This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
US society was fundamentally reformed by at least the magnitude I would propose, starting after WW2. Are you interested in proving these changes (which, in many cases, my "radical" changes simply seek to undo) were a net positive? In my opinion, anyone who wants substantial government interference and subsidy is responsible for showing that those interventions are justified. Your argument is just status quo bias.
The costs of cars and car dependence aren't hard to find. Car pollution likely contributes to asthma (also https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218136/ as another example, cars produce NO2 and contribute to ozone). Several thousand Americans are killed due to being hit by cars while walking or cycling every year (https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedestrians). User fees only cover roughly half of road costs, etc.
Status quo bias is good. Status quo has been formed as a result of massive amount of choices and preferences of millions over millions of people. If you want to declare all of them were wrong - damn well I'll ask some proof for it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
That link talks about general pollution. There are many sources of NO2, which will not go away if you remove passenger cars. Moreover, in the same source, the leaders among asthma problems were not exactly the countries you'd pick as leaders in car usage: Peru, Nigeria, Colombia, China. Maybe generally bad pollution policies and bad medical care contribute much more to the problem?
You can see pedestrian deaths a) mainly occur in dense, urban environments - ones that you propose should become a model and b) has been steadily declining since 70s, even unadjusted by population - are we using much less cars than then? There is a certain bump after 2010, but it's hard to argue we didn't use much cars from 70s to 2010s and then suddenly started using a lot of them. Also, guess what, more than half of the cases have alcohol involved. I think with the development of technology, this number will further go down, but will never be zero, because if somebody drunk want to jump in front of a bus, there's not much that can stop them. But I don't think anybody can seriously argue it is a good argument for eliminating private cars - no more than thousands of Americans dying from drowning is an argument for banning pools.
You forget here private drivers aren't the only ones who use roads. How do you think bread and milk gets to your grocery store?
Also, I don't see how that calculation - which includes commuter parking tax benefits, government costs and imaginary uncompensated damages - can be taken at face value. I could prove arbitrary cost to anything this way. Say, I made a law to tax hats at 50%, but shoes at 0%, and then claim that if I taxed shoes at 50% too, that would cost billions to people that walk (which is true), so then I claim all these billions is a subsidy for walking. This would be an insane argument - absence of potential taxation is not the same as expense. Otherwise, as there is no natural limit for taxes, anything can be attributed any arbitrarily high cost by just pointing out it's not taxed by that number yet, even though it could be.
Oh, I see. You're not even trying to make a good argument. You're just saying whatever comes to mind. Well this is pointless then.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link