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Or that they use child slave labor.*
*Note: they don’t own slaves just contract work out to slave owners
Okay, gotchu. The things you said were true just so wild to use as an explanation for ending quarantine that I had to take a second.
I legit can’t tell if you’re continuing the joke or being serious. It’s just crazy enough that I’m certain some people believe it
Yeah. I was so stoked when I got this name before I learned how it all worked
3·1 year agoYep. The standard Hollywood eyes are pretty close to how my dad’s look. Only Hollywood tends to do grey while his are a very pale blue. I didn’t actually learn he technically had brown eyes until I was in my late teens.
You have every right to your opinion, and you’re welcome to ignore me, but I really don’t understand where you’re coming from on that. I can think of so many issues with having a privatized road system. Just off the top of my head,
How do these companies get the land? Every libertarian I’ve asked this of has gone on about how the railroads didn’t need government help to get their land, which is provably false (sources 1,2,3). So given that the land is taken by the government then given or sold to the railroads, (or in our case roads) the government is still in the position of forcing the trade and choosing which companies get it.
Then we get to the topic of necessary monopoly. If we don’t have a monopoly in charge of a large chunk of land, turning right will cost you an extra $10 as opposed to going straight. For that matter going straight more than 5 miles may cost you an extra $10. (I’m hoping this is uncontroversial enough to not require a source). This is the reason that we have utilities (of which private roads are - at least in my state- already one (source 4)), but this means that the government gets to say how much they’re allowed to charge (source 5). If they don’t place this regulation, people that live at one end of a private road and work at the other will be required to pay extortionist prices, because there can only be so many roads to get from point a to b. If we do keep those requirements then this is no longer a benefit of using private roads.
Then there’s the price difference for the consumer. This one requires some pre-amble.
New Jersey has a population of 9.288 million
Michigan has a population of 10.077 million
(both source 6)
Michigan roads are funded primarily through a (shockingly high) gas tax of 19c/gal (7). (It’s largely so high because the wild temperature varrations damage the roads.) The average American uses 489 gal/year (8) for a total average tax of $92.91/year.
The average new Jersey resident pays very little in gas tax, but they do pay for tolls. I can’t find an average, but last year the state got ~2 billion (9) in tolls divided by the total number of residents from earlier we can roughly estimate they paid 215.33/year. (This fails to take into account visitors, but in the reverse direction it also fails to account for children and those not driving)This is in a toll system that, unlike a private one, does not need to turn a profit. To your point on road maintenance being better for toll roads - according to Consumer Affairs NJ is raked 27th in the country for it, while Michigan is 20th (10). US news has NJ at 40, and Michigan at 30 (11).
In the end of the day, it seems to me that people will pay more to drive, and the government will still have such a high level of control of the road system that any benefit that could be found in privatization is lost.
Sources:
- https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/22093/chapter/22
- https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0167.htm
- https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5697&context=nclr
- https://www.ncuc.gov/ncrules/rulstoc.html
- https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/ByArticle/Chapter_62/Article_7.pdf
- https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population
- https://semcog.org/blog/part-two-michigans-road-funding-how-do-we-stack-up
- https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/blog/2022/05/26/top-numbers-driving-americas-gasoline-demand#:~:text=489%20gallons%2Fyear%20per%20registered,day%20of%20gasoline%20was%20sold.
- https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/11/nj-toll-hikes-jan-1-2023-garden-state-parkway-nj-turnpike-atlantic-city-expressway/#:~:text=Through%20the%20end%20of%20September,according%20to%20the%20agency%20records.
- https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-conditions.html
- https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastructure/transportation/road-quality
They say while driving on public roads provided by a government that doesn’t let companies poison the air or install lead pipes for drinking water
1·1 year agoSince you can wipe a computer without a bitlocker key, I would assume you could encrypt the windows half with it, but I can’t say I’ve tried.
It only doesn’t matter if the majority of us are conscious of it and want to stop it. We need to place sanctions in a true democracy, that’s not easy and it requires everybody be educated.
We’re lucky that we’re still in the tail end of the early adopters phase so most people in the fediverse will be open to gaining education. Also both sides of the heavily populated fediverse (Lemmy and mastodon)* feel recently betrayed by corporate greed.
All to say, it won’t be a big deal as long as most people know what’s going on. (I didn’t before reading this.)
*Not sure where to put kbin
Come on over to @Fedquestions and ask about whatever isn’t making sense!
0·1 year agoNot OP but… I just recently created https://kbin.social/m/Fedquestions for questions about how the fediverse works on a technical level. So far I have three subscribers including me, but one of them really helped out on my only question so far!
31·1 year agoI’m gonna quit for entertainment, but Reddit has the last 15 years of the best tech advice. I physically can’t quit using it at work. The black out has made me noticably worse at my job. I support it, but fuck I wish it was just for new posts, that guy from three years ago that had my exact problem might have had an answer!
I’ll be much more irritated if you’re on the sidewalk. It’s more dangerous for pedestrians and for you. When you’re biking you expect to have to pass people whether it’s because they’re a slower cyclist or using a escooter. My old apartment had an exit at a blind corner and dealing with escooter riders on the sidewalk was hellish. I would pull out slowly so that pedestrians had plenty of time to stop, but when scooters became popular I had to start creating forward at a painfully slow pace because people going bike speeds somehow thought it was okay to be on the sidewalk.