this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2025
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Fuck Cars

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Zohran Mamdani, in the New York City mayoral debate: "Free buses would cost $700M. Cuomo gave more—$959M—to Elon Musk for a failed Tesla factory." (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 6 days ago by destructdisc@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

return on investment.

define investment, who was going to pay the state's ROI? elon? lol. the jobs these companies outsource to other countries?

seriously spend two seconds critically thinking about your nonsense before you speak it.

Free buses would have a much larger return on investment.

  1. movement of the population is streamlined. meaning more people will go more places and spend their fares in a larger variety of locations without having to worry about cost.
  2. you save a shit ton of money because you no longer need all that infrastructure for charging people money for fares and the ongoing maintenance related to such.
  3. population increases due to QOL improvements. meaning more revenue for the state via property/income taxes.
  4. its durable. population based revenue is much more reliable than investment nonsense.

the only difference between the corpo subsidy and free transit is:

  • the corpo can walk away for any reason leaving the state holding the bag.
  • the corpo concept has a shorter chain of cause/effect: give money to corpo -> corpo fails | corpo gives roi -> $
  • vs free buses -> increases desirability of the area & reduces on going costs of infra -> population increases -> more tax revenue.

in short: free buses absolutely would bring a return on investment it'd just be harder to measure the precise return because its part of a non-linear system.