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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Not just US centric but specifically the most rabidly left-wing parts of the US.

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record on this particular topic but the things @ChestertonsMeme are complaining about are not universal or even "American" problems they are "this is what happens when you let wealthy academic types who are completely divorced from ground level reality run the show" problems.

The Red Tribe solution to "I need a vehicle to shop" is stereotypically a truck, is it not? It's certainly not to design the world around the limits of a human on foot.

The Red Tribe solution to "I need a vehicle to shop" is stereotypically a truck, is it not?

In more rural areas? certainly. You might only be going to the store once a month because it's an hour drive there and an an hour drive back and you're only going to do it once or twice a month. Accordingly you need to haul all your shit in one go plus what ever your neighbors need picked up as well hense the popularity of pick-ups and deep-trunked sedans in comparison to other vhehicles. Meanwhile Red tribers who live in town typically drive hatchbacks like anyone else.

That said, I think @hydroacetylene's on to something below when they get into the psychology of the two tribes.

The red tribe solution to ‘I need a vehicle to shop’ is ‘well get you a vehicle’. The blue tribe solution is ‘we need to rearrange the city so you don’t need one’.

This says something about the psychology of the two tribes.

Which one shows greater will to power ?

No one's going to dedicate their life mission to getting cars for other people.

No one's going to dedicate their life mission to getting cars for other people.

Driving instructors. Mechanics. People who manufacture cars? Heck, in a tangential way, my job ultimately involves getting cars into the hands of people to drive them. And among all those people, surely some are genuinely dedicated to what they do.

They're mostly bad at it (especially driving instructors, they can afford to be bad) and only doing it because they're incentivised through the profit motive.

People who want to rearrange the entire economic system because X are almost invariably desire doing away with the idea of profit and subordinating the economy under some system of command and control.

Under such a system, even those who'd truly desire to give people the means of personal transportation would be unable to do so unless the government consented. Y

Which one shows greater will to power ?

The blue but then the blue tribe have also always been the most corrupted by power. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Yes, the blues.

If it wasn't for AI or war, I'd be fairly certain blue tribe would collapse this century due to running out of susceptible human resources to psyop, however, with AIs all bets are off except the ones that says no one will bother to write SF because you could get the same fix just reading obscure internet forums. Things will get impossibly weird.

I live in a rabidly left-wing city in the US within two minutes of a supermarket, and I still have no idea what they're complaining about, other than their desire for the isolation of suburban/rural living so they don't have to interact with anyone that doesn't fit their template of

the guy speaking in Received Pronunciation, with no tattoos, who uses PMC vocabulary and dresses in upper-middle-class business attire

which, uh, if you want to be isolated and limit interactions with anyone different from you as much as possible, may I ask why you also want to live within the city borders of Seattle (or any other city for that matter)?

I'm not saying that I would prefer suburban or rural living; there are a lot of good things about living in cities and I prefer them. The people are, in general, polite and law-abiding. Suburban and rural areas have their own pathologies. The main thing I am incensed about is that cities could be so much better if policy decisions took into account the fact that behavior varies from person to person in predictable ways and some people are net negative for the rest of the city.

which, uh, if you want to be isolated and limit interactions with anyone different from you as much as possible,

The fact that I referred to the hypothetical man as using "PMC vocabulary" suggests that I don't particularly identify with him. I'm happy to live next to people who are different, just not different in such a way that they will burglarize my house, drive recklessly, or harass my daughter on the street.

Others in this thread have shared contrary examples of walkable areas that don't have higher crime, because the police enforce the law and arrest or harass lawbreakers to keep them away. Where I live this happens much less often. The whole concept of incapacitation depends on statistical discrimination - that people who have a history of committing crimes are more likely to commit more crimes in the future. The discourse in leftist enclaves is focused on rehabilitation and compassion, not incapacitation, and the police are basically barred from incapacitating criminals.

In my area the response of urban lawmakers to the vast majority of the troublesome people being in the city is to make laws to try to make suburbs take their "fair share" of these people (e.g. with "affordable housing" requirements, which handily double as a way to increase Democratic representation in suburbs). And at the same time prevent the suburbs from treating them with any less deference than the cities do. Can't make the cities better, so try to make the suburbs worse.

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