#rent is such a fucking scam and buying is like owning a black hole to throw your living expenses into if you dare to own your own shelter

[royalberryriku]

It's gonna be 39C (102.2f) and we don't have an aircon fuckkk I hate Australian summers. Especially since, at least here, it's humid af as well.

#personal #vent #it's 29C today and I'm barely able to function im gonna die tomorrow #plan is to wake up at the asscrack of dawn and go somewhere that does have aircon all day #we can't even fix it ourselves because it's not our house and we don't have permission to like come on #like the mall or something #or the supermarket #just turning around in the frozen food department like a rotisserie chicken to be cooled down instead of heated #There's some places i can sit down and vibe that have at least some aircon #better than none #also fuck our real estate for refusing to fix stuff because it costs them money and they want to “”wait“” to be able to pay it #it's fucking summer and we're quite literally toast while they want to save more for christmas #like bruh #y'all are already rich as fuck at least pay off the investment of SHELTER YOU PROVIDE FOR VERY HIGH PRICES #when honestly shelter should be free but damn gotta buy that extra fucking ham or toy train set lest it spoil christmas #like damn imagine having a low key Christmas to save money while actually paying your bills it's almost like thats always us and for what #so y'all can complain you have it hard that we pay for your shit then act surprised you gotta maintain the thing we pay for?? #asshats probably don't even look at their electricity bill and ration the damn aircon and fans as if using too much means losing them ffs #anyway fuck the rich and this system that is centred around making basic shelter a commodity #rent is such a fucking scam and buying is like owning a black hole to throw your living expenses into if you dare to own your own shelter #housing should be free and this cabalistic capitalist system is a fucking nightmare #anyway back to the og point lol #it's fucking hot and i want winter back #Australian winters are so mild and great its like spring in other countries i think #spring here is also a nightmare of rain heatwaves and cold fighting in a parking lot so it's not nice here #but winter?? #nice and cool and mild #wish it was always less than 23C all the time that'd be amazing #i don't remember what that is in fahrenheit but yeah

[elbiotipo]

Tell us your thoughts regarding car culture 🏁Its rant timeeeeee🏁

OK so my opinion comes from the perspective of someone who is... lower-middle class? I don’t know where my family would fit, we do own our house and nice things like (cheap) computers, but a car is beyond us. What I mean is that every time we attempted to own a car it always came with shitty stuff. It comes with predatory financial practices (NEVER trust any “car plan”, they are basically scams, you will be paying increasing amounts of money for YEARS without even seeing your fucking car AND they will ask you more money to get it on the first place) that can send you straight up broke, and a piling list of stupid bureaucracy, maintaince, checkups, fuel, repairs, and other bullshit expenses just for the price of saying “I own a car”.

To me personally, all those shitty things outweigh any benefit about cars. I’ve always walked around, took buses (and yes, I hate buses, especially here, but they do their job) and basically all my adult life has been spent on foot and public transportation. So I don’t see a car as a real necessity, just as a very expensive piece of metal that can drive you around, sometimes. But people (my family and others) get into the most ridiculous stuff JUST to say "I own A Car, like the neighbors" even if in practice, it doesn't get put to do anything useful. Like owning a pretty pretty horse.

That’s why I dislike car culture, and by that I mean The Car as a status symbol. Ohhh, you can’t be Middle Class if you don’t own A Car... ohh do you REALLY want to take the shitty bus all your life instead of having A Nice Car... ohhh you won’t get any women if you don’t have A Car (my dad actually, non-ironically, believes this)... ohhh but A Car is more practical, it’s really a Useful Tool (when you take into account all the fucking expenses, especially if you are low-class, it’s really, really not more practical)... oohh you really should get a drivers license Just In Case...ooohhhh my Car must be cleaner better and cooler than my neighbors or else they will think I’m not good enough to have A Nice Car... and that’s just my experience here, let’s not even get into their status on the USA as a Symbol of Freedom and their entire city planning based on them.

Cars, to me, are a tool and should be treated as a tool, but they’re treated as a status symbol. And it’s not like I dislike luxury, I want to get myself a Gamer PC and a Nice House like anyone else. But everything in my life experience has shown me that owning a car is more of a pain in your pocket for a bragging symbol than anything else. For what? Just to say “I got to the same place you did, but I didn’t have to take the bus like some kind of peasant”? There are many things cars are useful for, but it’s never about that. It’s always about Owning A Car, about saying “now I can take you on a date in My Car, because I’m Middle Class and I have one, no matter if I’m like 100k in debt”, rather of what you can actually do with them.

Which is in most cases, the same things you can do by taking the bus or the train.

In rural contexts, obviously cars are useful, in fact vital, a farmer of course needs good transportation. But in an urban context, they’re worse than useless. Everything a car could do in a city (besides noise and hitting people, oh, I haven’t even gotten into that yet!) can and should be done better by more walkable cities and good, robust public transportation.

Public transportation, here and elsewhere, is shit of course, but it’s incidentally because the culture of car ownership creates cities around them, instead of walkable cities and good public transportation. Why should you care about how the proles get around? Important people drive cars. You might say, “well, but paying for a car isn’t as bad as paying for public transportation” but it is. For a lower income family a car is a money black hole that demands constant attention for little reward except some supposed freedom of movement (cutting through maybe, an hour of two of walking?) and distance (OH SURE YOU CAN HAVE YOUR MAGICAL ROAD TRIP. HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT HOW TO PAY FOR ALL THE GAS AND TOLLS YET?)

Have we talked about oil prices yet? have we talked about how oil prices fuck up everything that depends on on-road transportation? how the dependence of on-road transportation has murdered railways across the world? the fucking wars for fucking oil?

I don’t even need to talk about the enviromental impact of cars, do I? The fact that car crashes are the leading cause of injuries worldwide?

Argentina, of course, is a particular case, because the bulk of what I’ve said here (that cars are unaffordable for a lower-class family) is mostly because of Our Economical Problems. But look at the rest of the world, and they are even MORE obssesed about cars if it’s even possible. Cars, highways, entire cities, a fucking civilization built around them, to the point that you need to buy one just to get around, and if you can't, sucks to be you. Public transportation around THE WORLD (not only here) has been declining and becoming more shitty because of the dominance of cars.

For what? Oh, because if you have a car, you’re Middle Class, dontcha know. Everybody needs cars!

anyways, most of this is addmitedly projecting my own problems, but I hate cars, they are at the very bottom of my priorities, and I hate the entire culture behind them. If I ever own a car, it will be when I’m financially stable (so probably never) if I ever need to move stuff or go somewhere particulary far. Things I could do cheaper by bus or renting a truck, anyways. So fuck cars.