It's amazing to me how little talk there is about reduce and recycle - with remote work, better city and public transport planning etc if we could completely eliminate the use of cars for the vast majority of the populace we would not need to mine more for batteries, wonder where and how our electricity is going to come from and how we are going to offset carbon.
We literally have no vision for optimization, we just seem to obsess about and creating one problem to solve another for the sake of capacity and scalability.
The problem is that it's a classic large-scale prisoner's dilemma. Living in a walking city is nicer than living in a driving city. But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer!
The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other restrictive legislation, which has so far been extremely difficult because most voters choose "let's make things a bit easier for you today" over "we should all sacrifice now to make things probably better later".
How I see it is that it's not that people own cars, it's that they drive them absolutely everywhere. I think there is a happy medium where you still have a car to get you places where you can't walk, but essential services are walking distance from where you live.
The apartment I moved into last year is in a neighborhood with grocery stores, some restaurants and a gym. It's not the epitome of walkability but it gets the job done. While at my old place I found myself getting into my car every day to go places, now I find myself only using it 1-2 times per week.
Also weather is a major factor. When I visited my friend in Florida last month I decided to walk to McDonalds one morning. By the time I got back I was drenched in sweat from the humidity. By comparison I make a similar length walk almost every morning and don't think anything of it. There even if the place was super walkable, folks would still drive because of the heat and humidity.
I think a key difference here is building your cities to be more walkable; if there are humidity and heat problems: plant more trees for shade, provide more cover in general for people
I can't imagine that the current way of building cities with massive multi-lane stretches is going to be good for reducing experienced suffering to those who walk (it's just not a priority...)
Of course, any of that requires that you actually prioritise these features as opposed to extending highways/motorways with ever more lanes causing more and more induced demand, which... American cities don't seem to, generally...?
The usual shilling of "Not Just Bikes" should go here, where he talks in depth about what's wrong with American car-dependent cities and how they build...
> But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer!
I think that's fine. Most over time will realize they don't need 2 or more cars if they're living in a true walking city because driving will be more inconvenient than walking, and eventually either paying for or building a garage (or having it used up by 2 cars that are seldom used) or paying for street parking or other things will cause people to change habits. It just takes time if you have a walkable city.
Personally I think the sweet spot is one crossover SUV, highly walkable and bikeable city, and probably street cars that run up and down main commerce arteries. At that point you really do cover almost every conceivable local transit need or chore that you might have to undertake.
One is yea there's a certain level of cultural idiocy and laziness. I live in front of a bus stop and see it. But I also see lots of parents walking to pick up their kids, so I'm not sure what the breakdown is (this is in the suburbs in Ohio with the bad weather and all of that).
The other is that we don't really have a lot (any at all?) of examples where you have a true walkable neighborhood with desirable schools. Most walkable neighborhoods that I've seen were built before automobile traffic became prevalent, which puts them close to cities which tend to have the worst schools. So I'm not actually sure what parents would do if they had the combo of schools and neighborhood that we'd be talking about here, but I bet they'd walk because in those neighborhoods it just wouldn't be possible for all or most parents to drive their kid to school at the same time.
It's really hard to break out of thinking about things in terms of the suburbs and convenience because most use that as their starting frame of reference. How will I go to Costco if XYZ, well you wouldn't. How will my kids get to school? They'd walk or ride their bikes. "But it's dangerous" ok then make it safe. Participate in your community and your government. That's half the reason we have the problems we have now. For better or worse though economic physics is going to win. We'll either all perish in war over resources or these activities will just become too expensive. EVs won't save us either, and this is particularly true given the underinvestment in nuclear energy that has occurred world wide.
Kind of. It's a chicken-egg thing. When you design your society around cars and car infrastructure people take their cars everywhere and watch the news and get scared and all that. We can think back to earlier times where this wasn't the case.
I am living the life (in the us) of your last paragraph and it’s not that plug and play. Add kids to that equation and that goes out the window. Not saying it’s not possible, saying that my wife who is absolutely not accustomed to that will not be giving up her pampered life and I know many of my friends in the same boat.
> But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer!
Not necessarily, because it is significantly more expensive (depending on how you implement it). But one way to get people off their cars and onto public transport could be make people pay for their cars. Nowadays, people do pay quite a lot for their cars (insurance, registration fees, vehicle tax, etc), but the payments pale in comparison to the overall costs of having cars as a primary mean of mobility. Putting that cost burden onto the people that produce those costs would lead to many people reconsidering their need for a car.
That’s why it’s important to help people understand that’s it’s not about eliminating cars entirely, but about substituting significant numbers of trips.
The YouTube channel NotJustBikes has gained a lot of notoriety over the last couple of years, and he made an interesting point that driving is more pleasant in Amsterdam. [0]
The issue is mainly car dependency not cars per se.
>> Living in a walking city is nicer than living in a driving city. But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer!
You know what is even nicer than that, Living in a Rural area with a population density of less than 500 people per sq mile (310 people per sq km)
>The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other restrictive legislation
That is far from the only way to fix it, and it is very regressive, making the burden fall upon poor people, and often the elderly.
Using tax code to affect behavior is one of the most unethical things government does, and I always find it odd that the same people that complain about the rich, and how we should do more for the poor are the ones that also want to impose these heavily regressive tax schemes because "they know best"
> Using tax code to affect behavior is one of the most unethical things
I am not sure I understand. Those producing externalities should pay for them, and taxation is a basic way for that. Gasoline (etc.) pollutes, hence it should be taxed, on one side to collect the funds for attempted compensation, but also to limit the phenomenon and put it in the framework of "you will invest your resources where you deem them best invested".
>Those producing externalities should pay for them, and taxation is a basic way for that.
very are rarely those proposing taxing externalities doing so to cover the costs of mitigating those externalities, instead the money goes in to the government's general fund, or some other unrelated pet project. Also rarely the tax enough to the level that it would actually curb the desired behavior enough to effect the harm caused by the externality
So all you end up doing is making is harder for poor people to put food on the table while doing nothing to curb the externality
No: epistemologically, that is the indicator justifying a growing suspect.
Ineffectiveness should be determined by a logical and technical argument over the method, proposed as a possible solution, itself. You should identify what has it go wrong in practice. And you have in part already done it: that taxes are not earmarked (on compensation) and that the discouragement factor is insufficient. That is not necessary, it is not intrinsic to the method.
Nearby I commented on the infernal noise from electric cars. That is not necessary, not intrinsic: it just happens that people think it acceptable that some drive around with loudspeakers transmitting the screams of torture chambers. A potential solution becomes a problem because of external (non intrinsic) factors. It would be much, much easier to fix the external factors of the taxation problem than those of the "broken cybernetics" problem.
This smacks of a combination of "Real socialism has never been tried" in combination with the axiom of "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results"
The factor you are not considering is the omnipresence of corruption. Power Corrupts, and the more power you give government the more corrupt it becomes, this is born out time and time again, yet humanity refuses to learn this lesson.
The second you give government the powers you are advocating for, the people in government start thinking of all the different ways they can "help society", this amount of power is incredibly corrupting and can not be resisted, thus it always ends badly. ALWAYS
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again /under the same conditions/ expecting different results.
The «lesson» you talk about is again not a deduction but an induction. Engineer your system properly, and it will have to work.
If at first you don't succeed, call a hacker. They must be somewhere.
Incidentally, going to the context: the issue is, as you indicate, that "said people cannot resist corruption", well, stop giving power to "«people»" then - to those embarrassing liabilities I hear about. (They probably terrorize me more than you.) Which by the way, is one of the actual codified ways to tackle the problem (since at least 3800 years).
> if we could completely eliminate the use of cars for the vast majority of the populace
I find this way of thinking unrealistic and paternalistic. It might work in an authoritarian society, or in a society where the alternative to car culture is appealing.
But, let's get very realistic for a moment. I telecommute, and my wife has an in-person job. I'd even go so far as to say that most jobs are like hers: in-person, because she isn't a knowledge worker.
We go to the grocery store. Even though it's a reasonable walk, we take our car because it's not reasonable to lug the groceries back home. It's also not reasonable to bring groceries onto public transport. (My boss, who doesn't drive, uses an Uber for grocery shopping.) An alternate way of living would need to figure this out.
Even though most of our trips are very close to home, we do about 18k miles a year. Our family (and many friends) do no live in town. We also prefer to travel by car. It's much easier when going on a family vacation compared to lugging kids and baggage through all kinds of trains and bus transfer.
And... Where we live is mildly rural. Regular bus routes, (or similar) don't make sense.
Well, what's stopping you from e.g. lugging the groceries back on a bike instead and going twice a week to carry less each time, earning you a gym membership out of the deal from the cardio? That's the sort of thinking we have to get past. This, "well I use a car for xyz so I need it for all things I do in life" It's fine to have access to a car when you need a vehicle of that caliber, but most car trips aren't that. Most car trips people take are less than 3 mile; 30% are less than 1 mile:
All of those could certainly be replaced with something more sensible. How many times have you hopped into the car to go to the store and grab one thing? Probably a lot in your life. With car culture, we basically have a mindset of using a big axe for every cutting job, even those where a butter knife would do.
> Well, what's stopping you from e.g. lugging the groceries back on a bike instead and going twice a week to carry less each time
Taking trips to get groceries isn't a benefit but a cost.
I get that you like to go to grocery and other stores often, that you like spending time going to/from stores. Lots of people don't.
> How many times have you hopped into the car to go to the store and grab one thing? Probably a lot in your life.
As a fraction of my total trips, almost never, but when I did, it was urgent to me. What's your basis for asserting otherwise?
And you'd have me do without or get on a bike late at night or in bad weather to handle those situations.
BTW - the share of trips by length graph shows that <1 mile trips are a small fraction of total car miles/use a very small fraction of the total gas use.
I suppose that it's poor form to mention that, since you wanted to use resource savings to justify imposing your dislike of cars on others.
I'll elaborate.
One 100 mile trip uses the same gas as two 50 mile trips, so unless you make >2x as many 50 mile trips as 100 mile trips, you use more gas on 100 mile trips than 50 mile trips even if you make more 50 mile trips than 100 mile trips.
Even without doing arithmetic, it's obvious that there's more gas used in 10-25 mile trips (14% of trips) than 5-10 (15% of trips) and more in 5-10 than 3-5 (12% of trips). (It's not clear whether there's more gas used in 25-50 than in 10-25, but it's almost a lock that there's more gas used in >50 mile trips than 25-50.)
That exercise using your data shows that the <1 mile trips are a small fraction of total car miles and gas use.
But, like I said, usage arithmetic doesn't help your argument.
I don't think that workout is so obvious when you consider other factors such as city versus highway driving. For example, I'd expect with a given short trip to the store, a higher ratio of your nominal time in the vehicle will be spent idling at a red light or otherwise low speed maneuvering the car, versus actually traveling at speed. I wonder what mpg people actually are clocking when they are going to a store across the block? I expect its nowhere near even the epa city rating.
Plus there is just the physics of it all. What costs more energy, moving 4000lbs and 150lbs of human 1 mile, or moving 25lbs and 150lbs of human 1 mile? The latter, obviously. Can't arithmetic around that. Even with EVs, its going to require less electricity to power an ebike to move you and your cargo than to do the same with a 5000lb car.
As long as you're in town, the density of stop signs/lights is relatively constant, whether you're going 0.3 miles or 3 miles, so your hoped for "less efficient driving" is a fantasy you cooked up to try to save your argument.
The difference between city and highway mileage isn't enough to save your argument either.
You tried to argue that someone can save a significant amount of their gas usage by using bikes for short trips. That's wrong because those trips are a small fraction of their gas use.
It's wrong no matter even if their car uses 1Bgallons per mile. (Ratios and percentages are like that.)
Buying groceries for a family on a bike just seems like a nightmare, tbh.
I do something at least once a week with my car that just wouldn't be possible on public transport. Quick examples...
Transporting large amounts of already made food for parties.
Transporting a net for use in sports.
Transporting PVC pipes to do some custom hobby builds.
That's just going to be so much wasted time, imo. Plus there's often a lot of weather here that would be bad on a bike but manageable with a car.
All of that stuff you can probably do with a bike trailer. Plus you can just go to the store multiple times a week versus doing one big trip. That's how people shop in other countries outside the suburban carsphere. If the weather is bad just wear some rain pants.
If there's no sidewalks that's no issue for me. The law says I ride on the road so I ride on the road. In terms of family size that's no issue either, since they sell bike trailers. I see a lot of family units biking to my local farmers market and loading up with them, for example. Too much to push with your two legs? They sell cargo ebikes now too. The "grocery getter" car is obsolete.
I'm not judging I'm just trying to expand people's minds that are often closed off by society. Chances are you aren't taking all 3 kids to the store, but if you are you can be like the families at my farmer's market who tow kids in a trailer. Break that grocery trip up into 2 or three weekly bike rides and suddenly its a third of the shopping you have to bring back, and better for cardio to boot versus just one weekly ride. I don't ride on the sidewalk either because its illegal in my county actually.
I live in a very walkable neighborhood near lots of public transit.
Yesterday someone was shot in the head two floors up. A month ago I watched a racially charged conflict that only didn't end with a stabbing because a dude couldn't find anything appropriate in the unoccupied security desk. A week ago I witnessed a charged situation with a couple of dozen people at a bus stop. Someone was murdered on a bus at 11pm two blocks away over who got a cigarette on the floor. A friend was visiting me and someone got stabbed at the bus stop she used 45 minutes after she passed through.
There are exactly 0 units available in my building appropriate for a family of 4 unless you really aspire to live packed in like sardines, the units you could do so which still don't have much space in them go for significantly more than a 6 bedroom house on a half acre within a few miles.
What will happen if left-wing idealists try to force city density and public transit on people is a hard right wing turn when the consequences of one party trying to take freedoms away for idealistic reasons becomes a bigger burden than the consequences of the freedoms the other party wants to take away.
I really don't care about my own safety, but when it comes time for a family I would never subject any of them to the safety nightmare which is high density public-transit heavy living.
When the same people fighting to abolish the car are fighting to abolish the police, I don't think there's going to be much hope for either happening.
I guess one social worker costs about the same as maintaining five cars? What you're describing is not normal, and has little to do with the presence or absence of police. The US has about middle-of-the-pack police-per-capita, for instance, but because it lacks all the supporting infrastructure (social workers, psychiatric clinics, etc), it has really bad violent crime stats.
Shutting yourself off from society is a fragile and imperfect solution - if you look at South Africa, where elites have essentially tried to use razor wire and walled communities to insulate themselves, people's lives are still dominated by the threat and reality of the society they've tried to shut out.
It is the new normal if you look at crime statistics.
The insinuation that social workers can fix this problem or the problem is rooted in mental health issues is a problem.
These are, for the most part, grown men deciding to use violence for income (theft in various forms) or to settle disputes. I don't know what you think a social worker is going to do to diffuse a fight (not that they'd be notified and arrive before it was long over) or if anyone with that background would willingly put themselves in the middle of a potentially violent encounter and think they could make everybody play nice and use their words.
There is some magical thinking and somewhat offensive blaming of mental illness on crime.
And excluding yourself from certain populations is absolutely effective, and not "society" that you're shutting yourself off from. Unfortunately you do leave a lot of people behind trying to escape from crime, but there are plenty of effective ways of doing it, if you have the means.
Cities in the US are nothing like SA and the problems are nothing similar.
Eh, the US has kind of outlier stats when it comes to stuff like violent crime basically because it has a weird social system. Most rich countries have settled on a vaguely social-democratic normal where you pay taxes for social services that intervene at various points along the chain to make sure people don't eat each other.
If you subject people to economic darwinism, don't be surprised they bring regular darwinsim to your front door.
If you want things to change, just copy the countries that don't have your problems.
>If you want things to change, just copy the countries that don't have your problems.
The countries that don't have our problems don't have our demographics, history, or size, or anything remotely similar. Most of them also (intentionally) have to pay much less for defense, handled by us, and thus have more free tax revenue to spend on social programs.
There are some problems which could be helped with better access to social welfare resources. Not all. Likely not most.
There are divisions in our society which are a result of our history likewise cultures which are quite separated to which there is not a simple solution or social program which can just fix it.
Every country is special. The point is, social welfare works in reducing crime in Korea, it helps in reducing crime in Denmark. It helps in radically different cultures and in countries with totally different histories. It works because the majority of crime is driven by desperate people that just don't exist if they have basic social welfare.
The mechanics can be complicated, but the basic principle is simple: there are no states with a decent safety net that have US-level crime statistics.
PS: You do realise you don't need all those weapons, right? The US is bordered by Canada, and Mexico. Nobody is ever going to invade. The historical normal of the US is to have basically no army, and it worked just fine. Nobody has even seriously considered invading the US since the British left, despite two world wars, because it's obviously so impractical.
We literally have no vision for optimization, we just seem to obsess about and creating one problem to solve another for the sake of capacity and scalability.