teuast

He used to be a right wing billionaire who loved spreading his propaganda. He still is, but he used to be, too.

ok then

What you've been failing to consider, which I think I may have been taking as read to my detriment, is that the way our cities are organized plays a big role in determining which mode of shipping is more effective. The denser of a center you have, the more businesses you have concentrated in one place, the more you need capacity and the less you need flexibility. That inverts as things get more spread out and stuff needs to get to more different places. When you have a city organized around its rail infrastructure rather than a sprawling car-dependent mess, that rail infrastructure absolutely kills at supplying the place, significantly reducing the severity of the last-mile problem.

I will also note that even the most anti-car places still rightfully allow for delivery vehicles, and neither I nor I think any other person who doesn't like cars would begrudge that. I personally just think that pretty much any shipping done by big rig when it could be done by rail is a missed opportunity.

Here are a few additional links for you to consider:

Trucking is heavily subsidized

The interstates are increasingly a metaphorical financial albatross around our collective neck

The places that are connected by and organized around rail are invariably the most economically productive areas of any city

Saying dense urbanism with plentiful public housing is a "communist fantasy" is literally too dumb to dignify with a response.

Meet me in Vienna and I'll buy you a beer.

All of those are phenomenal arguments for heavily reinvesting in our freight rail.

Your history is wrong. We had begun industrializing about 100 years before trucks were invented and more like 160 before they really became dominant.

And are you literally arguing that building rail is more cost prohibitive, time consuming, and inflexible than building roads? Like actually? Unironically? I'm sorry, buddy, but when you start getting into numbers, that's my territory and you're out of your depth. https://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2014/01/11/rails-vs-roads-for-value-utilization-emissions-savings-difference-like-night-and-day/

If only we properly invested in history education in this country. Then maybe people wouldn't be embarrassing themselves by making arguments like yours.

So what did we do before we had widespread cargo trucking? Did we just not deliver any cargo ever? Everyone just wandered around dropping limes all over the place 'cause they'd only figured out how to carry them with their bare hands, until Henry Ford invented gas station sushi and revolutionized transportation forever?

Well, in the interest of not wasting everybody's time, I'll tell you: they organized their towns and cities around rail. This happened right here in the United States, with the stated example being in Philadelphia. Even the old West Coast cities were organized in much the same way for a long time. That was the only way they had available to them, and somehow, they still managed to have an economy.

We have a lot of retrofitting to do to regain that ideal. But it's possible.

Who besides rich boys can afford to ride their bikes to work?

i bike to work in no small part because i can't afford to drive there

Single mothers getting their kids to elementary and middle schools?

in civilized countries, they can use a cargo bike (what the dutch call a bakfiets) to carry the kids. or the kids can ride their own bikes.

The elderly going to their doctors appointments?

many elderly people can still cycle. you may even see electric assist tricycles on the bike path in civilized countries. and of course elderly people also benefit from accessible and convenient public transit.

Working stiffs who can’t afford to live in downtown?

this is a real concern and i absolutely share your desire to build large-scale dense public housing developments in downtown around transit stations, as well as doing the same around more outlying transit stations such that taking public transit also becomes a viable option.

What do you think will happen to rents when is forced to get an apartment in one of the existing blocks?

wait, i thought you wanted to build public housing to address housing affordability? was that just me offering a solution, and not you? that's weird

game has trains now

10/10, 100/100, all time best game

I am now inside my desk. I die a slow and painful death.

Why's it wrong?

I've been retreading the same ground because your argumentation strategy has just been to double down on your original points while ignoring my rebuttals. Which makes it fucking rich of you to accuse me of "not being interested in examining this discussion in any meaningful way." Imagine what I could achieve with that level of absolute brass balls.

What's the point of discussing if wages have grown without factoring in inflation? If wages increase, but inflation increases by the same amount, then leaving out the latter when arguing the former seems a little fucking dishonest, no? And of course it didn't occur to you to read past the first sentence to see where she makes that exact same point... or you deliberately ignored it to keep doubling down on the points I've already debunked.

And you've also admitted that there are still workers making the federal minimum wage, so it doesn't seem like this wage growth you think is such a trump card has been benefiting them at all. As I pointed out earlier, a third of the workforce is making less than $15, meaning that all of them would get a pay bump from raising the minimum, not just the ones who are already on the minimum wage. I have made this point multiple times and you still refuse to acknowledge it.

Honestly, you're arguing dishonestly enough that I straight up don't believe you when you say you'd love to see wages rise more.