Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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A large part of this is about control. E-bikes are affordable, easy to use, and make it easy and cheaper for anyone, even poor people, to get around. The upper classes do not want the lower classes free on any level.
I LOVE my e-bike. I just got a tern NBD and I can finally ride on my own with a bike that fits me even when my disability flares up and I am at my most limited.
Now that my bike time has increased dramatically I have noticed aggression towards me has also increased. I've had people yell slurs out of their car windows, people rev threateningly behind me when they couldn't pass, people speed around me through intersections, etc. Mostly I've noticed it from class traitors.
In my area especially people tie cars to freedom. Public transit is practically non-existent so kids and teenagers never ride a bus or a train and assume cars are the only way to get around. This seems to be especially strong among the lower and lower-middle classes, where people struggle to get and keep their cars, and seem to have an unhealthy emotional attachment to them.
If only there were a way to allow bikes on roads without directly impeding car traffic...
My country has the most ridiculous ebike rules. Speeds are limited, and it needs to function as a bike at all times.... Among others.
This means even if you have one of those moped style ebikes, you have to unnecessarily carry around pedals (which would be impractical and awkward to use), despite having no intention of using them. Cops can just stop you and ask for them. If you can't produce them, then you're getting a ticket.
Stupid.
But I agree, I would liken it to the electric vehicle problems. Though fundamentally different due to several factors, the motivations are the same. People are making money continually from the use of automobiles. Automotive repair and maintenance shops, gas stations (or EV charging stations), all the way to road maintenance and such.... It's a monster of an industry. Nobody wants to stop that gravy train, so they keep fighting against these alternatives that save us lowly "poors" some money. (Only considered to be poor because we don't drive dinosaur burning monster trucks everywhere, so we must be too poor to afford it)
those people want you out there spending your money (aka giving it to them), all the time. This doesn't make them more money, so it's bad.
Sorry this is just bullshit.
I don't think the upper classes spend any time thinking about us at all, certainly not thinking about how to prevent us being "free".
Ask yourself this: if these e-bikes were extremely expensive and so expensive that only the rich could use them, would rich people complain?
The upper classes do not always explicitly think about things, like "oh, a Democrat is in power, seems like a great time to price gouge" or "hmm, all the other top leaders are firing people and price gouging since there's a liberal in power, I should do it too" but these things do happen. Doing things to treat lower classes harshly isn't always specifically talked about and planned, it's just something those at the top do because they know others will as well and they also don't believe the lower classes will recognize it and fight back politically, especially when the more religious party always favors the rich and religion helps increase class complacency.
I'm not against people making money or being successful, but there is a certain level of exploitation that goes on and it's not always explicit and it's not always planned out in clear language and it still happens
This is just nonsensical.
Of course no one would complain about e-bikes if no one was using e-bikes.
You're unable to demonstrate a causal link between upper classes hating e-bikes and upper classes wanting to prevent the poors being free because there just isn't one.
Honestly, I dislike being poor and I dislike wealthy people but making up ridiculous accusations like "they don't want us to be free" is just plain silly.
Most wealthy people get their wealth from the labor of poor people. If poor people have easy lives, and need to work less hard for fun and to enjoy life, then they are less likely to work hard and wealthy people are less likely to stay wealthy.
I can't demonstrate a causal link because it would be impossible to design a study really showing that.
To demonstrate anything, I'd have to get a group of wealthy people and determine which of them don't want poor being free (and just asking them wouldn't reveal that).
Then I'd have to determine which of the wealthy people hate e-bikes by asking them.
Then I would have to see if there was a correlation.
If you use Democrat versus Republican as a proxy for the first inquiry, it would be an easier but less approximate estimation.
In order try to show causation (and it would be a iffy showing), you would have to take wealthy people and measure their views of e-bikes, wait a week, divide them in three, and show them films of poor people. One film would show poor people disliking ebikes and being unhappy. One film would show poor people feeling free after using ebikes and having nicer lives. One would be a film of a a film that showed something as neutral as possible, like a show about how to do math problems. That wouldn't actually be neutral, so if a budget allowed there would be a fourth group with no tv show at all. Then measure their views of e-bikes again and see if they changed.
I can't prove any of this, but the wealthy people shown groups of poor people happy using e-bikes would probably have more negative views of e-bikes after on average because this is a control issue. E-bikes are cool and great for the planet and rich people who don't like them only have 1 rational reason: wanting to maintain their lifestyle and concern that the lower classes finding more fun may reduce that. (And alcohol is fun and promoted because lower classes who use it a lot are more likely to have less intelligent children who will lack social mobility and can be exploited more easily.)
So yes, I don't have a budget or inclination to prove this, but it's not an impossible thing to prove nor is it irrational.
I don't have the budget nor inclination to prove that the sky is purple, I'm just going to keep saying it because it makes me feel better about myself.
So you're saying that my position is clearly evidently wrong, just like purple is not the color of the sky and therefore that's clearly wrong.
I get it, but the easy lifestyles of the rich come from the suffering of the poor. The poor doing well is always a threat to that lifestyle and it's naive to think the wealthy don't often have a deep-seated gut reaction to anything that could threaten that. Even if you think it's a stretch, it certainly isn't as evidently wrong as a purple sky.
This just isn't how wealthy people think though, even if it's correct.
They think they became wealthy through hard work and good decisions. They think of themselves as benevolent and generous. They think they're using their wealth to improve the lives if the have-nots.
The wealthy probably don't think:
"Uh oh, if the poor have more freedom and are happier, they may not work for such cheap wages collectively and it could affect my lifestyle. I better dislike the thing that makes their life easier."
But the wealthy do in fact make choices and respond in gut ways that protect their lifestyles.
The wealthy often do think of themselves as generous and benevolent, but then they do not structurally change society to make life less oppressive. No one should be opposed to universal health care. No one should support criminalizing homelessness.
There are also ways to structurally change society to make life easier for the poor that don't involve Marxism or incentivizing laziness. Classical economic theory and democracy can work together to make change but the poor are misled into voting for idiots because they are manipulated by the rich with religion and wedge issues and other clever tricks. Some of these rich people that deceive the poor with religion may even believe the lies of religion on some level. The logic of the mind of the average rich person may not be internally consistent, but they ultimately protect their interests.
You're just redefining your position to be a tiny bit less nutty. Your original assertion that "the upper classes do not want the lower classes free on any level" remains preposterous.
Wealthy people hate e-bikes and e-scooters because they can afford fancy cars and e-scooters cluttering up the sidewalk or zipping through the dog park are a minor inconvenience.
That really is all there is to it.
I am not trying to make my position any less nutty. I assert it is equally as nutty as before, which is to say not very nutty at all.
It's more than it being a minor inconvenience. If this were a pass time of the rich, the inconvenience would not be regulated. For instance, hobby sailing or expensive motorcycle riding is annoying and there isn't constant discussions about how to regulate it to make it harder for people to do those things.
You're wrong on this, you don't get it but you are.
Ah yes. The hallmark of enlightened discussion - "you're just wrong but you don't know it".
Continue feeling persecuted by wealthy e-bike haters suppressing your freedom for their personal benefit you nutter.
I don't own an e-bike or feel persecuted by wealthy people, you presumptuous gas-lighter.
You're also assuming I don't either have money or have wealth in my family, that I'm some angry lower class Marxist inventing reasons to be angry at the upper classes. You don't know me or my life or anything about me. Your anti-Marxism and anti-paranoia has left you naive as to the sadism and avarice of humanity.
One person who I had a romantic relationship with literally talked to me about how he sold things that harmed poor people but someone was going to do it and the poor were stupid and these things just happen. He made millions doing what he did and was both extremely intelligent and cruel.
When slaves used to run off the plantations, slave owners put iron boxes over their heads after. Children used to work long hours in factories. People in China have committed suicide from working so much, because their lives are so miserable. None of these things were or are "needed." Not all cruelty and sadism has been eliminated. Not wanting the lower classes to be happy or free was part of it and on some level it still is, despite wealthy platitudes about giving and gestures of helping that don't structurally change things.
Rich people are at times sadistic and cruel to poor people, rich people not liking poor people is real. And e-bikes are not simply just frowned upon because they are annoying. You just lack the intelligence to see that classism is part of the equation. This isn't to say you're a moron, perhaps you're intelligent at some things, but you lack the insight to see that a lack of open class warfare doesn't mean that upper classes have no motivation to sustain their lifestyles and that poor people doing well could be a threat to that. The fact that wealthy giving does lift some people up, and the fact that socialism that doesn't reward individual effort leads to people being very lazy, doesn't negate these things.
Go gaslight someone else who won't respond to your tripe.
Gaslighting is a very specific form of manipulation and this is not that. You should probably look into it to avoid looking like an idiot.
Of course wealthy people want to stay wealthy. Of course some wealthy people dislike poor people and would exploit them.
However, that does not mean that wealthy people hate e-bikes because they allow their users to be "free" and I maintain that any such assertion is absolutely bonkers.
Saying I am crazy because I assert wealthy people dislike things that bring poor people freedom is a form of gaslighting. You and people like you enable class oppression. You're so fucking stupid you buy into the lie and because you have a nice lifestyle and higher IQ, you enable rich people to manipulate others. Even if you have some narrow technical acumen, you are in fact stupid at seeing the broader problems in society. Much in the same way in olden times everything that upset the social order was "evil" now everything that upsets the social order is "crazy." Yes, that's gaslighting. Maybe we haven't known each other a long time, and maybe you have not personally secretly harassed and demeaned me insidiously over time, which is the quintessential notion of gas-lighting, but YOUR KIND has done this to many people for a long time, lacks an understanding of the fundamental attribution error and is genuinely too stupid to see class oppression, yes, you are a gaslighter, you're just too stupid to realize it.
Class oppression does exist and the rich and their proxies have all sorts of ways from disclaiming it doesn't.
I don't know you, but I'm going to take a wild guess: you're upper middle class, 190K a year doing software development, your IQ is 130 and you feel like with hard work and intelligence anyone can make it and you came from a middle class or possibly even lower middle-class background. You feel like because you made it, and escaped poverty, others could have easily also. You were selected for class advancement because a small percent of the underclass gets to move up to pretend fairness exists.
The rich oppress poor people in different ways, including with those they have selected, and including by keeping an untouchable underclass too small to revolt to make the large regular underclass complacent ("at least it's not that bad").
But this is a strategy, a technique. They call their oppression other things. "Oh, those people are just..." lazy, drunk, stupid. Insert a word to justify oppression. And saying anything else is just crazy, and then they have little boot lickers like you to occasionally offer insults and antagonism to anyone who suggests otherwise, as well as religion to offer the naive phantasmagorical portraits of a non-existent hell for anyone who challenges the social order too much so that only real heros with courage say "fuck this" when faced with a corrupt order. You are part of this, your denial is part of this, your gas-lighting is part of this.
Do you think anyone has read this far down into the thread? We're on an old thread very far down at the part where you have to click to see more. Perhaps 100 years from now AI is reading this (if we haven't all yet died as a result of environmental catastrophe) to try to learn how to simulate replies. I don't look like an idiot, no one can see me right now, you're probably one of the few people who will ever read this.
It's so tired of morons like you sticking your head in the sand and then pretending like you aren't facilitating cruelty in the world. You see people on the street wiho can't sleep without getting a ticket, aren't allowed to even live in the forests, and aren't able to even get a moment to sleep under an overpass while it rains because assholes have put spikes there? Your naivete or stupidity is either stemming from arrogance or malevolence. You're worse than the upper classes inflicting brutality on people because you feign like everything is fine. You're disgusting and I hope you suffer for denying that you are part of what is inflicting this brutal cruelty on the abject of society.
But also I don't know you that well, so perhaps you've been homeless yourself, live a middle class lifestyle, don't have an IQ of 130, and haven't advanced in society by acquiring some narrow technical skill. Perhaps you are Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged self-made and deserve it based on the work you've done. Idiots like you always create a false dichotomy that either extreme Marxism or unchecked capitalism are the only options, as though objecting to evil cruelty in society is somehow advocating for Marxism and that classism doesn't exist.
I see through your bullshit. Now go back to pretending that you've earned your place in society and everyone else can too and all is right with the world and you aren't some culpable vile ostrich while the world keeps heating up and the homeless population grows. You and your ilk disgust me and when not even your kind can escape the heat due to your inability to grasp math or history or data due to the convenience of avarice I'll be glad. (This is not meant to imply you don't understand global warming. You're allowed to think and express that's a problem at your social station without seeming like a "nutter." But your inability to see classism, you're willingness to parrot the common norms of society that the upper middle class or very lower upper classes are supposed to say IS the problem, and while scientists are setting themselves on fire trying to warm people we are all about to die, people like you are too stupid to realize that people at the top are a part of the problem and instead are towing the line of thinking what is socially acceptable. So go ahead and parrot normal ways of thinking and advocate for moderate sensible non-crazy change while exponents keep doing their thing. My only consolation is that your kind will soon be dead due to environmental catastrophe, along with all of us.)
When someone like you, with your above average intelligence, refuses to reason correctly, it's not laziness, it's just corruption through money and callousness. The 120-130 IQ set with their "everything is fine" mentality is just pernicious and it's pointless to even reason with you. The world is headed off an environmental cliff, there's nothing that anyone can do to stop it at this point, and I've played out scenarios in my head and there's no way I can personally stop this, even if I ran for office, even if I somehow could force most of the world to do what I want, because mathematically it's too late.
Actually, I've decided I'm wrong: I do look like an idiot opposing someone like you, it's a pointless endeavor. I read something in your stupid response that indicated mild verbal intelligence and I wanted to try to correct extremely poor logic but it was a pointless reflex. I need to learn to ignore your kind instead of giving into the time suck and distraction of those too deluded to understand classism or extreme poverty or upper class cruelty or impending environmental doom or the non-existence of god. Trying to reason with the stupid is only for the stupid, so I suppose we're both idiots. Enjoy the weather. The suffering your kind has inflicted on the homeless will soon infect the lives of every human as the planet becomes uninhabitable. Now go back to your non-nutter level-headed full stack development or whatever fucking shithead job you do and pretend while people on the street suffer that your acceptance of societal norms is not a part of this.
Woah there tiger, this is kind of a tirade. A moment ago you were accusing me of making assumptions about you when I know nothing about you, and now this?
I can see that you're very passionate about equity and equality. Nevermind me. I'm cynical and jaded and the light of idealism has long since faded from my eyes.
I could enumerate all the ways you're wrong about me but I would find it difficult not to antagonise you further, so instead I will just wish you well.
I literally said in the post "I don’t know you" and everything was a guess. Apparently I guessed wrong. Alright, I believe you. Perhaps you are some finance bro calculating net present values of bonds and staring at spreadsheets 10 hours a day?
I'm not passionate about equality and equity. I actually am just against torturing homeless people and against lower classes being forced to slave away most of their lives just to not die or become a tortured homeless person. It's a sad commentary on the world that disliking torturing poor people and expressing that is a "tirade."
It's not complex or idealistic. Don't torture homeless people, don't make the lives of the poor unbearable.
The problem is that when you ignore classism or don't realize that the antipathy of the upper classes causes these problems, you're part of the problem too. I wish I could wish you well, but people like you do enable massive cruelty by ignoring the truth, and I don't think you are stupid, I think you choose convenience and convenient thoughts and I hope you do end up suffering greatly and that your suffering gives solace to the destitute underclass. If you are part of the destitute underclass, I hope you learn to hate your oppressors and see them for what they are without turning into a communist who just wants to enslave everyone with big government.
You seem like someone who at least has some intelligence. Realize that the price gouging, homelessness, and extreme poverty and a system that allows elites to pay to persuade the stupid public with religion and wedge issues leads to corrupt outcomes. Even if you are a Democrat and vote against conservative policies, if you are going along with the current structure, you are supporting it because the structure is designed to not change much. It offers a convenient way to pretend you want change while enjoying the fruits of the extraordinary suffering of the extremely marginalized. You could change your views if you wanted. Realize that not acknowledging that the upper classes are the primary cause of this situation and that they use wealth to maintain power even if it means extraordinary cruelty. You can realize that voting Democrat does not absolve you from maintaining the power structure especially if you are a subtle apologist for it. Your views do matter. They hate ebikes because poor people and young people use them and it offers freedom: that is the main reason. It's not a crazy to think. They want you jaded and cynical and to think extreme poverty is a nuanced issue too hard to solve and has nothing to do with classism instead of the exploitation that it is, they make it convenient to hold ideas like this, distract your with hedonism and an easy life if you just forget about their worst inflictions of cruelty. Give up convenience and see the truth of how horrible some people are treated and that it's not a crazy conspiracy that their suffering has a cause from top to bottom. I don't think you will do it, I think you will continue to live in a bubble and not help the lowest classes and have the same laissez-faire morality towards the environment and only on your death bed when you see the impending death of the next generation due to environmental doom will you issue a mea culpa to whatever your fantasy god of choice is.
this isn't passion, i just hate bullshit
I was really just trying to find a not-completely-unpleasant way to tie off our little tete-a-tete, and sought to do do by constructing a well meaning although vague compliment. I'm sorry if that offended you.
I appreciate how the middle and upper classes who feign ignorance over their oppression always fall back on fake pretense of respectability and civility and genteelness as though their oppression didn't stem from violence, even if they only watch it or support it through their efforts. If a homeless person who has nothing to eat steals an apple, and the police paid with your labor come to drag him away, would you do anything to stop it? Of course not. Your labor that signs off on the power structure and indifference to the class structure is a form of violence, and trying to end things by falling back on the disguise of respectability is a well known technique.
I appreciate your trying to end this by saying "I am just a nice and respectful person, trying to end this in a civilized way," the final refuge of oppressors: we are just civilized and they aren't, as though your violence at a distance towards the poor somehow exculpates you and your genteelness protects you from impurity.
If you do not realize that extraordinary cruelty and evil is being done to homeless people, and if you don't realize this stems from the upper classes creating oppressive structures due to disdain for the freedom of the poor, then you are either stupid or vicious and avaricious and seduced by convenience and you clearly aren't stupid. None of this matters in the end, the stupidity of the non-scientific class and myopia and selfishness of the upper classes has doomed us all and global warming is coming for us. It's like skiing and seeing an avalanche and it's too wide to ski to the side and you can only ski downhill in futility. There's no outrunning global warming. Imagine India and Pakistan in 20 years in the future in the hottest regions at the hottest times. The displacements will be enormous, there's only so much water in certain areas. How will everyone react then?
I'm not offended by you specifically. You and your kind that feign ignorance of class oppression are a part of nature, you have no control over your mendacious ploys just like snakes wandering into a garden don't really ask to be that way. However, the lower classes are becoming much more educated and as the environment becomes more undeniably destroyed by the upper classes, it will be interesting to see the emotional response of a more educated Internet-empowered lower class as their environment disintegrates before them. The ultra rich have underground bunkers to try to wait this period out for a few generations. It's the smart thing to do, but likely won't matter. My calculations and assessments of this situation could also be completely wrong if I am analyzing the data incorrectly, but I'm almost certain I am right. The data and mathematical trends are ugly and not negotiable. Most of the scientists who don't believe in global warming likely have views rooted in religious delusion.
There is no civility to your kind and I don't accept your facade of respectability or agree to end our interaction with some sort of agree to disagree pseudo-civility. I still hope you suffer for being among the group that feigns ignorance of the cruelty inflicted by the upper classes. I am not a hippy striving for love at all times. I hope you suffer and I hope it hurts like paper cuts are covering your entire body.