You are not wrong in theory, but this reads like an econ 100 short answer. It ignores all the political and social aspects of a very complex system.

Yes, I agree, and of course I sort of try to qualify it a bit. I think cheap, easy transportation has its own value. Creating a sort of fluidity, competition and so on, and it's not like one can't imagine a situation where somebody is the guy who controls all the rail deliveries to a town, or where he has bought all the rail transport demand in the past, so now he gets to be first. Roads, meanwhile, are open to everybody.

At the same time, I really do think that it could be beneficial to shrink trucks down, automate them, or create something which has so many bogies that the road wear is not greater than on a car, so I sort of argued for what I saw as theoretically fair without actually being sure that the outcome would be what I hoped for.

This is basically the definition of something that should be subsidized. Same story for public education, health care, clean drinking water, etc

Not when subsidizing it prevents us addressing the bigger problem. Subsidize electric trucks, subsidize using cargo trains for 99% of the transportation of goods instead.

Those others have far fewer externalities than burning diesel to move heavy trucks.

Different kind of "everyone benefits from it." There's "individual people benefit when they pay for themselves and everyone does this" and then there's "everyone benefits from each individual receiving it." Public education etc. is the second one: we all as a society benefit when little Timmy gets educated, so we subsidize it in order to maximize that benefit. Transportation of goods is the first kind. I and all of my neighbors benefit from it, but we each benefit individually. When Bob down the street indirectly pays a few dollars to have some item transported to a store by truck, that doesn't benefit me at all. Likewise Bob doesn't benefit from my usage. "Everyone benefits" just because it's ubiquitous.

In economics terms, you want to subsidize things with positive externalities, because they'd otherwise be used less than the most efficient amount. I don't think trucking has positive externalities. It definitely has negative externalities, which would be an argument for taxing it (which of course we already do in various ways) rather than subsidizing it.

We need energy, therefore we should subsidize coal plants.

... Usually on the best land they were gifted for building the railway line on the first place, so heavily subsidized as well

They were gifted the land when the land was close to worthless because the transport costs for western products were higher than their value. The train is what made western land valuable. That land had value before the train came through was almost pure speculation -- people bought and settled land assuming that it would have value once a train arrived.

It was a real subsidy, but it was small and it was > 100 years ago.

OTOH, the land the freeways and roads were built on already had significant value before it was expropriated for road construction and wasn't paid for with diesel tax revenue, so it's yet another subsidy for truck traffic.

I like this, and I also think it will help this Canadian deal with the current position of the USA

It's absolutely critical, and worth mentioning, that even after substantial reductions, there are a lot of Canadians still working on and contributing to Firefox!

Occasionally see someone go to yt without ad blocking and I'm blown away, feels like I'm from the 1800's sitting with someone in rush hour traffic - what is going on?

I switched my family off Google after almost 20 years on our own domain. In hindsight it was ridiculously easy, although there are still some weird Google account required links that ultimately have me just moving on. Yt does run worse on FF but that's because of unlock (I believe) they tend to stall out intentionally instead of showing you ads and attempt to get you to switch.

Yeah, I believe the stall-out issue is sabotage, but it also visibly takes longer to just render the page. On FF, a YT page jumps around for almost two whole seconds while it renders for me (not to play the video - to render the page). This may also be sabotage by Google, I don't know.

I agree with you, coaster brakes suck. And losing your brakes if the chains drops is really serious, especially because it tends to happen when you need brakes the most.

Cable disc brakes have come a very long way and there are some decent models that require very little maintenance and work great.

Also for every skid you get on a coaster brake I'll raise you a nose Endo with the front disc brake!

> Also for every skid you get on a coaster brake I'll raise you a nose Endo with the front disc brake!

I can slam on my front disc brakes and not endo. Step 1: shift your weight all the way to the back. (hang off the back of the seat). Step 2: have front suspension.

Weight shift is mostly enough on its own, but front suspension eats up whatever endo tendency is left.

> Also for every skid you get on a coaster brake I'll raise you a nose Endo with the front disc brake!

This guy fox!

Hand strength is an issue with cheap, adult sized cable hand brakes but not an issue with smaller levers or even the cheapest hydraulic brakes.

The kids bikes that require them ate also made of mild steel and with more than my Enduro bike.

Don't buy a cheap, department store kids bike. You can get multiple kids through a quality bike and still sell it for like $100 less than you paid.

Worse, I've worn out a rim when the sidewall basically delaminated after a few thousand kms and gritty conditions. After the UCI allowed disc brakes on gravel racers and manufacturers switched it made a great style of bike just about perfect

If they use blatant, binary positions and you try to be subtle and nuanced you've already lost.