You don't speak for or get to decide for other people, you only get to speak for and decide for yourself, and the same goes in principle for everybody else.
"Kill" is another concept that has differing definitional scopes, depending on religion or legal system. Or even differing for the same religion/legal system for different contexts and/or time periods.
To be fair, Youtube Premium subscription is very affordable and lets you have an ad-free experience. I reward services if they offer ad-free versions for a reasonable price.
Im sure there are good engineers in Guatemala. Americans simply don't like competition and losing their jobs to foreigners I get that but don't pretend like you're better just because of the country you were born into.
what youre missing here is agency. I have complete control over how safely I drive my car. Sure there are crazy people driving but its best to be in another car than being a person walking when you have a crazy crash. In public transport I have no control over what other people can do to me or my loved ones, I can only react and the law is probably not in my side
You don't really have agency. You don't have agency over that person blasting down the road coming the other direction running the red light. You don't have agency over that drunk nodding off and crossing the yellow line. You don't have agency over someone not looking and merging into you causing you to go off the road and roll over. You don't have agency over that person looking at their phone and not realizing they're approaching you stopped at that red light ahead while they're going 20 over the speed limit.
You think everyone injured in a car accident caused the accident?
And you think people walking have more agency over a car coming and crushing them? That's why I said it's best to be a in a car in a car crash because that way you're protected. I'm not even against public transport is just simply not more safe than private transport
> And you think people walking have more agency over a car coming and crushing them?
And you think you have more stuck with a car in front of you and beside you? Or active cars going through the intersection while you're supposed to be stopped? Or merging into you when you have cars in front of you and behind you and beside you? You have the same agency, probably less in that car stuck in traffic.
But if you were in a bus, you'd have a much larger vehicle and have far less energy imparted to you as a passenger, or if you were on a light rail you wouldn't even be in the intersection in the first place. Better yet, that drunk would be on the bus instead of being forced to drive and cause the accident in the first place!
Every statistic shows transit is far safer than cars.
You're clearly not thinking through the scenarios through to actually analyze which leads to more agency and outcomes which is what you really care about. Spend some time reflecting before you reply and give actual concrete examples please.
buses have no airbags though, people walking across the street neither. Cars won't be eliminated and crime is getting worse across the board. I'd rather be in a car if I can
Busses barely even feel the impact of running over the Suburban. Have you ever been in a collision of a car and a bus? I have, in the bus colliding with an SUV that ran a red. The driver of the SUV was wheeled away seemingly unresponsive. It cost me about a 20 minute delay in my travel a long with everyone else on the bus. Who do you want to be?
Think about how you feel safer in that giant SUV compared to a subcompact. Then remember the bus is significantly larger than the SUV even comparing the SUV to the subcompact. Which "wins" in the accident? Now think of the light rail train, even larger than the bus.
I'd rather not even have to be in the path of a drunk driver in the first place. Maybe we could redesign our cities ahead of time so those drunks could walk or ride the bus or bicycle instead of getting behind the wheel. Impossible, I'm sure.
You seemingly can't even imagine a world where one doesn't need to get in a car to go to a bar or go get groceries, it's just assumed both of these people and you will have to be in a car and share the path.
Once again you haven't actually logically thought about these differences. Think about it again before you reply.
What middle class person has thousands of literal servants who will spend every waking hour serving, feeding, cleaning, tailoring, cooking and creating for them in their giant, country-spanning estates?
How many middle class people have the God-given divine right to rule and demand the sons of every nobleman to fight to keep and expand their power?
How many middle class people literally own a country and can dictate what happens in it from the top down? How many vineyards do middle class people own? How many garden hermits[1] do they keep on their estates simply for their ambience and kitsch?
What king 500 years could do that? (Well okay, maybe Suleiman the Magnificent, but that about exhausts the list.)
500 years ago puts us in 1525, which is still in the transitional period of Medieval kingdoms becoming actual states. The kind of absolutism you're thinking about is still about 100-150 years away from coming to fruition. Medieval kings were almost entirely reliant on their vassals to be able to marshal any power whatsoever: if an important vassal decides he doesn't want to fight in the king's war, well, the king can't exactly force him (see e.g. the Burgundians in the Hundred Years' War--and this involves the most cohesive European monarchy!). You're starting to see efforts by 1525 to reduce the power of nobles to act independent of their liege, but they're certainly not there yet.
But keep in mind the other luxuries people today enjoy that the kings of 500 years ago can't. The ability to see all of your children survive until, well, your own death. The ability to eat, say, fresh strawberries in the height of winter. The ability to know your wife isn't going to die giving birth to another kid. Hell, pretty good odds your bed is larger than a king's bed from 500 years ago, and more comfortable too.
you don't need that many servants when you have businesses that offer the same services and you can afford them. Or you think middle class people can't afford travelling, laundry services, food delivery, etc.
The second thing you're referring to is power. Power I admit can be zero sum but most people are not ambitious in that way, they just want material wealth not political power.
Sorry, using DoorDash to order fast food is not the same thing as having a team of the country's best chefs cooking every meal for you in your castle using ingredients your farmers hand-picked on your own vast swathes of premium farmland. Sounds healthier, too.
Similarly, spending $10 at McDonald's is not the same thing as having teams of servants tending to your every whim every waking moment until you die.
If you can't see that clear difference, I don't think you're approaching this in good faith. You shouldn't have to stretch the truth this much to make your point if it's actually true and you know it.
Let’s compare my quality of life to a king 500 years ago.
I have air conditioning.
I have running water and a toilet.
I have antibiotics. And all sorts of other medicine that actually works.
When I have to get an operation done I can go under anesthesia rather than it being literal torture. And I won’t be killed by an infection resulting from the tiniest cut.
I have literally endless entertainment. More than I can ever consume in a lifetime.
I have access to just about any piece of information that has ever existed and been made public.
I don’t have to worry about being killed by an uprising.
You act like having teams of servants is a good thing. It isn't. The best possible outcome is you don't need teams of servants and you can still have gobs of convenience. Which is exactly what the modern lifestyle has given us.
You're comparing a ten dollar meal from McDonald's to a cooked meal by a team of professionals. Your comparison completely ignores the fact that in modern society you can absolutely have a meal cooked by a team of professionals or you can have McDonald's and you can decide moment to moment what you want, and all of it requires less outlay from you than it did 500 years ago, so it's available to practically everyone, not just the most wealthy.
Middle class people are forced to work at jobs doing what some boss tells them to do instead of what they like with the majority of their waking hours. In that regard, they live lives far from as pleasurable as those of kings.
cultures would have to change to encourage motherhood and fatherhood, keeping marriages intact, etc. Also campaigns against contraceptives/abortion would help
