I’m very aware of NJTransit, the MTA, and SEPTA. I can’t drive, but I know that they cost more in my taxes to run than they would if they were privatized but legislated in terms of salaries, etc.

In what fucking world would privatized public transport be cheaper.

It’s just a matter of fact that for them to run a profit, fares would be massive.

In order for them to run a profit in the current, individual car-dominated society, NJTransit would have to…

… double its fares.

In other words, still far fucking cheaper than a car payment, car insurance, gas, and maintenance. Hope you like parking fees, too.

Not to mention, the cost of taxis/"rideshares” when the buses & trains inevitably can’t get to where you need to go, or when they’re 15+ minutes late, or when they only run so rarely that they may as well not run at all.

Fuck man, I’ve lived in incredibly shitty areas for public transportation and most of the cities I’ve lived in have always been open to me, a fucking cripple with a limp. You’re treating edge cases like the norm.

If you run a bus/train service and want to actually compete with cars, you need to have a truly massive number of vehicles on the road and rail, which means a massive skilled labor force between mechanics and crew, dispatchers, drivers, and route managers - all of whom expect to be paid more than minimum wage.

… okay? Do you think they’re being paid minimum wage now…?

And you can’t assume 100% fill on every bus trip (that’s how you get situations where the buses run once an hour or less), so you have to charge based on minimum fill rate, so that every ride is at least guaranteed breakeven.

I really hope your job doesn’t involve making decisions for any businesses, because that’s a horrible understanding of firm economics. You don’t charge based on the prospect of every individual ride breaking even; you charge knowing that the reliability of the service in low-usage periods ensures the continued usage during high-usage (and thus high-revenue) periods.

I’ve got it!

An iron horse!

Also, it wouldn’t be a small fee. It’d be a very, very expensive fee to pay for the gas, the traffic, and the wages. So if the prices are fair you’d be paying as much to use it as it does to own a car.

… are you aware of buses and trains.

@pugjesus@piefed.social

Kbin is my original, but Kbin went down years ago, before I even moved to Lemmy.world!

And organization! Most Crusaders, even the poor ones, would have brought along only money (or other valuables) to pay their way through, rather than having organized supply lines or even a set itinerary of depots who would be… expecting them. The poor state of roads and geographical knowledge also meant that, very often, smaller detachments would get lost.

The Byzantines would eventually set up some such logistics waypoints in their own territory simply to minimize the damage the Crusaders caused when passing through, but goddamn. That’s a low level of planning right there.

Oil’s pretty recent - oil wasn’t widely used until the late 19th century AD.

Unfortunately for folk in the Levant in the medieval period, they were getting it from multiple sides - the Byzantines, Western Europeans, Arabs, and Turks were all fighting over the region. The Arabs took it from the Byzantines over the 7th-11th century AD. The Western Europeans and Turks joined the fray (for different reasons and with different targets) in the 11th century AD.

uwu

For the same reason Chaos and Wholesome are opposites

for the shitpost o7

“Talk is a national institution, but it does not help the slave!”

I found TOW1 tedious. Is TOW2 really that much better?

Life truly imitates art 😭

The furries are taking over

@rickyrigatoni@retrolemmy.com your people

Related: “That’s hilarious but I can never repeat that joke because I’m not [minority group] enough to be clear it’s ironic”

Best lil guys, they recharge my shields

Explanation: In the Siege of Alesia during the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar (of conqueror and dictator fame), Caesar, with a force of about 50,000 Roman and allied troops encircled a slightly largely force under Vercingetorix in the fortified city of Alesia. Caesar, in order to ensure none of the Gauls could escape to regroup, built a wall around the fortified town. Vercingetorix was a charismatic and skilled Gallic warlord who sought to expel the Roman intruders from Gaul, after several years of the Romans increasingly intervening in inter-tribal wars and making themselves increasingly ‘at home’ as overlords of Gallic polities.

Vercingetorix, however, had planned to be surrounded - he had sent out the call for a much larger force to gather and surround Caesar while he was surrounding Vercingetorix!

Caesar played the Uno Reverse card, and built a wall around the wall he was using to surround the walled city of Alesia. That’s three (3) walls in total, for those counting, two by Caesar, one by the Gauls. So when the massive Gallic relief force arrived, they found out that there was no fair fight to be had - they had to siege out Caesar’s own besieging force to rescue Vercingetorix! To make matters worse for them, Caesar had his men ransack the countryside for all available food, burning what they couldn’t take - meaning the relief force couldn’t linger for long without starving.

By Caesar’s counting, he faced nearly ~350,000 Gallic warriors in total. It was likely significantly less than this, with the number exaggerated for both practical (hard to count an enemy hemming you in while you hem them in) and propaganda (big numbers = big victory) reasons. Modern figures range from ~80,000-200,000 enemy troops against Caesar.

Forced into several costly assaults on the Roman walls by their circumstances, the Gauls, even coordinating between the besieging and besieged forces to time their attacks, were driven back, and Vercingetorix eventually surrendered for lack of supplies (and lack of ability to break out of Caesar’s siege), ending the Gallic Wars with one of Caesar’s greatest victories.

Get fucked. When someone asks you to disengage, disengage. You’re being an asshole.

I’m sorry I don’t follow the rules of the Fae, or whichever arcane code you’re following?

If you want to disengage, feel free to disengage. No one is forcing you to respond to me. If you want to get the last word in and then say “Disengage” thinking it’s a “Now my points can’t be responded to :3” card, feel free to go fuck yourself.

The people have armed themselves to protect themselves from people like you.

The People’s Stick, I see.

They are more free than you can possibly imagine, and that idea terrifies you.

Maybe the post-1950s PR campaign was unnecessary all along.

They’ve literally hosted international conferences this year.

tightly restricted entry to and interaction with their territory from outsiders, with journalists only allowed to ask questions when accompanied by EZLN guards?

You wanna point out to me where that contradicts “holding a conference”?

I literally cannot with you people.

Yeah, sorry that you haven’t been following anything except the endless glazing of Subcommandante Marcos. I understand that PR of the internet age is much more compelling to our generation than the staid 1950s-level PR of former ML states, but I would suggest that you learn to think for yourself nonetheless.

Please disengage, I’m sick of the bad faith bullshit.

“Bad faith is when I’m contradicted”

Okay.

Do you have any actual objections to life under the Zapatistas, or are you just going to continue vagueposting about how it must be bad because you decided it must be?

You do realize that the Zapatistas, before this recent trouble with “Blaming the government (that they don’t need) for not controlling the cartels” tightly restricted entry to and interaction with their territory from outsiders, with journalists only allowed to ask questions when accompanied by EZLN guards?

There’s a long laundry-list of problems with how the Zapatistas have ‘settled in’ to their role since the turn of the century.