Is There 'A Hill You're Prepared To Die On' ?

[Barrister]

And *because* of the car, acceptable distances have become much further. Having a hockey tournament an hour away may not have happened before; now, it's seen as ordinary, perhaps even necessary. But even then, my vague impression, as I said, is that even carpooling has become foreign to our practices. Obviously, going to Legal with a lot of hockey stuff was going to  be difficult. Did you not know any other families going to Legal?

Okay, so we're actually getting closer.  I don't really disagree with many of the policy suggestions you make.

But I wanted to talk about hockey.

Obviously in the City of Edmonton there are more than enough hockey teams that my kid could find plenty of opponents within city limits.  But instead my kid (who is 8) has had games in Legal, Stony Plain, Beaumont, Spruce Grove...  So why?  I think it comes to fairness to the out-of-town kids.  They all live close-ish to Edmonton.  But if they're not allowed to compete against the Edmonton teams, suddenly they have to travel 2+ hours for all of their games.

I did think about offering to car-pool to Legal, but too late in the day, and I don't know any of the parents on this team very well.

[DGuller]

I personally didn't have a car until I was 26, and I was the first driver in my family.  Is it possible to live without a car?  It definitely was in all the places I lived in, hence why we didn't have a car.  It is, however, very limiting, and dense living isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Your quality of life is definitely lower without personal transportation even in a place with very functional public transportation.  I don't think it has anything to do with brainwashing, it's just a reality.

Yeah, but that's the point a lot of people aren't getting.
This is the case purely because cities are designed for this to be the case.

Maybe people aren't getting that point because it's not a good one?  You're making it sound like the existence of personal cars is some conspiracy imposed upon the public, which involves city planners cunningly designing the cities to create demand for personal transportation.  I think the fact that people everywhere in the world seem to desire owning automobiles should indicate that they fulfill some purpose or enable better lifestyles even in places not run by the city planners in the pockets of the auto industry.

[Oexmelin]

But I wanted to talk about hockey.

[Barrister]

That's why customers desire cars. Not some nefarious scheme by the auto industry.

I don't know why people automatically resort to "brainwashing" or "nefarious schemes". Publicity is all about transforming the act of purchasing into some profoundly meaningful act of personal accomplishment, collective and individual identity. It's about creating wants, and then transforming wants into needs. The fact that most people lived perfectly well, with a much higher proximity, with a lot less intimacy, for thousands of years, suggests very strongly to me that this isn't some "human nature" expressing itself (a highly dubious proposal whenever it's trotted out), but rather, precisely, the sort of desire that inserted itself in the aspirations of a growing middle class, given astonishing force by the post war industrial prosperity.

People lived without indoor plumbing, electric lights, television, the internet, refrigeration, and so many other conveniences for about as long as we've also had automobiles.  Our desire for such items can I guess be called "wants" in that we won't automatically die without these things, but our want for such items seems pretty deeply ingrained.

[Barrister]

But I wanted to talk about hockey.

And you call yourself a Quebecker!

[DGuller]

The fact that most people lived perfectly well, with a much higher proximity, with a lot less intimacy, for thousands of years, suggests very strongly to me that this isn't some "human nature" expressing itself (a highly dubious proposal whenever it's trotted out), but rather, precisely, the sort of desire that inserted itself in the aspirations of a growing middle class, given astonishing force by the post war industrial prosperity.

I wouldn't describe the living standards before 20th century as "perfectly well" kind of living.  Obviously the conditions were survivable for some, or we wouldn't be here talking about it in the 21st century, but perfectly well? 

I think part of the reason the standards of the 19th century seem to imperfect to most of us is because inventions like personal automobile (but obviously not just that) made higher living standards a new normal.  It's possible that human nature may desire things that are not practically possible to get.  Just because people lived as hunter gatherers some time ago doesn't mean that every invention after that period can't possibly be due to human desires expressing themselves.

[Jacob]

I wouldn't describe the living standards before 20th century as "perfectly well" kind of living.  Obviously the conditions were survivable for some, or we wouldn't be here talking about it in the 21st century, but perfectly well? 

I think part of the reason the standards of the 19th century seem to imperfect to most of us is because inventions like personal automobile (but obviously not just that) made higher living standards a new normal.  It's possible that human nature may desire things that are not practically possible to get.  Just because people lived as hunter gatherers some time ago doesn't mean that every invention after that period can't possibly be due to human desires expressing themselves.

You think it's the automobile that makes the difference between "perfectly well" today and "not perfectly well" before the 20th century?

[Valmy]

I wouldn't describe the living standards before 20th century as "perfectly well" kind of living.  Obviously the conditions were survivable for some, or we wouldn't be here talking about it in the 21st century, but perfectly well? 

I think part of the reason the standards of the 19th century seem to imperfect to most of us is because inventions like personal automobile (but obviously not just that) made higher living standards a new normal.  It's possible that human nature may desire things that are not practically possible to get.  Just because people lived as hunter gatherers some time ago doesn't mean that every invention after that period can't possibly be due to human desires expressing themselves.

You think it's the automobile that makes the difference between "perfectly well" today and "not perfectly well" before the 20th century?

Well before automobiles came along people around here were just obsessed with horses. It seems like for precisely the same reason. I don't think there was some big conspiracy and lobbying by the horse breeders that made everybody love horses and horse riding so much.

But even if it is the case that people would rather take their little children in their car to daycare instead of into a crowded train full of strangers to daycare and back because they are brainwashed by car companies...well you still have to deal with the reality that people have been brainwashed by car companies. That is just a thing that happened that cannot be hand waived away and just something that shouldn't be. How do we unbrainwash them?

Personally I stopped taking the bus once I had kids because if something happened I wanted to be able to rush to wherever I needed to be quickly if something happened and not be at the mercy of the bus schedule.

[DGuller]

I wouldn't describe the living standards before 20th century as "perfectly well" kind of living.  Obviously the conditions were survivable for some, or we wouldn't be here talking about it in the 21st century, but perfectly well? 

I think part of the reason the standards of the 19th century seem to imperfect to most of us is because inventions like personal automobile (but obviously not just that) made higher living standards a new normal.  It's possible that human nature may desire things that are not practically possible to get.  Just because people lived as hunter gatherers some time ago doesn't mean that every invention after that period can't possibly be due to human desires expressing themselves.

You think it's the automobile that makes the difference between "perfectly well" today and "not perfectly well" before the 20th century?

As I said, it makes up for part of the difference.

[Razgovory]

In my country, there was no campaign by Lada or Zaporozhets to turn drivers into lobbyists either.  They had 10 year wait lists to fulfill as it is, and the state would've probably preferred to direct more steel to missiles rather than personal automobiles.  Strangely enough, people still wanted to own cars. 

I was kind of wondering about the situation of you and Tamas in this car conversation.  The Eastern Bloc was pretty big on public transport and cars were hard to get.  I don't know if the situation was similar in other communist countries.  The desire for cars predates their existence as a status symbol because they are very useful tools.

[Josquius]

I personally didn't have a car until I was 26, and I was the first driver in my family.  Is it possible to live without a car?  It definitely was in all the places I lived in, hence why we didn't have a car.  It is, however, very limiting, and dense living isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Your quality of life is definitely lower without personal transportation even in a place with very functional public transportation.  I don't think it has anything to do with brainwashing, it's just a reality.

Yeah, but that's the point a lot of people aren't getting.
This is the case purely because cities are designed for this to be the case.

Maybe people aren't getting that point because it's not a good one?  You're making it sound like the existence of personal cars is some conspiracy imposed upon the public, which involves city planners cunningly designing the cities to create demand for personal transportation.  I think the fact that people everywhere in the world seem to desire owning automobiles should indicate that they fulfill some purpose or enable better lifestyles even in places not run by the city planners in the pockets of the auto industry.

What sort of a conspiracy are you suggesting here?
Who is running it? What are their goals? What are they doing?

I don't see the need for a conspiracy. Everything we are talking about is easily explainable by well recorded historic fact and its inertia across a variety of fields.
Urban planners in the mid 20th century were missing a lot of knowledge that we have today. The concept of induced demand was alien to them. They just didn't follow the in hindsight obvious drawbacks that their car focused thinking would lead to. They merely followed the trend of "modernity", yes with the eager help of equally ignorant central governments and businesses that had a vested interest in putting more cars on the road (that somebody else would pay for), but it's weird to think this was the only factor at play.
In America in particular with the way local government works this model is now looking extremely shaky. The ponzi of necessary eternal growth is wobbling. Its simply unsustainable in a country which is no longer developing.
It's simply wrong to suggest the inherent superiority of cars is to thank for their dominance. Its a fact that this model of development is heavily and unsustainably subsidised.
And I haven't even touched on the sociological downsides....

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The ponzi of necessary eternal growth is wobbling.

The day that growth (economically) is no longer needed and comes to end is not close at all. Global population is still growing, a lot of world's population is still objectively poor and forcing the well-off part of the world to become poorer is going to result in the use of guillotines. So growth it is.

[Josquius]

The ponzi of necessary eternal growth is wobbling.

The day that growth (economically) is no longer needed and comes to end is not close at all. Global population is still growing, a lot of world's population is still objectively poor and forcing the well-off part of the world to become poorer is going to result in the use of guillotines. So growth it is.

The world as a whole sure.
Individual cities in the US?

[Oexmelin]

People lived without indoor plumbing, electric lights, television, the internet, refrigeration, and so many other conveniences for about as long as we've also had automobiles.  Our desire for such items can I guess be called "wants" in that we won't automatically die without these things, but our want for such items seems pretty deeply ingrained.

My point is simply that there is nothing inherently natural about defining the family as a small group of 3 or 4, or wanting to be alone in a car stuck in traffic for three hours a day, or to want a suburban house with an individual pool. We live in a world that has promoted relentlessly these things as tokens of success, as things people ought to want. The rest of the world, which has longed for industrialized prosperity for quite some time, has understandably adopted many aspirations. And for people who grew up in the suburbs, and who have a lot of nice memories of it, or have had great experiences road-tripping, or whose models are other successful suburban people, often their parents, yes - that desire has been inculcated from a young age.

It is the fear of being deprived of those things that scare people. For many people who grow up with multiple generations in a single household, the emptiness of our own homes is often jarring. For people who just couldn't wait to get out of their parents' house (or parents' who couldn't wait to send kids away), the single-family house is an aspiration. Single-family house with backyards in a suburban community is a recent aspiration; an over-abundance of cheap consumer goods, three cars per family, an individual pool for every household... these things may indeed manifest an aspiration to material luxury that has deep roots, but it's only the contemporary shape of that aspiration, not the answer to some deep-seated human desire.   

[crazy canuck]

The ponzi of necessary eternal growth is wobbling.

The day that growth (economically) is no longer needed and comes to end is not close at all. Global population is still growing, a lot of world's population is still objectively poor and forcing the well-off part of the world to become poorer is going to result in the use of guillotines. So growth it is.

Growth in population is one of the two ways in which economic growth is created.  It is not a question of whether economic growth is "needed" because of population growth.