That’s also my understanding.

In the US it’s really common to have an accelerator.

Also eBikes in the Netherlands don’t have acceleators unless they’re illegally modified.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.

Oh hello fellow weirdos.

I did that for a number of years. I never had a credit card because I never wanted to spend money if I didn’t know I had it. When it came time to buy a house, they told me they couldn’t give me a loan because I didn’t have credit history. I had to get a credit card in order to get a loan. You can’t take on debt unless you’ve had debt.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, if you don’t take on debt unnecessarily that’s seen as a good thing. No credit history is optimal.

I love that the acorn has creepy squirrel hands.

I went to school in a dirt poor place. Like half of my graduating class joined the military. Recruiters were in the halls like every week. Yeah, it’s absolutely intentional.

If you ever drive through rural America, you’ll usually at least see one or two crosses, often on telephone poles, on rural roads. People, often teenagers, die pretty regularly in rural America because of drunk driving.

Some people like it. Some people are just numb to it. It’s just insane to expect people not to when bars are the only social space in a lot of these towns, and those bars are not accessible by anything but car. There is no such thing as a taxi for most of the US (space wise, not population wise).

Het is niet mogelijk.

Mi learnis ioma da Esperanto antaŭ mi movis al Nederlando. Nun ĉiam ik elektas la aliajn vortojn kaj mi estas malbona met Nederlands en Esperanto.

Edit: Mi volas lerni la du, sed, mi pensas ke, me povas lerni nenion.

It’s called “bringing food” or “going home.” It’s what people have done for thousands of years. Fuck, go buy some prepared food at a supermarket. This is not rocket science. I’ve never been forced to spend $70 on food while I was out. That’s not a thing.

Edit: look, if your position is that everyone should be able to eat when they’re out and not have to plan as much then great, we’re on the same page. Everyone should be able to eat out occasionally, or maybe even regularly. If your position is that you should be able to eat an expense meal and not care about the people who served you, then fuck you.

Edit: also, if you aren’t getting paid enough to pay service workers maybe you should go on strike.

Because the US is a failed state hiding under a developed world costume.

Tipping shouldn’t exist because people should be paid a living wage.

I don’t expect people to be rational, I know they aren’t. The point is that it’s better to not eat out than to screw over a person who may not be able to afford to eat in the restaurant you’re eating in. You are asking someone to work for you for starvation wages and then complaining that they’re upset that you’re not filling in the rest of the wages.

Yeah, the owning class is to blame, so stop giving the restaurant money.

Car sales people are paid on commission. If servers were paid on commission then your argument would make sense. If car sales peole were paid less than minimum wage, your argument might make sense. Neither of these is the case, so it doesn’t.

It’s not, but eating at a restaurant is.

Again, if it’s too expensive to afford, why are you doing it? It’s not medical care. No one is forcing you to eat at a restaurant.

If you can’t afford the tip, why are you paying $70 for a meal?

A lot of people grew up being used to a safe county. The idea that the government didn’t actually keep people safe, and that leaders could be so insanely incompetent, was so shocking it was easier to believe in crazy conspiracy theories.

It’s pretty easy to believe in an incompetent government after 9/11, but W came after Clinton and Bush Sr. The first Bush was the head of the CIA. He was evil, but highly competent. Clinton was clearly a world leader, also highly competent. Before that you had Reagan, who was Machiavellian as fuck running secret wars around the world. You had decades of these people looking like they were playing geopolitical 4d chess, then you had this clown who was playing checkers with pidgins. Then you had this incredible shock of the biggest attack on the US since Perl Harbor. It broke a lot of people’s brains.