The Koch brothers are campaigning against tax rises for public transit projects

You can get richer by increasing your wealth or by decreasing everybody else's wealth. People that think that life is a zero-sum game think that both are the same thing.

People with a growth mindset care more about wellbeing over relative richness. Sometimes the best way for me to have more is for everybody else to also have more. And others happiness and wellbeing is part of my own.

The Koch's fall in the first category.

In both states, those high employment counties are counties with big suburban job clusters and big cities with high unemployment. Now, those city residents will be denied Medicaid because they live "near" lots of jobs which they cannot reach without public transit, which Michigan and Ohio are strangling.

This is seriously getting sick.

Such commenters would also not be living in reality. A few self-driving vehicles deployed as research projects in select areas hardly defines an “age”. We’re just at the start of the path, and until there are millions of these things roaming the streets, they will have no impact on society. People need to get to work today, not in some near future that is still defined in years.

Besides, if we are just on the cusp of having self-driving cars we should be able to deploy self-driving trains right now and reap all the benefits of autonomous transport immediately.

It’s an interesting case of doublethink to suggest that the programs are unwelcome but also lead to gentrification. Apparently a lot of people do like transit :)

Public transit also helps out those who cannot afford alternative forms on transit. I don't see self-driving tech replacing transportation for low-income people, unless we move away from personal vehicle ownership.

What about an automated subway? It's just a box on a track, with the state of all the trains in the track known, self driving would almost be overkill for subways/trams/trains.

It's still public transport. There's no need to hold off the development on both ends.

Trains move more people more efficiently and cheaply. That should remain the case even as driverless cars become popular, at least for another generation - maybe two.

While the ride-hailing self-driving cars will be a great boon to those not wanting to drive, saving parking and potentially preventing accidents, I do believe SDC's will come in waves starting from the SW USA and California before spreading to the rest of the country/world. In these areas, public transit will likely be less useful, since for instance in Tucson, AZ, the city is massively spread out and busses would simply incur a much greater time-cost due to their non-personalized route.

Moving forward, as SDC's become more % of the fleet in urban/suburban areas (still won't be in rural areas for another 5-10 years or more), you will probably see more variety of SDC's. Instead of having a 50 person bus, you can have a 5-7 person SD shuttle/minivan (think Waymo Chrsyler Pacifica) that will take 5 people with similar routes to the same place.

Once SDC is highly penetrant in terms of %, I'd expect a great prolfieration of electric scooters, electric pedal-assist bikes, regular bikes, pedestrians, and all sorts of non-vehicular transport. I myself would ride a bike to work if not for the very low-skill drivers I encounter daily in my commute. This happens to be in an urban area with very poor bike infrastructure and very large hills. SDCs + electric bikes would solve these two issues, IMO, and they are probably ~10-15 years out in my location.

I think it would be a shame to put off important projects on the basis of something that may never happen. I'm sure it would keep the Koch brothers happy though.

You'd need to have some very smart, and tough public policy in place, though, to constrain robotaxis to instances where they provide maximal societal benefit. It will more likely be a free for all that makes traffic worse, not better, because that's just the way these things tend to go.

If public transit opens up travel options for poorer (usually minority) areas, young white people who can't afford to live in the city will start moving there, bringing their yoga studios and brunch cafes and actual grocery-stores-that-arent-just-an-isle-of-canned-food-in-liquor-stores.

> One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads.

Also: stuff requires upkeep, consider the current state of the woefully unfunded NYC subway. You can’t just build it and expect it to stay in perfect condition forever.

In the long run, not funding infrastructure has the same effect as killing it.

Once a sizeable populist group decides that taxes are theft, it will frame every policy decision we make, until we destroy our once-great institutions.

There was a time when the USA dreamed big, believed in itself and invested in itself. We had a growth mindset.

We have all been told to "look out for number one." They say that our government is corrupt and incompetent. They say we should drown it in a bathtub like an unwanted kitten.

Some A+ fear mongering out there in the austerity universe.

Didn't your government just introduce sweeping tax reductions?

The Koch brothers are, in my opinion, against any kind of redistribution. This is not surprising, I suppose, being them one of the richest people.

This narrative of "markets give everybody what they deserve" it's old like the world. Before markets the status quo was the will of God.

It's not about raising taxes, is about "should the community invest in itself?" or even "there is such thing as a community?".

Let's see them mount opposition for new highway projects, then.

It's a clever word play.

> If someone has the freedom to go where they want, do what they want [...] then they’re not going to choose public transit.

This argument is in itself probably not wrong.

Now switch the antecedent (freedom) and consequent (not public transport), and you arrive the argument "public transport is against freedom".

Anyone familiar with logic will know how wrong this is, but the other 95% won't notice.

Public transport is demonstrably the most cost-efficient method for the daily commute of hundred of thousands people in a city, provided the city itself and transport routes are designed accordingly (which arguably is the main problem in the US). For those sporadic free range transportation needs such as vacations and weekend escapades, car rental and taxi services should typically be enough for for all those who normally have enough travelling by public transport.

If you manage to filter out actual information from the crass left-leaning garbage that makes up 90% of this completely biased article, you'll see that the core of the story is a actually a fight again raising taxes.

You may or may not agree with the proposition to raise taxes to finance public transportation (which is pretty much impossible to pass judgment on without more local context on how public finances are managed in Nashville), but please, please try to see through the rank propaganda.

I don't have an outright objection to these positions. They're not crazy or nonsensical. They're matters of judgement, taste & perspective. Cars/roads have been very successful, as a transport technolgy. It's not wrong to be pro cars.

What I do have a problem with is the Das Capital-esque, think-talk-esque, manifesto-esque statements. The position isn't presented as "I like cars better," it is presented as:

"Cars are better. This is an absolute truth. I proved it.^" I can prove it using complicated philosophy with roots in America's founding or Bastiat. I can prove it with Adman Smith & Ricardo derived philosophy. Here is my horrendously complex econometric analysis, that only ever seem to convince their own authors.^

This type of argument is ironically bolshevic, and has all the characteristics that oponents of marxism took issue with, from fredriech hayek to Karl Popper. More importantly, it is fanatical and this makes it hard to engage others of different opinions/tastes. This is particularly frustrating here in this case, where the arguments so clearly involve matters of taste and subjective preference.

Cars need public infrastrucure too, all the asphalt you see everywhere. The infrastructure is costlier in land use. Consumer choice.. I'd say you could make the consumer choice argument both ways. People certainly like (judging by house prices) to live in (and visit) less car-centric cities.

This way of presenting politcal cases is not unique to the american right, it permeates all places & all parties.

^Al la: You are an ass. I can prove that mathematically.

Gentrification as an effect happens when an area becomes more desirable to live in. That means here that people place a positive value on public transport.

To deny an area the benefit of public transport based on some weird altruistic and paternalistic motive doesn't really seem credible.

It's really tail wagging the dog too. To say we should just keep areas shitty or undesirable to avoid gentrification seems totally backwards.

Handing out gift cards is a shitty move even if all their reasons against the project made sense (which it doesn't). These should be settled with educated, sensible debates rather than who has more money to spend.

This can work if you have a city structure with a clear resedential area and some central leisure or work place and there's lot's of commute between, but for many areas the benefit only comes if many people can use a network effect of reaching many areas.

The idea that they should do so badly misses the entire justification for a public service.

> If the people really want public transportation, why do you have to punish them for using cars?

The main reason to have a public service rather than a private one provided by the free market is to address an externality (either of benefit with the public service or of harm with the private service it displaces.)

Competing with the private service on a level playing field is, in that case, contrary to the purpose of having a public service.

You're right. We need to insist that drivers pay as much for their privilege to use public roads as we insist that public transit users pay to use public transit.

> See the highly inefficient HOV lanes, the purposeful underdevelopment of roads, exorbitant parking prices, punitive fuel and car taxes, closure of lanes, and so forth.

Oh. You want the government to subsidize your car-centric lifestyle even more than it does so. SOV cars have very large demands on space, and in urban settings, space is at a premium. Free parking, or even mandatory parking minimums, are essentially taxing everyone for the benefit of drivers.

The normal "user fees" for roads--gas taxes and car taxes--simply do not cover the actual costs even of maintenance for roads, let alone the capital costs of expanding them. This means that those funds come from general revenue, again causing everyone to subsidize drivers, whether or not they actually use them.