07-24-2018, 10:47 AM
(07-24-2018, 10:21 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: But are we ever really going to see any reduction in car dependency? More and more it seems doubtful as nothing has really changed in the nearly half century since many folks had to wait in long lines just to get gasoline. If anything we are even more car dependent than we were back then with the expansion of what has come to be known as the exurbs. Not much interest in changing course is evident, and it is often said that the advent of the ride sharing and food delivery services has actually put more cars on the road as so many have fallen for the line that they could make big money on these so-called gig economy platforms.
The older suburbs (like Hayward , California; Southfield, Michigan; Aurora, Colorado; Cicero, Illinois; and Richardson, Texas -- not to mention a real cesspool like Ferguson, Missouri) become increasingly urban in character as apartment complexes supplant the post-WWII bungalows as the GIs and early-wave Silent are no longer around. The gig economy is a reality for now, but I can see that becoming a target of literary and political assaults as it gets things done but at an excessive cost to the participants.
I can imagine a Trump objective of putting current freeways under tolls on behalf of profiteering monopolists. Add another $20 in the cost of living just for the enrichment of profiteering monopolists well-connected to a political elite, and along comes more anger at the system.
We will not reduce our car dependency until we can accept that extreme concentration of people in high-rise housing that effectively puts everybody within a walk or elevator ride (or both) between tiny living spaces and basic needs (which will be groceries, medicine, and low-brow entertainment) with commutes exclusively for getting to and from work. Even for the kiddies, school might be built into the 'multi-purpose behemoths.
We have let our cars become the means of escape from thoroughly-awful places in which to live. If you live in a depressed area like southeastern Kentucky, then you car is your chance to get to such a place as Atlanta or Indianapolis. If you live in a dreary hick town, then your car might be the means of getting somewhere 'where the action is'. If you are talking about some low-paying jobs as driving a taxi or a delivery vehicle, then cars create opportunities for semi-skilled labor (machine-operator category).
As it is, all the solutions that our elites of ownership and management offer are those that have a profit built in through monopoly pricing or cheap labor requiring little training.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.