10-07-2021, 11:39 AM
Some of us discuss technology; some of us discuss technology; some of us discuss engineering projects. The automobile as a one-size-fits-all solution to middle-class travel (except in New York City, where personal automobiles are restricted due to costs of parking and garage space to at the least the upper middle class) is such because of the huge investment in infrastructure to accommodate it, with such infrastructure committing people to the automobile in part because the automobile renders other transportation (such as bicycles, scooters, and vehicles resembling golf carts) too dangerous for such use.
Railroads would have been wise to collaborate with the rental-car business; railroads were competing with highway travel and had such advantages as safety. The private vehicle offered flexibility once near the destination. This of course was before air travel became the norm for long-distance travel.
Air travel is even less efficient in fuel than private automobiles... but far safer and swifter. It was originally a luxury, but it is now more efficient than driving an automobile more than about 200 miles. If your ultimate destination is less between 20 and 100 miles or you have multiple stops, then one might as well rent a car. Rental cars are of course cars that one does not own.
Transportation is inseparable from housing. In the last forty years we have had some of the most perverse social policies in housing... zoning that requires quarter-acre lots prices multitudes into very bad housing or even homelessness. Stalinist-style housing blocks (such as Pruitt-Igoe) might fit people accustomed to facing imprisonment if they gripe about anything in the "Workers' and Farmers' State" or such a right-wing nightmare as Pinochet's Chile. For basic dignity it is best that we solve our 'housing problem' some way other than building prison-like warehouses for poor people who actually do the work and punish them for ingratitude for being priced out of anything else. The freedom to complain about inadequacies in life is essential if we are to do anything to relieve people of those inadequacies.
I expect much real estate to be 'repurposed' to accommodate higher densities of population. Much of what we have is ideal for an America with half its current population, and then less concentrated geographically. We need to revitalized cities that globalization has ravaged. The neoliberal ideology of the last forty years has basically rewarded people for being rich and well-connected and punished people for being poor. To suggest that neoliberal ideal will further entrench itself and make life harsher for anyone not already rich ignores the egalitarian trend in Millennial and likely Homeland ideology. To be sure, X learned quickly to suffer with a smile on the job and endorse the reactionary politics of bosses and owners while on company property... but they griped about work to their Millennial and Homeland children (and still do), which may explain why people under 40 so reject the plutocratic order that we now have.
The last 1T demonstrated a large investment in affordable housing. with huge tracts of farmland and orange groves becoming huge tracts of single-family housing. Much of that housing has approached the end of the service life of it as well as the infrastructure (schools, streets, and sewers) that allowed millions to live like the fictional Ward Cleaver family of early television. .
I expect housing patterns to change. I expect vehicles to change -- with electric vehicles and vehicles that drive themselves. (You will submit to giving responsibility for driving a car to a very smart computer just to keep your auto insurance rate from becoming prohibitive).
Railroads would have been wise to collaborate with the rental-car business; railroads were competing with highway travel and had such advantages as safety. The private vehicle offered flexibility once near the destination. This of course was before air travel became the norm for long-distance travel.
Air travel is even less efficient in fuel than private automobiles... but far safer and swifter. It was originally a luxury, but it is now more efficient than driving an automobile more than about 200 miles. If your ultimate destination is less between 20 and 100 miles or you have multiple stops, then one might as well rent a car. Rental cars are of course cars that one does not own.
Transportation is inseparable from housing. In the last forty years we have had some of the most perverse social policies in housing... zoning that requires quarter-acre lots prices multitudes into very bad housing or even homelessness. Stalinist-style housing blocks (such as Pruitt-Igoe) might fit people accustomed to facing imprisonment if they gripe about anything in the "Workers' and Farmers' State" or such a right-wing nightmare as Pinochet's Chile. For basic dignity it is best that we solve our 'housing problem' some way other than building prison-like warehouses for poor people who actually do the work and punish them for ingratitude for being priced out of anything else. The freedom to complain about inadequacies in life is essential if we are to do anything to relieve people of those inadequacies.
I expect much real estate to be 'repurposed' to accommodate higher densities of population. Much of what we have is ideal for an America with half its current population, and then less concentrated geographically. We need to revitalized cities that globalization has ravaged. The neoliberal ideology of the last forty years has basically rewarded people for being rich and well-connected and punished people for being poor. To suggest that neoliberal ideal will further entrench itself and make life harsher for anyone not already rich ignores the egalitarian trend in Millennial and likely Homeland ideology. To be sure, X learned quickly to suffer with a smile on the job and endorse the reactionary politics of bosses and owners while on company property... but they griped about work to their Millennial and Homeland children (and still do), which may explain why people under 40 so reject the plutocratic order that we now have.
The last 1T demonstrated a large investment in affordable housing. with huge tracts of farmland and orange groves becoming huge tracts of single-family housing. Much of that housing has approached the end of the service life of it as well as the infrastructure (schools, streets, and sewers) that allowed millions to live like the fictional Ward Cleaver family of early television. .
I expect housing patterns to change. I expect vehicles to change -- with electric vehicles and vehicles that drive themselves. (You will submit to giving responsibility for driving a car to a very smart computer just to keep your auto insurance rate from becoming prohibitive).
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.