Why is Riding a Bicycle in the City Turning Into a Culture War
Why is Riding a Bicycle in the City Turning Into a Culture War
Here are some key reasons why a safety and efficiency issue is turning into a bicycle culture war.
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Most wealthy people get their wealth from the labor of poor people. If poor people have easy lives, and need to work less hard for fun and to enjoy life, then they are less likely to work hard and wealthy people are less likely to stay wealthy.
I can't demonstrate a causal link because it would be impossible to design a study really showing that.
To demonstrate anything, I'd have to get a group of wealthy people and determine which of them don't want poor being free (and just asking them wouldn't reveal that).
Then I'd have to determine which of the wealthy people hate e-bikes by asking them.
Then I would have to see if there was a correlation.
If you use Democrat versus Republican as a proxy for the first inquiry, it would be an easier but less approximate estimation.
In order try to show causation (and it would be a iffy showing), you would have to take wealthy people and measure their views of e-bikes, wait a week, divide them in three, and show them films of poor people. One film would show poor people disliking ebikes and being unhappy. One film would show poor people feeling free after using ebikes and having nicer lives. One would be a film of a a film that showed something as neutral as possible, like a show about how to do math problems. That wouldn't actually be neutral, so if a budget allowed there would be a fourth group with no tv show at all. Then measure their views of e-bikes again and see if they changed.
I can't prove any of this, but the wealthy people shown groups of poor people happy using e-bikes would probably have more negative views of e-bikes after on average because this is a control issue. E-bikes are cool and great for the planet and rich people who don't like them only have 1 rational reason: wanting to maintain their lifestyle and concern that the lower classes finding more fun may reduce that. (And alcohol is fun and promoted because lower classes who use it a lot are more likely to have less intelligent children who will lack social mobility and can be exploited more easily.)
So yes, I don't have a budget or inclination to prove this, but it's not an impossible thing to prove nor is it irrational.
I don't have the budget nor inclination to prove that the sky is purple, I'm just going to keep saying it because it makes me feel better about myself.
So you're saying that my position is clearly evidently wrong, just like purple is not the color of the sky and therefore that's clearly wrong.
I get it, but the easy lifestyles of the rich come from the suffering of the poor. The poor doing well is always a threat to that lifestyle and it's naive to think the wealthy don't often have a deep-seated gut reaction to anything that could threaten that. Even if you think it's a stretch, it certainly isn't as evidently wrong as a purple sky.
This just isn't how wealthy people think though, even if it's correct.
They think they became wealthy through hard work and good decisions. They think of themselves as benevolent and generous. They think they're using their wealth to improve the lives if the have-nots.
The wealthy probably don't think:
"Uh oh, if the poor have more freedom and are happier, they may not work for such cheap wages collectively and it could affect my lifestyle. I better dislike the thing that makes their life easier."
But the wealthy do in fact make choices and respond in gut ways that protect their lifestyles.
The wealthy often do think of themselves as generous and benevolent, but then they do not structurally change society to make life less oppressive. No one should be opposed to universal health care. No one should support criminalizing homelessness.
There are also ways to structurally change society to make life easier for the poor that don't involve Marxism or incentivizing laziness. Classical economic theory and democracy can work together to make change but the poor are misled into voting for idiots because they are manipulated by the rich with religion and wedge issues and other clever tricks. Some of these rich people that deceive the poor with religion may even believe the lies of religion on some level. The logic of the mind of the average rich person may not be internally consistent, but they ultimately protect their interests.
You're just redefining your position to be a tiny bit less nutty. Your original assertion that "the upper classes do not want the lower classes free on any level" remains preposterous.
Wealthy people hate e-bikes and e-scooters because they can afford fancy cars and e-scooters cluttering up the sidewalk or zipping through the dog park are a minor inconvenience.
That really is all there is to it.
I am not trying to make my position any less nutty. I assert it is equally as nutty as before, which is to say not very nutty at all.
It's more than it being a minor inconvenience. If this were a pass time of the rich, the inconvenience would not be regulated. For instance, hobby sailing or expensive motorcycle riding is annoying and there isn't constant discussions about how to regulate it to make it harder for people to do those things.
You're wrong on this, you don't get it but you are.
Ah yes. The hallmark of enlightened discussion - "you're just wrong but you don't know it".
Continue feeling persecuted by wealthy e-bike haters suppressing your freedom for their personal benefit you nutter.
I don't own an e-bike or feel persecuted by wealthy people, you presumptuous gas-lighter.
You're also assuming I don't either have money or have wealth in my family, that I'm some angry lower class Marxist inventing reasons to be angry at the upper classes. You don't know me or my life or anything about me. Your anti-Marxism and anti-paranoia has left you naive as to the sadism and avarice of humanity.
One person who I had a romantic relationship with literally talked to me about how he sold things that harmed poor people but someone was going to do it and the poor were stupid and these things just happen. He made millions doing what he did and was both extremely intelligent and cruel.
When slaves used to run off the plantations, slave owners put iron boxes over their heads after. Children used to work long hours in factories. People in China have committed suicide from working so much, because their lives are so miserable. None of these things were or are "needed." Not all cruelty and sadism has been eliminated. Not wanting the lower classes to be happy or free was part of it and on some level it still is, despite wealthy platitudes about giving and gestures of helping that don't structurally change things.
Rich people are at times sadistic and cruel to poor people, rich people not liking poor people is real. And e-bikes are not simply just frowned upon because they are annoying. You just lack the intelligence to see that classism is part of the equation. This isn't to say you're a moron, perhaps you're intelligent at some things, but you lack the insight to see that a lack of open class warfare doesn't mean that upper classes have no motivation to sustain their lifestyles and that poor people doing well could be a threat to that. The fact that wealthy giving does lift some people up, and the fact that socialism that doesn't reward individual effort leads to people being very lazy, doesn't negate these things.
Go gaslight someone else who won't respond to your tripe.
Gaslighting is a very specific form of manipulation and this is not that. You should probably look into it to avoid looking like an idiot.
Of course wealthy people want to stay wealthy. Of course some wealthy people dislike poor people and would exploit them.
However, that does not mean that wealthy people hate e-bikes because they allow their users to be "free" and I maintain that any such assertion is absolutely bonkers.
Saying I am crazy because I assert wealthy people dislike things that bring poor people freedom is a form of gaslighting. You and people like you enable class oppression. You're so fucking stupid you buy into the lie and because you have a nice lifestyle and higher IQ, you enable rich people to manipulate others. Even if you have some narrow technical acumen, you are in fact stupid at seeing the broader problems in society. Much in the same way in olden times everything that upset the social order was "evil" now everything that upsets the social order is "crazy." Yes, that's gaslighting. Maybe we haven't known each other a long time, and maybe you have not personally secretly harassed and demeaned me insidiously over time, which is the quintessential notion of gas-lighting, but YOUR KIND has done this to many people for a long time, lacks an understanding of the fundamental attribution error and is genuinely too stupid to see class oppression, yes, you are a gaslighter, you're just too stupid to realize it.
Class oppression does exist and the rich and their proxies have all sorts of ways from disclaiming it doesn't.
I don't know you, but I'm going to take a wild guess: you're upper middle class, 190K a year doing software development, your IQ is 130 and you feel like with hard work and intelligence anyone can make it and you came from a middle class or possibly even lower middle-class background. You feel like because you made it, and escaped poverty, others could have easily also. You were selected for class advancement because a small percent of the underclass gets to move up to pretend fairness exists.
The rich oppress poor people in different ways, including with those they have selected, and including by keeping an untouchable underclass too small to revolt to make the large regular underclass complacent ("at least it's not that bad").
But this is a strategy, a technique. They call their oppression other things. "Oh, those people are just..." lazy, drunk, stupid. Insert a word to justify oppression. And saying anything else is just crazy, and then they have little boot lickers like you to occasionally offer insults and antagonism to anyone who suggests otherwise, as well as religion to offer the naive phantasmagorical portraits of a non-existent hell for anyone who challenges the social order too much so that only real heros with courage say "fuck this" when faced with a corrupt order. You are part of this, your denial is part of this, your gas-lighting is part of this.
Do you think anyone has read this far down into the thread? We're on an old thread very far down at the part where you have to click to see more. Perhaps 100 years from now AI is reading this (if we haven't all yet died as a result of environmental catastrophe) to try to learn how to simulate replies. I don't look like an idiot, no one can see me right now, you're probably one of the few people who will ever read this.
It's so tired of morons like you sticking your head in the sand and then pretending like you aren't facilitating cruelty in the world. You see people on the street wiho can't sleep without getting a ticket, aren't allowed to even live in the forests, and aren't able to even get a moment to sleep under an overpass while it rains because assholes have put spikes there? Your naivete or stupidity is either stemming from arrogance or malevolence. You're worse than the upper classes inflicting brutality on people because you feign like everything is fine. You're disgusting and I hope you suffer for denying that you are part of what is inflicting this brutal cruelty on the abject of society.
But also I don't know you that well, so perhaps you've been homeless yourself, live a middle class lifestyle, don't have an IQ of 130, and haven't advanced in society by acquiring some narrow technical skill. Perhaps you are Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged self-made and deserve it based on the work you've done. Idiots like you always create a false dichotomy that either extreme Marxism or unchecked capitalism are the only options, as though objecting to evil cruelty in society is somehow advocating for Marxism and that classism doesn't exist.
I see through your bullshit. Now go back to pretending that you've earned your place in society and everyone else can too and all is right with the world and you aren't some culpable vile ostrich while the world keeps heating up and the homeless population grows. You and your ilk disgust me and when not even your kind can escape the heat due to your inability to grasp math or history or data due to the convenience of avarice I'll be glad. (This is not meant to imply you don't understand global warming. You're allowed to think and express that's a problem at your social station without seeming like a "nutter." But your inability to see classism, you're willingness to parrot the common norms of society that the upper middle class or very lower upper classes are supposed to say IS the problem, and while scientists are setting themselves on fire trying to warm people we are all about to die, people like you are too stupid to realize that people at the top are a part of the problem and instead are towing the line of thinking what is socially acceptable. So go ahead and parrot normal ways of thinking and advocate for moderate sensible non-crazy change while exponents keep doing their thing. My only consolation is that your kind will soon be dead due to environmental catastrophe, along with all of us.)
When someone like you, with your above average intelligence, refuses to reason correctly, it's not laziness, it's just corruption through money and callousness. The 120-130 IQ set with their "everything is fine" mentality is just pernicious and it's pointless to even reason with you. The world is headed off an environmental cliff, there's nothing that anyone can do to stop it at this point, and I've played out scenarios in my head and there's no way I can personally stop this, even if I ran for office, even if I somehow could force most of the world to do what I want, because mathematically it's too late.
Actually, I've decided I'm wrong: I do look like an idiot opposing someone like you, it's a pointless endeavor. I read something in your stupid response that indicated mild verbal intelligence and I wanted to try to correct extremely poor logic but it was a pointless reflex. I need to learn to ignore your kind instead of giving into the time suck and distraction of those too deluded to understand classism or extreme poverty or upper class cruelty or impending environmental doom or the non-existence of god. Trying to reason with the stupid is only for the stupid, so I suppose we're both idiots. Enjoy the weather. The suffering your kind has inflicted on the homeless will soon infect the lives of every human as the planet becomes uninhabitable. Now go back to your non-nutter level-headed full stack development or whatever fucking shithead job you do and pretend while people on the street suffer that your acceptance of societal norms is not a part of this.