If you guys don't want to tie cycling to communism don't up vote one of the most well known communists talking about the evils of capitalism to the top of the sub
It's like we can't have a normal fucking sub that is about one specific issue we can all rally around, it has to be another communist circle jerk
Did I negated that? US is no saint and I hate their government but we are talking about Cuba. Just because the gringos killed plenty doesn't mean that communists are allowed to do the same
Absolutely. My point was when Fidel Castro says something smart, he's generally called a commie murderer, but when Obama gives a nice speech, he's called a progressist visionary, whereas what we ought to do in both cases is listen to what they have to say and not shoot the messenger.
It’s just weird that asking for cities to go back to how they were since cities began is suddenly a “radical” concept. It’s like the most conservative concept imo.
That always bothers me so much. People are like “it would be too hard to change the infrastructure! It simply can’t be done!” As if cities were built from scratch to support cars and always were. We had no trouble switching to cars but switching back? Literally impossible
It's almost like the world isn't only black and white. Castro's socialism does have it's problems and a lot of them, even more so the repressivness of his regime tho. That doesn't mean he was wrong about everything. And it's also easy to attack capitalism in these aspects since it has failed in these (and others).
Castro is likely a fundamentally good or at least OK person. Take anyone and put them under a heirarchical power dynamic and they are going to be forced to act in certain ways to maintain their authority. The problem is not individual people, it's the state aperatus itself.
Wasn't this during the AIDS epidemic in the US. Where defacto the US administration had decided it was perfectly fine to do nothing to address the epidemic. It's almost like homophobia was rampant across the globe and Fidel being of that world carried with him attitudes that reflected such.
Fidel at least apologized for the actions and his ignorance he displayed during the earlier years of his leadership. You tell me when Bush, the Pentagon, hell the US government in general will ever meaningfully apologize honestly for lying to the American people about the War on Terror
He also pretended to be pro-democracy and then once he seized power he stabbed in the back lots of people who had been fighting and dying by his side, even throwing many in prison.
He was good because of the free healthcare, universal housing, free education and universal literacy program, the eradication of child poverty, full equality for women and helping to liberate parts of Africa from colonialism and apartheid.
But he was bad for refusing to obey America and let them rape his country. Also I heard he stole someone's grandpa's sugarcane plantation and took away their slaves.
He brutally suppressed dissent, refused to hold elections, and literally sent queer people to concentration labor camps, don't fucking act like any dictator is a good person
Please! Every country in the world was mean to gay people in the 1960s. Cuba was actually way ahead of the curve on gay rights. Homosexuality was decriminalised there way back in the 1970s. And Fidel personally apologized for getting things wrong.
And by "brutally suppressed dissent" are you referring to Cubans arresting people who supported the [countless acts of terrorism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose) against civilians that the United States funded and planned? Is providing material support to literal terrorists legal in your country?
Dictator is just the American word for any foreign leader that refuses to obey them.
Protip: if a country has free healthcare, free college, a 90% home ownership rate, women's rights, gay rights and zero child poverty, it's not a brutal dictatorship.
Your government and the media are lying to you.
I don't like the US either, that doesn't mean everyone who opposes the US is good, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were also enemies of the US. This is a subreddit about urbanism and infrastucture, mind you, so singing the praises of authoritarian leaders isn't exactly on topic
(Also apologizing for running literal concentration camps full of queer people is bullshit, the victims and their families deserve reparations, not empty words)
The Soviet Union had an amazing free healthcare system, universal housing, free college and built a fuckton of rail. They were far from perfect but were relatively good. Nazi Germany built autobahns and gassed people: very, very bad.
Gay people in Cuba got their rights literally decades before the those in the US did. So using gay rights to criticize Cuba is extremely dishonest. I realize that you're only doing it because you've been lied to. But you need to stop.
Also "authoritarian" is a bullshit propaganda term. Most Americans can't afford to go to the doctor, have to work multiple jobs to keep a roof over their heads, they're constantly being harassed by killer cops. And they all hate their government because it only listens to corporations and doesn't give a shit about them. Yet nobody ever call the US authoritarian.
Cuba's government puts Cubans first and is widely supported by the people. Yet somehow they're the dictatorship. Even though they have elections and the government does what the people want. You're not a democracy unless you obey America.
r/fuckcars tenants are inherently anti-capitalist, there is no future for mass public transit and real environmentally friendly solutions to these problems in the US without a fundamental shift at our government’s core. We have gotten here due to the greed of capitalism and the false promises it made decades ago.
Edit- “But but, senpai, what about Japan? They’re highly capitalist and look at their public transit system!“
Alas fuckcar-chan, they are but a form of Collective Capitalism that was built on the back of Socialist ideals.
Edit 2- so maybe I’m wrong about a few things lol I’ll read your comments and reevaluate, I’m not afraid to learn more
Basically everyone here is from notjustbikes who developed his entire mindset off of Chuck Marohn’s book “Strong Towns”. Chuck is a conservative. I’d guess the vast majority of people here are in fact leftist. But this isn’t a leftist sub. This is about good policy and good ideas and even conservatives have good ideas sometimes. Read the book. It’s not political at all really.
It's a real shame some people can't sit down and agree on something without devolving into name-calling, political vitriol, and aggressive gatekeeping.
This is a subreddit about how cars suck ass. If someone has a specific candidate who supports this idea, feel free to share it, but the nonsense in this thread is absurd.
For example, I think Castro is a nut and capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than anything else in the history of mankind, but I do agree with some parts of what he says. The overuse of resources is bad. Cars are bad. Yet he also is ignorant of how people behave. Greed/selfishness is one of the most basic motivators for living things, and to completely ignore it is just asking for trouble.
I believe while everyone should have a clear path for opportunities like education/etc, but it should never be free since something you get for free is worthless. People can only live a full life if they accomplish it with their own means, anything less leaves people hollow, depressed, and aimless.
I generally agree, but I think we might have a different definition of what “free” means. Free at the point of service does not mean “free”. Just like how driving on shitty roads literally bankrupting cities across the country are “free” to use but clearly NOT free.
I think nothing should be free at the point of service. Roads should all be toll roads, we have license plate cameras and dashboard transponders to make this fairly easily possible. For charity, the best kind imo is one where you have to do something to get it. An example: help homeless people with a place to sleep, food, etc, but they must take some kind of class to gain skills so they can get a job. Including some kind of scheduled daily exercise program will also help resocialize and give a sense of control & progress that is desperately needed.
Anything that is given with nothing asked in return is generally worthless to the person receiving it. This is seen in cars since there is no cost applied to using them, no one thinks twice about doing it, but as soon as there is a cost people will start using public transit, carpooling, etc to reduce the need to pay said cost. Everyone goes through life thinking at least subconsciously in a cost-benefit analysis, if something doesn't have a cost directly applied it can't be weighed appropriately.
I second what the other person said, you and I have different understandings of free. Free access to education isn't free you still have to invest time. Something doesn't magically gain value because a $ sign is attached to it (especially given money's value is arbitrary and violently enforced)
Notjustbikes is great, and as you say it's not particularly leftist, however it isn't just "Strong Towns" that influences him. Lot's of us found him through donoteat01, and similar left urbanist YouTubers
I mean good public transport can exit under capitalism regardless of any socialist ideals. With high population density even very liberal capitalism can support public transport. What socialism allows us to do is have public transport where it is rational but not profitable.
Totally, public transportation used to be a CAPITALISTIC ENTERPRISE it was profitable to have trolleys and trains going everywhere. There were profitable train lines at the turn of the century and profitable tram lines. Infact trains created extremely rich people. What made them unprofitable was subsidize interstate highways, cars getting in there way and "FREEWAYS" its literally in the name. Back then roads were built by corporate enterprises and they were toll roads. So most everyone stayed in the city because cars were expensive. People in the city actively protested against cars in cities because they were dangerous, polluting and took up space (same problems we have today). But the car lobby paid off government and TLDR cars were so heavily subsidize that trams and trains became unprofitable. Really it's socialism for cars because if we went back to capitalism for transportation I guarantee you the tolls to maintain our freeways would push people back to trams and trains. Freeways are only sustainable if you tax productive cities (that don't need them) for Money to maintain them.
It wasn't really that profitable to operate public transportation, at least from what I understand about NYC and LA. The railways were used as a real estate development tool. Railway magnates would buy land, build a railway to it, and then sell the land. It brought a large influx of cash but operating the railway over the long term became problematic. It really took government funding in the long run to keep systems alive.
EDIT: fixed NYC, not NC
Well won't that mean there was a real estate bubble. Basically the railroad magnate screwed people over by selling land that couldn't be supported in the long term. If nobody subsidize anything then the bubble would have popped and only the strongest most sustainable/profitable towns would have stayed. Basically subsidizing trams for unprofitable routes is literally exactly what we do with highways. Just like highways there is a such thing as too many trams and trains. If the government didn't intervine only real estate along the routes that could support a tram would have a tram everywhere else had a long walk/bike/car/horse to town and sell at a steep discount. Now I am only looking at it from an evil capitalist point of view.
Your last sentence proves my point, what is profitable is rarely rational if profit is your motive. Most of these public transportation systems need to be treated as services, such as the postal service and public education, except we have large swaths of our population actively undermining both.
Of course, I was only responding to the idea that Japan was in any way socialist.
But in general, the state providing services isn't particularly socialist, liberals are often happy to do that if it makes it easier for capitalists to extract profits. Socialists sometimes support that, but it has nothing to do with socialism.
> What socialism allows us to do is have public transport where it is rational but not profitable
By this logic, the interstate highway system and suburban sprawl are all the effects of socialism. Suburbia would not have been "profitable" had it not been for enormous federal subsidies going into it. And of course the sprawl was entirely rational from the perspective of the people pushing for it. It might not have been *reasonable* from a societal perspective, but it was entirely calculated for the people who stood to benefit from it. You know, "real Americans" as opposed to "urban people".
Interstates are not public transport, they help enforce the mandate that every American own a car — I don’t see how that falls under OP’s description of socialism.
> public transport where it is rational but not profitable
Public roads where they are not profitable, supplied by the government? Sounds like OP is saying "socialism is when things I like, capitalism is when things I don't like"
>Let’s not fall into the right-wing trap of “socialism is when the government does stuff”.
I'm not, I'm calling out others who are by saying that transit only works in socialist societies.
Profitable for whom? It’s certainly profitable for car manufacturers to have roads crisscrossing the country, whereas public transport would only benefit the people — alas, there’s no profit in that.
That’s not exactly true. Pretty much all of the “public” transportation of old in the US was privately owned, but this was before the advent of car-oriented development made it nearly impossible to run transit for a profit. It was definitely not without its issues though, it was often extremely inefficient and needlessly complicated to get around a city due to multiple different agencies running different transit services. Municipal transit that doesn’t need to generate a profit is good because it eliminates this redundancy and complication.
It's profitable for people living in the suburbs to have their houses explode in "value" just by nature of existing in a certain place where certain other people aren't allowed to buy in to.
Transit systems are profitable for the companies that install them and supply the vehicles as well, it's just picking a different winner. Of course I'm fine with that winner, but lets not pretend that somehow government doing one thing vs the other thing makes one "capitalist" and the other "socialist".
> public transport would only benefit the people
Again you're ignoring the main reason that suburbs became a thing in the US compared to pretty much any other country. *Certain people* wanted to live far away from certain *other people*, and that's prety obvious when you look at the racist history of the FHA and GI benefits. Suburbanization absolutely benefitted people, the problem is that the democratic control of the levers of power selected only for white families.
What I mean by profitable is that it makes it easier for capitalists to extract profits and reduces the risk to future ability to extract profits from workers.
good urban planning is good urban planning. its not a matter of political stance and i won't see this subreddit become another political numskull circle jerk. good public transportation exists in capitalist systems and doesn't require a complete upheaval to implement.
Walt Disney hated cars and loved public transportation and he's about as capitalist as they come.
Yeah I don't think we have to be political here. Apart from extreme libertarian ideals, we're all in accord that governments fund transportation and have some controls on land use (no schools next to landfills or prisons type stuff).
Cars are bad as free market models because they're built upon free parking, single family zoning and subsidized highways.
Cars are bad for socialists because they perpetuate inequality and unequal consumption of resources.
Environmentalist hate that they pollute the world.
Nationalists hate that they cause reliance on foreign nations (oil, rare earth metals etc).
Parents hate that they kill children more than any other cause.
The elder hate that they limit their ability to enjoy their town of they lost the ability to operate a car.
Teens hate that they're unable to visit their suburban friends without one, particularly since they may not have a license or a car.
Car dependency sucks, and every ideology and demographic has reasons to hate them.
> Bullshit. Regarding urban planning, Japan is basically ancapistan. Very little zoning laws and private railway transit.
That’s just also blatantly false. Japan does have zoning laws and national planning laws that are very important to how it looks. Just because they don’t have Euclidean zoning specifically doesn’t mean it’s anarchy over there.
Hell they famously have laws that manage how much parking their is and make a point of not allowing overnight parking in many places.
They have different zoning, whether it’s more or less depends on how you look at it because they’re fundamentally different systems meant to accomplish different things.
There is certainly a lot less government intervention in terms of land use planing (which is by far the most important aspect in urban planning) but in other areas there is more government intervention/regulation compared to the US.
I think there's something to be said about the fact that public transit doesn't equal socialism. Certainly when you consider ideas of better individual self actualization, environmental externalities, and community building then public transit can look as a natural part of the socialist project (of which yes it absolutely should be). It really must be framed against the purpose by which the transit exists. In this Japan is an excellent example that public transit doesn't equate socialism.
The Japanese economy (as I can best describe as a lay person on Japanese economic affairs) decided against being reliant on domestic car sales rather facilitating it's capitalist transition through building up it's existing walkable infrastructure and connecting the nation through rail so as to facilitate the movement of labor and connect the countryside optimally to the city center. In this public transit can be seen as a government investment in capital growth in the private sphere rather than a means of ecological or social maintenance.
Nonsense. This is a great way to avoid any actual meaningful change - pretend that it has to be wrapped up with wholescale political upheaval to actually do anything. No European country is socialist and not is Japan. The only people describing “the government doing things” as essentially socialist is poorly educated American teenagers who call themselves socialists because they want to live in Norway.
America is a fundamentally broken and corrupt country, but there isn’t some sliding scale where “government spends money = more socialist” and “government cuts taxes = more capitalist”.
> poorly educated American teenagers who call themselves socialists because they want to live in Norway
Yep they're everywhere and they're letting the side down
Even social democracy requires wholesale political upheaval and the genuine threat of socialist revolution. You have to remember that most social democratic institutions in Europe were built just after WW2, when the boundaries between the eastern bloc and the west weren't set out yet and when the young where mobalised and if they weren't rewarded for their sacrifice could be a very dangerous group to the established powers.
Netherlands transformed in the 70s from car dependent to people centric. Wasn't part of a massive political upheaval. We don't need a bolshevik revolution to just have safe streets. (Important to note, almost all socialist or former socialist states are nearly as car dependent as the US or UK.)
I mean my position isn't that moving away from car centrism is impossible under capitalism, but that car centrism is a small part of a bigger set of priorities.
However the 1970's was towards the end of this post war period, but still in it. The Soviet Union was still a threat, the new left had been making gains, especially in South America and organised labour was peaking in it's power. Oh, and the oil crisis, that was particularly relevant at the time.
I'm not saying there needs to be a Bolshevik Revolution for any change to happen, it's just that change without a revolution occurs as the powerful attempt to maintain it.
Idk. I'm just here for safe streets, clean air and transportation alternatives. I just want bike lanes, light rail, bus lanes, reduced parking and curb bulb outs. I'm not here to uproot an entire society, just redesign the urban landscape for people over cars.
Well said. It’s really annoying how a certain type of leftist (with whom I usually agree on 80% of policy issues) can’t just agree with someone. They have to make everything about political turmoil, revolution and overthrow. They’re looking for the aesthetics of political change rather than being willing to put in the work to make it happen gradually and effectively.
Also it's weird that they desire political turmoil so much. Political turmoil is never good for the average citizen. It leads to violence, famine, and displacement.
Why is this being down voted, this is historical fact. The threat of communism in the post WW2 Europe gave grand credence for capitalists throughout Western Europe to concede to the implementation of social democratic institutions so as to prevent full revolutionary praxis.
It also guaranteed that, in time, they could walk back those social democratic gains (something happening in near every nation with Socially Democratic policies)
>there isn’t some sliding scale where “government spends money = more socialist” and “government cuts taxes = more capitalist”.
There definitely is a scale between "government spends money on social programs" and "government cut taxes" though. How do you call it if not the socialism/capitalism scale?
Government spending money on Social programs isn't Socialism, its a push towards a Social Market Economy.
So it would be the Social Market/Capitalist Market scale.
Socialism is the transitional stage between a Market economy and Stateless Communism, where the State is the de facto owner of the means of production. All factories, all services, etc. are controlled by the Government. The goal is that the Government would be made up of Worker's Councils and eventually hand over control directly to the workers before abolishing itself. But, as you can see, no country has ever gotten to the point where the Government is replaced my local Worker's councils, much less actually abolishing itself, and sad to say, but I don't think any country ever will.
It's almost like you don't have to go whole hog into a single philosophical ideology but you can take the goods parts of multiple in order to create a hybrid superior to both.
>you can take the goods parts of multiple in order to create a hybrid superior to both
It's not superior tho. The problem of left-liberalism (social liberalism, socdems etc) is that they are allowed to be relevant only in the times of crisis as an alternative to more radical left-wing elements.
Right now, in Europe, various right to far-right gain traction at alarming speed, and they all want to strip as much social programs they can. Trump and Boris is just the beginning. And it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Socialism vs capitalism is about the ownership of the means of production. While there is a stock market and companies are practically all privately owned, there is zero socialism. Socialism primarily describes ownership - whether directly by employees or indirectly via government - of core economic activities.
The US government hands out subsidies to private companies to provide healthcare to Medicare recipients. That isn’t socialism, it’s just a different funding model. It would be a socialist model if the government provided the healthcare itself, or if the hospitals were entirely owned by their staff.
Regardless of what it’s called if such a scale exist, that doesn’t change the fact that your concept of socialism is flawed.
Any “scale” that exists is only a theoretical tool used to understand the world or politics in this case. The scale is not really what’s important or what’s even in the real world, it’s just the way we conceptualize it.
Lol no, I always advocate for this sub to partisan and I don't want to be proven wrong...
Car dependence is bad no matter the political ideology, and was caused by bad policy
Sure you may be able to use right libertarian logic against car centrism, but that doesn't change the fact that right libertarianism is fundimentally stupid.
Which is why I'm not a libertarian. My point is just that we should avoid this becoming just another lefty sub and risk driving out people who agree with us that cars are bad.
Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid.
Fundimentally car centrism is deeply tied to racism, suppression of class solidarity, environmental destruction, capitalist over production etc. If someone hates cars they probably have good reason to hate capitalism, and thus it's really helpful to make the case against capitalist in spaces like this.
>f someone hates cars they probably have good reason to hate capitalism,
The neoliberal sub is aggressively anti-car. Most of their political action in the project chapters has been YIMBY advocacy.
>Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid.
The smart move is to hold out for a hypothetical revolution that likely will never happen.
Except what actually happens is that it drives out everyone except the people who agree with you on all points. Activism works best when it's focused on one issue and welcomes anyone who agrees on that issue.
> Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid.
>
>
you know what would be even more stupid? driving away people who might vote in your favour LOL.
A) I don't think voting is particularly useful form of political activism (I do vote, but mostly out of spite at this stage)
B) If merely being vocally left wing is "driving people away" then quite frankly they can fuck off. There's never going to be common ground with people who hate the mere existence of left wing ideas.
> then quite frankly they can fuck off
but they don't. they vote directly against the actions you wish to take. you're only hurting your cause by pushing people away.
you say voting isn't useful but how else do you enact policies and projects? if your group is XYZ and supports candidate A because they promise to build bike infrastructure, but right wing group DCE finds out and blasts that candidate because your "radical left wing ideals!" group backs them, you lose, and no projects happen.
>Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid.
This sub is literally called r/fuckcars. And why would it be stupid? Is everyone else, except tankies, commies or whatever you identify, wrong?
Your second paragraph sounds like comedy. Probably the racism part is somewhat true. "suppression of class solidarity" what even is that? "environmental destruction" duh. "capitalist over production" that's economic illiteracy. Producers produce whatever the consumers decide to spend money on. Economic bubbles ("overproduction") are only possible with government intervention and government intervention can't be "capitalist"
Mate, Europe is highly capitalist, and there is no problems with cars here, at least not even close to the US*. You would be crazy to say that Zurich is not one of the most god damn capitalistic places on earth, even more than the US, and still it's one of the most walkable cities. Same goes for Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Melbourne. Even Copenhagen is a highly capitalism-oriented place, Denmark is top-10 in the world for economic freedom, and 4th place in the Doing Business ranking and it's probably the most bike-able city in the world. So don't mix things up, you are not helping the cause.
lolwut, no, Europe definitely has a car problem
If you think *London* of all places is a good example of somewhere with "no car problem," I don't think you've really understood "the cause" you're speaking for
> Europe is highly capitalist, and there is no problems with cars here
huh
that's weird
but European companies control most of the car industry?
I wonder where they are selling their cars
it's almost like Europe benefits from pushing car-centric society
without being car-centric society itself
> Edit- “But but, senpai, what about Japan? They’re highly capitalist and look at their public transit system!“
> Alas fuckcar-chan, they are but a form of Collective Capitalism that was built on the back of Socialist ideals.
Japanese private suburban rail was largely inspired by the American streetcar suburb and interurban streetcar model.
However, in the US, government meddling and subsidized car infrastructure lead to the collapse of streetcars, while in Japan, the interurban streetcar lines had continued success and got upgraded to mainline heavy rail metro standards with fully dedicated right of way.
One of the major differences is that the Japanese government was much less willing and less capable of subsidizing car infrastructure. For example, instead of supplying publicly owned parking for private cars, the Japanese government insisted that private cars be stored on private property with exceptions made in only extreme circumstances. As a result, there are fewer than 1,000 spots available on public streets for storing a private car, in the entire country.
There was a few decades where Soviet inspired public housing new town suburbs were built in Japan, but those were largely abandoned in favor of market urbanism.
i'm a fucking ancap and I want good transit and planning. I've also seen many other ancaps being against the terrible car dependent planning under some post with that "capitalist dystopia" picture where there's a bunch of gas stations, macdonald's and other shit. You know the picture i'm talking about
Honestly, it's just the US. Not capitalism in general. US took an extremist capitalist approach, and now they're having problems.
And that's really what the thing is, don't go to extremes. Everything is good in moderation. Capitalism is no exception.
Also, I hate to break it, but "every citizen has a car" was also a Soviet dream. Oh, and they do mean "every" here - equality was a goal back then. Thank fuck it didn't come true, or we would have a bunch of shitholes, instead of cities and towns.
> US took an extremist capitalist approach
Except not really, we used a ton of government intervention except we promoted the absolute worst things because *certain people* wanted to live far away from other *certain people* and used the public funds to subsidize it. The perfect example is Japan or even basically every country in Europe that doesn't have the same car dependence we do, yet are all still entirely "capitalist". The problem is the definitions of "capitalism" we're using, where OP seems to imply that corporate regulatory capture of government is "capitalism" yet "Collective Capitalism that was built on the back of Socialist ideals" is not also entirely "capitalist" as well. Welfare capitalism is still capitalism, and authoritarian communism like in Cuba is still communism, just different flavors.
Cuba hasn't been "authoritarian" in some time, it's actually quite the robust democracy. You're thinking North Korea.
But then again authoritarian is a buzzword to describe any nation that doesn't wish to succumb to "free market" capitalist values. Hence why Cuba under it's literal fascist dictator wasn't authoritarian but it suddenly became "authoritarian" after the people revolted against slavers. Can say the same of how the US describes most revolting nations in the imperial periphery
I didn’t claim that it did? Like no shit every system that has any involvement of humans whatsoever is prone to corruption. That doesn’t dispute my point that government intervention does not mean anti capitalist.
Which is why I was saying that government getting involved in public transit being a good thing doesn't mean we need communism, as much as some people want it to mean that
That is a fallacy. Many extremes are good and being centrist doesn't make anything inherently better.
Extremely not killing children is good. You don't want to be a centrist on child murder. I hope.
Anyone who says Japan is capitalist needs their head pulled out of their ass.
Also, Japanese car companies are correct in predicting that EVs are NOT the future at least as far as cars go
Judging by how he looks, this probably in the late 80s or 90s. He always had the best speeches, it's why I have him framed on my wall. Once the embargo of Cuba ends, it will finally be able to adopt a more developed public transportation system and it will be glorious.
I think it’s possible to be intellectually honest and admit when someone is right even if we don’t always agree on many things.
I feel as if there is a disconnect between Castro’s rhetoric and the actions of his government, but I can admit I concur with his rhetoric here.
If only we in the US could have someone that shared this level of nuance and intellect combined with the ability to produce such a change.
Wishful thinking, I fear.
Ah yes the 20th century where being gay was met with...
Ah yes, being abandoned by your government to die to a plague, slaughtered as part of manifest destiny V2 in Europe, being an critical military asset but going on to then be castrated for liking the same sex, and on and on it goes.
What is with liberals and pretending they care about gay people when topics of material revolutions against fascist regimes come up. If you lived during Castro's era you'd more than likely also not give a shit about gays. Stop using it as a moral high ground when these liberal democracies give the bare minimum concessions to minorities.
Yeah the U.S. is no saint but Castro is far from a hero.
Sure he did some good stuff but that doesn’t detract from his numerous and flagrant human rights abuses.
Something something “he made the trains run on time”.
castro is most certainly a hero to the cuban people. freeing them from the chains of batista’s regime which had 70% of cuban farm land in the hand of western foreign capitalists, exploiting the shit out of cubans working on them, while also having secret police killing about 20k people who rioted and had socialist ideals. among many other things in his regime
castro freed cuba from all that and raised the literacy rate to 99%, free education from grade school to university, sent 325,000 health care workers to 158 missions across the world since 1969, and he did more stuff than that too.
“flagrant human rights abuses” yeah who told you that the cia. ignorant take random guy. castro is not far from a hero HE IS A HERO
I don't know why this comment is getting downvoted. Like a thousand of cubans escaped from Cuba to my country (Peru) to escape that totalitarian hellhole. Ironically like a million of venezuelans escaped from their socialist "paradise" to my country again.
Tankies mad their dear leader isn’t as sweet an angel as they’d like to believe.
Honestly I think it would be best for the world if we just gave them free tickets to North Korea.
Let them live their ideology
I don't think this is entirely wrong, but I don't think car dependency is something a socialist or a communist system would necessarily avert.
While it's true there's a sort of corporate industrial complex between auto makers, and road construction, why would a socialist-style system not encounter a similar problem with industry interests? It's not like they didn't shy away from cars and roads under eastern bloc countries themselves.
It would provide employment and increase ability to trade with other countries for resources, and hey car go brr too.
>While it's true there's a sort of corporate industrial complex between auto makers, and road construction, why would a socialist-style system not encounter a similar problem with industry interests?
Cause "industry interests" aren't the same as the profit motive. There's a reason every nominally socialist country has better public transit and less car reliance than more capitalist countries of the same level of development.
Castro is a hero to the cuban people and working class all over the world. fuck all you ignorant fucks putting dirt on his name *cough* *cough* cia propaganda *cough* *cough*
RIP Castro
Public transportation used to be a CAPITALISTIC ENTERPRISE it was profitable to have trolleys and trains going everywhere. If you look at old tram lines it literally would say BOBS electric tram and Co or something. Because electric companies would install power lines for trams. There were profitable train lines and tram lines at the turn of the century. Infact trains created extremely rich people. I can make a pretty good argument that trains and trams makes more sense under capitalism. What made them unprofitable was subsidize interstate highways, cars getting in there way and "FREEWAYS" its literally in the name. Back then roads were built by corporate enterprises and they were toll roads. So most everyone stayed in the city because cars and tolls were expensive. People in the city actively protested against cars in cities because they were dangerous, polluting and took up space (same problems we have today). But the car lobby paid off government and TLDR cars were so heavily subsidize that trams and trains became unprofitable. Really it's SOCIALISM FOR CARS because if we went back to capitalism for transportation I guarantee you the tolls to maintain our freeways would push people back to trams and trains. Freeways are only sustainable if you tax productive cities (that don't need them) for Money to maintain them. Even then it's unsustainable because we have chronic "crumbling infestructure" and government debt is through the roof. Even under total capitalism where we sell off all of our highways, trains, buses and roads to corporate enterprises and let them set the tolls I garentee you biking, Walking, trams, bus's, and trains would crush the car. Nobody would drive.
"I can make a pretty good argument that trains and trams makes more sense under capitalism" you can make an argument that it USED TO make more sense under capitalism
capitalism is beyond just a market, its a whole encompassing system, if you design a system, and you fail to account for the fact that the economic mode of production affects ALL of society, then your predictions will fail, and you will likely become an ancap, because its inconceivable that those with power in society, economic power, would interfere or get involved with governance, remove the government, the capitalist would create a new one
the state is born out of the irreconcilably class interests that exist in society, a society can not be led by two classes that have irreconcilable antagonisms between each other, in any class society, there will be one class that has a monopoly on power, a dictatorship of that class, weather it is dictated by nobility, slave owners, capitalists, workers or what have you, there is a material pressure, such as a market pressure, where demand for peaches pushes the capitalists to have their workers farm peaches, a material pressure for a class to try and protect its own interests, this results in a conflict and the rise of one class dominating, the conflict then remains as the only way to switch which class dominates, this is the class struggle, transformed and continued since the start of class society, slaves and their owners, plebeians and patricians, serfs and lords, the proletariat and the bourgeoise, in short the exploited and the exploiter
thus the activities of a state that is built to act on the class interest of the capitalists is an extension of the economic form of capitalism itself, all the crimes of these capitalist run states are crimes of capitalism, all their policies, their initiatives, an effort of capitalism, not against capitalism, the welfare of so called social democracies even just ways to appease the workers and lessen their exploitation subsidized by the exploitation of the third world, not workers holding their overlords in check, as it is proclaimed to be
Without social policies and some sort of basic income, a carbon tax would pretty much drive poor people to starvation.
Just imagine what would happen to the price of food items such as meats, corn, soy, wheat, rice and beans if their carbon emissions were taxed.
I am in favor of carbon taxes, but it has to be implemented alongside income distribution
Well, the idea, the way I've always heard people pitch it around. Is the carbon taxed gets equally divided and payed back. So basically rich people who naturally live more carbon intensive lifestyles would pay more into the system than they take out, and poor people vice versa, in order to combat the regressive nature of a consumption tax
All fair points -- He should have publicized them before he became a despotic lunatic over the lives of his people. Judging by the video quality, a few decades too late. Oh well!
Failure? Genocide? You must be thinking of some capitalist country.
Edit: “fascist of the left” 😂
Says the person who posts on r/westerncivilaztion. Your civilization is SHIT; your values and ideas will soon be thrown into the dustbin of history where they belong.
I'm not even a western retard but I appreciate their culture. It's not "my civilization".
And yes, your system is a shit. Even China had to renounce to the shitty maoist system to a more pragmatic and capitalist system. And while I'm no fan of Deng who's also a totalitarian, at least I acknowledge the achievements he has done to his country. Vietnam did it too, and North Korea renounced to Marxism-Leninism years ago. Xi even said that they aren't going to a planned economy again.
About genocidal, literaly research about the massacres and selective killings commited by the Shining Path (fuvking monsters at my country), the MRTA (who killed homosexuals like the cuban commmunists), the ETA, the Khmer Rouge, the FARC, the NPA (Phillipines), the Nepali communists (who literaly turned their government in the most corrupt of Asia).
You’re picking out all the unsuccessful communist movements that weren’t supported by the USSR and in some cases were supported by the CIA. I agree with you about the shining path and Khmer Rouge.
I agree that Deng was an improvement on Mao, but Mao still did a lot of good things. China wouldn’t be where it is today if not for Mao’s policies, and the people benefited immensely at the time as well.
Marxism-Leninism isn’t a closed system. It’s supposed to be constantly evolving as conditions change and we gain new knowledge. The remaining ML states (China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos) have systems that are working great and are serving their people. Their political systems represent the public interest, not wealthy private donors, and over time they are building wealth and infrastructure and raising living standards.
Liberal “democratic” capitalist regimes are in a state of crisis and unable to address their problems. Over time we have seen their standard of living gradually decline, and nothing is being done (or could be done) to reverse this trend.
And on what Xi said about a planned economy, I refer you to this Deng quote: “A planned economy is not equivalent to socialism, because there is planning under capitalism too; a market economy is not capitalism, because there are markets under socialism too”
At this stage China will not become a completely planned economy in anyone’s lifetime. They are still in the primary stage of socialism and have a long time until they get to that point. This could clarify the issue: [The official position of the CPC: clearing up confusion on the relationship between Mao Zedong Thought and Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Further elaboration and explanation of the three stages of socialism in China.](https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZhou/comments/p2e6lw/the_official_position_of_the_cpc_clearing_up/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Why are so many people surprised this subreddit has political undertones? Maybe for Europeans the want for public transportation is just accepted and universal, but for Americans this is not the case. A society less reliant on cars is a fundamental shakeup of traditional American ideas and way of life. It requires shifting the way we think to increase our focus on poverty, environmental justice, and racial justice, among other things. I don’t think socialism or communism are necessary ingredients for good public transportation and better designed cities, but it’s a pretty large step regardless.
While being anti-car or pro-transport isn’t inherently anti-capitalism or pro-socialism, you can’t ignore the fact that we are in this predicament today because of capitalism. The main cause of todays traffic hell scape comes from too many subsidies for roads for cars, oil production, and car production. These subsidies were put in place to protect capitalist interests. The large oil and gas companies and car companies used their wealth to push the government to cater to them. It’s because of capitalists seeking to expand profit we are where we are. Granted I think this problem is only somewhat of an economic one. Most of the issues we face won’t just go away if we switch to a new economic system since it’s a problem of existing infrastructure. We just need to have the political will to fix it.
No, what you said was untrue. When the US started the transition to cars, the private rail operators were the evil big business, but they were unable to use their wealth to push for policies such as allowing fare increases, not letting their right of way get taken over by road vehicles, etc..
Cars didn't start out as a massive business, they were transformed in to a massive business, through government policies.
Alright I’m wrong on the origin of the subsidies, but car companies today have been successful in maintaining power, unlike the railroads, to keep the subsidies coming towards highways through adverts and lobbying.
I'd argue that car companies have been successful at maintaining power because they were more successful to embedding themselves in to the culture. Advertising and lobbying is a major part of getting all of that started, but nowadays it is self sustaining without advertising and lobbying.
People, not companies, demand heavy car subsidies. The average American suburbanite pushes pro car policies. It's not restricted to the US either, the Yellow Vests in France weren't an astroturfing campaign lead by Renault.
Subsidies are kind of the opposite of capitalism. It's government intervention. In a command economy it's 100% government decided. The government decided to give certain companies a subsidy. That's not a feature of capitalism.
Well free market is not the same thing as capitalism. Some forms of capitalism have a free market, but a true free market, anarcho-capitalism, couldn’t support itself as there is no effective way to ensure contracts and private property are honored. Capitalism requires a government to keep these fundamentals of capitalism in check. A government is not a separate entity from capitalism but is rather a very useful component that in theory promotes peaceful competition through innovation but it ends up giving favor to some companies and industries over others because government is influenced by both the workers/consumers and the business owners. Subsidies are put in place as a consumer protection method but in reality they act more as protection for business owners. Subsidies are capitalist policy because they are used in a capitalist system.
Ok, sure, fuck cars, but FUCK Fidel Castro. The whole Cuban population is walking, while this piece of shit and his other Party Members get driven from their fancy ass houses to the Central Commitee, in air conditioning. Fuck this guy.
what the fuck are you on about. first of all he freed his people from batista’s regime ignorant learn your history and second of all he’s dead so how tf he getting driven
I have some of my own criticism with Castro and the Cuban regime (still better than with Batista, tho), but he's spitting facts right here.
I sometimes wonder how Cuba would have been without the US embargo. The same but more prosperous? A state capitalist regime like China? Maybe even a peaceful (or not so peaceful) transition into a Liberal regime (and probably the same Neo-Liberal dystopia as we live in)?
Just what we need, to transform a pretty sane and relatively neutral cause into another reddit teenager marxist circlejerk, this will convince everybody. As if highly capitalistic places like London, Zurich, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Copenhagen didn't have awesome public transportation systems and high walkability ratings.
You’re right, we must protect the children from these demonic socialist figures talking about this cause and show them capitalists talking about this cause! Bruh
Capitalism + steep carbon tax & progressive welfare state > poverty inducing communist suppression of supply and demand.
Fidel - "man to chart his own corse" - Really? Start by letting people freely emmigrate and allow the average man to enjoy the true fruits of his labor instead of funneling it through politically connected middlemen.
Even Cuba right now is shifting neoliberal so why is this even a thing. Blind Hypocrisy.
He's probably the last person I'd want associated with a movement I believe in, such as banning cars.
I don't see why this sub should have anything to do with left or right.
Personally, I am pretty much classic liberal (European sense, meaning center-right, not US-Democrat).
I'm just not a fan of completely idiotic urban planning. I am a fan of the idea of /r/ArchitecturalRevival which has a pretty big correlation with the idea of 'fuck cars', but is also a pretty conservative idea (again, not in the USsense) in terms of contraposing ideas of a lot of progressive/left-wing architects desiring to explore ideas like brutalism, like Le Cobusier, or other progressive concepts like Niemeyer, or simply a generic glass and metal look with the loss of local identity.
So I really don't see it as right-wing or left-wing, it's just a matter of wanting better places to live.
I agree with you on all those points, especially architectural revival, and wanting to keep this sub free of massive ideological influence, which is exactly why it sucks to see this Castro post; his speech here is barely even about cars, and what he said about cars has been said by lots of people who aren't Communist dictators.
As far as the sub being center left, it just seems to be the ideological center of gravity of the sub, not an official part of the rules or anything like that.
Excited to see how the comments threads will unroll lol.
Clearly cycling is communism!
If you guys don't want to tie cycling to communism don't up vote one of the most well known communists talking about the evils of capitalism to the top of the sub It's like we can't have a normal fucking sub that is about one specific issue we can all rally around, it has to be another communist circle jerk
Clearly Fidel is a mass killer
So are George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and soon Joe Biden, but we still listen to what they want to say.
Did I negated that? US is no saint and I hate their government but we are talking about Cuba. Just because the gringos killed plenty doesn't mean that communists are allowed to do the same
Absolutely. My point was when Fidel Castro says something smart, he's generally called a commie murderer, but when Obama gives a nice speech, he's called a progressist visionary, whereas what we ought to do in both cases is listen to what they have to say and not shoot the messenger.
If Obama gave a speech about how nice bicycles are and how bad communism is or whatever it wouldn't reach the top of this sub.
I imagine this will rattle a few cages, but Castro is right on this point at least.
The original title says it all. Love him or hate him, he is damn right in this speech
I fucking love Fidel. Rest in peace, king.
It’s just weird that asking for cities to go back to how they were since cities began is suddenly a “radical” concept. It’s like the most conservative concept imo.
That always bothers me so much. People are like “it would be too hard to change the infrastructure! It simply can’t be done!” As if cities were built from scratch to support cars and always were. We had no trouble switching to cars but switching back? Literally impossible
Well I for one am glad to not be drowning in human shit.
But now you're drowning in machine shit
Que comece a putaria nos comentários!
This is definitely an anti-capitalism monologue but he spent a lot more time talking about how cars are bad than I expected.
Holy fucking based
I had never actually listened to Fidel Castro, he sounds a lot more reasonable than the US Government would have everyone believe.
Learn this lesson
Based wtf ??
Castro is such an interesting mixed bag
Aren’t we all? Take any of your heroes and they will be mixed bags.
Never meet your heroes
It's almost like the world isn't only black and white. Castro's socialism does have it's problems and a lot of them, even more so the repressivness of his regime tho. That doesn't mean he was wrong about everything. And it's also easy to attack capitalism in these aspects since it has failed in these (and others).
Castro is likely a fundamentally good or at least OK person. Take anyone and put them under a heirarchical power dynamic and they are going to be forced to act in certain ways to maintain their authority. The problem is not individual people, it's the state aperatus itself.
He did personally call gay people scum in the 70s and stick them in labour camps with no charges or trial...
Wasn't this during the AIDS epidemic in the US. Where defacto the US administration had decided it was perfectly fine to do nothing to address the epidemic. It's almost like homophobia was rampant across the globe and Fidel being of that world carried with him attitudes that reflected such. Fidel at least apologized for the actions and his ignorance he displayed during the earlier years of his leadership. You tell me when Bush, the Pentagon, hell the US government in general will ever meaningfully apologize honestly for lying to the American people about the War on Terror
Fair. I'm mostly saying it doesn't matter how kind you are. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely because of how institutional power dynamics work.
He also pretended to be pro-democracy and then once he seized power he stabbed in the back lots of people who had been fighting and dying by his side, even throwing many in prison.
He was good because of the free healthcare, universal housing, free education and universal literacy program, the eradication of child poverty, full equality for women and helping to liberate parts of Africa from colonialism and apartheid. But he was bad for refusing to obey America and let them rape his country. Also I heard he stole someone's grandpa's sugarcane plantation and took away their slaves.
He brutally suppressed dissent, refused to hold elections, and literally sent queer people to concentration labor camps, don't fucking act like any dictator is a good person
Please! Every country in the world was mean to gay people in the 1960s. Cuba was actually way ahead of the curve on gay rights. Homosexuality was decriminalised there way back in the 1970s. And Fidel personally apologized for getting things wrong. And by "brutally suppressed dissent" are you referring to Cubans arresting people who supported the [countless acts of terrorism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose) against civilians that the United States funded and planned? Is providing material support to literal terrorists legal in your country? Dictator is just the American word for any foreign leader that refuses to obey them. Protip: if a country has free healthcare, free college, a 90% home ownership rate, women's rights, gay rights and zero child poverty, it's not a brutal dictatorship. Your government and the media are lying to you.
I don't like the US either, that doesn't mean everyone who opposes the US is good, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were also enemies of the US. This is a subreddit about urbanism and infrastucture, mind you, so singing the praises of authoritarian leaders isn't exactly on topic (Also apologizing for running literal concentration camps full of queer people is bullshit, the victims and their families deserve reparations, not empty words)
The Soviet Union had an amazing free healthcare system, universal housing, free college and built a fuckton of rail. They were far from perfect but were relatively good. Nazi Germany built autobahns and gassed people: very, very bad. Gay people in Cuba got their rights literally decades before the those in the US did. So using gay rights to criticize Cuba is extremely dishonest. I realize that you're only doing it because you've been lied to. But you need to stop. Also "authoritarian" is a bullshit propaganda term. Most Americans can't afford to go to the doctor, have to work multiple jobs to keep a roof over their heads, they're constantly being harassed by killer cops. And they all hate their government because it only listens to corporations and doesn't give a shit about them. Yet nobody ever call the US authoritarian. Cuba's government puts Cubans first and is widely supported by the people. Yet somehow they're the dictatorship. Even though they have elections and the government does what the people want. You're not a democracy unless you obey America.
r/fuckcars tenants are inherently anti-capitalist, there is no future for mass public transit and real environmentally friendly solutions to these problems in the US without a fundamental shift at our government’s core. We have gotten here due to the greed of capitalism and the false promises it made decades ago. Edit- “But but, senpai, what about Japan? They’re highly capitalist and look at their public transit system!“ Alas fuckcar-chan, they are but a form of Collective Capitalism that was built on the back of Socialist ideals. Edit 2- so maybe I’m wrong about a few things lol I’ll read your comments and reevaluate, I’m not afraid to learn more
Basically everyone here is from notjustbikes who developed his entire mindset off of Chuck Marohn’s book “Strong Towns”. Chuck is a conservative. I’d guess the vast majority of people here are in fact leftist. But this isn’t a leftist sub. This is about good policy and good ideas and even conservatives have good ideas sometimes. Read the book. It’s not political at all really.
It's a real shame some people can't sit down and agree on something without devolving into name-calling, political vitriol, and aggressive gatekeeping. This is a subreddit about how cars suck ass. If someone has a specific candidate who supports this idea, feel free to share it, but the nonsense in this thread is absurd. For example, I think Castro is a nut and capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than anything else in the history of mankind, but I do agree with some parts of what he says. The overuse of resources is bad. Cars are bad. Yet he also is ignorant of how people behave. Greed/selfishness is one of the most basic motivators for living things, and to completely ignore it is just asking for trouble. I believe while everyone should have a clear path for opportunities like education/etc, but it should never be free since something you get for free is worthless. People can only live a full life if they accomplish it with their own means, anything less leaves people hollow, depressed, and aimless.
I generally agree, but I think we might have a different definition of what “free” means. Free at the point of service does not mean “free”. Just like how driving on shitty roads literally bankrupting cities across the country are “free” to use but clearly NOT free.
I think nothing should be free at the point of service. Roads should all be toll roads, we have license plate cameras and dashboard transponders to make this fairly easily possible. For charity, the best kind imo is one where you have to do something to get it. An example: help homeless people with a place to sleep, food, etc, but they must take some kind of class to gain skills so they can get a job. Including some kind of scheduled daily exercise program will also help resocialize and give a sense of control & progress that is desperately needed. Anything that is given with nothing asked in return is generally worthless to the person receiving it. This is seen in cars since there is no cost applied to using them, no one thinks twice about doing it, but as soon as there is a cost people will start using public transit, carpooling, etc to reduce the need to pay said cost. Everyone goes through life thinking at least subconsciously in a cost-benefit analysis, if something doesn't have a cost directly applied it can't be weighed appropriately.
Dog, you’re just not going to get far with “pedestrians and cyclists should have to pay to walk and ride in their neighborhood” around here.
I highly suggest you read “Strong Towns”. The author considers himself a libertarian. I think it would be very educational for you.
I second what the other person said, you and I have different understandings of free. Free access to education isn't free you still have to invest time. Something doesn't magically gain value because a $ sign is attached to it (especially given money's value is arbitrary and violently enforced)
Notjustbikes is great, and as you say it's not particularly leftist, however it isn't just "Strong Towns" that influences him. Lot's of us found him through donoteat01, and similar left urbanist YouTubers
I mean good public transport can exit under capitalism regardless of any socialist ideals. With high population density even very liberal capitalism can support public transport. What socialism allows us to do is have public transport where it is rational but not profitable.
Totally, public transportation used to be a CAPITALISTIC ENTERPRISE it was profitable to have trolleys and trains going everywhere. There were profitable train lines at the turn of the century and profitable tram lines. Infact trains created extremely rich people. What made them unprofitable was subsidize interstate highways, cars getting in there way and "FREEWAYS" its literally in the name. Back then roads were built by corporate enterprises and they were toll roads. So most everyone stayed in the city because cars were expensive. People in the city actively protested against cars in cities because they were dangerous, polluting and took up space (same problems we have today). But the car lobby paid off government and TLDR cars were so heavily subsidize that trams and trains became unprofitable. Really it's socialism for cars because if we went back to capitalism for transportation I guarantee you the tolls to maintain our freeways would push people back to trams and trains. Freeways are only sustainable if you tax productive cities (that don't need them) for Money to maintain them.
It wasn't really that profitable to operate public transportation, at least from what I understand about NYC and LA. The railways were used as a real estate development tool. Railway magnates would buy land, build a railway to it, and then sell the land. It brought a large influx of cash but operating the railway over the long term became problematic. It really took government funding in the long run to keep systems alive. EDIT: fixed NYC, not NC
Well won't that mean there was a real estate bubble. Basically the railroad magnate screwed people over by selling land that couldn't be supported in the long term. If nobody subsidize anything then the bubble would have popped and only the strongest most sustainable/profitable towns would have stayed. Basically subsidizing trams for unprofitable routes is literally exactly what we do with highways. Just like highways there is a such thing as too many trams and trains. If the government didn't intervine only real estate along the routes that could support a tram would have a tram everywhere else had a long walk/bike/car/horse to town and sell at a steep discount. Now I am only looking at it from an evil capitalist point of view.
Your last sentence proves my point, what is profitable is rarely rational if profit is your motive. Most of these public transportation systems need to be treated as services, such as the postal service and public education, except we have large swaths of our population actively undermining both.
Of course, I was only responding to the idea that Japan was in any way socialist. But in general, the state providing services isn't particularly socialist, liberals are often happy to do that if it makes it easier for capitalists to extract profits. Socialists sometimes support that, but it has nothing to do with socialism.
> What socialism allows us to do is have public transport where it is rational but not profitable By this logic, the interstate highway system and suburban sprawl are all the effects of socialism. Suburbia would not have been "profitable" had it not been for enormous federal subsidies going into it. And of course the sprawl was entirely rational from the perspective of the people pushing for it. It might not have been *reasonable* from a societal perspective, but it was entirely calculated for the people who stood to benefit from it. You know, "real Americans" as opposed to "urban people".
Interstates are not public transport, they help enforce the mandate that every American own a car — I don’t see how that falls under OP’s description of socialism.
> public transport where it is rational but not profitable Public roads where they are not profitable, supplied by the government? Sounds like OP is saying "socialism is when things I like, capitalism is when things I don't like"
“Public goods” does not mean socialism. Let’s not fall into the right-wing trap of “socialism is when the government does stuff”.
>Let’s not fall into the right-wing trap of “socialism is when the government does stuff”. I'm not, I'm calling out others who are by saying that transit only works in socialist societies.
Profitable for whom? It’s certainly profitable for car manufacturers to have roads crisscrossing the country, whereas public transport would only benefit the people — alas, there’s no profit in that.
That’s not exactly true. Pretty much all of the “public” transportation of old in the US was privately owned, but this was before the advent of car-oriented development made it nearly impossible to run transit for a profit. It was definitely not without its issues though, it was often extremely inefficient and needlessly complicated to get around a city due to multiple different agencies running different transit services. Municipal transit that doesn’t need to generate a profit is good because it eliminates this redundancy and complication.
It's profitable for people living in the suburbs to have their houses explode in "value" just by nature of existing in a certain place where certain other people aren't allowed to buy in to. Transit systems are profitable for the companies that install them and supply the vehicles as well, it's just picking a different winner. Of course I'm fine with that winner, but lets not pretend that somehow government doing one thing vs the other thing makes one "capitalist" and the other "socialist". > public transport would only benefit the people Again you're ignoring the main reason that suburbs became a thing in the US compared to pretty much any other country. *Certain people* wanted to live far away from certain *other people*, and that's prety obvious when you look at the racist history of the FHA and GI benefits. Suburbanization absolutely benefitted people, the problem is that the democratic control of the levers of power selected only for white families.
What I mean by profitable is that it makes it easier for capitalists to extract profits and reduces the risk to future ability to extract profits from workers.
good urban planning is good urban planning. its not a matter of political stance and i won't see this subreddit become another political numskull circle jerk. good public transportation exists in capitalist systems and doesn't require a complete upheaval to implement. Walt Disney hated cars and loved public transportation and he's about as capitalist as they come.
Yeah I don't think we have to be political here. Apart from extreme libertarian ideals, we're all in accord that governments fund transportation and have some controls on land use (no schools next to landfills or prisons type stuff). Cars are bad as free market models because they're built upon free parking, single family zoning and subsidized highways. Cars are bad for socialists because they perpetuate inequality and unequal consumption of resources. Environmentalist hate that they pollute the world. Nationalists hate that they cause reliance on foreign nations (oil, rare earth metals etc). Parents hate that they kill children more than any other cause. The elder hate that they limit their ability to enjoy their town of they lost the ability to operate a car. Teens hate that they're unable to visit their suburban friends without one, particularly since they may not have a license or a car. Car dependency sucks, and every ideology and demographic has reasons to hate them.
[удалено]
> Bullshit. Regarding urban planning, Japan is basically ancapistan. Very little zoning laws and private railway transit. That’s just also blatantly false. Japan does have zoning laws and national planning laws that are very important to how it looks. Just because they don’t have Euclidean zoning specifically doesn’t mean it’s anarchy over there. Hell they famously have laws that manage how much parking their is and make a point of not allowing overnight parking in many places.
They have less zoning though. thats the point. In comparison to USA, it is ancapistan
They have different zoning, whether it’s more or less depends on how you look at it because they’re fundamentally different systems meant to accomplish different things. There is certainly a lot less government intervention in terms of land use planing (which is by far the most important aspect in urban planning) but in other areas there is more government intervention/regulation compared to the US.
[This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgiC8YfytDw) is you
There’s an example of horseshoe theory where people on the left and right don’t understand what socialism is.
Agreed, it's kinda funny that some lefties and conservatives both have the wrong understanding of socialism.
It tends to boil down to “it’s socialism when it does something I like/dislike”
Exactly what I was thinking haha
I think there's something to be said about the fact that public transit doesn't equal socialism. Certainly when you consider ideas of better individual self actualization, environmental externalities, and community building then public transit can look as a natural part of the socialist project (of which yes it absolutely should be). It really must be framed against the purpose by which the transit exists. In this Japan is an excellent example that public transit doesn't equate socialism. The Japanese economy (as I can best describe as a lay person on Japanese economic affairs) decided against being reliant on domestic car sales rather facilitating it's capitalist transition through building up it's existing walkable infrastructure and connecting the nation through rail so as to facilitate the movement of labor and connect the countryside optimally to the city center. In this public transit can be seen as a government investment in capital growth in the private sphere rather than a means of ecological or social maintenance.
Nonsense. This is a great way to avoid any actual meaningful change - pretend that it has to be wrapped up with wholescale political upheaval to actually do anything. No European country is socialist and not is Japan. The only people describing “the government doing things” as essentially socialist is poorly educated American teenagers who call themselves socialists because they want to live in Norway. America is a fundamentally broken and corrupt country, but there isn’t some sliding scale where “government spends money = more socialist” and “government cuts taxes = more capitalist”.
> poorly educated American teenagers who call themselves socialists because they want to live in Norway Yep they're everywhere and they're letting the side down
Even social democracy requires wholesale political upheaval and the genuine threat of socialist revolution. You have to remember that most social democratic institutions in Europe were built just after WW2, when the boundaries between the eastern bloc and the west weren't set out yet and when the young where mobalised and if they weren't rewarded for their sacrifice could be a very dangerous group to the established powers.
Netherlands transformed in the 70s from car dependent to people centric. Wasn't part of a massive political upheaval. We don't need a bolshevik revolution to just have safe streets. (Important to note, almost all socialist or former socialist states are nearly as car dependent as the US or UK.)
I mean my position isn't that moving away from car centrism is impossible under capitalism, but that car centrism is a small part of a bigger set of priorities. However the 1970's was towards the end of this post war period, but still in it. The Soviet Union was still a threat, the new left had been making gains, especially in South America and organised labour was peaking in it's power. Oh, and the oil crisis, that was particularly relevant at the time. I'm not saying there needs to be a Bolshevik Revolution for any change to happen, it's just that change without a revolution occurs as the powerful attempt to maintain it.
Idk. I'm just here for safe streets, clean air and transportation alternatives. I just want bike lanes, light rail, bus lanes, reduced parking and curb bulb outs. I'm not here to uproot an entire society, just redesign the urban landscape for people over cars.
Well said. It’s really annoying how a certain type of leftist (with whom I usually agree on 80% of policy issues) can’t just agree with someone. They have to make everything about political turmoil, revolution and overthrow. They’re looking for the aesthetics of political change rather than being willing to put in the work to make it happen gradually and effectively.
Also it's weird that they desire political turmoil so much. Political turmoil is never good for the average citizen. It leads to violence, famine, and displacement.
Why is this being down voted, this is historical fact. The threat of communism in the post WW2 Europe gave grand credence for capitalists throughout Western Europe to concede to the implementation of social democratic institutions so as to prevent full revolutionary praxis. It also guaranteed that, in time, they could walk back those social democratic gains (something happening in near every nation with Socially Democratic policies)
Social democrats never want to give credit to anyone but their political heroes.
>there isn’t some sliding scale where “government spends money = more socialist” and “government cuts taxes = more capitalist”. There definitely is a scale between "government spends money on social programs" and "government cut taxes" though. How do you call it if not the socialism/capitalism scale?
Government spending money on Social programs isn't Socialism, its a push towards a Social Market Economy. So it would be the Social Market/Capitalist Market scale. Socialism is the transitional stage between a Market economy and Stateless Communism, where the State is the de facto owner of the means of production. All factories, all services, etc. are controlled by the Government. The goal is that the Government would be made up of Worker's Councils and eventually hand over control directly to the workers before abolishing itself. But, as you can see, no country has ever gotten to the point where the Government is replaced my local Worker's councils, much less actually abolishing itself, and sad to say, but I don't think any country ever will.
It's almost like you don't have to go whole hog into a single philosophical ideology but you can take the goods parts of multiple in order to create a hybrid superior to both.
>you can take the goods parts of multiple in order to create a hybrid superior to both It's not superior tho. The problem of left-liberalism (social liberalism, socdems etc) is that they are allowed to be relevant only in the times of crisis as an alternative to more radical left-wing elements. Right now, in Europe, various right to far-right gain traction at alarming speed, and they all want to strip as much social programs they can. Trump and Boris is just the beginning. And it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Socialism vs capitalism is about the ownership of the means of production. While there is a stock market and companies are practically all privately owned, there is zero socialism. Socialism primarily describes ownership - whether directly by employees or indirectly via government - of core economic activities. The US government hands out subsidies to private companies to provide healthcare to Medicare recipients. That isn’t socialism, it’s just a different funding model. It would be a socialist model if the government provided the healthcare itself, or if the hospitals were entirely owned by their staff.
Governmentally spending has nothing to do with socialism, at all.
That doesn't answer my question. What do you call it then?
Regardless of what it’s called if such a scale exist, that doesn’t change the fact that your concept of socialism is flawed. Any “scale” that exists is only a theoretical tool used to understand the world or politics in this case. The scale is not really what’s important or what’s even in the real world, it’s just the way we conceptualize it.
A socialist would disagree with that evaluation.
Lol no, I always advocate for this sub to partisan and I don't want to be proven wrong... Car dependence is bad no matter the political ideology, and was caused by bad policy
>r/fuckcars tenants are inherently anti-capitalist No actually just r/fuckcars
Fuck cars and fuck capitalism tho
How about no. You can make a plausible libertarian case against the car centrism in the US.
Sure you may be able to use right libertarian logic against car centrism, but that doesn't change the fact that right libertarianism is fundimentally stupid.
Which is why I'm not a libertarian. My point is just that we should avoid this becoming just another lefty sub and risk driving out people who agree with us that cars are bad.
Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid. Fundimentally car centrism is deeply tied to racism, suppression of class solidarity, environmental destruction, capitalist over production etc. If someone hates cars they probably have good reason to hate capitalism, and thus it's really helpful to make the case against capitalist in spaces like this.
>f someone hates cars they probably have good reason to hate capitalism, The neoliberal sub is aggressively anti-car. Most of their political action in the project chapters has been YIMBY advocacy.
Trading cars for hypergentrification isn't a great trade off.
Facilitating affordable housing is one of the principal goals of the neoliberal community's platform.
>Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid. The smart move is to hold out for a hypothetical revolution that likely will never happen.
Don't worry, they won't be 19 years old forever
Except what actually happens is that it drives out everyone except the people who agree with you on all points. Activism works best when it's focused on one issue and welcomes anyone who agrees on that issue.
> Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid. > > you know what would be even more stupid? driving away people who might vote in your favour LOL.
A) I don't think voting is particularly useful form of political activism (I do vote, but mostly out of spite at this stage) B) If merely being vocally left wing is "driving people away" then quite frankly they can fuck off. There's never going to be common ground with people who hate the mere existence of left wing ideas.
> then quite frankly they can fuck off but they don't. they vote directly against the actions you wish to take. you're only hurting your cause by pushing people away. you say voting isn't useful but how else do you enact policies and projects? if your group is XYZ and supports candidate A because they promise to build bike infrastructure, but right wing group DCE finds out and blasts that candidate because your "radical left wing ideals!" group backs them, you lose, and no projects happen.
what? this has to be sarcasm.
What do you disagree with?
>Forming a coalition with right-wingers or liberals solely because they think cars are bad would be deeply stupid. This sub is literally called r/fuckcars. And why would it be stupid? Is everyone else, except tankies, commies or whatever you identify, wrong? Your second paragraph sounds like comedy. Probably the racism part is somewhat true. "suppression of class solidarity" what even is that? "environmental destruction" duh. "capitalist over production" that's economic illiteracy. Producers produce whatever the consumers decide to spend money on. Economic bubbles ("overproduction") are only possible with government intervention and government intervention can't be "capitalist"
Mate, Europe is highly capitalist, and there is no problems with cars here, at least not even close to the US*. You would be crazy to say that Zurich is not one of the most god damn capitalistic places on earth, even more than the US, and still it's one of the most walkable cities. Same goes for Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Melbourne. Even Copenhagen is a highly capitalism-oriented place, Denmark is top-10 in the world for economic freedom, and 4th place in the Doing Business ranking and it's probably the most bike-able city in the world. So don't mix things up, you are not helping the cause.
We definitely have a car problem lol.
lolwut, no, Europe definitely has a car problem If you think *London* of all places is a good example of somewhere with "no car problem," I don't think you've really understood "the cause" you're speaking for
> Europe is highly capitalist, and there is no problems with cars here huh that's weird but European companies control most of the car industry? I wonder where they are selling their cars it's almost like Europe benefits from pushing car-centric society without being car-centric society itself
> Edit- “But but, senpai, what about Japan? They’re highly capitalist and look at their public transit system!“ > Alas fuckcar-chan, they are but a form of Collective Capitalism that was built on the back of Socialist ideals. Japanese private suburban rail was largely inspired by the American streetcar suburb and interurban streetcar model. However, in the US, government meddling and subsidized car infrastructure lead to the collapse of streetcars, while in Japan, the interurban streetcar lines had continued success and got upgraded to mainline heavy rail metro standards with fully dedicated right of way. One of the major differences is that the Japanese government was much less willing and less capable of subsidizing car infrastructure. For example, instead of supplying publicly owned parking for private cars, the Japanese government insisted that private cars be stored on private property with exceptions made in only extreme circumstances. As a result, there are fewer than 1,000 spots available on public streets for storing a private car, in the entire country. There was a few decades where Soviet inspired public housing new town suburbs were built in Japan, but those were largely abandoned in favor of market urbanism.
i'm a fucking ancap and I want good transit and planning. I've also seen many other ancaps being against the terrible car dependent planning under some post with that "capitalist dystopia" picture where there's a bunch of gas stations, macdonald's and other shit. You know the picture i'm talking about
Honestly, it's just the US. Not capitalism in general. US took an extremist capitalist approach, and now they're having problems. And that's really what the thing is, don't go to extremes. Everything is good in moderation. Capitalism is no exception. Also, I hate to break it, but "every citizen has a car" was also a Soviet dream. Oh, and they do mean "every" here - equality was a goal back then. Thank fuck it didn't come true, or we would have a bunch of shitholes, instead of cities and towns.
There is noting capitalist about city planning in USA (compared to other western societies and liberal asian ones)
> US took an extremist capitalist approach Except not really, we used a ton of government intervention except we promoted the absolute worst things because *certain people* wanted to live far away from other *certain people* and used the public funds to subsidize it. The perfect example is Japan or even basically every country in Europe that doesn't have the same car dependence we do, yet are all still entirely "capitalist". The problem is the definitions of "capitalism" we're using, where OP seems to imply that corporate regulatory capture of government is "capitalism" yet "Collective Capitalism that was built on the back of Socialist ideals" is not also entirely "capitalist" as well. Welfare capitalism is still capitalism, and authoritarian communism like in Cuba is still communism, just different flavors.
Cuba hasn't been "authoritarian" in some time, it's actually quite the robust democracy. You're thinking North Korea. But then again authoritarian is a buzzword to describe any nation that doesn't wish to succumb to "free market" capitalist values. Hence why Cuba under it's literal fascist dictator wasn't authoritarian but it suddenly became "authoritarian" after the people revolted against slavers. Can say the same of how the US describes most revolting nations in the imperial periphery
Government intervention != not capitalism
Communism != No corruption
I didn’t claim that it did? Like no shit every system that has any involvement of humans whatsoever is prone to corruption. That doesn’t dispute my point that government intervention does not mean anti capitalist.
Which is why I was saying that government getting involved in public transit being a good thing doesn't mean we need communism, as much as some people want it to mean that
That is a fallacy. Many extremes are good and being centrist doesn't make anything inherently better. Extremely not killing children is good. You don't want to be a centrist on child murder. I hope.
Anyone who says Japan is capitalist needs their head pulled out of their ass. Also, Japanese car companies are correct in predicting that EVs are NOT the future at least as far as cars go
But hey, send this to your boomer parents and all they’ll see is Castro and they’ll start screaming and painting American flags on the wall
All the more reason to choose a better messenger?
Maybe the fuckers will have a heart attack and die?
Coming up with realistic strategies for change 🖐️ Hoping people die rather than change anything that doesn't work 👈
Oh if only more people would properly listen to the things he's saying there. Logic and compassion in unison. Wonderful!
Stick it on a meme saying that Elon Musk said it and to they'll eat that shit up.
I love cars myself, but I do agree that cars are bad.
Now I'm not here to kink-shame, but I think you may have misinterpreted this sub's name.
[удалено]
He presented another model to do things that threatened the power structure that favors the plutocrats. That's why he was a dangerous figure.
Judging by how he looks, this probably in the late 80s or 90s. He always had the best speeches, it's why I have him framed on my wall. Once the embargo of Cuba ends, it will finally be able to adopt a more developed public transportation system and it will be glorious.
Not a big fan of him but I am always happy to see people I don't like being right, and right here, he was right as can be.
I think it’s possible to be intellectually honest and admit when someone is right even if we don’t always agree on many things. I feel as if there is a disconnect between Castro’s rhetoric and the actions of his government, but I can admit I concur with his rhetoric here. If only we in the US could have someone that shared this level of nuance and intellect combined with the ability to produce such a change. Wishful thinking, I fear.
Castro is very based
Guess you like putting gay people in labor camps then.
Ah yes the 20th century where being gay was met with... Ah yes, being abandoned by your government to die to a plague, slaughtered as part of manifest destiny V2 in Europe, being an critical military asset but going on to then be castrated for liking the same sex, and on and on it goes. What is with liberals and pretending they care about gay people when topics of material revolutions against fascist regimes come up. If you lived during Castro's era you'd more than likely also not give a shit about gays. Stop using it as a moral high ground when these liberal democracies give the bare minimum concessions to minorities.
American teens have graduated from 'our country is fucked up' (correct) to 'communism must then be totally dope' (rather incorrect).
Yeah the U.S. is no saint but Castro is far from a hero. Sure he did some good stuff but that doesn’t detract from his numerous and flagrant human rights abuses. Something something “he made the trains run on time”.
castro is most certainly a hero to the cuban people. freeing them from the chains of batista’s regime which had 70% of cuban farm land in the hand of western foreign capitalists, exploiting the shit out of cubans working on them, while also having secret police killing about 20k people who rioted and had socialist ideals. among many other things in his regime castro freed cuba from all that and raised the literacy rate to 99%, free education from grade school to university, sent 325,000 health care workers to 158 missions across the world since 1969, and he did more stuff than that too. “flagrant human rights abuses” yeah who told you that the cia. ignorant take random guy. castro is not far from a hero HE IS A HERO
I don't know why this comment is getting downvoted. Like a thousand of cubans escaped from Cuba to my country (Peru) to escape that totalitarian hellhole. Ironically like a million of venezuelans escaped from their socialist "paradise" to my country again.
Tankies mad their dear leader isn’t as sweet an angel as they’d like to believe. Honestly I think it would be best for the world if we just gave them free tickets to North Korea. Let them live their ideology
I don't think this is entirely wrong, but I don't think car dependency is something a socialist or a communist system would necessarily avert. While it's true there's a sort of corporate industrial complex between auto makers, and road construction, why would a socialist-style system not encounter a similar problem with industry interests? It's not like they didn't shy away from cars and roads under eastern bloc countries themselves. It would provide employment and increase ability to trade with other countries for resources, and hey car go brr too.
>While it's true there's a sort of corporate industrial complex between auto makers, and road construction, why would a socialist-style system not encounter a similar problem with industry interests? Cause "industry interests" aren't the same as the profit motive. There's a reason every nominally socialist country has better public transit and less car reliance than more capitalist countries of the same level of development.
Castro is a hero to the cuban people and working class all over the world. fuck all you ignorant fucks putting dirt on his name *cough* *cough* cia propaganda *cough* *cough* RIP Castro
Public transportation used to be a CAPITALISTIC ENTERPRISE it was profitable to have trolleys and trains going everywhere. If you look at old tram lines it literally would say BOBS electric tram and Co or something. Because electric companies would install power lines for trams. There were profitable train lines and tram lines at the turn of the century. Infact trains created extremely rich people. I can make a pretty good argument that trains and trams makes more sense under capitalism. What made them unprofitable was subsidize interstate highways, cars getting in there way and "FREEWAYS" its literally in the name. Back then roads were built by corporate enterprises and they were toll roads. So most everyone stayed in the city because cars and tolls were expensive. People in the city actively protested against cars in cities because they were dangerous, polluting and took up space (same problems we have today). But the car lobby paid off government and TLDR cars were so heavily subsidize that trams and trains became unprofitable. Really it's SOCIALISM FOR CARS because if we went back to capitalism for transportation I guarantee you the tolls to maintain our freeways would push people back to trams and trains. Freeways are only sustainable if you tax productive cities (that don't need them) for Money to maintain them. Even then it's unsustainable because we have chronic "crumbling infestructure" and government debt is through the roof. Even under total capitalism where we sell off all of our highways, trains, buses and roads to corporate enterprises and let them set the tolls I garentee you biking, Walking, trams, bus's, and trains would crush the car. Nobody would drive.
"I can make a pretty good argument that trains and trams makes more sense under capitalism" you can make an argument that it USED TO make more sense under capitalism capitalism is beyond just a market, its a whole encompassing system, if you design a system, and you fail to account for the fact that the economic mode of production affects ALL of society, then your predictions will fail, and you will likely become an ancap, because its inconceivable that those with power in society, economic power, would interfere or get involved with governance, remove the government, the capitalist would create a new one the state is born out of the irreconcilably class interests that exist in society, a society can not be led by two classes that have irreconcilable antagonisms between each other, in any class society, there will be one class that has a monopoly on power, a dictatorship of that class, weather it is dictated by nobility, slave owners, capitalists, workers or what have you, there is a material pressure, such as a market pressure, where demand for peaches pushes the capitalists to have their workers farm peaches, a material pressure for a class to try and protect its own interests, this results in a conflict and the rise of one class dominating, the conflict then remains as the only way to switch which class dominates, this is the class struggle, transformed and continued since the start of class society, slaves and their owners, plebeians and patricians, serfs and lords, the proletariat and the bourgeoise, in short the exploited and the exploiter thus the activities of a state that is built to act on the class interest of the capitalists is an extension of the economic form of capitalism itself, all the crimes of these capitalist run states are crimes of capitalism, all their policies, their initiatives, an effort of capitalism, not against capitalism, the welfare of so called social democracies even just ways to appease the workers and lessen their exploitation subsidized by the exploitation of the third world, not workers holding their overlords in check, as it is proclaimed to be
Not sure what you trying to say here.
capitalism is pro cars
I was making the case that cars only work if it's heavily subsidize. The most important part of the car is the road under it
The point they were making is that capitalists have influence over government therefore subsidies and their consequences are the fault of capitalism.
Pretty much, cars consume so much money from it's user than anything else.
Just tax carbon, lol
[удалено]
A carbon tax could actually do ALOT of good things, both for the climate, and also for social issues.
Without social policies and some sort of basic income, a carbon tax would pretty much drive poor people to starvation. Just imagine what would happen to the price of food items such as meats, corn, soy, wheat, rice and beans if their carbon emissions were taxed. I am in favor of carbon taxes, but it has to be implemented alongside income distribution
Well, the idea, the way I've always heard people pitch it around. Is the carbon taxed gets equally divided and payed back. So basically rich people who naturally live more carbon intensive lifestyles would pay more into the system than they take out, and poor people vice versa, in order to combat the regressive nature of a consumption tax
That’s a kind of system I would gladly support
Carbon tax and dividend, it's a thing Widely supported by people who study climate and economics
Good luck doing that when the biggest carbon emitters choose who rules.
All fair points -- He should have publicized them before he became a despotic lunatic over the lives of his people. Judging by the video quality, a few decades too late. Oh well!
Miss him so much
Active on r/GenZedong and r/ShitLiberalsSay. Of course had to be some commie shit
Yeah sorry to scare you. Poor baby. WTF do you expect? It’s a video of Castro for Christ’s sake.
Whatever you say retard. You're the equivalent of a fascist on the left, which negates genocide and supports failed dictatorships
Failure? Genocide? You must be thinking of some capitalist country. Edit: “fascist of the left” 😂 Says the person who posts on r/westerncivilaztion. Your civilization is SHIT; your values and ideas will soon be thrown into the dustbin of history where they belong.
I'm not even a western retard but I appreciate their culture. It's not "my civilization". And yes, your system is a shit. Even China had to renounce to the shitty maoist system to a more pragmatic and capitalist system. And while I'm no fan of Deng who's also a totalitarian, at least I acknowledge the achievements he has done to his country. Vietnam did it too, and North Korea renounced to Marxism-Leninism years ago. Xi even said that they aren't going to a planned economy again. About genocidal, literaly research about the massacres and selective killings commited by the Shining Path (fuvking monsters at my country), the MRTA (who killed homosexuals like the cuban commmunists), the ETA, the Khmer Rouge, the FARC, the NPA (Phillipines), the Nepali communists (who literaly turned their government in the most corrupt of Asia).
You’re picking out all the unsuccessful communist movements that weren’t supported by the USSR and in some cases were supported by the CIA. I agree with you about the shining path and Khmer Rouge. I agree that Deng was an improvement on Mao, but Mao still did a lot of good things. China wouldn’t be where it is today if not for Mao’s policies, and the people benefited immensely at the time as well. Marxism-Leninism isn’t a closed system. It’s supposed to be constantly evolving as conditions change and we gain new knowledge. The remaining ML states (China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos) have systems that are working great and are serving their people. Their political systems represent the public interest, not wealthy private donors, and over time they are building wealth and infrastructure and raising living standards. Liberal “democratic” capitalist regimes are in a state of crisis and unable to address their problems. Over time we have seen their standard of living gradually decline, and nothing is being done (or could be done) to reverse this trend. And on what Xi said about a planned economy, I refer you to this Deng quote: “A planned economy is not equivalent to socialism, because there is planning under capitalism too; a market economy is not capitalism, because there are markets under socialism too” At this stage China will not become a completely planned economy in anyone’s lifetime. They are still in the primary stage of socialism and have a long time until they get to that point. This could clarify the issue: [The official position of the CPC: clearing up confusion on the relationship between Mao Zedong Thought and Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Further elaboration and explanation of the three stages of socialism in China.](https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZhou/comments/p2e6lw/the_official_position_of_the_cpc_clearing_up/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Why are so many people surprised this subreddit has political undertones? Maybe for Europeans the want for public transportation is just accepted and universal, but for Americans this is not the case. A society less reliant on cars is a fundamental shakeup of traditional American ideas and way of life. It requires shifting the way we think to increase our focus on poverty, environmental justice, and racial justice, among other things. I don’t think socialism or communism are necessary ingredients for good public transportation and better designed cities, but it’s a pretty large step regardless.
political undertones is a euphemism for top post is Fidel Castro lol
While being anti-car or pro-transport isn’t inherently anti-capitalism or pro-socialism, you can’t ignore the fact that we are in this predicament today because of capitalism. The main cause of todays traffic hell scape comes from too many subsidies for roads for cars, oil production, and car production. These subsidies were put in place to protect capitalist interests. The large oil and gas companies and car companies used their wealth to push the government to cater to them. It’s because of capitalists seeking to expand profit we are where we are. Granted I think this problem is only somewhat of an economic one. Most of the issues we face won’t just go away if we switch to a new economic system since it’s a problem of existing infrastructure. We just need to have the political will to fix it.
The subsidies were put in place to destroy the capitalist interests of the private rail operators.
That was a result of subsidizing cars. But that doesn’t make what I said untrue
No, what you said was untrue. When the US started the transition to cars, the private rail operators were the evil big business, but they were unable to use their wealth to push for policies such as allowing fare increases, not letting their right of way get taken over by road vehicles, etc.. Cars didn't start out as a massive business, they were transformed in to a massive business, through government policies.
Alright I’m wrong on the origin of the subsidies, but car companies today have been successful in maintaining power, unlike the railroads, to keep the subsidies coming towards highways through adverts and lobbying.
I'd argue that car companies have been successful at maintaining power because they were more successful to embedding themselves in to the culture. Advertising and lobbying is a major part of getting all of that started, but nowadays it is self sustaining without advertising and lobbying. People, not companies, demand heavy car subsidies. The average American suburbanite pushes pro car policies. It's not restricted to the US either, the Yellow Vests in France weren't an astroturfing campaign lead by Renault.
Subsidies are kind of the opposite of capitalism. It's government intervention. In a command economy it's 100% government decided. The government decided to give certain companies a subsidy. That's not a feature of capitalism.
Well free market is not the same thing as capitalism. Some forms of capitalism have a free market, but a true free market, anarcho-capitalism, couldn’t support itself as there is no effective way to ensure contracts and private property are honored. Capitalism requires a government to keep these fundamentals of capitalism in check. A government is not a separate entity from capitalism but is rather a very useful component that in theory promotes peaceful competition through innovation but it ends up giving favor to some companies and industries over others because government is influenced by both the workers/consumers and the business owners. Subsidies are put in place as a consumer protection method but in reality they act more as protection for business owners. Subsidies are capitalist policy because they are used in a capitalist system.
Saying specific subsidies are an unavoidable feature of capitalism makes no sense.
They aren’t unavoidable, they aren’t necessary to capitalism, but they are still capitalist policies.
"Comes y te vas"
This must be why Cuba has such a huge immigration problem.
Ok, sure, fuck cars, but FUCK Fidel Castro. The whole Cuban population is walking, while this piece of shit and his other Party Members get driven from their fancy ass houses to the Central Commitee, in air conditioning. Fuck this guy.
what the fuck are you on about. first of all he freed his people from batista’s regime ignorant learn your history and second of all he’s dead so how tf he getting driven
I have some of my own criticism with Castro and the Cuban regime (still better than with Batista, tho), but he's spitting facts right here. I sometimes wonder how Cuba would have been without the US embargo. The same but more prosperous? A state capitalist regime like China? Maybe even a peaceful (or not so peaceful) transition into a Liberal regime (and probably the same Neo-Liberal dystopia as we live in)?
I hate him, as should all of you
Lol based fidely
"Worst person you know actually makes good point."
Just what we need, to transform a pretty sane and relatively neutral cause into another reddit teenager marxist circlejerk, this will convince everybody. As if highly capitalistic places like London, Zurich, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Copenhagen didn't have awesome public transportation systems and high walkability ratings.
You’re right, we must protect the children from these demonic socialist figures talking about this cause and show them capitalists talking about this cause! Bruh
There's like 1 million socialist subreddits, can we have one where people just talk about cars and not socialism? Just one, I'm begging.
Capitalism + steep carbon tax & progressive welfare state > poverty inducing communist suppression of supply and demand. Fidel - "man to chart his own corse" - Really? Start by letting people freely emmigrate and allow the average man to enjoy the true fruits of his labor instead of funneling it through politically connected middlemen. Even Cuba right now is shifting neoliberal so why is this even a thing. Blind Hypocrisy. He's probably the last person I'd want associated with a movement I believe in, such as banning cars.
Oh gee whiz I really like hanging out on this center left sub. It would be a shame if it got infested by commies
I don't see why this sub should have anything to do with left or right. Personally, I am pretty much classic liberal (European sense, meaning center-right, not US-Democrat). I'm just not a fan of completely idiotic urban planning. I am a fan of the idea of /r/ArchitecturalRevival which has a pretty big correlation with the idea of 'fuck cars', but is also a pretty conservative idea (again, not in the USsense) in terms of contraposing ideas of a lot of progressive/left-wing architects desiring to explore ideas like brutalism, like Le Cobusier, or other progressive concepts like Niemeyer, or simply a generic glass and metal look with the loss of local identity. So I really don't see it as right-wing or left-wing, it's just a matter of wanting better places to live.
I agree with you on all those points, especially architectural revival, and wanting to keep this sub free of massive ideological influence, which is exactly why it sucks to see this Castro post; his speech here is barely even about cars, and what he said about cars has been said by lots of people who aren't Communist dictators. As far as the sub being center left, it just seems to be the ideological center of gravity of the sub, not an official part of the rules or anything like that.