows that they should never have been trusted with a car at age 16.
 

pigeon

Banned
i mean yeah no one here's gonna say that people don't die sometimes in cars, but you can die doing pretty much anything.

Yeah but most things don't literally kill a hundred people a day for the last fifty years. In generally once something kills 1.8 million people we usually view it as bad. I don't know where the cutoff is but it's before that.

And your risk of an accident greatly decreases once you're past like 16, and it goes down pretty much every year. You get close calls but that shit happens.

"That shit" being "people nearly dying and killing others and surviving only because of luck or reflex response."

Yes, that shit happens, but what if, hypothetically, it could happen less? Would that be good?

Very little actually replaces the feeling of when you really get in the mood for driving.

Let's legalize MDMA and ban driving.

"Hey do you need to go to work?"
"Go to what?"

We had low opinions of human brainpower because we said, "here, you're smart enough to be trusted with this"? That doesn't even make sense.

We had low opinions of the value of human brainpower because we decided it would be fine to spend a huge amount of it on "keep this enormous metal wagon between these white lines so that you don't die in agony and kill many others," a task which provides no benefit to society besides avoiding bad consequences we created from happening.
 
Much of America is designed and/Or spread out such that not-driving is basically impossible, even with hypothetically good public transit. You'd have to redesign it from the ground up to fix it. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, and there would be pretty much no way to design public transit such that I could get to, say, a random office in a strip mall in any kind of reasonable amount of time.
 
We had low opinions of the value of human brainpower because we decided it would be fine to spend a huge amount of it on "keep this enormous metal wagon between these white lines so that you don't die in agony and kill many others," a task which provides no benefit to society besides avoiding bad consequences we created from happening.

You don't think that giving people access to personal transportation has had any positive benefits for society? I feel like you took the lesson from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and just ran a million miles in the wrong direction with it.
 

pigeon

Banned
You don't think that giving people access to personal transportation has had any positive benefits for society?

Well, okay, that's a fair response. It is good that people are able to travel around. However we have already reached the point where we could let them travel around much more safely and we basically don't bother to do it. That represents a lack of faith in the value of humanity! We should value preserving life more.
 
You don't think that giving people access to personal transportation has had any positive benefits for society? I feel like you took the lesson from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and just ran a million miles in the wrong direction with it.

My main issue with cars is/was their affect on urban planning. The rise of the suburbs was a mistake.
 

Diablos

Member
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/331483-republicans-introduce-anti-net-neutrality-legislation

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill Monday to nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules.

“Few areas of our economy have been as dynamic and innovative as the internet,” Lee said in a statement. “But now this engine of growth is threatened by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internet’s infrastructure."

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) co-sponsored Lee’s bill.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai introduced his own plan last week to curb significant portions of the 2015 net neutrality rules that Lee’s bill aims to abolish. Pai’s more specific tack is focused on moving the regulatory jurisdiction of broadband providers back to the Federal Trade Commission, instead of the FCC, which currently regulates them.

The FCC will vote to consider Pai’s proposal in May.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) and Technology and Communications subcommittee chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) had previously indicated brokering a net neutrality deal with Democrats.

Democrats including Sens. Edward Markey (Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Technology and Communications subcommittee ranking member Brian Schatz (Hawaii) have all said that Republicans have been too far to the right on net neutrality for them to come to the table on a compromise.

A full repeal of the rules would be a worst case scenario for Democrats.

It's like they're doubling down on killing the Internet
 

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
I note I'm not hearing a lot of "driving is not actually horrifically dangerous and absurd to the degree that if you suggested it today people would lock you up," just a bunch of "yeah I guess driving does result in a lot of unnecessary deaths but how else are people in Montana gonna get to the supermarket?"

Unconvincing!

Self-driving cars will help but the reality is that as long as people have convinced themselves that getting behind the wheel of a death machine is somehow awesome they're still going to endanger all the rest of us.

I note I'm not not hearing any actual suggestions from you that are in any way meaningful.

Public transit is not a solution to cars in the United States. Should cities and other highly populous areas invest in it? Absolutely.

Is public transportation an efficient or even literally feasible investment in the absolutely vast swathes of rural and suburban land in the country? No fucking way.

You can complain all you want about how our suburbs wouldn't exist if not for cars but they do exist and nationwide public transit is not going to be a solution any time soon. The cost of even attempting it would be beyond insane.
 

pigeon

Banned
I note I'm not not hearing any actual suggestions from you that are in any way meaningful.

I mean, I feel like the solution is pretty obvious. Invest heavily in developing self-driving cars, issue commercial licenses for them to transit without drivers, then ban private car ownership entirely and force everybody to get memberships with self-driving taxi companies.

If necessary we can actually just set one up under the government but I bet the free market can work this one out.

I just don't think we'll ban private car ownership any time soon because of people with the bad, life-endangering opinions on display in this thread. But it's not like nobody can figure out what to do!
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Private car ownership in cities will become economically too burdensome. You have to pay for your mortgage somehow. I expect some big consolidations in the car industry over the next five years.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I mean, I feel like the solution is pretty obvious. Invest heavily in developing self-driving cars, issue commercial licenses for them to transit without drivers, then ban private car ownership entirely and force everybody to get memberships with self-driving taxi companies.

If necessary we can actually just set one up under the government but I bet the free market can work this one out.

I just don't think we'll ban private car ownership any time soon because of people with the bad, life-endangering opinions on display in this thread. But it's not like nobody can figure out what to do!

Dude, as a dyed in the wool political crank, I have to tell you that you need to figure out how to market your ideas better. Propose a London-on-steroids system where we de-automobilize urban cores through onerous entrance-exit fees combined by massive public transit investment. No one will take you seriously if you start with "ban cars". Read Cass Sunstein, we need to nudge nudge nudge nudge nudge.
 

Trouble

Banned
Private car ownership in cities will become economically too burdensome. You have to pay for your mortgage somehow. I expect some big consolidations in the car industry over the next five years.

It's not even that it's economically too burdensome, it's just less convenient. I expect you'll see more car companies get into the car sharing business in the next few years. Here in Seattle we already have Mercedes (Car2Go) and BMW (ReachNow). I took the bus to work this morning and drove a nice 3 series home from work today for ~$6.50.

Honestly the only reason I still have a car at all is that it's paid off and my (per-mile) insurance is ~$30 a month.
 
I mean, I feel like the solution is pretty obvious. Invest heavily in developing self-driving cars, issue commercial licenses for them to transit without drivers, then ban private car ownership entirely and force everybody to get memberships with self-driving taxi companies.

If necessary we can actually just set one up under the government but I bet the free market can work this one out.

I just don't think we'll ban private car ownership any time soon because of people with the bad, life-endangering opinions on display in this thread. But it's not like nobody can figure out what to do!
They'll probably fade away due to insurance costs and cheap self-driving car memberships, no ban necessary.
 

The way they are trying to label Net Neutrality really bothers me. Making it sound like they're going from some older system to Net Neutrality which is bad, when in fact Net Neutrality is literally preserving the exact environment that lead to the Internet thriving in the first place. If it were sectioned off and tiered and prioritized the way ISP's want to now, it would have taken another 5-10 years, maybe even longer, to get to the point we're at now. It's probably one of the most dishonest stances the entire Republican Party has embraced.

I will never forgive Ted Cruz for his bullshit "Obamacare for the Internet" comment.
 

Coolluck

Member
I hope Dems rally behind O'Rourke instead of writing the Texas Senate race off since Castro isn't stepping in. Seems like every shitty Senate bill I see has Texas written all over it.
 
I know this bill sucks, let's throw it in the Senate's lap and let them deal with it. Great way to legislate.

If they're doing this, they know it's dead. They're not going to just punt the bill to the Senate to work on, that's not how this works and they know it and their constituents know it.

They'll get their names attached to a toxic vote with nothing to show for it, since it'll die in the senate, since there's no way it gets 50 votes (they can only lose 3), let alone 60 if it can't be done via reconciliation (which it probably can't be)
 

pigeon

Banned
Also for the record I didn't even mention how cars are powered by the most explosive thing we could find to make accidents even more dangerous and also they're slowly changing Earth to be more like Venus in terms of supporting life (i.e., not as good at it). There are a lot of bad things going on here.

Dude, as a dyed in the wool political crank, I have to tell you that you need to figure out how to market your ideas better. Propose a London-on-steroids system where we de-automobilize urban cores through onerous entrance-exit fees combined by massive public transit investment. No one will take you seriously if you start with "ban cars". Read Cass Sunstein, we need to nudge nudge nudge nudge nudge.

I appreciate this post.

I agree, a more likely solution is just to keep incrementally increasing transaction costs for car ownership (insurance, gas tax, accident liability) until people choose to give them up and switch to Robot Lyft voluntarily. The problem is that's the n**l*b*r*l solution, so then only rich people will own cars.

For this reason, to circle back to the original topic of the thread, I support literally any increase in gas tax no matter how large. Although since our goal is to extinguish private ownership we then also need to come up with an actual mechanism for funding roads.
 
Are we seriously talking about banning cars?
No one is seriously proposing a car ban, I said we should take money meant for roads and use it to build trains and then it devolved into arguing over the (smart, very intellectual) cars suck side and the (dumb hick side) cars don't suck side.

I think I heard on The Weeds a couple weeks ago that Singapore just has a 100% tax on cars.
 

ascii42

Member
If we do away with personally owned cars and just have taxis, what do we do with car seats? They aren't exactly the kind of thing you want to install and uninstall every car ride, but you don't want to do without them.
For this reason, to circle back to the original topic of the thread, I support literally any increase in gas tax no matter how large.

Wouldn't this primarily hurt poor people, at least in the short and mid-term? More likely to have longer commutes, more likely to drive older, less efficient cars?
 
@BraddJaffy
Trump to speak with Putin tomorrow

C-yFDgHXgAAV7j1.jpg


100 day performance review.
 
Also for the record I didn't even mention how cars are powered by the most explosive thing we could find to make accidents even more dangerous and also they're slowly changing Earth to be more like Venus in terms of supporting life (i.e., not as good at it). There are a lot of bad things going on here.

I don't know how many movies you watch but gas isn't that volatile. You can shoot that shit with a machine gun and have it not even light up. And yes, they aren't environmentally friendly but that's a problem with literally every other form of transport without change in design which isn't somehow impossible on manually driven cars.

There's also the fucking over of lots of rural poor people that kinda need cars to get around (no form of public transport is coming to my hometown for example) and rely economically on cars being mass produced to cut costs on their end.
 
No one is seriously proposing a car ban, I said we should take money meant for roads and use it to build trains and then it devolved into arguing over the (smart, very intellectual) cars suck side and the (dumb hick side) cars don't suck side.

Banning cars would be a logistical nightmare that also shrank the US economy substantially. On top of that, while it would work great for large cities, in rural communities or even slightly smaller towns/cities it would be horrible. It would be a massive failure outside of densely populated areas. I think we absolutely should invest in newer mass transit systems, but implying it could replace private vehicle ownership is absolutely ridiculous.

I think I heard on The Weeds a couple weeks ago that Singapore just has a 100% tax on cars.

We should do the same because our infrastructure, culture, and geography are identical to Singapore right?

We talk about banning guns all the time. Cars kill a lot more people!

I would rather Cars we constitutionally protected than Guns tbh.
 
Ban cars. Eat the rich
A future I can believe in.

I don't know how many movies you watch but gas isn't that volatile. You can shoot that shit with a machine gun and have it not even light up. And yes, they aren't environmentally friendly but that's a problem with literally every other form of transport without change in design which isn't somehow impossible on manually driven cars.

There's also the fucking over of lots of rural poor people that kinda need cars to get around (no form of public transport is coming to my hometown for example) and rely economically on cars being mass produced to cut costs on their end.
I mean, public transportation is way more ecofriendly than cars and I'm pretty sure rail is too.

No one is saying "ban all cars" (well maybe pigeon is) but reducing the number of people driving would be a great thing for public health and the environment.

We should do the same because our infrastructure, culture, and geography are identical to Singapore right?
Obviously not, was just referencing something interesting I heard. No one here thinks we can get the number of people who drive down to like 15% or whatever overnight.
 
Banning cars is an even bigger nonstarter than banning guns. They might be the only thing people like more. That's not to say that we also shouldn't invest in public transportation, but at this point a car is more than just a way to get around. It's a status symbol and a major part of the culture.

The major downsides to high car ownership are a problem with a real-world technological solution that's going to happen inside of like 10 years. Cheap, efficient EVs will decimate internal combustion cars for daily commuters, which neuters the climate impact, and improvements in self-driving and computer assisted driving will help reduce accidents. Trying to legislate the outcome is just asking for pushback and misery.
 
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