To be clear, I don’t think a ban is an appropriate response to saying something like that, but it does have the same implications as saying “why should I pay for car insurance, I’m not going to get in a crash” or “why pay for highways, I never leave my suburb”. Even if you don’t directly benefit from those services existing and being paid for, other people do and you actually do benefit from those other people being better off. For the educating kids subject specifically, think about when you’re 60, do you want to be taken care of by doctors that got a subpar education, or for your retirement funds to run out because the institutions they rely on collapsed due to a lack of educated workers. It is to everyone’s personal benefit in the long run to pay for public services that help the community even if they don’t take advantage of them personally and directly.
I am of the opinion that Highways existing in general are a net good, but definitely shouldn’t be built the way they have been and need to be given viable alternatives in most cases. I would have used the example of paying for roads without owning a car, but I made a few assumptions about the kind of person I was replying to and tried to tailor my argument to the kind of person I figured they were (as in, the kind of person that definitely owns a car and uses it extensively).
Maybe there is a way they could have been done better, I don’t know, but I always feel the need to push back on this idea because in reality they’ve been an absolute calamity that I’ve been suffering from my whole life as one of the many people forced to live near one.
I am going to assume you also live in the US here, because that’s the environment I’m most familiar with and is where I’ve heard the most complaints about highways for. The problem is partly that they were built to go directly through city centers rather than around cities, and it’s way too late to change that, and partly because General Motors propaganda meant that everyone considers cars to just be the default way of getting anywhere to the extent that other options often just don’t exist. For getting between cities, and especially for getting good and produce between cities, highways are a fine option to exist. I would absolutely prefer that high speed rail existed as an alternative, but even if it did I am certain there are some people that would still find it more convenient to drive.
To be clear, I don’t think a ban is an appropriate response to saying something like that, but it does have the same implications as saying “why should I pay for car insurance, I’m not going to get in a crash” or “why pay for highways, I never leave my suburb”. Even if you don’t directly benefit from those services existing and being paid for, other people do and you actually do benefit from those other people being better off. For the educating kids subject specifically, think about when you’re 60, do you want to be taken care of by doctors that got a subpar education, or for your retirement funds to run out because the institutions they rely on collapsed due to a lack of educated workers. It is to everyone’s personal benefit in the long run to pay for public services that help the community even if they don’t take advantage of them personally and directly.
Except highways make everyone worse off not better. That one doesn’t fit.
I am of the opinion that Highways existing in general are a net good, but definitely shouldn’t be built the way they have been and need to be given viable alternatives in most cases. I would have used the example of paying for roads without owning a car, but I made a few assumptions about the kind of person I was replying to and tried to tailor my argument to the kind of person I figured they were (as in, the kind of person that definitely owns a car and uses it extensively).
Maybe there is a way they could have been done better, I don’t know, but I always feel the need to push back on this idea because in reality they’ve been an absolute calamity that I’ve been suffering from my whole life as one of the many people forced to live near one.
I am going to assume you also live in the US here, because that’s the environment I’m most familiar with and is where I’ve heard the most complaints about highways for. The problem is partly that they were built to go directly through city centers rather than around cities, and it’s way too late to change that, and partly because General Motors propaganda meant that everyone considers cars to just be the default way of getting anywhere to the extent that other options often just don’t exist. For getting between cities, and especially for getting good and produce between cities, highways are a fine option to exist. I would absolutely prefer that high speed rail existed as an alternative, but even if it did I am certain there are some people that would still find it more convenient to drive.