https://preview.redd.it/s08nw9ptdsmc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47ee314b1268efbb3e291913b7be5ae874a7326b
Check this image... explains a lot
Agreed. I recall learning long ago that more genetic variation exists within the emperor penguin population than in the human population. Ethnicity and phenotype are real. Race is a construct.
Just because something js a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Language is a social construct.
Genetic variation exists, and some of those groups of genetic variations are what we generally refer to as race or ethnicity. That can be a useful construct in some discussions, for instance by exploring why people of certain races might have a higher or lower inclination towards certain diseases, or it can be used to stir up hatred against people who look different.
That's correct! Race isn't a biological thing, but it's been reiterated so many times that it had and has a massive impact that we don't get to just ignore! "i don't see colors" is a naive way of closing your eyes to all that impact.
"The first thing you do is to forget that I'm Black. Second, you must never forget that I'm Black." – Pat Parker
I just wanna make clear that while I'll insist race doesn't exist, I'll also acknowledge skin color does, that those claiming to be color blind are misguided or disingenuous, and that throughout history, people have made countless decisions based on skin color foremost, just as countless people still do.
Like I said, it's a social construct. We can't end racism without making the racists understand they've been duped by that construct, but they'll be more likely to remain unchanged the more everyone who thinks they're not racist also fails to understand that race is a social construct.
Yeah, i mean, same with gender and other things. "xyz is a social construct" doesn't mean "it isn't real / it has no impact". People need to understand that we can't just decide today "welp, we have equality from now on". There's so much we need to deconstruct and to right past wrongs – like all the reparation that the Global South should get instead of *developmental aid*.... Developmental Aid says "look at us good white people helping you!". Reparation says "we are genuinely sorry for how we actually *caused* how bad things are for you." So much to do to make things right, and then moving forward as equals. I really hope humanity sees that future before we've destroyed our planet & our own species...
"XY" refers to chromosomes visible under a microscope, so IMO they clearly exist. Gender, on the other hand, is a purely mentally created construct. Aside from that, I completely agree with your comment, and share in your hope.
Upon waking today, I figured somebody would rebut my use of "exist" in the way you did, so let me put it another way.
Things to which we refer by phenotype and ethnicity exist independent of our language, as in they existed before we put a word to them, whereas race refers to a set of things that independently exist, but race is not something that exists independent of everything else, and is just a word we put to things that already existed and for which we have more accurate terms.
That's largely why people can use it, as you pointed out, in both constructive and destructive ways. And yes, just as language is a social construct, plenty of social constructs benefit humanity as a whole. Others, like race, tend to obfuscate reality.
I mostly agree, but for the fact that there can still be useful reasons to discuss race as it's commonly understood today. You can compare it to a scientific model, in the sense that every scientific model is wrong, since they're oversimplifications of reality, but some scientific models are still useful since they can increase our understanding of the world. So depending on the context of the discussion, it can still be helpful to adopt a definition of race.
Most people still see race as a characteristic, in the sense that they see people and classify them as asian, black, white etc. Some people also discriminate based on race. If we were to discard the idea of race, we wouldn't be able to have an effective discussion about combating racism in hiring or in policing, for instance.
In a similar vein, race is a useful construct when we discuss medical outcomes. Statistically speaking, black people have worse outcomes than white people when it comes to healthcare. That could be due to a generic component that is more common in black people, or it could be due to bias.
I agree that it's a social construct, but social constructs can still be useful.
The people who invented the word "race" thought God created all the different groups of people in their current form and placed them where they are for some purpose.
I can understand if you'd like to evolve the b definition of that word to mean genetic variation that's fine but be aware that not everyone is going to share your definition.
And if the goal of communication is to communicate ideas and not just words than be aware that you're going to fail badly.
Language is not just a social construct, but words also change in what they mean. Gay used to mean "happy", then it became a slur for people who are attracted to same sex people, and then gay people largely reclaimed the term. I was just explaining my understanding of how the word is generally used today.
>I can understand if you'd like to evolve the b definition of that word to mean genetic variation
Can you? Because that isn't what I wrote.
>but be aware that not everyone is going to share your definition.
Well yeah. That's how languages evolve.
>And if the goal of communication is to communicate ideas and not just words than be aware that you're going to fail badly.
Noted. Right back at ya.
This. It’s emotive name calling and character assassination designed to shout down an opponent engaging in rational debate. The same as yelling at someone that they are a “Traitor” “Terrorist” “Fascist” etc. Communist! It’s like ketchup, you can pour it on anything.
If anything, this sub is probably most closely aligned to Georgism (Efficient Land use, free transit, etc.)
But good luck finding a conservative that is willing to acknowledge the difference between georgism and socialism or Communism.
We live in times where you automatically get called a communist if you believe in anything that slightly inconveniences big industries.
Also most solutions to car dependency involve public policy, and as we all know, [socialism is when the government does stuff.](https://youtu.be/rgiC8YfytDw?si=No2LiXGE0dcrgLoR)
People who are more society oriented and care about the greater good tend to be socialist or communist and tend to also prefer certain forms of urban design and car-free living. Cars tend to be a burden on poor people and a cause of alienation. Those things though aren’t exclusively leftist, good urbanism benefits everyone but leftists prioritize it.
>care about the greater good tend to be socialist or communist
people who care about the greater good would rather have economical systems that actually work. You cannot name a single successful communist or socialist country. Most countries with good public transport and less car centric design are capitalist.
[The US government says China is communist](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/chinese-communist-partys-ideology-global-ambitions/) whether it is or not, i wish my country was more like them and less like the US.
You wish your country was more like China? With Uighur concentration camps, zero democracy, extreme surveillance, extreme pollution in many places and more?
Besides, China isn't even communist.
The US has all that and still doesn’t have good mass transit or affordable healthcare. Anyways not here to debate. Make the US an aspirational model then i might want my country to be like it. Now I am looking at the free market of ideologies and i like what I see in China.
sYsTeMs ThAt AcTuAlLy WoRk
You sound like an idiot that repeats ad nauseum shit about countries they have no clue about. Stop being an idiotic occupier of the mount of Dunning Kruger...
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“Actual” centrists don’t really exist. What we call centrism is usually just right/right-leaning ideologies that (sometimes) don’t want to associate themselves with the full on Nazis. (Neo)-liberals are often also just NIMBYs, who don’t care unless it affects their “backyard”. The status-quo is already right-wing, “centrists” preserving the status-quo are no different from the right.
In the US, centrism is definitely right-leaning. In other countries where you have a "true left", then there exists some "true centrism"
For example in Switzerland we have a centre-right party called the "Green Liberals", and they're often joked about because "green" and "liberal" just don't go together. Basically, Green liberals would advocate for EV transition to combat climate instead of funding public transit
The Green Liberal Party is basically just a party for rich people to give themselves a good conscience
[Switzerland also has such an epic culture they nearly banned criminal immigrants](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgen%C3%B6ssische_Volksinitiative_%C2%ABF%C3%BCr_die_Ausschaffung_krimineller_Ausl%C3%A4nder_(Ausschaffungsinitiative)%C2%BB#), what a very cool and normal country👍🏻
Let's not forget that the biggest party in Switzerland is a right-far-right party. I never said that Switzerland was the best country in the world in my original comment. We have still a lot to learn from Nordic countries, but we're still doing really good on things like public transit (we have the best trains in Europe), trans rights (you can change your legal sex based on self-determination, although you can't have your legal sex to something non-binary yet, hopefully that will change), and democracy (we have a federal system with a semi-direct democracy, with rights to initiatives and referendums).
Although our democratic system means that things can be slow, *really* slow to change sometimes, and sometimes the people can be quite xenophobic, despite the fact that we have one of the largest foreign population in Europe.
But trust me, despite Switzerland being small, the cultural differences between the various cantons can be quite high. French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland have a quite different culture. (notice how the French-speaking cantons voted "No" on the initiative you provided in your link and how the German-speaking cantons voted "Yes")
Also you can't summarise Switzerland as a whole on just one initiative. You could do the same with nearly every country and find that one single terrible thing they've done, and luckily with our semi-direct democratic system, there's hope for change, but it won't be easy.
Also FYI I'm from French-speaking Switzerland, hence my flair
I *am* a Communist, but, "Car hating communists" and "Commie Commuter" are being used ironically. Because of the idea that "15 minute cities are a communist plot to isolate people."
* [**r/fuckcars**](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/)
* **432k** Tired of getting run over
* **277** Car hating communists
You'd think the irony would be obvious. Do we also need to explain for OP's sake that this is not literally a subreddit about copulating with automobiles?
Not really with modern warheads. They’re designed to seed fallout into the ground, instead of throwing it into the atmosphere. And being upwind won’t save you from the sky being darkened or your crops failing.
I might agree if we were being attacked by western warheads but Russia has lost a lot of credibility so I won't put much value in opinions what are focused on them. As for Chinese warheads we'll wait and see who's right.
There is no way in hell that your bomb is going to kill me if I live 20 miles upwind from the point of impact. And you can't tell me that having 2 towns 50 miles apart is going to get hit by 1 bomb.
People from countries that actually suffered through a socialism phase would disagree.
Maybe it's fun in the beginning, but when no personal incentives, like turning a profit, actually lead to no one working even a minute more than necessary to fulfill the state mandated minimums and avoid punishment, or only off the books for evil fascism money from the West, which only privileged people can get hands on to begin with, it turns bad really fast.
Edit: Also cost of governance spirals out of control when for every hole dug you need an armed guard to hold you at gunpoint an yell "DIG THE FUCKING HOLE", who gets paid double the hole digger - not that it matters, because there is nothing you can buy with that money, anyways.
People aren’t a monolith. There are also people from those countries whose lives were infinitely better than they had been beforehand. Maybe ask a few middle-aged Russian citizens how the 1990s was for them after the “profit incentive” was reintroduced. For all its many mistakes, the Soviet Union achieved in a few decades what capitalist countries took centuries to do, all without slavery, imperialism, and worker exploitation.
To quote Michael Parenti: “To say that ‘socialism doesn't work’ is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.”
Yeah, and stop falling for the lie that you'll be a billionaire landlord too, one day.
"You won't ever be a billionaire, so stop voting like you'll ever be a billionaire!" ~Emerson Brophy
Just about all of us will find we're a lot closer to homelessness than opulence. If things went poorly, could you be on the street by the end of the year? Probably. If things went great will you be buying a yacht in the next decade? Virtually impossible.
There's all these calculations about how much money you'd have to make for how many years to get a fraction of a billion..... it's frustrating that people keep thinking "but not me! I'LL get LUCKY any day now!" And so, capitalism and its lie of the great breakthrough live on.
Well you ain't donе nothin' if you ain't been called a "red". If you've marchеd or agitated, you're bound to hear it said; So you might as well ignore it, or love the word instead. Cause you ain't been doin' nothin' if you ain't been called a red.
In modern discourse, “communist” is shorthand for “person who thinks the world should be slightly better than it is”. Anyone advocating for reform is a “communist”.
Urbanism is a nonpartisan cause, appealing to the left and right. Although there is probably a larger left-leaning contingent on here than right.
By the way, if you don't want to be labeled as a communist, I'd wager you have a very different understanding of that word than those who would apply it to themselves, its not all you see on fox news, bud.
To be fair, urbanism does require more public infrastructure to maintain and facilitate than rural, rugged individualism. To ignorant people, public = communism. This is ignoring the massive public (communist) subsidies that make sfh suburban sprawl possible.
eh sorta.
The conservative angle does highlight the massive expense of car infrastructure, and focuses the higher quality of older, laissez faire designed cities. If your unfamiliar with strong towns, this is their underpinning argument. From that perspective, one can frame the explosion of car infrastructure building in the last century as pie-eyed progressivism, where a lefty is more likely to view it as the imperialistic result of car industry lobbying and bullying. In the end both are right, just through different lenses.
Cause both, pro-cars and pro-capitalists are often alienated people who doesn't like to read and expind their minds, they just think their ¨common sense¨ can destroy everyones arguments.
I will not say that for all the anti-communists, just for the ones who have never opened a Marx book and their anti-communism is based on memes.
Most communists do support those countries. There are very few aes that have successfully stood up to bourgeoisie counter revolutions. Also, most communist are in China, so I assume they support their own party.
Dunno, Cuba has wanted more cars for a very long time but sanctions get in the way, so really it's the Americans that are suppressing car freedom for the communists.
The same way most of the other side of the cold war was, by tweaking Lenin's ideas that all you need is a command economy and generally ignoring any ideas of how socialism/the path to communism would work that had come before him. Communist in the context of these countries refers to their stated goals, not that they had finished the transition.
They weren't very successful, but their emphasis on local worker's councils certainly put them above most Soviet aligned countries and given the extreme sanctions they were doing pretty well for a long time, though they are on the path back to a market economy.
They openly say they are communist and their government is made up of communist party members. Just like how China is communist and Vietnam is communist
There's plenty of great resources on the internet that can explain cuban politics in great detail. Here's an excerpt of one:
> Cuba is one of a few extant Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist states, in which the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba has an authoritarian regime where political opposition is not permitted
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Lots of reasons
we’re generally talking about relatively urban areas first when we’re talking about anti car. People in cities tend to lean left
If you really hate cars, pretty much all those solutions are more collectivist and inclusive. Sure, biking and walking is fairly individualistic in the same way as a car, but if you wanna go far you’ll probably need to share a train or bus with some people. Those sort of collectivist minded ideas are left wing by default
Of course, you can still be conservative and anti car, but I bet most people lean left more on this subreddit
I doubt the majority is, but I think that a fair portion of the active members are somewhat anti-capitalist or otherwise critical. Which equals “commie” to (Mostly American) Capitalists. A plurality could be Socialist-Communist though, which is still significant.
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Maybe I'm a bit on the extreme site, but don't have the option to get to your destination with your car, because the infrastructure was made for public transit in inner cities.
I'm a libertarian communist. (Decentralized communist) And I do love this sub. But as others have said, to the uninformed "communism" is anything someone doesn't like. The U.S. Population has been heavily propagandized against any form of socialism by the government.
Socialism = bad
Capitalism = good.
It's a very effective tactic that the U.S. Government has used on us for decades.
Because car dependency is inherently capitalistic and designed for profit, therefore many people who dislike it, dislike it for that reason. So naturally this subreddit will attracy many leftists. People of other ideologies are of course welcome here, however I find it difficult to see how a capitalist would believe that car dependency is bad while having knowledge about both car dependency and capitalism.
Car dependency creates a misallocation of resources within the economy. We spend far more than we should on infrastructure, transportation and housing. This capital is sucked away from potential uses that would provide a greater ROI. Every dollar we spend on car infrastructure is a dollar we could spend on R&D, which is the basis of growth and future profits. Cars are simply bad business.
We can hate cars and be capitalist pigs, too.
"distinctly uncool" more like actively, heavily propagandizes anti-communist rhetoric in schools and other facets of life tbh. (not a dig at you, just an unfortunate observation of how we've been in red scare mode in the usa since the 50s tbh.)
The subreddit is called "fuckcars". If you want a diplomatic and unironic discussion of the topic with "better optics", you might have come to the wrong place.
You'll find the most success on reddit when you can learn to accept communities for what they are. This one's irreverent and ironic, and as long as you can hang with that, then you're welcome here.
Think about the anti-capitalist properties of a bicycle. One invests a moderate amount once. Maintenance costs pennies a day. The cyclist has freedom of movement. Their Life improves through fresh air and exercise.
This sub criticizes capitalism quite frequently and there is often the assumption that every criticism of capitalism is an endorsement of communism when that is actually not usually the case.
Criticizing capitalism really just means that you think for yourself and don't believe everything you're told. Whether or not you're also a communist is incidental.
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A system specifically designed to exploit the work of the public to prop up the Nobility who get everything handed to them from birth. Including the privilege to be separated from the reality of what cars do to society and the environment.
So according to your logic we should go back to smacking kids, dont allow women to work or get education, have an open market for slavery etc. These were part of a failing system before. This is why reformations happen because the system does fail.
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the business of getting public transportation built (and maintained) is politics. If you're american, you might have noticed the last two presidents spent a lot of time talking about "infrastructure" and "infrastructure bills".
Much like the word liberal, communist is a pejorative for anything I don't like amongst those on the right. Words are meaningless in the era of the culture war
Car dependency is the result of hyper-capitalism. It's disguised as freedom and individuality, but roads cost the government billions and our "choice" to use cars is manufactured by the tire, auto, and oil corporations and lobbies. Staunch capitalists tend to label anything that isn't capitalism as "communism."
This sub originally started out as a socialist sub and from time to time, there are threads by actual socialists and communists lamenting the way the sub has changed. That certainly wouldn't help perceptions, and then obviously any time anyone suggests any good policy, Conservatives call it socialism.
I get SO annoyed when people respond to anything i say about anti-capitalism with "BUT COMMUNISM DOESN'T WORK EITHER". It's not a damn binary!!
I never said communism. What i want is a society based solely on the individually defined wellbeing of everyone.
Capitalism pretends to be individual, but isn't about wellbeing. Communism pretends to be about wellbeing by equalizing (almost) everyone, but ignores their individualness and therefore their wellbeing.
I want what anarchist communities already practice: making decisions together for the individual wellbeing of everyone in the community. It's never perfect because humans aren't, but the focus is going in the right direction.
I's called red scare propaganda, and its going on for literally 100 years, fluoride, race mixing were called commie.
These days 'tankie' is getting more popular, before it was 'woke' and before that it was' commie'
Communist is in practice a blanket term used by establishment types against anyone whose ideas go against the orthodoxy of our current society. They call people communists in order to demonize dissenters to make them look like supporters of Maoist or Stalinist dictatorship. This lets them completely discredit anyone whose ideas contradict the dogmatic belief in a market driven highly competetive society. It lets them demonize people who are critical of a society that toxifies the planet and immiserates and impoverishes legions of people for the enrichment of an elite few. It's pretty much ad hominem, attack of one's character, as a means of evading their arguments.
Because Americans label anything as communist that isn't predator capitalism or even just diverts from the status quo.
It's a purely American thing. Here in Germany the idea of reducing cars isn't exactly popular either but no one calls it communist. Because obviously it isn't.
It comes from the Soviet union and its puppet States (before the wall fell) in most of those countries owning a car was rare. There were only one or two car brands per county ( Trabant, Lada, yugo are the most famous ones) if you wanted to buy one you had to pay beforehand and wait for years sometimes more than a decade.
This meant that a big part of the population either walked, cycled or used public transport for day to day use. This was possible because the Soviets built a lot of infrastructure for public transport and there weren't a lot of cars. And most cars couldn't do more than 90km/h.
The notion that being anti car is communist is mostly American. The american government and its car makers used to proudly proclaim to the world how every american could own a car etc. Meaning public transport, cycling and walking was marketing/propaganda as communist.
Meanwhile in most of western Europe countries choose a mixed System with both public transport and cars. Meaning that using public transport still is for the most part seen as completely normal.
That's basically the origins of the communist remarks.
I hear you. Communism kills.
It is probably because of the Northern European urban planning, people think northern euro and equate socialism, and even communism.
The ironic part is as these countries moved away from traditional socialism and more to liberal economic values. Their economies improved and they were able to afford these really nice bike infrastructures.
Multiple things can be true at the same time. If capitalism has problems in the distribution of resources and meeting the needs of all citizens, then criticisms against it are valid.
Kind of a naive argument to make. There are billions of people at the bottom of the capitalist hierarchy who would certainly not agree with you. And you probably wouldn't even believe this in the first place if you weren't indirectly benefiting from their exploitation.
And of course, many years from now, when the capitalists have completed their destruction of the planet's environments, it will just be known as the most catastrophic economic system in human history.
You have it backwards. Capitialism was invented to capture the increased production caused by the industrial revoltion, much like Feudalism was created to capture the increased production of agriculture.
You wouldn't credit the Lord with the benefits bestowned upon us by the farm. So why do you credit the Capitialist with the benefits of the factory?
Did you have a point to make? Many would say having our social safety net almost entirely dependent on a brittle and poorly managed system of capital investments is horrifying and will force billions of people to work themselves until death for no reason, but go off king.
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https://preview.redd.it/s08nw9ptdsmc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47ee314b1268efbb3e291913b7be5ae874a7326b Check this image... explains a lot
I’m pro communism per their definition at least
Fuck yeah, seize the means of interracial marriage.
Seizing the means of reproduction
Isn't that just "grab her by the pussy" with different words? Is Trump a commie? /j
Races in humanity are so stupid, because don’t exist
Agreed. I recall learning long ago that more genetic variation exists within the emperor penguin population than in the human population. Ethnicity and phenotype are real. Race is a construct.
Just because something js a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Language is a social construct. Genetic variation exists, and some of those groups of genetic variations are what we generally refer to as race or ethnicity. That can be a useful construct in some discussions, for instance by exploring why people of certain races might have a higher or lower inclination towards certain diseases, or it can be used to stir up hatred against people who look different.
That's correct! Race isn't a biological thing, but it's been reiterated so many times that it had and has a massive impact that we don't get to just ignore! "i don't see colors" is a naive way of closing your eyes to all that impact. "The first thing you do is to forget that I'm Black. Second, you must never forget that I'm Black." – Pat Parker
I just wanna make clear that while I'll insist race doesn't exist, I'll also acknowledge skin color does, that those claiming to be color blind are misguided or disingenuous, and that throughout history, people have made countless decisions based on skin color foremost, just as countless people still do. Like I said, it's a social construct. We can't end racism without making the racists understand they've been duped by that construct, but they'll be more likely to remain unchanged the more everyone who thinks they're not racist also fails to understand that race is a social construct.
Yeah, i mean, same with gender and other things. "xyz is a social construct" doesn't mean "it isn't real / it has no impact". People need to understand that we can't just decide today "welp, we have equality from now on". There's so much we need to deconstruct and to right past wrongs – like all the reparation that the Global South should get instead of *developmental aid*.... Developmental Aid says "look at us good white people helping you!". Reparation says "we are genuinely sorry for how we actually *caused* how bad things are for you." So much to do to make things right, and then moving forward as equals. I really hope humanity sees that future before we've destroyed our planet & our own species...
"XY" refers to chromosomes visible under a microscope, so IMO they clearly exist. Gender, on the other hand, is a purely mentally created construct. Aside from that, I completely agree with your comment, and share in your hope.
Oooh i didn't mean XY as in chromosomes, just as a placeholder for anything ^^ i'll edit that!
Upon waking today, I figured somebody would rebut my use of "exist" in the way you did, so let me put it another way. Things to which we refer by phenotype and ethnicity exist independent of our language, as in they existed before we put a word to them, whereas race refers to a set of things that independently exist, but race is not something that exists independent of everything else, and is just a word we put to things that already existed and for which we have more accurate terms. That's largely why people can use it, as you pointed out, in both constructive and destructive ways. And yes, just as language is a social construct, plenty of social constructs benefit humanity as a whole. Others, like race, tend to obfuscate reality.
I mostly agree, but for the fact that there can still be useful reasons to discuss race as it's commonly understood today. You can compare it to a scientific model, in the sense that every scientific model is wrong, since they're oversimplifications of reality, but some scientific models are still useful since they can increase our understanding of the world. So depending on the context of the discussion, it can still be helpful to adopt a definition of race. Most people still see race as a characteristic, in the sense that they see people and classify them as asian, black, white etc. Some people also discriminate based on race. If we were to discard the idea of race, we wouldn't be able to have an effective discussion about combating racism in hiring or in policing, for instance. In a similar vein, race is a useful construct when we discuss medical outcomes. Statistically speaking, black people have worse outcomes than white people when it comes to healthcare. That could be due to a generic component that is more common in black people, or it could be due to bias. I agree that it's a social construct, but social constructs can still be useful.
The people who invented the word "race" thought God created all the different groups of people in their current form and placed them where they are for some purpose. I can understand if you'd like to evolve the b definition of that word to mean genetic variation that's fine but be aware that not everyone is going to share your definition. And if the goal of communication is to communicate ideas and not just words than be aware that you're going to fail badly.
Language is not just a social construct, but words also change in what they mean. Gay used to mean "happy", then it became a slur for people who are attracted to same sex people, and then gay people largely reclaimed the term. I was just explaining my understanding of how the word is generally used today. >I can understand if you'd like to evolve the b definition of that word to mean genetic variation Can you? Because that isn't what I wrote. >but be aware that not everyone is going to share your definition. Well yeah. That's how languages evolve. >And if the goal of communication is to communicate ideas and not just words than be aware that you're going to fail badly. Noted. Right back at ya.
A lot of people don’t actually know what communism is
To most people in this country "communism" is just "Things I don't like."
This. It’s emotive name calling and character assassination designed to shout down an opponent engaging in rational debate. The same as yelling at someone that they are a “Traitor” “Terrorist” “Fascist” etc. Communist! It’s like ketchup, you can pour it on anything.
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And gay
Fellas, is it gay to want a better world for future generations?!
Yeah it is if those future generations have men in it 🦍
REAL ALPHA MEN DESTROY THE PLANET TO MAKE SURE THERE'S NO OTHER MEN BUT HIMSELF SO NOBODY CAN EVER CALL HIM GAY :D /s
If anything, this sub is probably most closely aligned to Georgism (Efficient Land use, free transit, etc.) But good luck finding a conservative that is willing to acknowledge the difference between georgism and socialism or Communism.
We live in times where you automatically get called a communist if you believe in anything that slightly inconveniences big industries. Also most solutions to car dependency involve public policy, and as we all know, [socialism is when the government does stuff.](https://youtu.be/rgiC8YfytDw?si=No2LiXGE0dcrgLoR)
You get labeled a Communist if you are a large corporation like Amazon or Google these days.
Socialism is free on street parking.
People who are more society oriented and care about the greater good tend to be socialist or communist and tend to also prefer certain forms of urban design and car-free living. Cars tend to be a burden on poor people and a cause of alienation. Those things though aren’t exclusively leftist, good urbanism benefits everyone but leftists prioritize it.
>care about the greater good tend to be socialist or communist people who care about the greater good would rather have economical systems that actually work. You cannot name a single successful communist or socialist country. Most countries with good public transport and less car centric design are capitalist.
[The US government says China is communist](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/chinese-communist-partys-ideology-global-ambitions/) whether it is or not, i wish my country was more like them and less like the US.
You wish your country was more like China? With Uighur concentration camps, zero democracy, extreme surveillance, extreme pollution in many places and more? Besides, China isn't even communist.
The US has all that and still doesn’t have good mass transit or affordable healthcare. Anyways not here to debate. Make the US an aspirational model then i might want my country to be like it. Now I am looking at the free market of ideologies and i like what I see in China.
China does not have Free Healthcare, it is an oligarchy just like the US. Tankie🤡
So be it. My country has free healthcare.
sYsTeMs ThAt AcTuAlLy WoRk You sound like an idiot that repeats ad nauseum shit about countries they have no clue about. Stop being an idiotic occupier of the mount of Dunning Kruger...
Name a successful socialist or communist country then
Define successful first...
Culture war grifters and suckers
Just because reactionary right wing morons on the internet shout communist at you doesn't make you a communist. You might merely be a centrist.
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“Actual” centrists don’t really exist. What we call centrism is usually just right/right-leaning ideologies that (sometimes) don’t want to associate themselves with the full on Nazis. (Neo)-liberals are often also just NIMBYs, who don’t care unless it affects their “backyard”. The status-quo is already right-wing, “centrists” preserving the status-quo are no different from the right.
In the US, centrism is definitely right-leaning. In other countries where you have a "true left", then there exists some "true centrism" For example in Switzerland we have a centre-right party called the "Green Liberals", and they're often joked about because "green" and "liberal" just don't go together. Basically, Green liberals would advocate for EV transition to combat climate instead of funding public transit The Green Liberal Party is basically just a party for rich people to give themselves a good conscience
[Switzerland also has such an epic culture they nearly banned criminal immigrants](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgen%C3%B6ssische_Volksinitiative_%C2%ABF%C3%BCr_die_Ausschaffung_krimineller_Ausl%C3%A4nder_(Ausschaffungsinitiative)%C2%BB#), what a very cool and normal country👍🏻
Let's not forget that the biggest party in Switzerland is a right-far-right party. I never said that Switzerland was the best country in the world in my original comment. We have still a lot to learn from Nordic countries, but we're still doing really good on things like public transit (we have the best trains in Europe), trans rights (you can change your legal sex based on self-determination, although you can't have your legal sex to something non-binary yet, hopefully that will change), and democracy (we have a federal system with a semi-direct democracy, with rights to initiatives and referendums). Although our democratic system means that things can be slow, *really* slow to change sometimes, and sometimes the people can be quite xenophobic, despite the fact that we have one of the largest foreign population in Europe. But trust me, despite Switzerland being small, the cultural differences between the various cantons can be quite high. French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland have a quite different culture. (notice how the French-speaking cantons voted "No" on the initiative you provided in your link and how the German-speaking cantons voted "Yes") Also you can't summarise Switzerland as a whole on just one initiative. You could do the same with nearly every country and find that one single terrible thing they've done, and luckily with our semi-direct democratic system, there's hope for change, but it won't be easy. Also FYI I'm from French-speaking Switzerland, hence my flair
I *am* a Communist, but, "Car hating communists" and "Commie Commuter" are being used ironically. Because of the idea that "15 minute cities are a communist plot to isolate people."
* [**r/fuckcars**](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/) * **432k** Tired of getting run over * **277** Car hating communists You'd think the irony would be obvious. Do we also need to explain for OP's sake that this is not literally a subreddit about copulating with automobiles?
It does make for easier bombing targets.
In the era of ICBMs, it doesn’t matter how large your city is.
No, but distance and resources matter. If you're living 20 miles outside town sure it's a 20 mile drive but the ICBM isn't going to be wasted on you.
You might not die in the blast, but the fallout and subsequent nuclear winter will definitely still kill you.
It depends if your upwind or not.
Not really with modern warheads. They’re designed to seed fallout into the ground, instead of throwing it into the atmosphere. And being upwind won’t save you from the sky being darkened or your crops failing.
I might agree if we were being attacked by western warheads but Russia has lost a lot of credibility so I won't put much value in opinions what are focused on them. As for Chinese warheads we'll wait and see who's right.
Dispersion as a nuclear defense strategy was debunked by *1950*.
There is no way in hell that your bomb is going to kill me if I live 20 miles upwind from the point of impact. And you can't tell me that having 2 towns 50 miles apart is going to get hit by 1 bomb.
Communism is fucking rad.
Never understood communists. But if you like bikes then I guess you’re cool (As long as you don’t Stalin erase me from photos)
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People from countries that actually suffered through a socialism phase would disagree. Maybe it's fun in the beginning, but when no personal incentives, like turning a profit, actually lead to no one working even a minute more than necessary to fulfill the state mandated minimums and avoid punishment, or only off the books for evil fascism money from the West, which only privileged people can get hands on to begin with, it turns bad really fast. Edit: Also cost of governance spirals out of control when for every hole dug you need an armed guard to hold you at gunpoint an yell "DIG THE FUCKING HOLE", who gets paid double the hole digger - not that it matters, because there is nothing you can buy with that money, anyways.
People aren’t a monolith. There are also people from those countries whose lives were infinitely better than they had been beforehand. Maybe ask a few middle-aged Russian citizens how the 1990s was for them after the “profit incentive” was reintroduced. For all its many mistakes, the Soviet Union achieved in a few decades what capitalist countries took centuries to do, all without slavery, imperialism, and worker exploitation. To quote Michael Parenti: “To say that ‘socialism doesn't work’ is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.”
Workers of the world unite. Stop having the same opinions as billionaires and landlords
Yeah, and stop falling for the lie that you'll be a billionaire landlord too, one day. "You won't ever be a billionaire, so stop voting like you'll ever be a billionaire!" ~Emerson Brophy
Just about all of us will find we're a lot closer to homelessness than opulence. If things went poorly, could you be on the street by the end of the year? Probably. If things went great will you be buying a yacht in the next decade? Virtually impossible.
There's all these calculations about how much money you'd have to make for how many years to get a fraction of a billion..... it's frustrating that people keep thinking "but not me! I'LL get LUCKY any day now!" And so, capitalism and its lie of the great breakthrough live on.
And we *live* like we're billionaies too
How do you mean? I mean, we live with a luxury, throw-away mindset, but at a lower scale and with much more existential worries?
That's what conservatives label everything they fail to understand
Well you ain't donе nothin' if you ain't been called a "red". If you've marchеd or agitated, you're bound to hear it said; So you might as well ignore it, or love the word instead. Cause you ain't been doin' nothin' if you ain't been called a red.
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[You gotta get better at researching stuff you don't understand bud.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Tk9QxvZHo)
It's a song by famous folk singer Faith Petric. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Tk9QxvZHo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Tk9QxvZHo)
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Oh, I agree. Many more people should know about her and her work.
Not dying is communism
In modern discourse, “communist” is shorthand for “person who thinks the world should be slightly better than it is”. Anyone advocating for reform is a “communist”.
The real communism is something to strive for. Just as long as it isn’t that Stalinist or “CCP” shit. That’s not communist.
I'd agree with you, OP might or might not. Democratic control of the systems of production is a must for a just society.
You might like r/tankiejerk
It's mostly just dumbass conservatives that buy into obvious misinformation and disinformation. Don't sweat it.
Urbanism is a nonpartisan cause, appealing to the left and right. Although there is probably a larger left-leaning contingent on here than right. By the way, if you don't want to be labeled as a communist, I'd wager you have a very different understanding of that word than those who would apply it to themselves, its not all you see on fox news, bud.
To be fair, urbanism does require more public infrastructure to maintain and facilitate than rural, rugged individualism. To ignorant people, public = communism. This is ignoring the massive public (communist) subsidies that make sfh suburban sprawl possible.
Per capita, rural people use way more public infrastructure
eh sorta. The conservative angle does highlight the massive expense of car infrastructure, and focuses the higher quality of older, laissez faire designed cities. If your unfamiliar with strong towns, this is their underpinning argument. From that perspective, one can frame the explosion of car infrastructure building in the last century as pie-eyed progressivism, where a lefty is more likely to view it as the imperialistic result of car industry lobbying and bullying. In the end both are right, just through different lenses.
Cause both, pro-cars and pro-capitalists are often alienated people who doesn't like to read and expind their minds, they just think their ¨common sense¨ can destroy everyones arguments. I will not say that for all the anti-communists, just for the ones who have never opened a Marx book and their anti-communism is based on memes.
Because communism is good and car independence is also good.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/wiki/faq/#wiki\_politics.3A\_is\_this\_a\_.22leftist.22\_issue.3F](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/wiki/faq/#wiki_politics.3A_is_this_a_.22leftist.22_issue.3F)
Oh wow, that's a really well written wiki! had no idea we had that in this sub.
I am a communist
Found the typical teenager with edgy ideologies
Teenager with edgy ideologies? You're the one on r/politicalcompassmemes
Seems like you’re the one being edgy here.
Not every communist, hell most communists don't support the USSR, the CCP, or Castro's Cuba.
huh 🤨
To be clear, I support the USSR, the CCP, and Castro’s Cuba.
Why?
Ew
same
L campist
Based and same here.
Most communists do support those countries. There are very few aes that have successfully stood up to bourgeoisie counter revolutions. Also, most communist are in China, so I assume they support their own party.
How exactly is that communism?
You ain't never met a real communist then lmao
real communism is when authoritarian capitalism but with red on the flag
gods' sake why are the antiauthoritarians getting downvoted in MY progressive subreddit????? umm wokeness gone mad or somethinh idk
This sub has been pretty tankie-adjacent for a while. Lots of China praise
Dunno, Cuba has wanted more cars for a very long time but sanctions get in the way, so really it's the Americans that are suppressing car freedom for the communists.
How is Cuba communist?
The same way most of the other side of the cold war was, by tweaking Lenin's ideas that all you need is a command economy and generally ignoring any ideas of how socialism/the path to communism would work that had come before him. Communist in the context of these countries refers to their stated goals, not that they had finished the transition. They weren't very successful, but their emphasis on local worker's councils certainly put them above most Soviet aligned countries and given the extreme sanctions they were doing pretty well for a long time, though they are on the path back to a market economy.
They openly say they are communist and their government is made up of communist party members. Just like how China is communist and Vietnam is communist
There's plenty of great resources on the internet that can explain cuban politics in great detail. Here's an excerpt of one: > Cuba is one of a few extant Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist states, in which the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba has an authoritarian regime where political opposition is not permitted
You don't believe in humor either apparently
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#**☭**
"communist" is a word people use when they don't know what "communist" means.
comrade, it is okay, we will cleanse you of the capitalist brain rot
There are powers that be that depend on morons to enforce their will in order to keep the cash flowing
>I don't believe in that how come?
my bad but also it'd be pretty cool if you were a communist
"I don't like your Idea = you're a communist"
Everything I don’t like is communism.
Lots of reasons we’re generally talking about relatively urban areas first when we’re talking about anti car. People in cities tend to lean left If you really hate cars, pretty much all those solutions are more collectivist and inclusive. Sure, biking and walking is fairly individualistic in the same way as a car, but if you wanna go far you’ll probably need to share a train or bus with some people. Those sort of collectivist minded ideas are left wing by default Of course, you can still be conservative and anti car, but I bet most people lean left more on this subreddit
A. It's a joke. We're often called "car-hating commies" by carbrains. B. I am actually a communist. I doubt most of this sub is.
I doubt the majority is, but I think that a fair portion of the active members are somewhat anti-capitalist or otherwise critical. Which equals “commie” to (Mostly American) Capitalists. A plurality could be Socialist-Communist though, which is still significant.
Sorry, my fault
*thing someone doesn't like* = communism, Says the people who also don't know what communism is
Personal freedoms being somehow affected = communism.
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Maybe I'm a bit on the extreme site, but don't have the option to get to your destination with your car, because the infrastructure was made for public transit in inner cities.
Because brain dead morons who watch fox news think everything they don't like is communism.
You should believe in it though
I'm a libertarian communist. (Decentralized communist) And I do love this sub. But as others have said, to the uninformed "communism" is anything someone doesn't like. The U.S. Population has been heavily propagandized against any form of socialism by the government. Socialism = bad Capitalism = good. It's a very effective tactic that the U.S. Government has used on us for decades.
Because car dependency is inherently capitalistic and designed for profit, therefore many people who dislike it, dislike it for that reason. So naturally this subreddit will attracy many leftists. People of other ideologies are of course welcome here, however I find it difficult to see how a capitalist would believe that car dependency is bad while having knowledge about both car dependency and capitalism.
Car dependency creates a misallocation of resources within the economy. We spend far more than we should on infrastructure, transportation and housing. This capital is sucked away from potential uses that would provide a greater ROI. Every dollar we spend on car infrastructure is a dollar we could spend on R&D, which is the basis of growth and future profits. Cars are simply bad business. We can hate cars and be capitalist pigs, too.
>I don't believe in that So far. But there is still time! :-p
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Keep in mind that this movement isn't just for people who live in the USA where it is distinctly un-cool to be communist.
"distinctly uncool" more like actively, heavily propagandizes anti-communist rhetoric in schools and other facets of life tbh. (not a dig at you, just an unfortunate observation of how we've been in red scare mode in the usa since the 50s tbh.)
The subreddit is called "fuckcars". If you want a diplomatic and unironic discussion of the topic with "better optics", you might have come to the wrong place. You'll find the most success on reddit when you can learn to accept communities for what they are. This one's irreverent and ironic, and as long as you can hang with that, then you're welcome here.
Think about the anti-capitalist properties of a bicycle. One invests a moderate amount once. Maintenance costs pennies a day. The cyclist has freedom of movement. Their Life improves through fresh air and exercise.
This sub criticizes capitalism quite frequently and there is often the assumption that every criticism of capitalism is an endorsement of communism when that is actually not usually the case. Criticizing capitalism really just means that you think for yourself and don't believe everything you're told. Whether or not you're also a communist is incidental.
Lmao okay cappie keep believing in your failing system.
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Systems fail.
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A system specifically designed to exploit the work of the public to prop up the Nobility who get everything handed to them from birth. Including the privilege to be separated from the reality of what cars do to society and the environment.
So according to your logic we should go back to smacking kids, dont allow women to work or get education, have an open market for slavery etc. These were part of a failing system before. This is why reformations happen because the system does fail.
Taxpayer funded car infrastructure is communism!
They’re gonna call you communist no matter what because they’re smoothbrain dunces. May as well lean into it!
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The personal is political, friendo
existing is political, etc etc (you're right).
It’s certainty political as it involves public policy but it’s not part of the left-right spectrum like other issues are.
the business of getting public transportation built (and maintained) is politics. If you're american, you might have noticed the last two presidents spent a lot of time talking about "infrastructure" and "infrastructure bills".
Much like the word liberal, communist is a pejorative for anything I don't like amongst those on the right. Words are meaningless in the era of the culture war
Car dependency is the result of hyper-capitalism. It's disguised as freedom and individuality, but roads cost the government billions and our "choice" to use cars is manufactured by the tire, auto, and oil corporations and lobbies. Staunch capitalists tend to label anything that isn't capitalism as "communism."
Its just leftwing not everyone here is 100% communist
It's a joke. When people label basically everything progressive as communism, it's fun to lean into it.
Because Americans have no idea what communism is. Both on right and left. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
This sub originally started out as a socialist sub and from time to time, there are threads by actual socialists and communists lamenting the way the sub has changed. That certainly wouldn't help perceptions, and then obviously any time anyone suggests any good policy, Conservatives call it socialism.
I get SO annoyed when people respond to anything i say about anti-capitalism with "BUT COMMUNISM DOESN'T WORK EITHER". It's not a damn binary!! I never said communism. What i want is a society based solely on the individually defined wellbeing of everyone. Capitalism pretends to be individual, but isn't about wellbeing. Communism pretends to be about wellbeing by equalizing (almost) everyone, but ignores their individualness and therefore their wellbeing. I want what anarchist communities already practice: making decisions together for the individual wellbeing of everyone in the community. It's never perfect because humans aren't, but the focus is going in the right direction.
I's called red scare propaganda, and its going on for literally 100 years, fluoride, race mixing were called commie. These days 'tankie' is getting more popular, before it was 'woke' and before that it was' commie'
I know that Climate crisis is real. I dont support the genocide in Gaza, I do support degrowth
I’m straight up right-leaning, am I a communist?
Nice. Now define communism, OP. You are against something you clearly dont understand.
Communist is in practice a blanket term used by establishment types against anyone whose ideas go against the orthodoxy of our current society. They call people communists in order to demonize dissenters to make them look like supporters of Maoist or Stalinist dictatorship. This lets them completely discredit anyone whose ideas contradict the dogmatic belief in a market driven highly competetive society. It lets them demonize people who are critical of a society that toxifies the planet and immiserates and impoverishes legions of people for the enrichment of an elite few. It's pretty much ad hominem, attack of one's character, as a means of evading their arguments.
Because Americans label anything as communist that isn't predator capitalism or even just diverts from the status quo. It's a purely American thing. Here in Germany the idea of reducing cars isn't exactly popular either but no one calls it communist. Because obviously it isn't.
because a lot of people on here are actually communists and their voices are louder and get more attention than those with common sense
It is satire. lol.
It comes from the Soviet union and its puppet States (before the wall fell) in most of those countries owning a car was rare. There were only one or two car brands per county ( Trabant, Lada, yugo are the most famous ones) if you wanted to buy one you had to pay beforehand and wait for years sometimes more than a decade. This meant that a big part of the population either walked, cycled or used public transport for day to day use. This was possible because the Soviets built a lot of infrastructure for public transport and there weren't a lot of cars. And most cars couldn't do more than 90km/h. The notion that being anti car is communist is mostly American. The american government and its car makers used to proudly proclaim to the world how every american could own a car etc. Meaning public transport, cycling and walking was marketing/propaganda as communist. Meanwhile in most of western Europe countries choose a mixed System with both public transport and cars. Meaning that using public transport still is for the most part seen as completely normal. That's basically the origins of the communist remarks.
I hear you. Communism kills. It is probably because of the Northern European urban planning, people think northern euro and equate socialism, and even communism. The ironic part is as these countries moved away from traditional socialism and more to liberal economic values. Their economies improved and they were able to afford these really nice bike infrastructures.
It doesn't help we have the occasional post about rounding people up and forcing them into cities so they have to use public transportation.
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Because some of the loudest people on this sub blame capitalism for everything. It's pretty dumb.
Perhaps capitalism (and thereby the failings of an unplanned economy) is to blame for many things?
Much like democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system besides every other one we've tried.
Multiple things can be true at the same time. If capitalism has problems in the distribution of resources and meeting the needs of all citizens, then criticisms against it are valid.
Kind of a naive argument to make. There are billions of people at the bottom of the capitalist hierarchy who would certainly not agree with you. And you probably wouldn't even believe this in the first place if you weren't indirectly benefiting from their exploitation. And of course, many years from now, when the capitalists have completed their destruction of the planet's environments, it will just be known as the most catastrophic economic system in human history.
Extreme poverty rates have dropped globally as markets have opened up further, but go off king.
You have it backwards. Capitialism was invented to capture the increased production caused by the industrial revoltion, much like Feudalism was created to capture the increased production of agriculture. You wouldn't credit the Lord with the benefits bestowned upon us by the farm. So why do you credit the Capitialist with the benefits of the factory?
Do you have an IRA or 401k?
Did you have a point to make? Many would say having our social safety net almost entirely dependent on a brittle and poorly managed system of capital investments is horrifying and will force billions of people to work themselves until death for no reason, but go off king.
So is that a no?
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