Grlygrl201@aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 3/15/01 8:42:05 AM Eastern Standard Time, ThosStew writes:
>
> << In a message dated 3/15/2001 12:46:13 AM, Grlygrl201@aol.com writes:
>
> > southerners just don't use mass transit. they
> >equate bus or train travel with poverty
>
> waste enough and they'll therefore take to it "naturally" :-)
>
> Tom <--doesn't own a car >>
>
> dear tom who doesn't own a car,
>
> i'm very happy you have alternatives where you live. i assume you are
> sending your real-time hologram to the next world economic forum, along with
> your colleagues' holograms, because all this flying back and forth is just
> too wasteful when you are availed of advanced technology that makes many
> face-to-face meetings unnecessary.
Whenever a thread about how stupid the USAn automobile system is, some
hick stops scratching her mites long enough to wail about how she
doesn't have alternatives where she lives, so she can't help it, and
she just can't move to some more enlightened area because she can't
afford it or her devolved family can't dig for grubs without her or
something.
Any discusison about alternatives to stewing in a car on the way to
work or the gym has to take these trogs into account. Whenever you
mention that your life is happier since you use your car less, and
that there are obvious ways for communities to spend less on the
automobile infrastructure with its many ways that it makes life suck,
always add that of course there are areas that are just fucked, and
that's fine. They'll just become morlock reserves when gasoline hits
$50 a gallon, assuming that cold fusion flying cars haven't been
invented yet.
Me, I don't own a car, but I do use one occasionally. More
importantly, I believe that we're going to see some sort of economic
meltdown when the free oil ride runs down, and I want to live
somewhere that isn't as fucked as your normal USAn city (or suburb,
ewww) when that happens. Seeing as the first world's agriculture and
commerce is completely dependent on cheap energy from oil, I think
that we're all going to take some kind of hit.
I'm not an economist, or an energy expert, though. Geege, do you
really think that the costs of operating a car is not going to go
through the roof as oil gets scarcer and scarcer? I only see two
alternatives to that: clean nuclear power is discovered, or dirty
nuclear power is subsidized even more than it is now. What's going to
happen to communities that depend on the car when it costs $50 to get
groceries because you have to drive to the strip mall?
-- Karl Anderson kra@monkey.org http://www.monkey.org/~kra/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:14:20 PDT