Ask Lemmy

"Driving is miserable and parking is hard to find, so let's get rid of the bike lanes."

Conservatism, mostly.

Gestures broadly at American Coservatives.

It would save taxpayers money if the government would house the unhoused. In the long run, it would save the government money on healthcare and law enforcement. We would all be better off. But no, we can't have that because of a belief that people shouldn't have a safe place to sleep without earning it. I'm talking about in Canada but I'm sure it applies also in other countries.

Almost any argument against public transportation or better bike and walking infrastructure.

You can't improve traffic by adding another lane. People who were using other means of transportation start to move over to cars, and then that lane fills up and you're back where you started. This "induced demand" has been studied by traffic engineers for decades, and is very reliable.

You can improve traffic by offering viable alternatives to cars. Even if that means taking up a lane for bikes, buses, or rail. The induced demand effect works in reverse, too. People see they're getting passed by the bus on their morning commute and make the obvious choice.

Trailer trash MAGAites

When my mother wants to give me something, I think it's like a gift thing, or maybe its just some snacks, then my older brother (5 years older than me, for context) gets jealous and then my mother promises to get him something at another time, its late and no time to go to a store right now. Dude was so pissed me at ME, keeps complaining and would rather both of us get nothing... like... bro... why?!?... I didn't make this choice, blame mom or something. Why do I get blamed for receiving something?

I imagine bro was probably so pissed when he found out my mother was having another child, I could practically imagine him being 4 years old and trying to kill me before I was born lolz.

US Republicans

This is a common strategy in competitive games. For example, in chess, it might greatly benefit you to hinder your opponent's pieces rather than improving one of your own pieces.

Literally every single US foreign military intervention ever. There are Americans starving on the street, apparently we cant afford to house or feed them yet apparently we can afford to bomb and murder abroad.

Inspired by the EU's new import tarrifs on chinese products. Instead of making better domestic products that people want, they just try to make foreign products less affordable.

What are other examples?

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N----r, n----r, n----r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n----r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N----r, n----r.”

Oh I have a few.

Cell phone software and hardware. They lick out people from making good devices and they lock out other operating systems. Cell phones in general engage in tons of monopoly like behavior, like proprietary platforms who's only function is consumer lock in, and locking out people who they don't like.

Car companies, notoriously lobby against free trade with other countries so they can sell terrible cars for higher prices.

ISPs often libby to make collectively owned or municipal internet illegal despite being far cheaper and far better and net neutrality in many cases as well as more privacy focused.

Consoles, they try to prevent people from installing Linux and mods and stuff so they can get people to keep buying mediocre games, called triple AAA games. These games don't appeal to most PC users because there are actually many good games on the PC and mods, but on console you usually only have a handful of games that are fun to play in modded. Lots of action liteRPGs and multiplayer shooters and simpleton games on consoles. Easy to make, easy to play.

Political parties. Instead of actually improving they compete for corporate money and are backed by hypercapaitlist, corporatist media, and are almost 100% hostile to the voters at this point. Almost everything they pass is going to make our life worse and they only really act to protect corporations and expand the laws to boost corporate profits and screw over the workers.

U S A U S A U S A U S A G E S

The area i life in. That is the main goal of everyone exept a few. You can feel the hate, and mistrust and unwell wishes in the air.

when people decide to divide people up into 'good' people and 'bad' people.

this naturally means they want to punish the bad people and boost up the good people.

Russia's hybrid war with the West comes to mind. The invasion of Ukraine has turned out that way too, although it was intended to be a quick resource grab.

America.

In the UK, civil servants used to get an excellent pension (a percentage of last earned) . People complained and said that wasn't fair and it should be removed, so now everyone gets a shit pension. Well done, guys.

Every decision around healthcare at the national level.

Greedy people.

Why not do both?
colonizing and plundering of resources intensifies