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Strong disagree. The reason we have few vegans and anti-car people is because those ideas always crumble under pressure. The reason, "[w]hat these groups all have in common is a strong ability to signal these things emotionally to people similar to them and form a consensus, but also a generally terrible ability to discuss these things reasonably[,]" is because generally these positions are based on emotion rather than logic and almost always develop within bubbles where they don't get challenged. Its almost like being an anti-slavery advocate in 2023 America. What kind of real debate skills do you have? You just assume slavery is bad, everyone else around you assumes the same, so if some sincere pro-slavery advocate came around, you would be confused and, in 99.99% of cases, your only "plan" would be to go with ad hominem attacks. We see this pattern quite often with certain online topics that are associated with left of center groups.
Huh, I'm pretty surprised to see anti-car in this bucket (though I don't feel particularly negatively towards vegans either). I've been around this forum and its predecessors for about a decade IIRC, back when the "discursive style" was quite a bit better[1], and I would say I hate cars. I drive plenty when I'm back in my hometown (LA), and even enjoy it, but would prefer to see equalization with other forms of transport of the gargantuan subsidies it gets for its enormous use of real estate, destructive right-of-ways, and effect on local health via air pollution. Driving is fun, but building a society around driving walkable/bikable/transitable distances is quite obviously insane, and I definitely hate it.
Given that you think these ideas "always crumble under pressure", I'm curious why you think this is so obviously wrong. I'm hoping you have an actual answer to this, and that this isn't just a (ironic, given the thread topic) sign of the precipitous decline of the intellectual quality of this community.
[1] from the perspective of autistic intellectual honesty and open-mindedness
Well, since you lead off with a false premise, its not going to end up going all that well for you. We spend less per passenger mile on cars than busses or trains.
Less flippantly, the problem with the premise is that every other form of transit has extreme failure modes when it isn't in an absolutely ideal environment. Walking has the issue of it being hard to go any significant distance quickly. Biking too. Both fail at the important task of lugging around lots of consumer goods (as does public transit in many ways) and also those two fail the weather test. Transit also often fails the weather test because getting to it requires exposure to the elements. When it doesn't, it requires expensive shelters, paired with frequent stops. The frequent stopping is a detriment to the system as a whole because it makes your transit slow, often meaning much slower than a car.
Turning to public transit only, it suffers from an intermittency problem. Buses and trains can't come all the time, as is they already are losing to cars on a fuel per mile basis. This pairs with inconsistency to create a crises in commuting. Sure, if the bus always came at 8, and always got me to the train at 8:10, and that train always came at 8:15 and got me to work at 8:30, hunky dory. But that isn't how it works. Sometimes two buses come at 7:56 and 7:58, then one at 8:15. Now you missed that 8:15 train and have to wait till the 8:45 train, that is delayed, and now you're very late. So its the TSA problem at the airport, except every day of your life. OTOH, cars are simple. You leave 2 minutes late, you are 2 minutes late, more or less. There's no transfers, no cutoffs, etc. You don't know how many times I've seen a train leaving the station right as my bus is pulling into the station only to see the next one is coming in 25 minutes, on a line that is supposed to run every 10 during rush hour.
And then there is the next major problem with public transit, which is lack of directness. Because they are financially irresponsible even when simply transporting people in a hub and spoke system to the major downtown areas, they are downright impossible to operate while connecting spokes. So, lets say you live in Lil Ireland, and have a friend in North Burgandy. A 20 minute drive, being a hypothetical 30 minute bus, but no such bus exists. Instead, you need to take a 30 min bus to Corpopolis, then a 20 min train to South Burgandy, and a 10 min bus to North Burgandy. And you have to hope you don't have long layovers in between.
But how does XXX town make it work? They probably don't. You probably just don't visit people out of your neighborhood that often. This is enforced with violence, or by some sort of violence-adjacent policy that keeps a neighborhood's "character" pure. The kind of things which would face endless lawfare in most of America. Plus you make more of your own food, live in a smaller home, smaller room, etc.
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Slavery as punishment for crimes is very widespread in America and the abolitionist position on that is a controversial one.
Yes, and that is another example of a subset of people without very good arguments.
Definitely beg to differ on that one. Absolutely fucked incentives arise from the state maintaining large captive slave labor workforces that get paid pennies or nothing at all, contracting them out to private businesses instead of using normal waged labor, etc.
That is an argument for minimum wages in prisons. A totally different argument than an argument against slave labor. You paired it with an argument against the state subcontracting incarceration to private corporations. Again, a different argument.
Forced labor is part of a great number of criminal sentences, because it is often the humane alternative. Lets say you are in Illinois and pick up your first ever DUI, and there is nothing special about it. The statute says you are eligible for the following penalties: Up to 364 days in jail, $2500 in fines, revocation of your drivers license for at least a year, or any combination thereof. However, prosecutors and judges are allowed to offer/sentence different terms. For example, a prosecutor on a 1st time DUI can offer 2 years of court supervision + 100hrs community service in lieu of asking for jail time or a large fine (which many DUI offenders could never end up affording). In most counties their are 3 tiers of community service: 1) Independent CS, 2) Supervised CS; 3) Sheriff work program. In the first, you just go to your soup kitchen or church, work your hours get a certified letter from your boss and come back with that at the day your supervision is being terminated. Done, you are back to being a free citizen. Terms satisfied. In the second, you report to a social services worker, they assign you to a job. You report in with both regularly. Again. Do the work and you are done. In the third you report to the sheriff, and they essentially run a garbage pickup grew for 8 hours a day. 100 hours would take you 12 days, then you report in, and you are done. Again, this is all forced, unpaid labor. And almost every defendant prefers it to going to jail.
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