> Not surprisingly, the socialism is blatantly obvious.
Because God forbid that people care about others in traffic.
Of course you care about the safety of others while driving. I shudder to think what traffic would be like in a country where people don't.
It's pretty clear to me that automobiles and urban life basically don't coexist. They tragedy of the commons'd every city they touched. A car is great if only you have one, but not so great when everyone has one. This realization is not socialism, but more like rolling back a failed experiment. You can still drive your pickup truck 300 miles per hour on your farm or whatever if you want. Just not through dense cities, where most people are walking or cycling.
Amsterdam _has_ a ring road, you know.
Everywhere that has tried this has regretted it, because the volume of traffic induced is so high that the average journey speed ends up below 30km/h anyway. What a city needs to get millions of people across it is high volume public transport.
If you need to cover longer distances, you can likely go slowly towards some sort of transit hub and then take a faster vehicle to your final destination. (This is why people fly instead of drive across the country. In the cities, you can run trains underground and not conflict with anything else going on in the city! Many cities have tried this with great success; the only complaint is not doing enough of it.)
Seeing as the social democratic[0] PvdA is currently the largest political party in the Amsterdam city council[1], with the greens a close second, that's all in line with what the people of Amsterdam want.
This is Europe. Socialism isn't a scare word here. If anything, it's a rallying cry.
(FWIW I don't agree that this does make it less desirable to live in cities; it will tend to reduce noise and improve the efficacy of the bus system, both of which make living in cities _more_, not less, desirable anyway.)
I wouldn't have thought most people living in central Amsterdam have parking, anyway?
People who don't have a car aren't real people?
Of course boomers love capitalism when in the 60s a factory worker could easily pay off a huge house, two brand new cars every 3 years, and support a family of 5 on a single income.
But that isn’t capitalism today. Young people are working themselves into the ground just to share a room in a house with 6 other people, barely able to put food on the table.
What do you suppose the current generation will say about capitalism when they get old?
Wealth is flowing from poor people to rich people at an ever increasing rate. It’s no wonder alternative economic systems are gaining in popularity.
Guess what, the same generation born in ussr (mostly urban and either russian or conformist enough to benefit from the system) liked the system too, while it worked. Hell, who would not like state-provided housing, public transport childcare and all the nice things, while they last, even if the system as whole isn't sustainble enough.
It seems that now, based on your comment, it’s in vogue to call it socialism.
At this rate, in a few years it’ll be called democratic socialism and not long after it’ll be called social democracy.
I guess you gotta keep that Overton window moving.
As an aside, what is often overlooked when someone brings up the point you do, is that communist nostalgia[0] is a real thing.
You can get into endless arguments about how they are No True Socialists but it just ends up being like a word game.
That's why the European parties that lean in that direction tend to cast themselves as "social democratic", a different term.
You’re just continuing on the path of self-identification. Would you call North Korea democratic just because that’s what they call themselves?
If not, then why not when you seem to have no qualms calling them socialist because on the basis that they call themselves that in their constitution?
> You can get into endless arguments about how they are No True Socialists but it just ends up being like a word game.
You paint it as some sort of semantics game, meanwhile both socialism and communism are well defined.
Notwithstanding the different flavors, they all have certain elements in common as a fundamental requirement and no amount of trying to fit the Soviet shaped peg into a round hole changes that.
> That's why the European parties that lean in that direction tend to cast themselves as "social democratic", a different term
I understand that you use the word “tend” to hedge your bets, but your comment here implies a certain amount of ubiquity and lack of parties trying to distance themselves.
The reality is that that Europe has a slew of socialist parties that aren’t hiding it either, they’re often called “Socialist Party” in their respective language. Hell there are even some communist parties.
And it’s not like they don’t occupy any seats in the respective parliaments either. Most of these parties have significant presence in parliaments and at other levels.
The science as well, the dependency between impact veolocity and severity of injury and risk of survival of pedestrians and cyclists is fairly well studied and known.
the image there sure does not look like a 30km/h street to me
I've been there (or somewhere in Amsterdam where it looks exactly the same) and at peak hour 50km/h passing by a crowded bicycle path while at the same time there's a tram next to you surely does not feel appropriate. But yes, that could be cultural.
Need to get on the public transport building first.
> I mean, not everyone has the possibility of walking a couple of streets to buy a cappuccino and then take an elevator to the office. Try having kids in a city today and then let's talk.
I don't get this comment. Is there no cafe near you? Also, you still shouldn't speed in residential or mixed neighbourhoods, regardless of where you live. Even if your office is further away. People live there. A highway and ring road usually takes you reasonable near you office, for most cities in europe and I bet every city in the US.
> Try having kids in a city today
What's the difference to having a kid in a city in the past? Cars certainly grew bigger and that's strictly worse for having a kid in the city.
I get not wanting your kids to grow up in the city, but that's also your own decision. And if you end up with a long commute others shouldn't bear unreasonable consequences. Others might raise their kids in the city and the kid might want to cross the road (assuming it is old enough) without a fear of death from thousands of cars speeding by.
It’s a policy on vehicle speeds, one that could be implemented in any political-economic system, or not. I don’t see the connection to social ownership of the means of production.
Luckily in some countries governmental organisations protect their citizens from inconsiderate people who lack empathy. You can call that socialism, no one cares.
>Not surprisingly, the socialism is blatantly obvious.
You do the speed limit only for yourself?
Is "for each other" really so triggery?
It is also launching a campaign with the slogan: “We drive 30 for each other.”
Not surprisingly, the socialism is blatantly obvious.