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http://www.euronews.com/2018/05/21/free-public-transport-across-estonia
Estonia is set to implement free transport for its residents across much of the country as of July 1. The free fare zone will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Estonia is already a world leader in free public transit: In 2013, all public transit in its capital, Tallinn, became free to local residents (but not tourists or other visitors, even those from other parts of the country). The new national free-ride scheme will extend this model even further, making all state-run bus travel in rural municipalities free and extending cost-free transit out from the capital into other regions.
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Free Public Transport is Launched Across Estonia
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:04PM (17 children)
Not to mention secondary costs due to increased criminal mobility.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:13PM (9 children)
I really doubt the Estonian criminals need to use public transportation to be mobile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:22PM (8 children)
Then you've never seen the pickpockets in Tallinn.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:41PM (7 children)
No, indeed, I haven't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday May 24 2018, @01:15PM (6 children)
That's the problem with pickapockets, no? You don't see 'em.
You get to dinner and suddenly discover you can't pay for your dinner!
Then comes the nightmare of replacing all those cards and other documents governments and businesses require you to keep handy.
( I question highly why I am still required to carry a driver license or auto registration. Any patrolman pulling me over has instant radio access to that same information, and my DMV photo. All I am doing by having that info on me is making it available to the pickapockets. I don't mind losing the store loyalty cards so much... all the info they have on me is bogus anyway. )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:09PM (4 children)
Bingo.
However, it's not that hard to avoid being pickpocketed. Just make it too hard/risky for them to reach your valuables - e.g. put your wallet in the pocket of tightly fit jeans or in a small purse lined with a thin metallic mesh hung by your neck under your shirt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:26PM (1 child)
Keep an enraged mutant ferret in your trousers at all times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @03:19PM
Had one when younger; it sorta died though, now it's useful only for excretion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @04:36AM (1 child)
College GF picked my wallet out of my back pocket one day while we were walking down a hall. Ever since then I've kept my wallet in a front pocket. Side advantage, I'm not sitting on that fat lump.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 25 2018, @04:46AM
It's not a side advantage, it's actually two advantages, front and back:
- the back advantage - no longer sitting on a fat lump
- the front advantage - next time your GF slips her hand in the front pocket, at least you'll get this advantage in exchange for you wallet
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @03:05PM
I question anyone who demands a license.
When I had the gas connected for this place I rang the company to start the account. They wanted name address dob drivers license. . So I said "what? I have to get a drivers license to connect the gas so I can have hit water?" After some stuffing around she created my account without it.
Since then I have learned that they collect the info to do a background check because the see having a energy account as bring a type of finance. Fuck em.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:27PM (6 children)
Check out the demographics of Estonia on wikipedia, its like 99.8% white and the remaining 0.2% is Jewish so its crime rate isn't going to be like Venezuela or Baltimore. The murder rate per 100K population is less than 1/4 of Mexico. They have this weird Russian Mob vs local "trade union" thing going on otherwise the rate would be only slightly above zero. Their police basically don't enforce drug trafficking laws as long as the criminals keep the civilians out of it, which is a weird implementation of decriminalization, so there's roughly zero reported drug crime, but there's plenty of drugs just not an object of enforcement. Unlike the US and more famous organized crime, they have a weird thing going on involving international jewelry theft, its just kinda their thing, and their neighbor countries complain constantly, sometimes hinting at reparations.
Its basically a small country that is like living in the white American burbs... if you're not directly involved in organized crime, there's not much other than drunken/drug problems (especially drunken drivers), family disturbances, drunken family disturbances, and petty crime stuff like shoplifting and pickpocketing and that's about as bad as it gets.
Part of the reason they won't have homeless people riding the bus as a shelter, is they don't have diversity so there goes a large fraction of homeless; the other part is because they don't have diversity they don't have the incredible financial drain of diversity ruining their society, so they can afford social programs such that they don't have non-diverse homeless. If you tried this in the USA or any diverse vibrant country it would be a homeless bum transport service and mobile heroin shooting gallery, but they prefer a different cultural style. Its not going to be like buses in the USA which are basically a minority crime delivery service.
I looked into the place quite a lot back in the "e-citizenship" era earlier this decade, so some of this may be a few years out of date, maybe its better or worse now.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 24 2018, @05:43PM (4 children)
Aaah, the wonders of the Trump Era!
"They have less diversity, so they have less problems. Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:51PM
Well it is a VLM post, that dude should be Grand Dragon Cocksucker by now. Maybe even the KKK is put off by him?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @01:29AM (2 children)
Did you even look in Wikipedia? I don't think so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Estonia [wikipedia.org] Here's what it says: "Today, Estonia is an ethnically fairly diverse country, ranking 97th out of 239 countries and territories in 2001 study by Kok Kheng Yeoh....According to the census of 2000, 109 languages were spoken natively in Estonia. By 2011, the number of languages spoken natively had increased to 157, mainly due to new immigrants."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 25 2018, @11:52AM
Read deeper, their idea of diversity is quaintly euro where the lines being redrawn repeatedly over the last centuries mean there's "true Estonians" vs "Russians" vs various others.
Its like saying Poland was very diverse because they redrew the lines so many times that there's Germans and Poles and Russians but they're all white people who've lived in the same houses (mostly) for centuries; by diversity they don't mean some dude from another culture on the other side of the planet was transplanted there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @03:15PM
http://culture-wars.com/muslim-rapists-gang-rape-torture-17-year-old-girl-set-her-vagina-on-fire/ [culture-wars.com]
You mean the food of muslims?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:45PM
Wait, what?
You say that like one classification has anything to do with the other, or they are somehow mutually exclusive categories.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.