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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • If a person has harmed others, and is likely to do more harm in the future, it’s appropriate to remove them from society. This is why prisons exist.

    Drivers licence suspension typically is the consequence of crimes that are too minor to warrant prison. In this case, the perpetrator has the chance to make changes to their life to avoid prison. For example, they can accept slow public transit, bike to work, get a closer job, move to a place where it’s easier to live without a car.

    Obviously, It will be challenging for the perpetrator to reorganize their life in a way that does not require them to risk harming others, and many will fail.

    But your argument that society is required to accept being victimized by dangerous drivers because it would be inhumane to force them to use alternative forms of transportation (used by millions of people too poor to afford a car, even in the most car dependent cities) is absurd.





  • Even with those concerns, I still like tolls

    A. Driving a car has externalities that are currently not priced in the gas tax / registration fees. This means that having toll free roads are also regressive in that they are forcing people who do not drive (often due to poverty) to subsidize those who do drive. It makes sense to make the drivers pay for more of the harm they cause others, and tolls are a simple way of doing this. They are also can help discourage driving since paying every time you drive in a certain area is probably more noticable than paying once a year when you register your car.

    B. This is a real issue in 205 where there is another bridge right next to it. Maybe in this case, you can add a toll to both bridges. But generally, the urban growth boundaries in Oregon make it easy to find places to find put toll booths where there is no way to drive around it.



  • Polls have been remarkably accurate in the last few election cycles.

    The “polls are wrong” talking point is a convenient way for politicians to ignore the will of the people. Trump has done this for a long time, and recently Biden has taken up this practice to pretend that the “Real Americans” think he is fit to be president for another 4 years.

    So please don’t repeat this talking point, or at least read a bit into historical accuracy of polls before you declare them bullshit.






  • I think your Title IX comment is a misinterpretation of the video. He never said Title IX is responsible for the achievement gap, and cautioned against policies that disadvantage girls. He used Title IX as an example to show that the academic achievement gap in favor of boys, that Title IX was attempting to solve, is smaller than the current academic gap in favor of girls (at least by one measure); therefore systemic action is necessary.

    But I found this video did a good job at clearly stating the crisis we have for boys, particularly black boys in America. And the idea of pushing for more male teachers, particularly English teachers, seems like good policy.