I’ve seen you say a few places in this thread that reducing caloric intake is related to eugenics. That’s a pretty strong claim to make without any evidence. Can you share any?

How is it seizing power?

There’s definitely an opportunity cost. If you build a road or a parking garage that’s taking space and funds that could go to something else. The same could be said of a park or firehouse or factory. And I’d agree that in many cases something better could have been done than car centric infrastructure.

But an individual owning a car isn’t taking something from someone who doesn’t own a car.

Besides, my point is that cars should not be prioritized over pedestrians, cyclists and public transit. Just that to displace cars we should try to understand what people see in them, contra the last line of the OP image

Gene Hackman!

You’re right there are a lot of negative things about the U.S. And even if it became a biking/public transit utopia, it would still suck to be homeless. We’d still need to address wealth inequality.

I’m addressing the last line of the OP image, why do we hold up cars as a symbol of freedom? It’s because they do provide personal empowerment. They provide specific benefits.

It’s possible for a situation to have terrible outcomes without it being a conspiracy. Some people, like Robert Moses, did design certain places to be accessible by car but not by bus. But I’d argue the main reason the car is dominant in the U.S. is because individuals who saw benefit from their own car use pushed and bought into that system.

Imagine we’re playing chess, we have to understand the pieces on the board, what their abilities are. I get it’s a fun thought experiment to list all the ways a bike is great. I’m just saying it’s useful to understand what people see in a car if we want to create an alternative.

You don’t know about my thighs!

Jokes aside, it’s one thing to say it’s possible to recreate some aspect of car ownership with a bike. But it’s making the individual responsible for something that requires a societal solution.

Suggesting impractical alternatives to what are easy benefits with cars isn’t a serious alternative. And we won’t fully replicate everything a car does. But understanding where the trade-offs are is essential to approaching the problem.

You’re right, not every box has to be checked before it starts making sense for some people to switch to bike. I just commented because the original post was saying “why do we say cars are the ultimate symbol of freedom?” If someone can’t see why people like cars, they may have a hard time creating an environment where people move away from them.

To create a pedestrian first world I think we need to legitimately understand what advantages a car has. A car is a true source of empowerment.

Sure, I can ride a bike, but I could never ride a bike 300 miles for a weekend trip to any arbitrary destination. I can take a bus but not at any moment, and not the middle of the night. I can take public transit, but not to the place I need to go.

A car is a portable personal space. I can eat lunch in my car, I can take a nap.

A car is a space protected from the elements - I’m not getting rained on. Protection from wind, snow, sun.

Its locked doors are a barrier between me and potential (and sometimes imagined) threats.

I don’t need to list out for this community all the negative things associated with cars. I just list these pros to highlight it’s a challenging task to displace cars. It’s a list of benefits to replicate.

Thanks for sharing all these pics. It does help to remind we’re not alone, and that other people are willing to take action, and need us to take action.

Did you read the article? They took her to a psychiatric hospital, and explicitly note there’s a discrepancy about the time. I’m not saying she wasn’t abused, or that her whole story is fake. Just, we all know you can’t go 40 days without water. You can’t go a week without water.

Yeah, and that her version of events doesn’t seem possible (no food and water for 40 days)