Some people can’t afford to leave their jobs for extended amounts of time. The sort of people who can’t afford formula, for example.

This is the key worry of governments with cryptocurrencies, and was the main selling point of them initially, before the whole crypto tech bro hype.

Yep. Arguably Bitcoin arose from the 2008 financial crisis and the following bailouts.

What I’ve never understood about it is that it seems so unlikely that it would ever replace a national currency, for two simple reasons. First, because taxes owed in a country can only be repaid in the national currency. Second, because government contracts will only ever pay in the national currency, from macroprojects, to maintenance contracts, to millions of civil servants. This creates both a ton of demand and a ton of supply for the national currency.

And that doesn’t even take into account the role of the central bank and private banks in the money supply. Being highly regulated, there’s zero chance that a private currency would ever be legally allowed to take hold there either.

Central bank digital currencies appear to have very little to do with crypto currencies like Bitcoin. Rather, they appear to be a mechanism to surgically induce economic stimulus when and where desired, like a more controlled version of the stimulus checks that we saw in many countries during COVID.

For example, they could directly credit your digital currency account with a certain amount of money that you are only allowed to spend on certain goods and services and for a limited amount of time. This would ensure that the money is spent and stimulates certain economic aress rather than being hoarded or invested.

Density without walkability means non-stop traffic.

Walkable neighborhoods need retail businesses. We need to be able to do everyday errands by foot if we want to keep traffic to reasonable levels.

I spend a couple of decades living in Spain. I’m well familiar with old towns.

Designing our streets for pedestrians first, transit/bikes next and private motor vehicles last is the way it should be. If that means that some streets are inconvenient for car traffic, so be it. Surely that is preferable to downgrading the ability or experience of the most vulnerable to move around.

North-american style car-dependent suburbs are an aberration that should disappear altogether. They didn’t exist a hundred years ago and they shouldn’t exist now. It is immoral that the people living sustainably in urban centers are subsidizing the people living at large in the suburbs. If they like them so much they can pay their true cost to society.

There are multiple different ways to tax carbon. The current federal carbon tax does not include rebates for planting trees, so that loophole doesn’t exist.

I just made it clear that making personal cars somehow “vanish” will not really change the financial side of things.

What you are not taking into account is that the sort of low-density, car-dependent, single family home suburbia we criticise requires many more square meters of road per person than a walkable medium-density mixed-use neighborhood. Strongtowns shows with data, not opinion, how town centers are subsidizing financially unsustainable car-dependent suburbia.

I wish anyone in this “FuckCars” community would actually think of a way to fix the world, and not just complain about the way it is.

Easy. Start by copying the Dutch street design guidelines and zoning laws. Boom! Living car-free or car-lite would be much easier, at least in North America where so many people drive to do the most basic daily errands.

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just study and copy what already works elsewhere. That’s how bad things are around here.

Please stop being disingenuous. You know perfectly well that what we want is doable because it is already being done in many places in Europe and Japan. Stop fighting a strawman of your own creation.

We want fewer private motor vehicles in our streets because car-centric urban planning translates into places that are unpleasant to live in, especially for people who don’t drive.

I live right by a busy stroad. How many of the cars whizzing by do you think are delivery vehicles? How many busses? Very few compared to the number obese SUVs and lifted pickups, even though there are four large supermarkets and many shops within walking distance along this corridor.

If we reduced the number of private motor vehicles in this stroad the quality of life for my family would significantly increase: less air pollution, less traffic noise, more pleasant daily errands, less risk of being run over by a tank-sized ego booster, more room for trees and bicycles.

Stop spewing bullshit and fear. Let my kids and I hope for a better future.

The article does not justify why a carbon tax would not work, or at least be an important part of the solution. If we are missing our current targets, what measures can we take to do better? For example, how would increasing the carbon tax by 50% affect our emissions? Despair doesn’t get us closer to our goals.

Until people develop a workable alternative

The alternative will not appear out of thin air. More people need to have a sense of the long-reaching consequences of car-dependent urban planning and that’s what propels them to vote for better planning in their cities.

Nothing is going to change without a shift in political leanings, and that’s what this sort of advocacy is doing.

Many years ago we got lucky and a recently-graduated doctor took us under her roster. Not losing that is one of the reasons we hesitate to move to a different place, even though our doctor is pretty much only doing phone appointments since the pandemic began.

Is it so hard to paint “RESCUE TRAINING” on props like these with big letters so that confusion can be avoided?

“Nothing happened! See, it is not such a big deal.”

Somebody who doesn’t understand that the effect is cumulative. Just like a heavy rainstorm one day may be manageable but if it happens every day you have a flood.

We need to do better.

In total, officers seized a staggering 551 kg of cocaine and 441 kg of crystal meth

Yeah, this wasn’t some unlicensed weed.

in theory a lot or europeans are still living comfortably off of the horrific crimes they committed

in practice i doubt this money would come from those most responsible

A few Europeans from a few countries committed horrific crimes over half a century ago. Leopold III of Belgium in the 1950s during the independence of the Congo being the most modern example I’m aware of, and he died forty years ago.

If we are talking about the slave trade bound to the US, that ended a century and a half ago. Not that things turned instantly great for the freed slaves, of course.

So how much should we chastize people who were not even born when these things happened, and how much reparation needs to be paid to people who were not even born when it happened either? Because the way things work in the real world, I fear that in the end it will be middle class folks who will be paying “reparations” that will do nothing but fill the pockets of a few corrupt politicians from the receiving countries.

Don’t leave us hanging! Are you still stuck sitting on the toilet browsing Lemmy?

the dockless rent-a-scooters need to go

Yeah, I get it. Private vehicles everywhere on the side of the street are an eyesore and take a ton of valuable public space. If at least e-scooters were as small as a car it wouldn’t be such a big deal to see them parked everywhere.

Plus, some people have kids under 5

Yup, that’s us. We walk, use transit, or the kid rides on her bike child seat.

E-bikes exist if you don’t have the legs to tackle those hills yet.

I wish i could also move more people with me on the bicycle

Depending on the size of those people: bike child seat, bike trailer, or they can ride their own bicycle. Cargo bikes can easily carry two kids or one adult without even using a trailer.

It would also be great if there was some sort of heater/AC in it as well

That is called “dress for the weather”. Even snowflake pinko commies like me can do it.

I rode in all weather for years

Same. And that includes snow and ice, for those at the back that think that riding a bike in winter is only possible in LA. If people can walk in that weather, people can ride a bike even more easily as the exercise keeps you warmer.