If only communism could function under voluntarism.

Take China for example. A middle class person in China today lives like an upper class person compared to the 1700s. A poor person on average anywhere is doing way better than ever before..

Has there actually been a better century in terms of comfort and stability for most people

Odd to me that you equate productivity with the value of a person.

The reasons for farm subsidies are.. Debatable. If you keep food cheap people don't notice currency debasement as much. Personally I think it might make more sense for prices to rise to a point where farmers are profitable without subsidies. Those subsidies are value extracted from the tax payer anyway.. You're paying for it.

You're right too in that buses and trains are a lot cheaper and should always out compete cars. How much do you think fares would have to rise to make public transport self sufficient ? Make it so it funds its own expansion and service improvement.

The Toronto Transport Commission is my local example. From what I can napkin math they get about 1 billion dollars in subsidies per year from the city (maybe some provincial and fed money too.. I rounded up generously). They collect a little over 700k fares a day. Wouldn't take much of an increase with like almost 250 million fares a year to close that gap.

Privatize the roads and have cars users pay their share of that infrastructure cost and get the burden off of working people and I bet a small share increase would be pretty affordable.

If you rented or bought a house close to a grocery store you'd mostly be able to do it. European cities were built when horse and carriage were still the best option. I think if city centres were designed to be car free and have everything organised to be walkable that'd be great for people who want that.. There are certainly a lot of situations where someone needs to have a car .. Here and in Europe.

A world where roads and public transit are all operated as for profit ventures without any tax ? Man now you're talking .. I'd love that

Yeah the US is a really poor example of a free market.. I don't think one exists for health care.

Some people are just better in terms of being productive. I don't see how that's debatable. The question is just if you let those people keep they're outsized earnings or you forcibly redistribute them.

Me too

Yeah I just- put that in another comment. Made a funny crack about privatising roads to incorporate the true cost of infrastructure with tolls lol. Might incentivize more people to use transit.