Caption: when you want the government to dictate that everyone live in cookie-cutter houses with cookie-cutter lawns and drive cookie-cutter cars
Image below: an image from the miniseries “Chernobyl” of a Soviet officer shaking hands with several people dressed up in protective suits, saying, “I serve the Soviet Union”
Note that this meme is meant to make fun of NIMBYs who spread the conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities being some evil communist plot to take away their freedom
Note that this meme is meant to make fun of NIMBYs who spread conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities being some evil communist plot to take away their freedom. The irony being that they often support the sorts of laws — restrictive zoning, parking minimums, Euclidean zoning, etc. — that essentially mandate car-dependent suburban sprawl.
Funny thing is, given the choice this lot would happily take a tower block in their back garden over someone taking their god given right to drive a chunk of metal around at 70mph
NIMBYism isn’t consistent, it’s just one aspect of a gamut of selfishness
Yeah, they don’t care about freedom, they care about having their personal preferences prioritized. All of conservatism can be summed up with selfishness or fear.
I have the freedom to choose my transportation options. I wanna take the bus to work, better yet a quiet train? I can.
I dont have to worry about drinking and driving because I won’t be driving.
If my taxes raise, that’s ok because I can choose to ditch my car, which costs a lot more than I thought it did!
It would cost nothing to add a bike rack here, or include a sidewalk. And it would let more people spend money at this business, more often!
There are many leftist approaches to talking about class and social issues without using theory dork words like Bourgeoisie. Talking to the everyman about how our solutions will solve their problems or not disrupt their desires is the most important skill for us.
Also, one thing that I think is a good indicator that your solutions are the right ones is when you can argue for the same solution from wildly different value systems. Ending car dependency? I can just as easily argue that from a free-market libertarian perspective as from a socialist perspective. Whereas to be in favor of car dependency, there really is no way to argue for that under either value system without being wildly ideologically inconsistent.
Plus, as you say, actually arguing for these solutions using the language and value systems of our traditional opponents can do a lot to reach people who are on the fence. And it’s not even dishonest to do so because I genuinely believe ending car dependency is the more pro-freedom stance. It’s just about knowing your audience and putting things in the terms they’ll understand best.
Pretty easy to make a socialist argument for cars IMHO.
It’d go something like, “the only way to ensure the right to mobility is equally distributed is to ensure every individual has what equates to a bus station in their own home.”
Using an ideology to support a desired outcome isn’t as hard as it should be.
If my taxes raise, that’s ok because I can choose to ditch my car
What about the ones who didn’t want their taxes to be raised? Taxation is involuntary servitude, and no end can justify robbery.
If you don’t like taxes, move out to the woods. Balking on taxes when you use the things they provide is no better.
Examples like the Free Republic of Liberland were victims of the still existing institutional coercion.
Agorism is the way to abolish the apparatus of compulsion and coercion, and it’s a long-haul goal.
OP asked for arguments that could help convince normal Americans
https://open.spotify.com/track/4VJrTc5QPr13zgkwxaTjjN?si=niCU4IByRouS4O_r-OkKiQ
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
That song captures such a mood. Love it.
We have way better taste and ideas than anything the USSR put out. But social housing in some former-bloc countries is pretty innovative. Still not fitting American values.
I’d say just show them rowhouses of Philly, the duplexes of… Vancouver? Or actual building plans for high density housing.
Americans are highly allergic to copy-pasted buildings (ahem… Except in the suburbs) and thats a good value to uphold.
![[meme] How to reframe car-dependent zoning into terms that so-called Freedom-Loving Patriots™ can (hopefully) understand](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7f4e62bd-ea7c-4ce3-879c-c78d8332d82d.jpeg){kind=link}