06-11-2019, 04:44 PM
(06-11-2019, 10:13 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:(06-11-2019, 03:50 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(06-10-2019, 07:26 AM)Tech2 Wrote: Welcome to the land of the free.
Driving a car ranges from a luxury to a convenience to a necessity. The motor vehicle is a later innovation than democracy. The private automobile is a dying institution in such places as New York City, Tokyo, Paris, London, Seoul, and maybe San Francisco.
Economic convenience is not democracy. Democracy cannot give people everything that they want. Some people get priced out of living certain places and into miserable places. Nobody wants to live in a slum, but that is what is available to many of us. To adapt a phrase of Benjamin Franklin, people who would trade their essential freedom for economic gain will lose their freedom and get no gain.
Regarding first paragraph, the latter status applies in virtually all suburban areas excepting some close to central cities. In Chicago this would apply to the likes of Evanston, Oak Park and Berwyn. Over on the old boards I created a thread exploring whether we will ever reduce auto dependency in this country. So far we seem to have not had the desire to do so, as gasoline demand increased along with prices in many cases. How high do you feel the price would need to go before we would see a significant drop in consumption? When the rideshare thing began there was much speculation that such could reduce the number of cars on the road. Opinions still are mixed on the results. Common answer is probably not as there are so many folks seeking even the slightest sliver of the gig economy pie, which includes all the food delivery drivers as well.
Rideshare allowed people to take longer commutes. For may people it is the short trips that eat the miles -- and gasoline. There's the big disparity between 'city' driving and 'highway' driving. I am amazed at how long it takes for me to go four miles from my house through town to a grocery store. Fifteen minutes? Now that is stop-and-go driving. A car consumes gas while idling at a stoplight.
The incentive to share a ride increases with length. Maybe one can get a little shut-eye while someone else drives.
Ride-sharing is far easier for people who live in the same apartment complex and work the same schedule in the same place. The gig economy does not so work.
Quote:Over-dependency on the auto was called into question back in 1973-74 when we had that awful gasoline shortage when many had to wait in long lines just to fill their tanks. And yet there are considerably more cars on the road today then there were at that time, along with the expansion of what has become known as the exurbs, home to the so-called McMansions discussed elsewhere on this forum, which has served to increase auto dependency even more. And yet we haven't even come close to another gasoline shortage? Anyone care to analyze the wherefore and why, and do you think another such shortage looms in our future?
Exorbitant prices, shortages, or unavailability. At a high-enough cost, people return to horses in rural areas.
As for McMansions, those reflect almost as a rule people with more money than common sense; they are possible only when a comparative few people make huge incomes in the presence of so many working poor.
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.