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28240. Adam Selene - 4/25/2006 4:32:06 PM alistair, that was true a hundred years ago when the vast majority of us lived in an agrarian economy with the industrial revolution just really kicking in. But in today's service economy, you can live in a city with dozens of employers within walking distance and hundreds within biking distance. Land serfdom does not have to be in our future.
While I think full mobility will never be ceded by the population, I claim it's practice can be dramatically curtailed without any loss of economic freedom. People are already dramatically slowing urban flight and a growing minority of the middle class are repopulating cities. Where I work at the inner harbor in Baltimore, I drive by about 5 highrise condo buildings that are under construction and another dozen recently completed with ads for buyers on the buildings. (I commute about 20 miles to Columbia.)
If not for my big-home loving wife, I'd happily move next door to my office to gain back my commute time and gas money (plus get rid of my weekend lawn duties!) 28241. arkymalarky - 4/25/2006 4:44:07 PM My goal is to be able to stay put out here away from everyone else. When I retire from teaching I don't intend to work or play anywhere I have to drive to get to.
But a nice first step for America as a whole would be purchasing more practical cars. I doubt many Americans are going to transition straight from Hummer to Greyhound. And we're a large, spread-out country with no feasible mass transit system. Either the modern age will allow many more people to work at home or inability to commute will harshly impact every class. 28242. alistairconnor - 4/25/2006 4:53:27 PM This may be my next car... an object worth of worship.
The Loremo.
1.5 litres per 100 km = about 150 mpg of diesel.
they say it'll be available in 2009, for 11000 euros. We'll see. 28243. arkymalarky - 4/25/2006 4:54:45 PM Cool. What does that translate to in US dollars? 28244. PelleNilsson - 4/25/2006 4:56:04 PM It would be interesting to see, in constant prices and related to average middle-class income, the cost of fuel for a model T related to a modern hybrid car.
And I think you are wrong, alistair. The clock will not turn back. Our societies, and in particular America, are founded on the car. Once it was a supplement to public transport, now it is the other way around. 28245. alistairconnor - 4/25/2006 4:56:50 PM Currently, that would be about $13600.
In 2009, I would expect $30k or $60k...
your mileage may vary! 28246. alistairconnor - 4/25/2006 5:00:04 PM "will not" turn back is a foolish statement, Pelle. People make decisions of their own free will, but with strong economic constraints. Transport will not be as expensive as it was in 1906, but maybe as expensive as 1936.
In a generation from now, things will have settled to a new equilibrium. A lot of pain will be had before then. 28247. alistairconnor - 4/25/2006 5:02:37 PM The key reason that there are no valid comparisons with the past, is that for a century at least, people have had a strong, and justified, expectation of economic betterment for themselves and/or their children. I think that expectation is now evaporating. 28248. PelleNilsson - 4/25/2006 5:12:39 PM I don't understand that at all. Do you mean that it would be impossible for some reason to find out the cost of gas, average fuel consumption and average income in, say, 1930 and compare with the present situation? Hell, I could do it if I had the energy. 28249. resonance - 4/25/2006 5:31:36 PM People have enjoyed considerable freedom over the last five decades, insofar as they have been motorised. Over the past three, just about anyone who is economically active or solvent has had this freedom.
That doesn't make it a right. Unless you are alleging that it has generated an entitlement? Amend the Constitution perhaps? Pursuit of happiness, and a tankful of gas?
I don't believe it's a right. Generally speaking I think 'natural rights' are useful fictions with which to construct a fairer society, not an immanentized law. Needless to say, I think 'legal rights' are more or less the same. Anyway you don't find too much in the way of rights popping up in society unless there is a pragmatic benefit for them to exist -- the concepts, sure, but they don't have any lasting implementation unless there's a net benefit.
Anyway, that's immaterial. I don't think that people in general will gain or lose access to mechanical transportation based on whether or not they have a 'right' to it. I think they will do so based upon economic pressure. 28250. alistairconnor - 4/25/2006 5:50:16 PM ... exactly my point.
Pelle : I don't understand that at all: what I'm talking about is not whether X hours of work = Y km. What I'm talking about is that a large part of the sentiment of freedom and wellbeing associated with accessible transport, comes from the expectation that it's going to continue to get better. 1950 : Even if we have to make sacrifices to buy a car, or even to buy fuel, we do it joyfully because of the good times ahead. Today : we have to make ever-increasing sacrifices, but the good times are behind us.
So, even if gas at $10, for example, turned out to be less than the real price in 1950, that price does not engender a sentiment of freedom, but of trapped desperation. 28251. PelleNilsson - 4/25/2006 6:04:37 PM Contrary to what many may think I'm of the opinion that this discussion fits very well here. Ecologism is a secular religion which was founded in 1972 when the Club of Rome published "Limits to growth". It has its own set of a priori beliefs and an escatological doomsday scenario. The Club of Rome predicted the end of civilization as we know it by 2010, but for every year that passes the end gets pushed another year into the future. Vide alistairs "in a generation from now ...". 28252. alistairconnor - 4/25/2006 6:14:27 PM Ah yes I remember, the doomsayers have been proved wrong time after time. No such thing as peak anything. Global warming, humbug. Man is magically incapable of harming his environment, and endlessly inventive and always gets himself out of trouble, everything's just fine.
Sounds like a secular religion to me.
You think people will be materially better-off in a generation from now, Pelle? Is that a rational belief? 28253. Adam Selene - 4/25/2006 6:35:07 PM I think the discussion belongs under philosophy as much as anywhere, since we're talking rights to our lifestyle and not economics per se.
Anyway - I disagree with Pelle's assumption. While a car was once necessary to take advantage of life's pleasures and other benefits, that's not necessarily true today. Where I once needed to drive to a movie theatre, now I retire to my media room. Where once I had to drive downtown for a restaraunt meal, now it's just around the corner. My library and most of my liesure entertainment is a modem away. And if I lived in the city, my gym, library, museums, theatre, etc. would all be within reach without a car.
And we're not even talking total carlessness - just cutting our useage by a significant fraction. We can still have a car for weekend jaunts and cross-country vacations, we just would need a large fraction of people to walk/bike to work or work at home, and another fraction to increase gas mileage via hybrids or downsizing their vehicle, to completely remove dependence on foreign oil for the next few decades. 28254. Adam Selene - 4/25/2006 6:38:00 PM Another thought - the pressure to improve car usage is not just gas prices - it's also congestion. There's a very real limit to how long most people are willing to sit in a traffic jam, especially as they grow geometrically (if not exponentially) every decade. 28255. PelleNilsson - 4/25/2006 6:52:03 PM Yes, I do. And yes, I think it's rational. The doomsayers were wrong in the 70's. They are equally wrong now.
Have you read "Limits of growth"? If not pick it up at the library, and while you are there get hold of Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" as well. These two books, have directly or indirectly formed your world view. Read them, and feel a rising wave of incredulity over their reasoning and predictions. 28256. Adam Selene - 4/25/2006 7:01:51 PM I guess I agree too. Virtually all negative side effects of "progress" (for lack of a better word) are not nearly as serious in the near term as the problems they solve. Industrial pollution? Better than 16-hour days subsistance farming with well water and latrines. Sweat Shops? Better than starvation. Child Labor? same thing. As horrific as we think these things are now, the were better than the alternatives at the time.
So today we have problems.. they too will be solved when they get serious enough that we muster our resources. Global warming? well- maybe there will be some fairly large scale relocations away from the coast before we get it under control, but probably nothing much worse than Katrina already. And what we've gained from the industrial progress that gave us global warming has been tremendously better and healthier lifestyles for virtually everyone on the planet. Have some benefited more than others? Of course. Has everyone benefited? hardly. But most have benefited to some degree and many to a huge degree. 28257. alistairConnor - 4/25/2006 8:02:11 PM Global warming? Ah no problem. We're going to "get it under control". That's clear. By what means? Oh never mind about the details, I'm sure Science will fix it.
There, Adam, is the potted summary of the irrational belief system you share with Pelle.
The facts don't support such a view. The USA and China, leading protagonists in the competition for a finite supply of petroleum, are also sitting on virtually unlimited supplies of coal. Are they going to leave them in the ground? I think not. Are they intending to compensate for the CO2 and other gases they are currently releasing, or are intending to release? No sign of that.
Maybe there's a technical fix for the problem, or will be some day. But I think we'd already know about it by now, if there was one that could be deployed in time (say, within 20 years). That stuff doesn't happen overnight.
And "probably nothing much worse than Katrina already"... have you got some specialist knowledge you'd like to share, or is it blind, ideologically driven optimism, as I suspect?
28258. alistairConnor - 4/25/2006 8:03:34 PM But, having said that, I am relatively sanguine about being able to weather the coming storms, personally at least. I wouldn't be planning on buying a car in 2009 if I wasn't an optimist. 28259. Adam Selene - 4/25/2006 8:23:27 PM I wouldn't call it "blind," there's many generations of experience that man can solve problems man creates. Not eliminate all problems, but solve the ones that improve our situation in the near term. But yes, I'm an optimist. As a sci-fi reader since birth, I've always believed in man's innate ability to master his destiny, and that in the end, we will muddle through somehow.
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