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It depends on who governs it. Here in NL the infra takes the bikers in mind when being (re)designed. So safety is OK. No license is required, but we will give you shit if you fuck up. No inspections. Bikes are cheap because everybody has one and sells them after a couple of years. For 75 euros I can get a bike that will last me years.
This might work here for some reason, but I can imaging if you live in some shithole US state in which politicians need to regulate everything it will suck.
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Which I don't really get why this is the case. From what I have seen about the founding of the US it was a tax dispute and the founding fathers got pretty close to writing some kind of prototype libertarian manifest.
I do think that with the hegemony and the wealth gotten as a result of the measures taken after WW2 the politicians wallowed in it, got used to it and started making more stupid decisions as time progressed. The rest of the world could see that there was no rational given the available data why they did what they did. And with the presidencies in the past 21 years anyone could see this failscade happening from a mile away, except for the frogs in the water we know today as "US citizens" .
(My $0.02)
@WhiteTemplar @deprecated
EURHG MUH GAWD! DA JOOS DID WUT!?
@xyfdi Yeah I mean here in the US where everyone with any power sees the populace as something to squeeze for as much money as possible, while making our lives as miserable as they can get away with.
A good government and ruling class can exist, but we don’t have one and people think they can escape the malice if they’re just clever enough. But cleverness doesn’t scale up, because loopholes will just be closed once enough people start exploiting them. In some cases they intentionally let a lot of people use the loophole before abruptly closing it just to fuck with as many freedom-minded people as possible.