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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. 28260. Adam Selene - 4/25/2006 8:49:13 PM alistair - I like that car! Specially the spartan interior. It appeals to the minimalist, functionalist engineer in me. 28261. resonance - 4/26/2006 12:26:09 AM ... exactly my point.
Well, not to put too fine an edge on it, but your point is something different -- that market pressure will remove the automobile from the hands of all but the 'well-to-do', whatever means of qualifying you are using for that title.
Mine is that the very same pressure will work to keep that mobility in the hands of most people, since both the jobs economy and the services economy depend heavily upon a mobile population.
28262. Adam Selene - 4/26/2006 12:45:10 AM resonance,
And I think you're both right. :)
Market pressure will remove the automobile in it's current form from the masses, but people will never give up mobility, even if it means shudder mass transit, hybrids, and self-imposed rationing of travel by living closer to your commute destination. 28263. Adam Selene - 4/26/2006 12:45:51 AM Darn toys. 28264. SnowOwl - 4/26/2006 3:02:51 AM test 28265. wonkers2 - 4/26/2006 3:15:01 AM I'm inclined (barely) to agree with Pelle and Adam in this discussion. We are certainly capable of adapting to declining oil reserves. The transition will be momentous because our economic development for 100 years has been based on oil. However, coal reserves are huge and nuclear energy is a viable alternative. Solar and wind energy will also contribute. I heard recently that we are on the brink of a significant breakthrough in solar power. Motor vehicles some day will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. However, global warming is worth worrying and doing something about before it's too late. 28266. wonkers2 - 4/26/2006 3:16:37 AM If you look at world car production you'll see that more people, not fewer, are driving cars every year. This trend may be expected to continue. 28267. wonkers2 - 4/26/2006 3:16:58 AM For the forseeable future. 28268. judithathome - 4/26/2006 3:33:41 AM Yes, Wonkers, just think of all the Chinese waiting to trade in their bicycles for cars.
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