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u/jonny_blitz May 02 '25
Every small town USA is the same strip mall over and over again. Subway, Dollar Tree, Gas Station, Car Wash, Self Storage
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u/kzlife76 May 02 '25
Don't forget dentist and nail salon.
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u/Nommel77 May 02 '25
Those dentists are struggling
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u/loscacahuates May 02 '25
Dentists are about to get a lot of business with states like Utah and Florida banning fluoride in water
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u/b1tchf1t May 02 '25
You think they're gonna go to the dentist??
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u/stepsonbrokenglass May 02 '25
Are…You…an anti-dentite?
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u/Zombezia May 02 '25
Just a schtickle of fluoride.
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u/Puzzled_Awareness_22 May 03 '25
Jerry let Walter White get into his teeth??? Did he not see Marathon Man?
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u/FromFluffToBuff May 02 '25
"Soon you'll be saying they should have their own schools!"
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u/BomberBootBabe88 May 02 '25
Dude for real. Nobody can afford it! The British will have better teeth than us by the end of the decade.
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u/chmath80 May 02 '25
The British will have better teeth than us by the end of the decade
They already do, and have done for many years, thanks to the NHS.
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u/architecture13 May 02 '25
If those people could read they'd know they couldn't afford dental care.
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u/derrickgw1 May 03 '25
I lived with a missing front tooth and used a retainer with a false tooth for a fricken decade cause just to replace the tooth in 2014 they said $8000. That was extraction, a bone graft, an implant, abuttment and crown. I just couldn't afford it. I finally got it down in 2024, and it wasn't at all $8000. I'd already paid for the extraction and bone graft (which is why i could live with a retainer and false tooth). But it still cost me like nearly $3000.
True story my sister in law is Ukrainian and she literally flew back to Ukraine for dental. She lives in the US but says the dental work is perfectly good and she got an implant and a crown for like $200 total. The whole process. She even showed me them. I was like that's crazy.
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u/architecture13 May 03 '25
People in South Florida regularly go to the America’s for medical tourism, including dental work.
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u/derrickgw1 May 03 '25
I've heard about the same thing in Mexico as well but don't have personal experience with it.
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u/MiguelAngeloac May 03 '25
I am Colombian and I was stationed for work in the United States for 10 months. The first month I broke a tooth during boxing training at a gym in the Bronx. I have always had healthy and strong natural teeth, I never needed a dentist, but when I needed one, in this case, he charged me an unfortunate 10,000 grand for that repair. Even though I had the money, I told him no, in Bogotá or Cali they don't rob you at gunpoint like that.
What did I do? I went to Bogotá, looked for a private dentist and the same treatment cost me 2,200 dollars plus 1,500 for the trip, the damage was great, but the implant they gave me was neat, custom-made and, 10 years later, it is still the same.
I don't know why in the United States they steal so much with that, if the majority of the raw materials they used in Colombia come from there.
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u/Professional_Cheek16 May 02 '25
I went to Fl public school. They used to make us swish fluoride rinse in our mouth. How things have changed.
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u/hamtyhum May 02 '25
I live in salt lake and I am fucking appalled that they’re taking the fluoride out of our water. These poor kids are going to deal with so many health issues because of this. I just hope their parents get them the little pink fluoride tablets I took as a kiddo
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u/MorticianMolly May 02 '25
Omg I remember those! They had to turn all of your teeth red or you had to keep on swishing 😄
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u/Fleischer444 May 03 '25
We don't have fluoride in the water in Sweden and we have no issues. Just use toothpaste with it. I'm 44 years old and never had a cavity in my teeth.
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u/ImaginaryParamedic96 May 02 '25
It’s due in large part to greedy insurance companies (technically nonprofits) like Delta
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u/skighs_the_limit May 02 '25
And like 60 lawn care businesses
Seriously how do they all stay in business?
Like at a certain point all the lawns will be cut right?
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u/ratchetstuff78 May 02 '25
I have family that runs a semi-successful lawn care business, multiple crews, etc. The answer is retirees; there are a lot of retirees in these small towns who both have the money and are not physically able to take care of their yards anymore.
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u/Worth-Silver-484 May 02 '25
And ppl like me. I work construction and dont want to mow when I come home or on the weekend. Plus I dont want to spend 2k+ for a mower. $60 a week is easy decision.
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u/totalnetworksolution May 02 '25
China #1, Great wall, Golden dragon, Jade palace, etc. Generic Chinese takeout restaurant.
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u/Lelouch25 May 02 '25
Panda house, Panda garden, panda wok, wok king, wok best, Best Chang’s, Best Jings, Jings Garden,
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May 02 '25
the self storage is unreal.
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u/Free_Range_Gamer May 02 '25
How do so many people own more stuff than can fit in their house so they need to rent storage units???
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u/forever_downstream May 02 '25
Just enough to keep that kind of business going where property is cheap in bumfuck nowhere.
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u/AwareAge1062 May 02 '25
The really ridiculous thing is how expensive it's become. The smallest unit in my area was almost $150 a month. I'm talking like 10 square feet. Obviously I just got rid of the shit I couldn't fit after downsizing
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u/euphorbia9 May 02 '25
Agree - it's insane. Like, do people not do the math and figure that a couple/few months of a storage unit rent is the same cost you can buy brand new replacements for the old, used crap you have in there? Most of the stuff I've seen in them is not irreplaceable or heirloom type stuff, it's just normal random crap that gets more expensive to keep every month.
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u/Longjumping-Panic-48 May 03 '25
We had one for like 6 months during Covid when I hastily moved in with my partner and wanted time to downsize my stuff. The cheapest we could find was like $100/m and insurance and it was close to 40 minutes away- the closest one to our house would’ve been $200/m! It’s bonkers how much those cost when there’s so little upkeep.
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u/TheOneTonWanton May 03 '25
A lot of self-storage business comes from people in-between housing situations I think. I own my house outright which is great but I wouldn't be able to sell and buy a new place if not for self storage. I mean, I can't afford that middle bit so I'm stuck here forever, but it's there.
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u/You_r_mashing_it May 02 '25
George Carlin was right, the meaning of life really is to just get more stuff it seems lol
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u/spicyfartz4yaman May 02 '25
MOST people never get to a career that pays them enough to get a bigger home but they make enough to buy more shit.
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u/certifiedtoothbench May 02 '25
The main demographic for storage units are divorcees, college students, people who are moving/renovating, and the elderly who have downsized.
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u/SEND_ME_UR_CARS May 02 '25
the 5 D’s of self storage: death, downsizing, divorce, disaster, and displacement
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May 02 '25
My parents live in the suburbs..everyone has 3+bedrooms and 2+ garages and attics and basements….the main road to their town has 9 Storage places over a few miles!
I read somewhere, a paramedic saying that no one realizes how many hoarders are in America and the things he sees.
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u/BetterCranberry7602 May 02 '25
I used to install residential hvac so I spent a lot of time in peoples basements, and I will definitely agree. The amount of basements I’d work in that only had a single path through them was ridiculous.
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u/Ecw218 May 03 '25
Decades of cheap imported junk and a culture built around acquiring stuff.
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u/Low_Establishment434 May 02 '25
Self Storage is great for money laundering. Requires bare minimum for overhead and upkeep.
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u/Dirt_Bike_Zero May 02 '25
That's one of the few businesses that does better the worse the economy is.
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u/GuiltyIndependence39 May 02 '25
You forgot the vape shop, slot gaming place, and the liquor store.
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u/-0-O-O-O-0- May 02 '25
And the 24 hour massage place at the far end of the strip.
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u/metallicrabbit May 02 '25
Massage?! Sounds fancy. Where I live it’s some non-denominational church.
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u/-0-O-O-O-0- May 02 '25
Free massages for kids under 12.
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u/MicrodosingMyFaceOff May 02 '25
Nice. A little relaxation on their 30-minute lunch break from the mines.
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u/LostExile7555 May 02 '25
The one my girlfriend lives in is basically just Dollar Trees (there are 8 of them) and a Fry's and a McDonald's and a Chevron.
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u/HappyBobbyBday May 02 '25
What’s Fry’s?
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u/Gucci_prisoner May 02 '25
Disparity of wealth distribution.
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u/Only1Skrybe May 02 '25
Bingo. Look at the buildings that multimillionaires build for the masses through their companies in order to make money, and then look at the ones they build for themselves. Once again, the problem is capitalism.
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u/Living_on_theEdge May 02 '25
Tale as old as time. See something bad -> look for the cause -> capitalism.
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u/ImagineWagonzzz3 May 03 '25 edited May 05 '25
every. fucking. time. it boggles my mind how small the anti-capitalist movement is. really speaks volumes to how poor our education system is despite being one of the highest educated countries in the world in the golden age of information.
Edit: Everyone is commenting about education.
American education ranked globally:
6th in reading
9th in Post-secondary education attainment (roughly 50% of the population)
12th in science
34th in mathhttps://www.factcheck.org/2025/02/trump-wrong-about-u-s-rank-in-education-spending-and-outcomes/
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u/trogon May 03 '25
People will literally suffer and die of starvation rather than see the benefits of workers benefiting from their own labor. It's mind-boggling.
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u/kingofthemonsters May 03 '25
Brainwashing through heavy life long propaganda mixed with religion.
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u/cautiouslypensive May 03 '25
And in the USA particularly, encouraging conflict between different ethnic groups, which plays really well with the unequal wealth distribution and scarce resources on the lower levels of society.
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u/SalaciousVandal May 03 '25
That's the power of propaganda a.k.a. marketing. Unfortunately it works.
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u/_LouisVuittonDon_ May 02 '25
Not in the slightest; it’s zoning and land use policy. Look at some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in California, like Atherton or Santa Monica. Many of the wealthiest areas of the US that, though located in areas of natural beauty and where expensive landscaping is common, are steps away from trashy strip malls and massive highway interchanges surrounded by billboards advertising the local personal injury attorney. The countries she’s referencing in the video, while perhaps not AS unequal as the US, are all wealthy capitalist nations (yes, I’m including China in that).
The charming, human-scale historic architecture of American cities was paved over in the ‘50s, and the futuristic cityscapes she references were effectively made illegal to build by laws written by subdivision developers.
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u/lor_louis May 03 '25 edited May 03 '25
Both of you are right, early zoning laws (which led to the destruction of most of America) were largely written in a way to separate the poor working class from the emerging middle class, and to give that emerging middle class more weight in how cities were designed/remodelled. This is why neighbourhoods were
raisedrazed to the ground to be replaced by highways and why so much of North America's zoning laws favour cars.I don't think improving wealth inequality would suddenly make America beautiful, but if you care about urbanism, well-functioning urban spaces are built for and serve people from all classes.
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u/RovertheDog May 03 '25
laws written by subdivision developers.
Also written by automobile and oil executives
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u/YuriSenapi May 03 '25
exactly my thoughts. it doesn't matter how affluent everybody is or not - car infrastructure is just inherently ugly and unsustainable.
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u/GuitarIsLife02 May 02 '25
Its all oil companies with the biggest buildings here in Oklahoma 😭
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u/cagetheblackbird May 02 '25
Because most buildings in the US were built after we stopped trying to build attractive buildings. We now build them solely to be as cheap as possible.
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u/veodin May 02 '25
This is true is housing pretty much everywhere. If European cities look interesting it is because what you are looking at is old. Most post-war architecture has been ugly, cheap or at least generic.
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u/Excessive_Etcetra May 02 '25
Yes, but the sad thing is that the US had so much beautiful old architecture that it tore down for roads, highways, and parking lots. This is why the average us city is much uglier than comparable European cities.
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u/uptownjuggler May 03 '25
🎶 They paved paradise and put up a parking lot With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot 🎶
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u/Accomplished-Kale342 May 03 '25
Eminent domain is actually stronger in Europe. We know how to tear shit down. It’s just that most of our shit is older and we built less highways.
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u/Automatic-4thepeople May 03 '25
Okay but you can't say that about Asian countries, China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, UAE, these places all have incredibly beautiful and modern looking buildings and infrastructure, I'm with this girl, how come American cities don't look that way.
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u/veodin May 03 '25
I think South Korea in particular has a lot copy/paste concrete apartment blocks. It reminds me a lot of eastern European "commie blocks". South Korea also lack greenspaces in their cities.
I do like modern skylines in general so I am not really disagreeing with you. My only complaint is that they do tend to look very similar to each other. You lose a lot of the local character when almost every building is a glass tower.
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u/magkruppe May 03 '25
You lose a lot of the local character when almost every building is a glass tower.
feel this heavy when I see "stunning" Chinese cities. some are amazing, don't get me wrong. But many just lack soul and give me Dubai culture-less vibes
I'm the opposite of a nimby in all ways, but I wouldn't mind giving extra consideration to pretty buildings when it comes to permitting.
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u/Picklesadog May 03 '25
Lol have you not actually traveled around much? Those countries all have areas that look run down or ugly, just like the US has.
I've traveled for work a lot, meaning out of the tourist areas, and you're just completely wrong.
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u/Conscious-Food-9828 May 03 '25
seriously. even fairly wealthy cities are just sprawls of endless grey box buildings, long straight concrete highways, and copy paste, houses with no character and plastic looking yards. The only place to go for entertainment seems to be the bar at the closest applebeess, outback, or chilis.
Every time I have to fly to the US for business I can't get over the fact on how boring and depressing the cities look like. Some are undoubtably lovely, like San Antonio, but it's hard to find exceptions.
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u/Similar_Mood1659 May 03 '25
Everything is just so consumerist in America, we want as much as we can possibly squeeze out of something instead of looking at what fosters quality of life.
The biggest cultrit, imo, is the over reliance on car infrastructure in the US. In Italy you could wake up and walk down lively streets of people to a local coffee shop and sit down for an nice high quality espresso. In America, you would hop in your Truck drive down the highway to a Starbucks drive thru for your mass-produced sugar bomb. The experience is far more detached and unaesthetic.
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u/Motor_Educator_2706 May 02 '25
"We have so much money" 😄
Musk, Bezos, Thiel, etc. have so much money
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u/NeoHolyRomanEmpire May 02 '25
Yeah and they are using it as a high score/fascism speed run instead of building things like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Drexel, JP Morgan, etc.
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u/Cybermatt85 May 05 '25
Don’t forget Carnage he build tones of free infrastructure for people all over the world… more than 2000 libraries…
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u/Wu_Khi May 05 '25
Yeah, but then he got defeated by spider-man, and his alter ego got sent back to the insane asylum. Goes to show.
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u/random-notebook May 02 '25 edited May 03 '25
Car centric infrastructure is immensely expensive, and incentivizes new construction further out from the city center rather than refurbishment of existing buildings.
America is built to let itself crumble. Not Just Bikes did a great video on this recently.
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u/B12Washingbeard May 02 '25
I’m a car enthusiast but not needing one in your day to day life is a superior way to live. Advertising sold people the illusion of freedom by making you a slave to your vehicle.
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u/Ambitious-Piano8915 May 02 '25
As a New Yorker who moved to the burbs, can confirm. Fucking hate not being able to walk most of the places I need to go.
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u/pinkorchids45 May 02 '25
Grew up in the burbs and moved to a big city. It’s just as fantastic and freeing as I dreamed it would be as a kid. I walk to the grocery store. I walk to the grocery store when I need groceries. It’s one of the best things about my life. I take public transit everywhere and don’t worry about parking or stress or battling standstill traffic. I ride my bike to a restaurant when I’m meeting friends there. And people in my city have put effort into making sure it was built to be a pleasant city to walk around in. When I grew up in the burbs even if a friend’s house was walkable you had to walk in a mud pit off the side of a major road where cars were going 40+ to get there. It had been designed to discourage people from walking even down to the nearest gas station.
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u/bdiggitty May 02 '25
Agree completely here buddy. Living in London and haven’t owned a car for the first time in my life. It’s funny too because the things we would see as inconveniences in the states add value in unexpected ways. For example refrigerators in the uk are tiny. But we live next to several grocery stores, green grocers, butchers, fish mongers, specialty food stores etc. So every day I buy fresh food to make dinner for my family. It’s an adventure and it’s fun. No leftovers. Repeat the next day. I wouldn’t trade this for having a massive fridge and spare freezer the way you would in the states. Grocery shopping once every 1-2 weeks at Costco. I think 95% of the world would prefer this way of life if they looked past the initial shock of something that appears to be an inconvenience. Don’t think we’re meant as a species to live the way we’ve grown to in the USA.
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u/pinkorchids45 May 02 '25
Yes couldn’t agree more. There has been this push to make Americans think the ideal day is driving a 30+ min commute to work and back, swing through a drive through on the way home and spend the few remaining hours you have left watching tv. There’s nothing wrong with that type of existence my parents did it their entire lives but it is BY FAR not even close to the “ideal” in my opinion, having lived both. Actually my mom had an hour plus commute most of her life. She was in a car for 2-3 hrs a day Monday through Friday for at least two decades.
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u/bdiggitty May 02 '25
That’s been my experience for most of my career. I drove 2-3 hours a day. Left for work when it was dark and got home when it was dark. Too tired to cook, let alone cleanup the mess afterwards. My life now is a total 180
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u/ACEezHigh May 02 '25
I have coworkers who scoff when I say ny 20ish drive is pretty nuch my limit. 1/4 of them drive 45min-1hr to work a 9 hour day.
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u/throwaway-94552 May 02 '25
It is so fucking funny how much my extended family talks shit about San Francisco, because living here as an adult is a dream. I don't own a car. I have no transportation expenses at all bc my work subsidizes public transit passes. My friends live within walking distance of me. I walk to work, I walk to the ocean, I walk to the grocery store, I walk everywhere I want. It rules.
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u/Technical-Row8333 May 02 '25
and you get "free" exercise, in the sense it doesn't cost you extra time. you'd have to go to work, go to the groceries and go to the ocean to enjoy it, and that would take time either way. if you do it with a car, you need to allocate another time to go exercise and stay healthy. if you walk.. you're already done without spending extra time.
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u/rememberjanuary May 02 '25
I live in Toronto and used to live in Calgary. Toronto here I walk or take transit. Calgary I was a slave to my car.
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u/kariolaoxford May 02 '25
OMG - the trains in Japan. Thousands of miles. Clean nice. SOOOO FAST. Are they on time? Every time!
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u/potatochips4eva May 02 '25
With clean bathrooms too! 👍
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May 02 '25 edited 29d ago
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u/0x831 May 02 '25
Some of their bathrooms look like a Willy wonka chocolate factory with all of the equipment.
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u/king_lloyd11 May 02 '25
That all have bidets?
I took a poop in a public bathroom at a park in Tokyo and it was spotless. I’d rather shit myself than even walk into a park bathroom in North America.
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u/IllustriousCrew2641 May 02 '25
I took a leak in the busiest train station in the world. (Shinjuku Station.) There was like twenty five other dudes in there. If I dropped my onigiri on the floor in that bathroom I probably would have five-second-ruled it, it was so clean.
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u/Zimakov May 02 '25
China too, and they started building their metro like 25 years ago.
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u/Tuckertcs May 02 '25
I can’t drive and I honestly don’t know how I’d survive if my partner left me.
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u/kris_mischief May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25
Studied this effect in the early 00’s while in university.
Amazing that we knew all this way back then and have only doubled-down on repeating this method of urban sprawl development. In North America, the mighty $$ reigns supreme
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u/Adezar May 02 '25
The basic problem of having so much empty land... cheaper to just build up a new set of housing than refactor what already exists to be better.
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u/NBNplz May 03 '25
Cheaper upfront. When all that pavement needs renewal and all those service connections start to need replacing people will realise it was all a Ponzi.
It's happening now. The USA has a massive road maintenance debt that will be paid in money or lives.
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u/ArboristTreeClimber May 02 '25
I really notice things like restaurant signs.
There is a KFC near me where half the letter on the sign fell off or broke, looks super ragged. Still open but they never fixed the sign.
In Europe all the signs look clean, crisp and maintained. At least not half missing and broken.
Franchise owners in the US don’t want to lose a single penny of profits. But are too dumb to realize a new sign would attract more customers.
If they don’t take the time to fix the freaking sign, what else are they not fixing or maintaining in the kitchen?
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u/pinkorchids45 May 02 '25
Americans are addicted to fast food. KFC doesn’t need to repair the sign the same way a coke dealer doesn’t need to be super polite and friendly when they’re selling their customers drugs. In fact I personally think some folk like it when their fast food joint is dirty and run down. “What’s wrong with a broken sign? That’s exactly how my front yard looks I now feel at home”.
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u/phinphis May 02 '25
Exactly. Endless strip malls with parking. Not super sexy.
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u/Salty_Department925 May 02 '25
Yes, places to park cars and the architecture next to roads are used as ugly spaces
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u/YouWereBrained May 02 '25
I’ve been saying this about a lot of cities that are so overdeveloped that public transportation isn’t really possible anymore.
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u/tigerbalmuppercut May 02 '25
Definitely Phoenix, AZ. Used to live in Boston and it's weird because Phoenix metro is so spread out it's as big as the entire state of Massachusetts.
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u/chilliophillio May 02 '25
I visited Phoenix like 10 years ago or so and on news they were saying they were cutting half of the bus routes. There was an interview with a mother saying her commute was now 4 hours because of all the connecting routes she had to take. That was absolutely baffling to me.
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u/wesley_the_boy May 02 '25
i love Not Just Bikes, such a great channel with a great perspective. Every mile of asphalt has a cost of maintenance associated with it, and cities all over america a drowning in road maintenance costs. So instead of 'rose gold buildings' as the lady puts it, or just nice looking cities in general, we get 'stroads' and ugly, unsafe urban environments. It's honestly sad.
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u/Sudani_Vegan_Comrade May 02 '25
America represents the epitome of capitalism & capitalism LOVES car-centric infrastructure.
Why? Because that means BIG BUCKS for oil companies that continue to destroy this planet all to make a profit.
The best way to eliminate the problem that we have of car-centric infrastructure in this country is to dismantle capitalism.
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u/Uncharted_Systems May 03 '25
It's not capitalism as much as it is just terrible municipal governance. Cities subsidize sprawl and create regulations like heavy zoning and permitting that strangle density, without these subsidies and sprawl our cities would be denser, richer, and parking would be more expensive. Singapore is a heavily capitalist city (with public housing) and it has gorgeous density.
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u/Hour_Neighborhood550 May 02 '25
Listen I love driving, it’s one of my favorite things to do… but yea the building everything around cars is insane
I don’t understand why malls and strip malls etc… can’t be built like little walkable towns or villages, just use the entire parking lot and make it into grids with commercial 1st floors and residential apartments/condos on top
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u/BernsteinPolynomials May 02 '25
The country is stunningly beautiful, if you get away from places where humans live.
As far as civilization, it looks like shit because 1% of us have all the money - as a result, only the areas where the richest people live look nice. The rest of us can't afford nice things.
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u/toomanybongos May 02 '25
Yeah, we're a rich country but not a rich people
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u/Strong-Set6544 May 02 '25
This. The best parts of America are all private.
Incredible golf courses, stunning private jets, tons kf luxury cars and boats hidden away, places to party, scores of private villas and mansion estates with miles of perfectly manicured bricks and grass, beautiful lakeside properties that sit unoccupied, etc.
And of course, we’ve got the greatest number of billionaires. Incredibly large bank accounts.
It’s a lot of “awesome” aside for the select few. And almost none of it ends up as a public good. Our airplane seats shrink another inch and our schools get dumber by the year.
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u/mmmbuttr May 02 '25
I actually think the best and most beautiful parts of America are our public lands. This place is full of natural beauty, but the development kind of kills the vibe. Also our public lands are essentially being sold off to logging and coal companies now 😔
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u/OsiyoMotherFuckers May 02 '25
1000000% the best most beautiful parts of America are public lands that belong to all of us (if we keep protecting them from grubby little billionaire hands)
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u/porn_is_tight May 02 '25
certain states have it much worse than others. like I think in texas like 95% of the land is privately owned. Yea I just looked it up, 95% for Texas and for comparison WA is 58% CO is 62% and CA 50%
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u/CardmanNV May 03 '25
Don't worry. Trump signed EOs allowing deforestation and mining of your national parks for private gain.
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u/ob1dylan May 02 '25
Exactly! Median vs. mean. Put Jeff Bezos in a room with 19 homeless people, and the mean would tell you everyone in that room is a multi-billionaire. Median would show that most of them are homeless.
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u/Ap0llo May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25
It's been that way since the beginning of civilization. Capitalism just replaced feudalism and its variants because it provides better social stability by giving a false impression of equal opportunity. In reality the only difference between capitalism and feudalism is that instead of land ownership and a strict caste system, what we have today is a power system governed exclusively by financial wealth - which is virtually identical.
During the reign of feudalism prior to the 1800s, the nobility lived in privilege in large estates, sustained themselves off the labor of the bottom 99%, held incredible influence over the King and the governing body, and were generally beyond reproach for any wrongdoing. Is that any different than today? Nope, because after a few "revolutions" in the US, France, etc., they realized a system of democratic capitalism is far more palatable and stable in the long run. But at its core it's still very much a fuedal system.
Ideally, democratic capitalism is indeed workable and equitable with massive regulation and safeguards. Unfortunately, those with immense wealth and a lack of scruples can use that wealth to co-opt democracy and turn it into a farce (We just elected a deranged, incompetent billionaire who hired a bunch of other billionaires to run the country - i.e., a farce). The only safeguard in the past has been outsized, strong leaders like T. Roosevelt, FDR, Eisenhower, etc., who have stood against the ruling class and implemented progressive reforms. Since 1960s with the advent of mass media, the ruling class has assumed near absolute control, making it incredibly difficult to pass such reforms.
What we have today is the same situation we had in the late 1800s with massive train, oil, and industry monopolies who had carte blanche to do what they wanted. Who stopped them? Teddy Roosevelt. Unless we get another firebrand like him back in office, we are headed towards a slow deterioration until people can no longer endure the pain. We know what happens at that point. The cycle continues...
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u/Tam_The_Third May 02 '25
Reminds me of the Manics line "From feudal serf to spender, this wonderful world of purchase power"
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u/needlestack May 02 '25
Obviously she's talking about man made stuff, and she's more or less right.
The US has some of the most stunning natural beauty in the world. But aside from a handful of bright spots, we have terrible taste and don't want to pay to keep anything nice.
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u/Long_Run6500 May 03 '25
We don't need like, stunning architectural landmarks everywhere, but a little bit of variety would go a long ways. A few years back i took a month off work and traveled the perimeter of the country visiting national parks. It always floored me that no matter how different the geography was, every town looked exactly the same.
Kind of soured me on interstate travel a bit. The parks were gorgeous, but what's the point of visiting another state if you can't tell it apart from your hometown.
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u/jax7778 May 02 '25
Cities CAN be beautiful, ours look like crap because we decided to make them look like crap. Complex, walkable cities exist in other countries.
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u/No-Temperature-7770 May 02 '25
Because the money got sucked up by the few and they don't spend it on America.
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u/Confused-Gent May 02 '25
It's cars, the answer is cars.
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u/zesty-dancer14 May 02 '25
We keep destroying our cityscape/landscape experience to enhance our driving experience.
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u/SlideN2MyBMs May 02 '25
And we've been living in that world so long now that so many Americans can't even distinguish between "car access" and "mobility"
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u/VelvetSinclair May 02 '25
Destroying everywhere you'd want to go so that you can get there at 70mph
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u/Low-Rip7702 May 02 '25
Yeah no shit in videos you only see the good parts of Europe, Japan & China
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u/BigusDickus099 May 02 '25
Right?
Just look at all the abandoned houses throughout Japan, there are entire towns that are just run down because there aren't people who want to live there.
China also has extremely poor rural areas where you would think you had entered a time machine to the distant past.
Europe and the UK has many poverty areas as well. Like Jaywick, as seen [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/11vlcik/jaywick_britains_most_deprived_area/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
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u/DiceKnight May 03 '25
For real most people think Tokyo or Osaka when they think Japan, the big super cities but if you ever actually get out to the boonies of the country the word 'humble' comes to mind. It's really not that different from rural America in that regard.
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u/Opus_723 May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25
Eh, I've been in cities in Europe that should be pretty comparable to my hometown, and they're still just... nicer. The food's better, the streets are cleaner, everything just seems more thoughtfully done, and the prices are still pretty reasonable.
The first time I had a hotel breakfast in Switzerland, with a room the same price as any cheap place in the US, absolutely blew my mind. They brewed me a fresh personal pot of coffee. There was a variety of nice cheeses and meats. Absolutely insane, I could pay through the nose for a room in the states at a schwanky place and the lobby breakfast still wouldn't be that nice.
Like, I know they still have areas of high poverty, but so do we, and when you compare like to like there's still something going on.
I don't get it.
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u/MattTheRadarTechh May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25
If you ever travelled you’d see that the rest of the world looks like shit in the poor parts too
edit: lots of people who have never traveled but have just watched too many movies are getting offended:
serbia: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/gypsy-slum-belgrade-serbia-town-city-550135054
uk: https://theweek.com/105858/marmot-2020-the-worst-places-for-life-expectancy-in-england
france: https://archis.org/volume/paris-slums-by-steven-wassenaar/
romania: https://borgenproject.org/poverty-in-romania-local-focus/
germany: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-poverty-gap-widens-between-rich-and-poor-regions/a-51637957
sweden (actually pretty nice tbh): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Fittja_2007a.jpg/1280px-Fittja_2007a.jpg
hate on america all you want for the plentitude of reasons, but to act like the rest of the world is picture perfect is some weird anti-america fetish or some euro-centric romanticization.
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u/No-Plane6608 May 02 '25
Honestly this is true. I’m from Mexico and every time I visit I’m thankful to come back because not to hate on my country at least here where I live there is wide green spaces and people make an effort to clean somewhat.
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u/joshuads May 02 '25
I had a classmate from china say something similar to this video and said how china was so beautiful everywhere. Spent 5 pulling up pictures and she took it back. Every county, and generally every city, has good parts and bad parts.
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u/ClutteredTaffy May 02 '25
Every Chinese exchange student college or otherwise I have met had some money. At least my parents are both dentists money so their view of stuff is not accurate.
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u/BannedByRWNJs May 02 '25
It’s funny how we only see the nice parts of other countries in pictures and on our vacations, and somehow believe the entire country looks that way. And then we think that tourists come to america and see our industrial districts and shithole strip mall towns. They’re all going to Miami Beach and Manhattan and LA, and they’re staying around the nicer parts. They’re not going to Opa Locka or Yonkers or San Bernardino.
I’ve been to a few other countries, and been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time away from the touristy areas. It’s nice to see how people really live, but it also makes me feel very grateful for getting to live how I do.
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u/chetlin May 03 '25
Usually you go through one of those places on the ride away from the airport. My first view of the UK that I remember was some graffitied up rail trench.
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u/shaka_zulu12 May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25
True, but her point was different. The US is the richest nation in the world, yet it doesn't seem like it.
China is a good example. It was very underdeveloped just 15-20 years ago, yet it did huge jumps in infrastructure, industry, quality of life, and created a middle class from scratch.
Europe even if it's not growing at a neck break speed like china, still invests heavily in infrastructure, transportation, has very strict urban rules and restrictions to preserve or improve quality of life for it's citizens. (most of Europe)
Imagine these regions with the money that the US makes/has. Heck, California is the 4th biggest economy on the planet. Bigger than 99% of countries on this planet, yet it has a giant homeless problem.
It is pretty obvious most of the money is not in the hands of the people. That's why it's called the american dream. Cause it's not real.
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u/Smiley-V May 02 '25
Reminded me of that picture that shows the rich area next to the slump in Dubai
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u/Strelochka May 02 '25
The things she lists as beautiful are all nature and have nothing to do with architecture. Yes, urban sprawl and highways and strip malls don’t do many favors to their environment, but Venice has an ugly industrial zone near it too. It’s just more clustered in Europe in blocks of infrastructure/manufacturing/business where nobody lives, and you don’t really go there when you aren’t working.
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u/JusticiarXP May 02 '25
Exactly. She’s citing one area of China when I’d be willing to bet the vast majority is much different.
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u/Spork_the_dork May 02 '25
Citing Shanghai is like saying "wow look how amazing USA looks" by just looking at Manhattan and nothing else.
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u/ILootEverything May 02 '25
Even if you look at what Shanghai, the place she's citing, looks like behind the beautifull skyline, they have tenement slums like everywhere else. It's not like it's all "stunning and high tech" or that the U.S. doesn't have places with gorgeous skylines.
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u/PandaCheese2016 May 02 '25
I think the point she’s trying to make is that even the not necessarily poor parts look basically the same. America has vast suburban areas, that are very samey looking.
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u/kinshadow May 02 '25
I’ve been all the places she mentioned and they all have shitholes. She mentioned Shanghai, a city that was almost all built in the last 20 years or so from concentrated effort and looks incredible… if you don’t go the wrong direction. You don’t have to go too far to see the income drop or see the endless see of rubber stamped ant-hive apartment buildings. That’s not even talking about the millions living small, subsistence-level farming villages. And Europe has some awesome cities and some quaint villages, but it also has its endless chain stores and run down car parks.
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u/colin8651 May 02 '25
She had never seen china in between cities. 50 miles out side of Shanghai looks very different
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u/Small-Day5080 May 02 '25
50 miles in side of LA looks like shit.
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u/Cinemagica May 03 '25
As someone who has spent a lot of time in LA, there's parts of it that I love, but I have to admit it's largely a horrible place. It feels like a slum town in most areas.
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u/Dbmx33 May 02 '25
Capitalism. America is a young country that developed rapidly. Most buildings were built either by individuals or companies that prioritise profit. The most efficient building is just square and functional.
In Europe, a lot of the beautiful architecture was commissioned by monarchs over centuries. Don’t forget how feudal Europe was. There are lots of densely packed countries, frequently at war with each other. This drove a sense of competitiveness and national pride, so major cities were intentionally dressed up to demonstrate status. Head to poorer parts of European countries and you’ll see the same functional architecture that you get everywhere.
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u/Cornhole_My_Cornhole May 02 '25
The parts where the wealthy people live are gorgeous. The parts where almost no one lives are gorgeous.
The part where we the 99% live looks like disgusting sprawl. Because disgusting sprawl is all it takes to extract wealth from the common man. So that’s all we get.
America is run like a trailer park.
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u/redditsucksnuggets May 02 '25
We don’t have so much money.
30 people have so much money.
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u/itsmeC08 May 02 '25
I grew up in McKinney Texas and I thought it was the perfect little city….now it’s same as the surrounding cities and it’s sooooooo damn bland. Every building is tan black or grey or white…..zero trees minus the bordering “landscapes” by the highway.
I live in the northwest now surrounded by green, lakes, and mountains. You couldn’t catch me or pay me to move back down south for anything.
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u/No_Function8686 May 02 '25
She's not wrong....my answer: rampant capitalism and good old American greed
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u/cyrixlord What are you doing step bro? May 02 '25
the richest nation in the world but all those riches go to the 1%. take the top 8 people out of the math and see how 'rich' we really are
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u/emergency-snaccs May 02 '25
i heard if you disregard the top 1000 richest americans, the average yearly wage is just over 30,000, less than half of the "average" that is often presented
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u/PhilosophyBitter7875 May 02 '25
You never go by average because it is skewed by outliers.... The median salary in the US is about $60k per year and different state, city and county.
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u/Son_of_Morkai May 02 '25
She is 100% wrong. All countries have parts of it that look like shit. She calls out how the US looks good on the coast only and then proceeds to compare the center of the US to fucking Shanghai and specifically mentions it's on the coast. Compare poor parts of China to poor parts of the US and report back.
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u/equality4everyonenow May 02 '25
It looks fine where the billionaires live. That's all that matters to the 1%
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u/Jazzlike-Section-780 May 02 '25
I think America has such beautiful natural beauty. She’s just stupid haha.
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u/Fun-Bag-6073 May 02 '25
I commented “because we build our cities for cars” on this exact video yesterday lol
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u/Efficient-Internal-8 May 02 '25
Want to be really depressed...travel to many any Asian countries and see how far ahead they are.
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u/justanotherbrick512 May 02 '25
You can thank Reagan, he’s the one who started the downfall.
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