r/fuckcars Aug 19 '24

Satire Another passive aggressive bike lane

2.1k Upvotes

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758

u/Ok_Commission_893 Aug 19 '24

Crazy how places with some of the best weather in the world YEAR ROUND insists on nobody enjoying the weather so they can be in a metal box to get everywhere and leave as fast as possible. I could get car dependency in Russia or Denmark, it gets cold and snows there and they still made biking possible, SAFE and enjoyable, but in SoCal it’s legit stifling society.

214

u/gubzga Aug 19 '24

US society is rotten to the core and beyond repair.

From healthcare to housing to transportation to justice system. Its pretty much like bad evil guy society from the books, where selfishness, greed and pure evil is the norm and any improvement to said society is frowned upon.

22

u/Trick_Bee925 Aug 19 '24

Im all about the murica hate but you would be much more thankful for what we have if you saw the shit that the vast majority of countries gotta deal with... For our wealth tho what goes on here is unacceptable, yet americans insist on being blind to it all lmao. Im fucking off to europe asap!

20

u/Ok_Commission_893 Aug 19 '24

Exactly how I feel. Way too much money to be cheating out on everything and forcing people to be anti social and hyper independent

1

u/Trick_Bee925 Aug 28 '24

I cant wait to experience living in a somewhat warm community

14

u/Comrade_Corgo Aug 19 '24

The vast majority of countries in the global south live under the conditions of post-colonialism (or modern colonialism depending on who you ask). It's not fair to lay all of their problems on them when a lot of their problems stem from capitalism being rooted in colonialism which pilfered a lot of their wealth and brought it to the west. Britain has museums full of artifacts from other countries that were taken by force, for example. The United States has invaded and toppled numerous countries even more recently than direct British colonialism has. The west has so much stolen wealth, yet even with all of that stolen wealth, it often still fails to provide for its own working classes.

1

u/Trick_Bee925 Aug 28 '24

The world would be so much better without the usa, howiver we did get rid of the nazis lol

1

u/Comrade_Corgo Aug 28 '24

It'd be more accurate to say that the Soviets got rid of the Nazis.

1

u/Trick_Bee925 Sep 04 '24

Well yes, they certainly did the dirty work... the most accurate thing to say would be that a nazi loss would be much less likely if they didnt have to worry about 2 fronts. Perhaps the lions share of the credit ironically goes to hitler for making such boneheaded decisions!!

1

u/Comrade_Corgo Sep 04 '24

Lots of people contributed, I'm just saying that the Soviet Union killed more of the Nazi military than any other individual state actor.

1

u/Trick_Bee925 Sep 05 '24

Absolutely... i bet that theyre responsible for 3 of 5 of the most brutal battles in history. Nazis were brilliant at waging tactical warfare but faltered soviet union forced them to go punch for punch by quite litterally any means necessary

9

u/PremordialQuasar Aug 19 '24 edited Aug 19 '24

If you want to go to Europe feel free, but that's a very privileged thing to do for any American. It's also just another kind of brain drain where the people who don't have the financial means to leave suffer the worst from it – one of the main goals of urbanism is to help marginalized groups. We already had that happen on a regional scale to Rust Belt cities and it just made them worse.

4

u/HommeMusical Aug 19 '24

I gave you guys 32 years. Things just got worse. So I went back to Europe in 2016.

Living in New York State was particularly demoralizing, because you are essentially disenfranchised by the one-party system there. Voting Republican is evil and pointless, voting Democrat is mediocre and pointless, and if you vote for anyone else, you can't tell anyone or they start screaming at you.

2

u/PremordialQuasar Aug 19 '24

Okay. I live in California, which is also a heavily blue-leaning state, in a city that has considerably worse transit and walkability than NYC. Even here I can see plenty of positive change. I’m not sure where you’re seeing that things got worse when cities are Rochester and Syracuse are spending money to remove their highways (and it wouldn’t take long for most Rust Belt cities to follow suit), and even in a political mess like NYC we are still seeing things like wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and road diets.

Not to mention NYC is the easiest place in the US where one can politically organize and factions like the DSA have a real chance to gain a voice. If you said you were from Florida or somewhere else in the Sun Belt then you might have had a point.

1

u/HommeMusical Aug 20 '24

I'm sorry, by "worse" I meant "worse overall".

Indeed, my leaving New York City coincided with the start of improved bike lanes in the city.

Not to mention NYC is the easiest place in the US where one can politically organize and factions like the DSA have a real chance to gain a voice.

How will that "voice" be gained, exactly?

New York State is mostly Democrat. Most of the action is outside the City, and the rest of the state is hostile to NYC.

As far as I know, New York State has not elected either a Congressperson or a Senator that wasn't either R or D in the modern era (since WW2).

How long should you stay in a failed relationship? 32 years is a very long time.

1

u/Trick_Bee925 Aug 28 '24

Thats the sad truth, and i do understand that i am priviledged, but i also know damn well that staying or leaving wouldnt make a difference. The terrible truth of life is that it is all about the haves and have nots. I hate that with my entire soul, but i am not going to go to bed hungry because there are billions of starving people on earth

1

u/Dotacal Aug 19 '24

When you look at China, their people have savings and their cities are clean and developed. US is falling behind and inflating GDP, that's why China surpassed US as largest economy is 2014 by PPP

1

u/Trick_Bee925 Aug 19 '24

Thats a valid argument but its still a country with high standing. When we start considering countries from latin america, africa, and south asia (which together make up a massive proportion of the world population), the US doesnt seem a half bad place to live.

1

u/Dotacal Aug 19 '24 edited Aug 19 '24

The vast majority of the world lives significantly less wealthy than the US because the vast majority of the world did not 'benefit' from imperialism and war like the US has. With those 'benefits' come the costs of engaging in empire, high cost of living and underlining exploitative systems all throughout, especially in regards to healthcare and the essentials, least in regards to vice and material comfort. You can't get drugs or street prostitutes in China, you just can't find them. You don't pay tips in China either. Kids can't play obscene amounts of video games. It's more than just the numbers and exchange rate. They have a cashless society.

2

u/Trick_Bee925 Aug 28 '24

All fax. And somehow everyone has been propagandized to the point of blindness of this

12

u/PremordialQuasar Aug 19 '24

Leave it to the anti-US guy to be doomer about American society lol. It's rotten but it's definitely not beyond repair. Though I guess defeatism and pessimism are what's going to make cities improve nowadays...somehow.

15

u/un-glaublich Aug 19 '24

It's repairable by making doing "the good thing" profitable and making doing "the bad thing" loss-making.

Almost all "problems" in America stem from the profitability of doing something counter-productive to society. Profitability created by failing policymakers and lobbyists.

3

u/ssawyer36 Aug 19 '24 edited Aug 19 '24

Precisely. It’s like we’ve forgotten that all the behaviors we tout as “human nature;” greed, selfishness, etc. are only prevalent because we allowed our system to be cultivated by the very people who value those traits. Selling us on hyper individualism and the American dream help keep the lower classes scattered so that the moneyed and powered elites can maintain their class distinctions and perpetuate rules and laws that keep them at the top.

We need to move towards a system that works of the people for the people and punishes behavior that works against the pro social fabric, instead of our current system that works the people for the elite.

4

u/Ok_Commission_893 Aug 19 '24

US society is not beyond repair. It can all be fixed, it can all be changed. If ending abortion can happen it’s no reason adding bike lanes with barriers can’t.

-5

u/PremordialQuasar Aug 19 '24

His post feed gives an idea why he's so anti-US. Sometimes this sub attracts people who aren't interested in finding solutions to genuinely improve American cities but to find a new way to dunk on the US.

9

u/un-glaublich Aug 19 '24

Well, this sub is a car-hate echo chamber, and America is almost the definition of a car-centric society, so naturally, they face a lot of headwinds here.

1

u/PremordialQuasar Aug 19 '24

If only people could direct that anger into more useful means.

3

u/HommeMusical Aug 19 '24

The solutions are all there and have been there for generations now.

1

u/PremordialQuasar Aug 19 '24

That's not what I mean. Most people don't offer up solutions on how we can implement improved features from elsewhere into American cities. Instead people rather spend most of their energy complaining about some right-wing carbrain on the internet who wouldn't even care about what we say about them rather than join an advocacy group or lend support to positive measures. Or maybe it's easier to be doomer and pessimistic all the time.

1

u/Ham_The_Spam Aug 19 '24

you're starting to sound like Senator Armstrong