• neanderthal@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Driving sucks. You have to have a license, insurance, and in many places inspections. You can’t or shouldn’t do it on meds, alcohol, or sleep deprived. You have buy and register a car. You have to fuel and maintain a car. A few seconds of distraction can completely ruin your life and someone else’s. It only takes one person making a mistake to clog up an MTA with millions of people for hours. One in a million will make mistake. You are more likely to have police interactions than almost any other activity. You can only go where roads are. License plate readers can track your movement.

    I.e. you pay out the ass to do something stressful and dangerous that opens you up to life altering liability and you can’t safely do it if you are impaired in any way. Half of people in the US are all but forced to do this daily and often impaired. Not even negligently impaired, shift workers, emergency workers, parent of new borns are all forced to do this.

  • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Person on the left is a tenured professor at UC Berkeley. They live in a multi million dollar home that they bought in an era where housing was more affordable. They bike to campus, which is about ten minutes. They got tenure a few years ago, so they’ve taken their foot off the gas a bit. Adjuncts and postdocs do most of the grunt work.

    Person on the right is an office worker in some random small city. They live about 30 minutes out by car from city center, where all the jobs are. They would have loved to have lived closer, but it was all her and her husband could afford. They were both much happier two years ago when things were still remote, but corporate forced RTO. There were also layoffs, so they are working more hours than ever.

    This debate isn’t actually occurring face to face. Person on the right’s CEO just emailed a link out to the entire company of a lecture Person on the left was giving at a conference he was attending in palm springs. The same CEO sent out an email “apologizing on behalf of all men” after Trump won.