Comment by thenewnewguy
3 hours ago
What if the guy in the car voted for pro-oil politicians whose campaign explicitly included expanding fossil fuel consumption and cutting budgets to trains and other public transit?
Because ultimately the way we organize society is we have a democracy and we vote on representatives to make the laws. Companies actually don't get to directly cut public transit, they have to convince voters to do that.
Most people weren't voting age 70-50 years ago when public transit systems collapsed, so mostly they didn't vote on this. Even in places that have consistently voted pro transit for decades at this point, they quite literally still have decades of baggage to get rid of in the form of antiquated or hostile laws that were designed to slow them down, require workarounds or blow through their budget. You can't undo all of that even over multiple terms in-office.
And there's the whole thing about the US political system, which discourages any more than 2 parties, which disincentivizes members of those parties from actually following through on campaign promises vis a vis lobbying money for their reelection campaign and future positions on the boards of companies whose laws they decide on. Then the information who to vote for comes from media companies owned by...
Plus, some people's votes are simply more equal than others’. And sometimes we can ignore some people's votes by cheating just a little bit (see Bush vs Gore).
There are simply so many factors at play here that I still think twisting this as an "individual choice" problem is disingenuous at best. There are people who have the power to make changes, but it's not your average Joe on an average salary.