malaph

If only communism could function under voluntarism.

The reasons for farm subsidies are.. Debatable. If you keep food cheap people don't notice currency debasement as much. Personally I think it might make more sense for prices to rise to a point where farmers are profitable without subsidies. Those subsidies are value extracted from the tax payer anyway.. You're paying for it.

You're right too in that buses and trains are a lot cheaper and should always out compete cars. How much do you think fares would have to rise to make public transport self sufficient ? Make it so it funds its own expansion and service improvement.

The Toronto Transport Commission is my local example. From what I can napkin math they get about 1 billion dollars in subsidies per year from the city (maybe some provincial and fed money too.. I rounded up generously). They collect a little over 700k fares a day. Wouldn't take much of an increase with like almost 250 million fares a year to close that gap.

Privatize the roads and have cars users pay their share of that infrastructure cost and get the burden off of working people and I bet a small share increase would be pretty affordable.

If you rented or bought a house close to a grocery store you'd mostly be able to do it. European cities were built when horse and carriage were still the best option. I think if city centres were designed to be car free and have everything organised to be walkable that'd be great for people who want that.. There are certainly a lot of situations where someone needs to have a car .. Here and in Europe.

A world where roads and public transit are all operated as for profit ventures without any tax ? Man now you're talking .. I'd love that

Me too

Yeah I just- put that in another comment. Made a funny crack about privatising roads to incorporate the true cost of infrastructure with tolls lol. Might incentivize more people to use transit.

I like trains too. Unfortunately they rarely go anywhere I need to go where I live. In Toronto they also sadly win out in the homeless urine category over my car.

Everything is profitable if you raise prices. In a way you're just offsetting a certain segment of the populations transportation costs to everyone else under that system. Maybe you could privatize the roads too and use the tolls to fund more buses which operate at a profit. Its fun think of insane libertarian free marker solutions to such problems :) Cars might be less appealing if people had to pay the associated infrastructure costs on a per km basis.

If you really want to you can structure your life in a way where food is close to home.. did that through college. Paid for cabs for groceries .. Walked and used transit or my bike. Was pretty miserable in Canadian winters and not very convienent. Plus pretty expensive.. You can do it. Or just admit you like cars :) as long as most people secretly actually like cars and use them then society will be structured in a way to accommodate that. The world's a big place and in order to have most of the things you need really close isn't really entirely realistic.

Well two of probably a dozen or more requirements a week right? Your solution is "pay someone else with a vehicle" and after a certain number of times that makes less sense than just having a vehicle. Also imagine being a single mom who works with like 5 kids.. Trying to manage that with paying for cabs or trying to use a bus..

For non urban people like me you unfortunely need a vehicle to get everything. I vastly prefer public transport if I'm going into a major city because parking is a major inconvience and expense.

Public transport in areas with low population density is unprofitable and poor service .. Too few vehicles so long waits between pickups. My town has literally a single cab .. Better be the first person to call if you need a ride to work ..

I never had a noticeable case of it either. I think I probably had an asymptomatic case

At this point probably everyone has had omicron or one of the later less harmful variants. The trend of becoming more transmissible and less harmful is normal for corona viruses. Im with most people in being apprehensive about getting additional boosters. Why do you feel there's a real danger?