this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Germans better not vote right-wing or "Christian" again, otherwise they can say bye bye to public transportation funding for the next 4 years.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wish that too. Sadly the people are stupid. Over 16 years of doing nothing, corruption and stopping investments into the country, have already been forgotten because now with the last government of SPD and Greens that wanted to reform and invest, and the everything blocking FDP, the effect of that mismanagement are shown and they are being blamed for. Not the once at fault...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Progressives need better social media managers and to not be above playing dirty. They should be spamming their ideologies over all social media, being loud about mistakes the others made, being low-brow and making memes, phrases and shit that even monkeys on the right can understand. Give the media something to talk about - all publicity is good publicity. The nazis and right-wingers learned it, when will the progressives?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

The greens also need to grow a pair. Bring threw what they stand for and yell it from the roof tops! Not what they have always been doing, being so passiv and only feel good words

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes but we are also going to have to compromise on issues where a big part of the electorate does not hold doctrinaire progressive values (in Europe this means one thing: immigration). It won't be enough to spam the "stupid" voters with low-brow memes and make fun of "nazis" and hope that non-progressives suddenly become enlightened and see that their values are wrong. There will have to be substantive concessions on policy. Even "stupid" voters know when they're being manipulated.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The big thing to me is helping the “opposition” (that I put in quotes) clarify their values. Many of them say they oppose illegal immigration to get violent criminals out of America. (Many others are racists) We can focus on details that show Republicans don’t care about violent offenders, ignoring them to focus on nonviolent immigrants, and that Democratic organization successfully removes them.

A big point in favor of this is showcasing how many people were deported under Obama. It was more than Trump! The reason it’s not highlighted because it was “business as usual” going after violent offenders, not to mention scaling down operations from prior admins, and because the organization didn’t receive direct interference to make big shows of hurting innocent people.

People can get more done, more effectively, when their boss isn’t trying to make news headlines about it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

(Many others are racists)

In a modern world where Indiana voted for Obama and where brown people of all shades are now flocking to Trump, I don't think there's any hard evidence for this tired (and by definition unfalsifiable) line and I think that throwing it around casually is now serving mostly to make the left toxic, both in the USA and here in Europe. That's my view.

On the rest, sure. Mastering the media narrative is as important as ever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

If you want to make the argument that “there are no racists” in America, that is a starkly uphill claim to make.

I acknowledge a huge number of voters are not like that. Which is why I talked about them first and regarded Others as being racist. Which is true.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Progressives need better social media managers and to not be above playing dirty.

Progressives failing is underestimating the number of stupid people and assuming people are sensible. See 4 below.

These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:

  1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

  2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

  3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

  4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

  5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

While not all conseatives are stupid, stupid people are nearly always conservative.

"I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. . - John Stuart Mill

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

You do know many people are stupid, it's why we're in this mess. Not just Germany but stupidity is ubiquitous.

These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:

  1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

  2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

  3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

  4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

  5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

It sounds like all of the problems they've faced are matters of fiscal priority. By contrast, how much money was spent on car infrastructure that ultimately has still not fixed traffic? I'm betting that number is higher.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

The German government is subsidising having a fancy car as an employment bonus (Dienstwagenprivileg).

It's not technically supposed to be about having a fancy car (i.e. an SUV), but that's what it's often subsidising in practice

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

At leats for Hamburg the plan was to invest 3.2billion into transport infrastructure from 2023-2026 of which 126million€ goest into roads for cars. That is a bit more then half they put into pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and absolutly dwarved by the extension of metro, regional rail and other public transport costs.

That being said that is the city and the federal government is covering up a long stretch of highway in Hamburg, which is extremely expensive.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

That's based of Hamburg as far as explicit costs go, but there's also implicit costs. I don't know Hamburg, I've never been there, but I'll make an assumption that it's like every other big city with urban parking and ICE cars stuck in traffic every morning, bellowing fumes out for everyone to breathe.

It is my argument that for every dollar you don't explicitly spend on car infrastructure, you'll get it back tenfold in implicit costs being alleviated elsewhere, especially in the physical- and mental healthcare sectors.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

In the olden days Hamburgs city planners really thought cyclists were awesome. Like awesome enough to jump over a fully grown tree on the cycling path. Also it is the largest city in the EU without a tram system.....

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know Hamburg, I've never been there, but I'll make an assumption that it's like every other big city with urban parking and ICE cars stuck in traffic every morning, bellowing fumes out for everyone to breathe.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks I'll never visit Hamburg

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's definitely one of the worst crossings on one of the worst roads in town. This road has been built in the 1960's when people were fully committed to the "autogerechte Stadt" (car-righteous city). Even with the current budget and a green (and more importantly cycling) senator for traffic and mobility transition you can't fix 70 years of missdevelopment in 5 years. But we are working on it.

3km to the west, the street now looks like this. On the Reeperbahn, 1.5km to the west they also converted 2 of the four car lanes into bicylce lanes, which also will be made permanent now.

In the other direction, the (more or less) parallel Mönckebergstraße is already closed for cars (except busses and taxis), and the even more parallel Steinstraße is due for a full reconstruction this year, after which it will also be closed for personal cars.

It's getting better slowly but steadily. The biggest problem I see, is that there are often segments with great bicycle infrastructure that end abruptly without any useful transition from and to the old, shitty infrastructure. For example, this is the road leading towards the new bike lane on the Reeperbahn (see above). There is not even a shitty bike path there, you have to either illegally use the pavement, or the 4th lane of the 5 lane monstrosity you see in 5714s photo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Spending twice as much money on walking and cycling infrastructure as on car infrastructure isn't too bad, especially when you consider that roads for cars cost 20x more per km than roads for bikes. Hamburg for sure isn't a paradise for cyclists, and they still build a fair share of stupid infrastructure, but it's already gotten a lot better than 10 or 20 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

EINE STADT, EINE STATION,

EINE KOMMENTARSEKTION!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

I love the Berlin transit system. I know I've never relied upon it for daily work yet (the longest I stayed was one month), but it's been so very convenient to get around the city. Normally it's so easy and quick.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Gut. Jetzt mehr investieren.

Wir haben genug Finanzen.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Aber denke doch jemand an die Schuldenbremse....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Per capita, or?..