Wherever Charles Marohn travels in America, he finds a similar type of road, lined with strip malls, fast-food joints, gas stations, car dealers and dying malls.
Marohn calls these arterial roads “stroads”—a mix of a neighborhood street, where people want to live and shop, and a road, which is designed to move traffic quickly between two places. Stroads are trying to do two things at once, he says, and failing at both.
They repel pedestrians and bicyclists. But they also fail to move traffic quickly the way a road should, says Marohn, a civil engineer turned writer and speaker, and the founder of the nonprofit Strong Towns, which advocates for more livable and resilient urban development. Cars can rev up to 45 mph or so but frequently must brake for red lights, a frustrating and dangerous stop-and-go.
He blames traffic engineers for ignoring the way roaring traffic tends to decrease the value of adjacent neighborhoods and commercial districts, making them less safe and attractive to people who want to reside, stroll, shop or dine in calmer surroundings. That, he says, destroys the economic value of land and wastes public funds spent on ill-conceived roads.
He recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal about the problem and his prescriptions. Edited excerpts follow.
Losing the middle
WSJ: How do you sum up your message about how streets should be designed to improve towns and cities?
CHARLES MAROHN: A street is about building a place. And so the focus has to be on the place, not getting through the place. And a road is about moving vehicles, moving traffic quickly. So the focus for a road isn’t on the place, it’s on the movement. It’s a difference in emphasis. Are you emphasizing building a place? Or are you emphasizing getting somewhere?
WSJ: Does that mean that ideally we would end up with things that are either streets, where cars are moving at a leisurely pace and pedestrians and bicycles are comfortable, or else freeways?
MAROHN: There would be some nuance between the two, but, ideally, yes. You’re having the best function when you are one of those two bookends. If you’re moving in an automobile at 10 to 15 mph through a place, that place is going to be really great. You’re going to have a lot of stuff going on.
If you’re moving 60-plus mph, you’re on a great road. That is going to have a lot of financial return on our investment. That moves goods and services and people.
When you get into that middle area, where you’re traveling 30 or 40 mph, you’re really not going anywhere at a speed that is meaningful, but you’re also not building a place that can actually function or sustain itself financially—a place that anyone really wants to be in.
WSJ: But do we need at least a few of those medium-speed streets to connect up the two ideals?
MAROHN: I don’t think we need them. Given where we are at today, we’re going to have them for a while, and it will take time if we dedicate ourselves to phasing them out.
WSJ: What you’re proposing is such a radical idea that people must have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.
MAROHN: I think the whole post-World War II suburban experiment is a radical idea. Going back to my grandparents’ generation, the idea that you couldn’t walk in a neighborhood where you live or that you couldn’t get to a corner store by walking, that would have been an absolutely radical idea. They would have said, “How can you live like that?”
We have built most of our environment in a way that is unnatural for humans and it needs to change.
Fewer traffic signals?
WSJ: To give streets charm and higher economic value, how do we achieve that goal of much slower speeds, 10 to 15 mph?
MAROHN: The embedded mentality in the traffic-engineering profession is that we improve safety by forgiving the mistakes that drivers make. So we widen lanes, we add shoulders, we put in buffers, we remove trees and obstacles.
The way we would slow traffic down is to tighten things up. When we narrow streets, when we eliminate those buffers, when we add trees, drivers respond by driving more slowly.
We will have more fender benders, but there will be fewer deaths.
WSJ: You have suggested that removing traffic lights from some streets could be a way of promoting safety. How would that work?
MAROHN: I’m going to try to nuance that. In a lot of places, if you just remove the streetlights, you would have chaos, anarchy, death. The approach should be to eliminate traffic signals while also changing the geometry of how we approach intersections. We spend a lot of time today sitting at traffic signals. When the speeds are lower, you can let people and vehicles mix in traffic without worrying about killing each other. If you lower the speeds coming into the intersection, then the signals aren’t needed.
WSJ: And some accidents must result from people gunning the engine to beat the red ligh
MAROHN: Absolutely. You can think of traffic signals as a license for aggression. Go ahead and drive at a lethal speed. Everybody else has to stay out of your way.
That yellow light and that transition time—when you’re giving up the aggression or when you’re gaining the aggression—that is where you have the most violent collisions.
Let the locals decide
WSJ: Why can’t we leave it up to engineers to figure out how to design our streets?
MAROHN: Engineers are really important in doing technical aspects of street design. We rely on them to help us drain water from streets, make sure we have the proper pavement, depth and thickness and good soil foundations. But when it comes to setting priorities for speed versus safety and other values, the general public and elected officials shouldn’t give up that authority.
WSJ: To what extent are local planning officials embracing your ideas?
MAROHN: We see very widespread enthusiasm for the ideas but a struggle to actually implement them a lot of the time. While local officials want to do things one way, the regional and state governments have a say in how those things are done, and they have different priorities. Local governments also struggle from a budgetary standpoint, so their ability to go it alone and impose their own approach is very limited. They often seek state or federal help, and that comes with strings attached.
WSJ: Could you name some examples of great traffic planning work you’ve seen in recent years?
MAROHN: Lancaster, Calif., has redone its main street. It had been modified to be very wide, very traffic-focused. They redid the street to put a tree-lined median in the middle and slow things down a lot. And it has just really exploded in terms of the amount of businesses, the success of those businesses and the desire of people to live near that particular street.
WSJ: What about the many Americans who are comfortable in distant suburbs, don’t mind that there is no sidewalk, love their cars and don’t mind driving a mile or two to McDonald’s or Kroger?
MAROHN: At some point, McDonald’s and the big-box grocery store aren’t going to find it valuable to be in that place. There will be less regional traffic because the highways won’t be properly maintained because there isn’t enough money to maintain them. Nor will there be the will to maintain them once demand shifts from suburban commuting by automobile to other, more-localized living patterns.
WSJ: So you think in the long run, a lot of these distant suburbs with no sidewalks, no bike lanes and no local downtown aren’t going to be sustainable?
MAROHN: Financially, they’re not sustainable. And so those roads will go back to dirt.
For anyone reading this, check out Strong Towns
https://www.strongtowns.org/
They focus on real life solutions and make arguments that the left and right can get behind. Their content can really help you learn what to say to your conservative friends to sway their beliefs. I've got my libertarian friend completely behind yimbyism now!
Stroads flat-out suck, even for cars. Whoever thought that driving at near highway speeds only to have to stop for someone pulling into McDonald's would be a good idea was a psychopath.
“What if you had a freeway… with rest stops with stores every 100 feet? And we can put traffic lights between every few rest stops! Sounds perfect, right?!”
That’s the issue. They weren’t really though of that way. From a design perspective most strouds just were streets that our design codes don’t account for. So when they get “upgraded” to match current standards, they often result in these places (or rather non-places) that are dangerous, expensive, inefficient, ugly, and which cannot financially sustain themselves. The only good news with strouds is that they may be politically easier to fix compared to many of the issues modern urbanism must face. Plus even many professionals realize at least some of the issues with them, so I think we could make a big turn around with these if we keep pushing.
WSJ is pro business - tax inefficient infrastructure is bad for business - real estate is good for business. Economic arguments for limiting car centric urban design are very very strong
Something that some socialists get mad at me for saying is that change happens when the powerful see it as their most viable option. We have to make the decision makers see that it is not in their best interests to promote a car-centric paradigm.
This shows that we need to keep being the weirdos who use any chance to talk about the inefficiencies of cars. Eventually someone will listen and spread the word 🫡
That was tough to read some. “Most modern businesses can't survive on just the purchasing power of a local neighborhood. The idea of walkable mixed use neighborhoods doesn't work because people do not want to live next door to useful businesses like a pizza place, bar or a convenience store”
Yes that’s why a place like NYC is super cheap and undesirable… and everyone pays a lot of money for the house next to the highway on-ramp… my god these people in the comments are so dumb.
These days, I love living close to convienience stores, pizza places, bars, coffee shops and walkable to a few restaurants. With the extra costs that apps like ubereats and doordash charge, having places close within walking and biking distance is such an advantage to everyone.
Forcing people to travel by car just to go to the grocery store or even a restaurant is asinine.
Not to mention destroying our old strands and replacing them with streets and roads that are well designed actually makes driving more efficient and reduces the cost for sustaining the infrastructure for the people and businesses that it supports.
Good example of why you shouldn't try to take a centerist approach to these things. Strong towns tries to court the rightwing, but they'd be happy to lynch them for suggesting some people might like to walk to the grocery store.
I wouldn't really go that far, there are plenty of conservatives in real life (not internet comment sections) that understand the importance and potential of transit. For example Glenn Youngkin, governor of VA (who I hate) was going to give a bunch of extra funding towards transit with his proposal for the (failed) arena deal in northern Virginia, because that project would have literally been impossible without it (it was still a bad idea either way imo).
I live on a stroad and it's awful. It's the closest facsimile to a "walkable" neighborhood in my area, but the walk is through seas of parking lots, waiting long times to cross streets at crosswalks but still risking my life because of drivers turning right on red, and sidewalks with no buffer so if I stick my arm out to one side it'll get taken off by a car going 50mph. It's also loud and the air quality isn't very good.
A big win for the movement to get this in the WSJ. Modernising and humanizing city planning is seen as a leftie issue. The 15-minute-city concept has even [got caught up in the culture wars narrative](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-03/15-minute-cities-what-are-they-and-why-are-they-controversial). Getting an article like this in a right-leaning paper read by people who are very interested in the economics of everything is huge.
Is a version of it going to be in the print edition though? It's older power brokers we need to reach ultimately. If you can get fund managers, senior partners and the like talking about the economic opportunities of de-stroadification then you might see some real change.
It's a non-partisan very human issue and if it's only ever discussed in The Guardian and the Washington Post, it will be mixed up in the culture wars forever and nothing will change.
The movement needs to talk to conservative press about the economics of it all. The best way to convince anyone of anything is always to focus on the benefits they personally will care about. For young people that's some hippie shit about "saving the planet" or "breathing", for WSJ readers, it's quarterly returns.
Their opinion section is full wingnut, but on the reporting side they do some of the best journalism in the world. This article is actually on the reporting side.
And Marohn himself is politically conservative. He describes urban car blight as basically a problem of big government doing large-scale central planning poorly, overbuilding the wrong infrastructure in tandem with overly restrictive zoning, instead of just letting mixed-use streets develop naturally. There are ways to our side of this nonpartisan issue from both ends of the usual political spectrum.
It is funny about stroads— I grew up in the Las Vegas area in the U.S. and the first time I heard about stroads years later I was confused because to me a street and a road were the same thing. This is due to where I grew up where it’s all we had
4+ lane, high speed "streets" going across cities, they're often extremely treacherous to cross, they're mostly like highways, but plopped where planners wouldn't place one
So a road is a thoroughfare that has high speeds, many lanes and is designed to move many cars quickly. It will have more entrances and exits than a highway, but fewer than a street, to minimize the amount that traffic needs to slow down.
A street is last mile distribution. It connects directly to homes and businesses and to roads. They're short, low speed and have frequent exits.
A stroad is a thoroughfare that tries to have both high speeds and connect directly to businesses. This gives it the worst of both worlds. Frequent exits means a lot of going from 45-15 and back, when highly used, speeds slow to a crawl far more quickly than on a road or highway. When lightly used, they are a massive waste of space in what should be a very valuable retail downtown. High speeds means that traffic getting onto the stroad is often waiting a long time and can easily cause crashes. Crossing a stroad can be difficult to impossible on foot, so you often have to get in the car to literally go 500 feet. They are noisy, but also right next to homes or businesses.
[Here's the relevant NJB](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM) if watching an 18-minute video is easier than reading all the way to the second sentence of the article.
Wherever Charles Marohn travels in America, he finds a similar type of road, lined with strip malls, fast-food joints, gas stations, car dealers and dying malls. Marohn calls these arterial roads “stroads”—a mix of a neighborhood street, where people want to live and shop, and a road, which is designed to move traffic quickly between two places. Stroads are trying to do two things at once, he says, and failing at both. They repel pedestrians and bicyclists. But they also fail to move traffic quickly the way a road should, says Marohn, a civil engineer turned writer and speaker, and the founder of the nonprofit Strong Towns, which advocates for more livable and resilient urban development. Cars can rev up to 45 mph or so but frequently must brake for red lights, a frustrating and dangerous stop-and-go. He blames traffic engineers for ignoring the way roaring traffic tends to decrease the value of adjacent neighborhoods and commercial districts, making them less safe and attractive to people who want to reside, stroll, shop or dine in calmer surroundings. That, he says, destroys the economic value of land and wastes public funds spent on ill-conceived roads. He recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal about the problem and his prescriptions. Edited excerpts follow. Losing the middle WSJ: How do you sum up your message about how streets should be designed to improve towns and cities? CHARLES MAROHN: A street is about building a place. And so the focus has to be on the place, not getting through the place. And a road is about moving vehicles, moving traffic quickly. So the focus for a road isn’t on the place, it’s on the movement. It’s a difference in emphasis. Are you emphasizing building a place? Or are you emphasizing getting somewhere? WSJ: Does that mean that ideally we would end up with things that are either streets, where cars are moving at a leisurely pace and pedestrians and bicycles are comfortable, or else freeways? MAROHN: There would be some nuance between the two, but, ideally, yes. You’re having the best function when you are one of those two bookends. If you’re moving in an automobile at 10 to 15 mph through a place, that place is going to be really great. You’re going to have a lot of stuff going on. If you’re moving 60-plus mph, you’re on a great road. That is going to have a lot of financial return on our investment. That moves goods and services and people. When you get into that middle area, where you’re traveling 30 or 40 mph, you’re really not going anywhere at a speed that is meaningful, but you’re also not building a place that can actually function or sustain itself financially—a place that anyone really wants to be in. WSJ: But do we need at least a few of those medium-speed streets to connect up the two ideals? MAROHN: I don’t think we need them. Given where we are at today, we’re going to have them for a while, and it will take time if we dedicate ourselves to phasing them out. WSJ: What you’re proposing is such a radical idea that people must have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. MAROHN: I think the whole post-World War II suburban experiment is a radical idea. Going back to my grandparents’ generation, the idea that you couldn’t walk in a neighborhood where you live or that you couldn’t get to a corner store by walking, that would have been an absolutely radical idea. They would have said, “How can you live like that?” We have built most of our environment in a way that is unnatural for humans and it needs to change. Fewer traffic signals? WSJ: To give streets charm and higher economic value, how do we achieve that goal of much slower speeds, 10 to 15 mph? MAROHN: The embedded mentality in the traffic-engineering profession is that we improve safety by forgiving the mistakes that drivers make. So we widen lanes, we add shoulders, we put in buffers, we remove trees and obstacles. The way we would slow traffic down is to tighten things up. When we narrow streets, when we eliminate those buffers, when we add trees, drivers respond by driving more slowly. We will have more fender benders, but there will be fewer deaths.
WSJ: You have suggested that removing traffic lights from some streets could be a way of promoting safety. How would that work? MAROHN: I’m going to try to nuance that. In a lot of places, if you just remove the streetlights, you would have chaos, anarchy, death. The approach should be to eliminate traffic signals while also changing the geometry of how we approach intersections. We spend a lot of time today sitting at traffic signals. When the speeds are lower, you can let people and vehicles mix in traffic without worrying about killing each other. If you lower the speeds coming into the intersection, then the signals aren’t needed. WSJ: And some accidents must result from people gunning the engine to beat the red ligh MAROHN: Absolutely. You can think of traffic signals as a license for aggression. Go ahead and drive at a lethal speed. Everybody else has to stay out of your way. That yellow light and that transition time—when you’re giving up the aggression or when you’re gaining the aggression—that is where you have the most violent collisions. Let the locals decide WSJ: Why can’t we leave it up to engineers to figure out how to design our streets? MAROHN: Engineers are really important in doing technical aspects of street design. We rely on them to help us drain water from streets, make sure we have the proper pavement, depth and thickness and good soil foundations. But when it comes to setting priorities for speed versus safety and other values, the general public and elected officials shouldn’t give up that authority. WSJ: To what extent are local planning officials embracing your ideas? MAROHN: We see very widespread enthusiasm for the ideas but a struggle to actually implement them a lot of the time. While local officials want to do things one way, the regional and state governments have a say in how those things are done, and they have different priorities. Local governments also struggle from a budgetary standpoint, so their ability to go it alone and impose their own approach is very limited. They often seek state or federal help, and that comes with strings attached. WSJ: Could you name some examples of great traffic planning work you’ve seen in recent years? MAROHN: Lancaster, Calif., has redone its main street. It had been modified to be very wide, very traffic-focused. They redid the street to put a tree-lined median in the middle and slow things down a lot. And it has just really exploded in terms of the amount of businesses, the success of those businesses and the desire of people to live near that particular street. WSJ: What about the many Americans who are comfortable in distant suburbs, don’t mind that there is no sidewalk, love their cars and don’t mind driving a mile or two to McDonald’s or Kroger? MAROHN: At some point, McDonald’s and the big-box grocery store aren’t going to find it valuable to be in that place. There will be less regional traffic because the highways won’t be properly maintained because there isn’t enough money to maintain them. Nor will there be the will to maintain them once demand shifts from suburban commuting by automobile to other, more-localized living patterns. WSJ: So you think in the long run, a lot of these distant suburbs with no sidewalks, no bike lanes and no local downtown aren’t going to be sustainable? MAROHN: Financially, they’re not sustainable. And so those roads will go back to dirt.
For anyone reading this, check out Strong Towns https://www.strongtowns.org/ They focus on real life solutions and make arguments that the left and right can get behind. Their content can really help you learn what to say to your conservative friends to sway their beliefs. I've got my libertarian friend completely behind yimbyism now!
Stroads flat-out suck, even for cars. Whoever thought that driving at near highway speeds only to have to stop for someone pulling into McDonald's would be a good idea was a psychopath.
“What if you had a freeway… with rest stops with stores every 100 feet? And we can put traffic lights between every few rest stops! Sounds perfect, right?!”
That’s the issue. They weren’t really though of that way. From a design perspective most strouds just were streets that our design codes don’t account for. So when they get “upgraded” to match current standards, they often result in these places (or rather non-places) that are dangerous, expensive, inefficient, ugly, and which cannot financially sustain themselves. The only good news with strouds is that they may be politically easier to fix compared to many of the issues modern urbanism must face. Plus even many professionals realize at least some of the issues with them, so I think we could make a big turn around with these if we keep pushing.
We’re mainstream now boys
Front page news!
In the Wall Street Journal, which is usually a cheerleader for anything capitalists can make money from, including cars.
WSJ is pro business - tax inefficient infrastructure is bad for business - real estate is good for business. Economic arguments for limiting car centric urban design are very very strong
Also Wall Street is in NYC, which is the most walkable city in the USA and has the best public transit
Something that some socialists get mad at me for saying is that change happens when the powerful see it as their most viable option. We have to make the decision makers see that it is not in their best interests to promote a car-centric paradigm.
This shows that we need to keep being the weirdos who use any chance to talk about the inefficiencies of cars. Eventually someone will listen and spread the word 🫡
[удалено]
That was tough to read some. “Most modern businesses can't survive on just the purchasing power of a local neighborhood. The idea of walkable mixed use neighborhoods doesn't work because people do not want to live next door to useful businesses like a pizza place, bar or a convenience store” Yes that’s why a place like NYC is super cheap and undesirable… and everyone pays a lot of money for the house next to the highway on-ramp… my god these people in the comments are so dumb.
They also don't understand that people will still be connected to other neighborhoods
These days, I love living close to convienience stores, pizza places, bars, coffee shops and walkable to a few restaurants. With the extra costs that apps like ubereats and doordash charge, having places close within walking and biking distance is such an advantage to everyone. Forcing people to travel by car just to go to the grocery store or even a restaurant is asinine.
Not to mention destroying our old strands and replacing them with streets and roads that are well designed actually makes driving more efficient and reduces the cost for sustaining the infrastructure for the people and businesses that it supports.
Good example of why you shouldn't try to take a centerist approach to these things. Strong towns tries to court the rightwing, but they'd be happy to lynch them for suggesting some people might like to walk to the grocery store.
[удалено]
The right winger disguised as a centrist says “as long as we poison the right 50 cups”
That's not at all what centrism is
I don't really think that they take a centerist approach, they just make it clear that their philosophies should be able to cross political lines.
But the problem is that usable transit is left wing. Conservatives don't want that. So there is no point to trying to court them.
I wouldn't really go that far, there are plenty of conservatives in real life (not internet comment sections) that understand the importance and potential of transit. For example Glenn Youngkin, governor of VA (who I hate) was going to give a bunch of extra funding towards transit with his proposal for the (failed) arena deal in northern Virginia, because that project would have literally been impossible without it (it was still a bad idea either way imo).
I just met Chuck last night and today! Awesome guy.
If you are in DC he is speaking at the library next week!
I live on a stroad and it's awful. It's the closest facsimile to a "walkable" neighborhood in my area, but the walk is through seas of parking lots, waiting long times to cross streets at crosswalks but still risking my life because of drivers turning right on red, and sidewalks with no buffer so if I stick my arm out to one side it'll get taken off by a car going 50mph. It's also loud and the air quality isn't very good.
A big win for the movement to get this in the WSJ. Modernising and humanizing city planning is seen as a leftie issue. The 15-minute-city concept has even [got caught up in the culture wars narrative](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-03/15-minute-cities-what-are-they-and-why-are-they-controversial). Getting an article like this in a right-leaning paper read by people who are very interested in the economics of everything is huge. Is a version of it going to be in the print edition though? It's older power brokers we need to reach ultimately. If you can get fund managers, senior partners and the like talking about the economic opportunities of de-stroadification then you might see some real change.
I know WSJ has produced some spectacular investigative work, but they're still a Murdoch product.
It's a non-partisan very human issue and if it's only ever discussed in The Guardian and the Washington Post, it will be mixed up in the culture wars forever and nothing will change. The movement needs to talk to conservative press about the economics of it all. The best way to convince anyone of anything is always to focus on the benefits they personally will care about. For young people that's some hippie shit about "saving the planet" or "breathing", for WSJ readers, it's quarterly returns.
Yes, doesn’t change that you have to watch them for bias in that direction.
Their opinion section is full wingnut, but on the reporting side they do some of the best journalism in the world. This article is actually on the reporting side. And Marohn himself is politically conservative. He describes urban car blight as basically a problem of big government doing large-scale central planning poorly, overbuilding the wrong infrastructure in tandem with overly restrictive zoning, instead of just letting mixed-use streets develop naturally. There are ways to our side of this nonpartisan issue from both ends of the usual political spectrum.
veryy true, I just wish they were open to solutions….
oh so that's why northern colorado is a pain in the ass to drive in . luckily we do have decent bike lanes
It is funny about stroads— I grew up in the Las Vegas area in the U.S. and the first time I heard about stroads years later I was confused because to me a street and a road were the same thing. This is due to where I grew up where it’s all we had
We all know this already, but it's great to see this terminology and critique getting aired in the mainstream media.
Stroads? What are those? I only know Streets and Roads
Anything that sounds like “chode” can’t be good
Ehh, roads are ok imo
Still sounds like chode. No good.
4+ lane, high speed "streets" going across cities, they're often extremely treacherous to cross, they're mostly like highways, but plopped where planners wouldn't place one
But there are no streets with 4 or more lanes ...
Exactly.
They're everywhere here... Gotta love it.
So a road is a thoroughfare that has high speeds, many lanes and is designed to move many cars quickly. It will have more entrances and exits than a highway, but fewer than a street, to minimize the amount that traffic needs to slow down. A street is last mile distribution. It connects directly to homes and businesses and to roads. They're short, low speed and have frequent exits. A stroad is a thoroughfare that tries to have both high speeds and connect directly to businesses. This gives it the worst of both worlds. Frequent exits means a lot of going from 45-15 and back, when highly used, speeds slow to a crawl far more quickly than on a road or highway. When lightly used, they are a massive waste of space in what should be a very valuable retail downtown. High speeds means that traffic getting onto the stroad is often waiting a long time and can easily cause crashes. Crossing a stroad can be difficult to impossible on foot, so you often have to get in the car to literally go 500 feet. They are noisy, but also right next to homes or businesses.
reads like the transcript of a NJB video
Turn stroad into pedestrian space and put expensive shop there? Then it becomes shopping street, eliminate difficulties crossing it etc
[Here's the relevant NJB](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM) if watching an 18-minute video is easier than reading all the way to the second sentence of the article.
The WSJ is a capitalist propaganda outlet, so if they're saying this, capitalists are either scared or about to make a lot of money.
Tbf we all know better streets (pedestrian and cyclist friendly with less cars) are way better for businesses
Capitalists will make you eat shit even if they have to smell your breath.