Economics: Muh Roadz

[SuburbanFarmer]

Here's my thoughts on roads and vehicles: They are kind of crazy if you really step back and consider it.

Sometimes while I walk the dogs, I get pretty reflective and it strikes me as really weird that we are surrounded by so many cars, parking lots, and roads. I think people in the future who study us will find this one of the most bizarre aspects of our society. Seriously go outside today and just step your mind back from all of this stuff you are used to and look at it as if you are seeing this society for the first time. We devote more real estate to roads and parking lots than we do to living space. We design our communities in such a way that we are totally dependent upon motor vehicles when we don't really have to organize our communities in this way. We don't really need cars to move ourselves and goods around quickly. We could do it with people movers of various kinds, cargo pipelines, trains, and now even drones for small packages. We have all these cars around us, and we devote so much of our real estate to paved roads and parking lots, because we choose this. Why is it so important? There has to be a reason why we naturally converged on this paradigm, but I am not sure it's a good idea in terms of robustness and longevity of civilization. it makes us quite fragile economically and infrastructurally.

Pure momentum from the Industrial Revolution. The motor vehicle was a quantum leap forward in human productivity, and we built our civilization around that.

Now that we have alternatives, it will take a long, long time before we can move away from the current paradigm. The interests are entrenched, and societal norms are built around personal transportation via car.

Uber and Lyft are the first wave of change. There will be others, but progress will take time. We certainly aren't doing any Interstate-level building projects, until the current system collapses.

[kybkh]

[Kath]

. Seriously go outside today and just step your mind back from all of this stuff you are used to and look at it as if you are seeing this society for the first time. We devote more real estate to roads and parking lots than we do to living space.

Beautiful illustration of your point.
https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7 ... ians-roads

[SuburbanFarmer]

That's a beautiful song. Good pick.

[Speaker to Animals]

Here's my thoughts on roads and vehicles: They are kind of crazy if you really step back and consider it.

Sometimes while I walk the dogs, I get pretty reflective and it strikes me as really weird that we are surrounded by so many cars, parking lots, and roads. I think people in the future who study us will find this one of the most bizarre aspects of our society. Seriously go outside today and just step your mind back from all of this stuff you are used to and look at it as if you are seeing this society for the first time. We devote more real estate to roads and parking lots than we do to living space. We design our communities in such a way that we are totally dependent upon motor vehicles when we don't really have to organize our communities in this way. We don't really need cars to move ourselves and goods around quickly. We could do it with people movers of various kinds, cargo pipelines, trains, and now even drones for small packages. We have all these cars around us, and we devote so much of our real estate to paved roads and parking lots, because we choose this. Why is it so important? There has to be a reason why we naturally converged on this paradigm, but I am not sure it's a good idea in terms of robustness and longevity of civilization. it makes us quite fragile economically and infrastructurally.

Pure momentum from the Industrial Revolution. The motor vehicle was a quantum leap forward in human productivity, and we built our civilization around that.

Now that we have alternatives, it will take a long, long time before we can move away from the current paradigm. The interests are entrenched, and societal norms are built around personal transportation via car.

Uber and Lyft are the first wave of change. There will be others, but progress will take time. We certainly aren't doing any Interstate-level building projects, until the current system collapses.

It occurs to me that the paradigm shift will happen when a critical mass of westerners opt out of the corporate/statist system and start building their own organic communities around some common principles. The alternative economy is part of it. Homesteading is part of it. The cob/permaculture ideas are part of it.

We've seen little nudges in that direction perennially since the 19th century, and especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am sort of seeing it now where I live.

We keep going like this because we are addicted to it in the same way we are addicted to "stuff", the corporate career path, etc. Eventually enough people are going to decide it's not worth it and naturally form communities on their own.

There is a series of architectural books I studied to get better at software engineering.

https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language ... 0195019199

There is so much in there to blow your mind about how organically grown cities and communities just work, whereas these engineered communities are usually inhuman and awful places. He shows multiple illustrations of layouts of cities where you can just see the beauty of the organic town and the ugliness of the engineered town. He also goes into individual house construction, and even patterns for entry to homes, etc. I highly recommend this book, not to become a better architect, but to see the world in a different way.

[Speaker to Animals]

. Seriously go outside today and just step your mind back from all of this stuff you are used to and look at it as if you are seeing this society for the first time. We devote more real estate to roads and parking lots than we do to living space.

Beautiful illustration of your point.
https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7 ... ians-roads

This is exactly how weird it is to me when I get that state of mind.

[Speaker to Animals]

My take on it is that everything we do in building civilization, communities, and even our homes is participating in a kind of language. You need to understand that language, the grammar, morphology, etc. Ask yourself if this language is speaking something you want to live out, because I don't think we do this, and our society is not happier for it.

[SuburbanFarmer]

My take on it is that everything we do in building civilization, communities, and even our homes is participating in a kind of language. You need to understand that language, the grammar, morphology, etc. Ask yourself if this language is speaking something you want to live out, because I don't think we do this, and our society is not happier for it.

We'd be a lot better off if more people were thinking critically in the first place. I can raise my own kids that way, but I don't see any way to influence society in that direction.

Corporations love dumb, isolated consumers.

[Ph64]

Here's my thoughts on roads and vehicles: They are kind of crazy if you really step back and consider it.

Sometimes while I walk the dogs, I get pretty reflective and it strikes me as really weird that we are surrounded by so many cars, parking lots, and roads. I think people in the future who study us will find this one of the most bizarre aspects of our society. Seriously go outside today and just step your mind back from all of this stuff you are used to and look at it as if you are seeing this society for the first time. We devote more real estate to roads and parking lots than we do to living space. We design our communities in such a way that we are totally dependent upon motor vehicles when we don't really have to organize our communities in this way. We don't really need cars to move ourselves and goods around quickly. We could do it with people movers of various kinds, cargo pipelines, trains, and now even drones for small packages. We have all these cars around us, and we devote so much of our real estate to paved roads and parking lots, because we choose this. Why is it so important? There has to be a reason why we naturally converged on this paradigm, but I am not sure it's a good idea in terms of robustness and longevity of civilization. it makes us quite fragile economically and infrastructurally.

Pure momentum from the Industrial Revolution. The motor vehicle was a quantum leap forward in human productivity, and we built our civilization around that.

Now that we have alternatives, it will take a long, long time before we can move away from the current paradigm. The interests are entrenched, and societal norms are built around personal transportation via car.

Uber and Lyft are the first wave of change. There will be others, but progress will take time. We certainly aren't doing any Interstate-level building projects, until the current system collapses.

Heavily manipulated by big auto and big oil.

http://www.brooklynrail.net/info_streetcar.html

Perhaps the greatest factor in the demise of urban light rail was the action taken by National City Lines to purposefully undermine rail transit operations. Jointly owned by General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone Tires; National City Lines operated under the cover of small bus companies, systematically buying up privately owned streetcar companies, then replacing streetcars with fume spewing, inefficient busses. Furthermore National City Lines lobbied local governments to eliminate trolley lines as a hindrance to street traffic. National City Lines was ultimately found guilty of criminal conspiracy to destroy the American streetcar system. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done; by the time of the verdict (the 1950s), most of America's trolleys were gone.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Here's my thoughts on roads and vehicles: They are kind of crazy if you really step back and consider it.

Sometimes while I walk the dogs, I get pretty reflective and it strikes me as really weird that we are surrounded by so many cars, parking lots, and roads. I think people in the future who study us will find this one of the most bizarre aspects of our society. Seriously go outside today and just step your mind back from all of this stuff you are used to and look at it as if you are seeing this society for the first time. We devote more real estate to roads and parking lots than we do to living space. We design our communities in such a way that we are totally dependent upon motor vehicles when we don't really have to organize our communities in this way. We don't really need cars to move ourselves and goods around quickly. We could do it with people movers of various kinds, cargo pipelines, trains, and now even drones for small packages. We have all these cars around us, and we devote so much of our real estate to paved roads and parking lots, because we choose this. Why is it so important? There has to be a reason why we naturally converged on this paradigm, but I am not sure it's a good idea in terms of robustness and longevity of civilization. it makes us quite fragile economically and infrastructurally.

Pure momentum from the Industrial Revolution. The motor vehicle was a quantum leap forward in human productivity, and we built our civilization around that.

Now that we have alternatives, it will take a long, long time before we can move away from the current paradigm. The interests are entrenched, and societal norms are built around personal transportation via car.

Uber and Lyft are the first wave of change. There will be others, but progress will take time. We certainly aren't doing any Interstate-level building projects, until the current system collapses.

Heavily manipulated by big auto and big oil.

http://www.brooklynrail.net/info_streetcar.html

Perhaps the greatest factor in the demise of urban light rail was the action taken by National City Lines to purposefully undermine rail transit operations. Jointly owned by General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone Tires; National City Lines operated under the cover of small bus companies, systematically buying up privately owned streetcar companies, then replacing streetcars with fume spewing, inefficient busses. Furthermore National City Lines lobbied local governments to eliminate trolley lines as a hindrance to street traffic. National City Lines was ultimately found guilty of criminal conspiracy to destroy the American streetcar system. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done; by the time of the verdict (the 1950s), most of America's trolleys were gone.

That's why it won't change until we reset. Entrenched interests will never allow innovation away from their current model.

Big Auto and Oil have been suppressing electric vehicles and mileage efficiency for a long, long time. Once Tesla came along, they started making a token effort, but not innovating. Just enough to block Tesla from changing things in a big way.