Aliens built the TTC

[sabotabby]

I had brunch with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time, and we were talking (of course) politics and the pervasiveness of the "but how we will pay for it???" ideology. (I agree that it's a question worth asking—it's just usually asked as a rhetorical question to shut down debate, when it is actually a question that has an answer.) Basically, the idea that one invests in social good and infrastructure has been in rapid decline since the 80s. You couldn't build a subway system now—witness the Scarborough One Stop Wonder. People would get deadlocked wondering how to pay for it, rather than considering it an essential civic investment and just getting the thing done.

I compared it to when you see white people talking about the pyramids. Like, how did they have the technology back then? How did they figure it out? What a mystery! Must have been aliens!

Now we're existing in the ruins of a mightier civilization. Waiting for the subway (well, haha, not this weekend). Wondering, I can only suppose: How did they build this wonder? What kind of marvellous technology did the ancients of the 1960s have? How did they pay for it???

Comments

[moon_custafer]

If R.C. Harris were a city planner today, not only would he be fired after about fifteen minutes, the fact he’d been hired at all would be treated as a scandalous outrage: “This guy who doesn’t even have an engineering degree wants us to spend *how* much on a filtration plant?” (I mean that’s pretty much what they said in the 1920s-30s, and I expect having to fight for everything hastened his death.)

[dewline]

And he'd be fired for excessive competence. Yes, that would actually be the grounds for it.

[franklanguage]

I guess you read The Peter Principle too?

[sabotabby]

I live it daily.

[dewline]

Some of us who've never read it have lived it. Or have family and/or friends who have.

[sabotabby]

Well, no, I think lack of experience would be an asset if he knew the right people (which he did). Having a vision, though? That's a different story.

[dewline]

Well, I know for damned sure that aliens did not build the Line 1 infrastructure for OC Transpo. Alstom supplied the train sets, Rideau Transit Group hired the subcontractors that dug the tunnel, laid down the trackage, built the Belfast Yards, etc.. And how we're paying for it all - and the lawsuit filed by Siemens that followed Larry O'Brien shutting down the earlier West-South line plans - well, it's all documented, to my knowledge.

Ottawa's been damn lucky. I've been watching the mess you're being subjected to. If it weren't for Ford's need for vengeance and rotten judgement...

[sabotabby]

Ottawa has a lot farther to go. But we've been subject to "move fast and break stuff" for decades.

[dewline]

This is also true.

[metawidget]

Aliens might have understood the habits and capabilities of rush-hour humans better than Alstom and RTG seem to have.

[kore]

It's a particularly baffling question given that taxpayers rarely paid for a setup of a whole lot of public institutions, like, say, public libraries. But now it's like "You'll be taking MY money!" when in reality it was the very rich who didn't mind funding stuff like museums or hospitals or giant research medical centers (Gates doesn't even come close in that regard). Like usual it's the behaviour of the very rich that drives a lot of public life. And also of course a constant demonizing of ANY kind of 'socialism' (COMMUNISM), i.e. we're all in this together, vaccinate your kid for herd immunity, public infrastructures are good even if you own a car, and the concurrent glorifying of "screw you Jack I've got mine" (someday when you've got about three hours just ask me what Tim Eyman did to the infrastructure of Seattle, go on, just ask me, just make sure you have booze on hand).

-- Moi, channeling her dad circa about 1993

[sabotabby]

AND YOU ARE/WERE BOTH CORRECT

[kore]

//SPIRIT OF MY DAD WOULD BE BOTH AMUSED AND PROUD I THINK

[kore]

Also I truly don't think you could get something like the New Deal/SSI anywhere near to launch these days, I just don't. Not that it was a cakewalk in the thirties, but just look at the decades-long bloody bitter struggle it has been to try to get some not-rich US citizens halfway decent healthcare that still is not that affordable and often undertreats people.

(sorry to be so US centric but that is the system I know....)

[sabotabby]

If we hadn't done Medicare in the 50s and 60s, it would never have happened now.

[notasupervillain]

There used to be a magic money tree. But the millenials killed it by eating too much avacado toast.

[sabotabby]

Good point. I forgot about the avocado toast.

[notasupervillain]

HOW COULD YOU FORGET

[dewline]

Some days, I'm surprised that millenials haven't murdered the rest of us for our jokes.

[notasupervillain]

Never! House prices first.

[nyctanthes]

Oh lord, as an NYC resident I have SO MANY FEELINGS about this. And if one has a chance to leave NA and travel on the railway system in many other parts of the world.

Sigh.

[sabotabby]

It's possible. It's so possible.

[rdi]

I have heard the elders of my people speak of a thing called "progressive taxation" which existed in a semi-mythical golden age, and enabled great miracles of social engineering to take place.

[sabotabby]

Or it was aliens.

[rinue]

I have continued to think about your pyramid analogy for days. It's profound and puts a lot into focus. Thank you for this comparison.

[sabotabby]

Thank you! It's a thing I've been thinking about hammering into a longer piece, but have no idea how to go about it.