[Dr House]

No you don't. You have to be rich enough, be able to sell your home and property, and not have anything you gotta stick with where you are.

So the million immigrants jumping the border every year are a mirage, then? I'm sill stuck in PR? Dammit, I thought I was in Seattle!

Selling your house is not that difficult, and barring that you can put it up for rent. Besides, it was a choice in and of itself to buy a house. What you're saying is that people have an absolute right to be shielded from the bad consequences of their actions. That is beyond stupid.

[Abood]

You don't own property. People who own property need to sell their homes to move. And no, they're not stupid if they can't sell their homes. What a double standard you apply to people, first you say the free market determine prices, and then you say that they're stupid if they can't sell their homes. The market is unpredictable and property is long-lasting. If I buy a home today, who's to say whether I can sell it or not in 30 years' time?

My dad has a home in Florida he's been trying to sell for so long, but he still hasn't sold it. He also can't make profit out of it, or even break-even, by renting it out. It used to bring profit, but now it doesn't. To claim that that's stupid is just a double standard on your part, because you believe in the free market and the free market fluctuates. How can someone make a "choice" if he doesn't know what's going to happen to the market after a long period of time?

Also, people are not free to go where they want to go. That's why there are illegal immigrants. If they were able to afford migrating legally, why did they risk their freedom and go in illegally? Why did they go to the US, not to Europe? People aren't free to choose to go to wherever the hell they wish. There are many factors that come into play, and that's called the enslavement of circumstances. Why are you in Seattle and not anywhere else?

[Dr House]

People who own property need to sell their homes to move.

No, they need to sell them to recover the expense.

My dad has a home in Florida he's been trying to sell for so long, but he still hasn't sold it.

And yet he lives in Kuwait.

And no, they're not stupid if they can't sell their homes.

When did I say that? I said it's stupid to want to shield people from the bas cansequences of their own choices.

What a double standard you apply to people, first you say the free market determine prices, and then you say that they're stupid if they can't sell their homes.

Don't put words in my mouth Abood, I didn't say they were stupid. I said it's their responsibility. What's stupid is to shield them from the negative consequences of their own actions, their own choices. If you take a risk and you lose, it shouldn't be my responsibility, just like it shouldn't be my gain but yours if the risk pays off.

Also, people are not free to go where they want to go. That's why there are illegal immigrants.

Courtesy of the federal government of the United States of America. That's an artificial restriction, not a natural one.

People aren't free to choose to go to wherever the hell they wish.

You're right, people are constrained in the choices they can make, but they can still make the best of all those choices. It's their responsibility if they don't.

-Dr House

[Abood]

What's stupid is to shield them from the negative consequences of their own actions, their own choices.

Their own actions and choices didn't determine the price in the Free Market.

You're right, people are constrained in the choices they can make

My point exactly: enslavement of circumstances.

I'm glad we agree.

[Dr House]

Their own actions and choices didn't determine the price in the Free Market.

Actually, it does, unless you skipped out that class. The more people choose to sell the higher the supply, and the more people choose to buy the higher the demand. If deman exceeds supply the price goes up, if demand exceeds supply the price goes down.

My point exactly: enslavement of circumstances.

I said constrained, I didn't say unbearably constrained.

Except in the most extreme circumstances, you still have options. I obviously didn't have the choice to go to the Netherlands, but I had the choice to come here so I took it.

If you're lost in the forest, will you sit down and wait to be rescued, or will you try and get out yourself before you starve?

If you have a dead-end job you hate, will you continue doing it, or will you look for a better one?

Your choices are your own responsibility, and your own reward if they pay off. Nobody else's.

-Dr House

[Abood]

Actually, it does, unless you skipped out that class. The more people choose to sell the higher the supply, and the more people choose to buy the higher the demand. If deman exceeds supply the price goes up, if demand exceeds supply the price goes down.

So it's a collective choice, which implies a collective responsibility. The Free Market isn't affected by any one individual.

I said constrained, I didn't say unbearably constrained.

My point is this: some people have to own cars. They don't like it, but they have to. If they were given another choice, they wouldn't own one, but another choice in their city (eg.good public transport) doesn't exist. Saying they can move out is ridiculous. It's not a choice of moving out, changing your job vs. getting a car. It's a choice of getting a car or getting a bike/taking slow public transport (and both could result in hours of commuting). Thus, they are slaves of their circumstances.

Your choices are your own responsibility, and your own reward if they pay off. Nobody else's.

Some people are born rich, some are born poor... WOW, CHOICE!

[QatzelOk]

Don't like where you live? Move.

The children of Burkina Faso want to take your advice.

How do they get American green cards so they can start eating enough calories?

[Dr House]

I really wish they didn't need one. They didn't in 1925.

-Dr House

[Lensky1917]

If you're lost in the forest, will you sit down and wait to be rescued, or will you try and get out yourself before you starve?

I can't help but to feel a little cynical at your survival expertise Dr House. Plus, isn't one of the main guidelines for when you get lost, not to move?

[Kiashu]

Of course you always have a choice about your life. Always.

Change may not be easy, and it may take time, but is always possible. Always.

The circumstances don't constrain the range of choices you have, they just make certain paths easier or harder. But unless you're in a death camp, you always have choices.

The role of government and corporations in a democratic society is to ensure equitable access to those options, so that particular choices are not impossible. If they don't build railways or wind turbines, then I can't use them. However, across most of the West while one area may be run by useless slugs who do nothing, other areas are not, so you can move.

This may not be quick and easy to do, but can be done. It just effort. Take your balls in your hands, give them a little squeeze for luck, and then set to work.

As Yoda said, "do or no do, there is no whinge".

Is there no end to the self-pity of the middle classes? Oy, vey.

[Dr House]

I couldn't have put it better myself. Megakudos, Kiashu.

Wait, wasn't my original rebuttal directed at you?

Ah, well... mystery of life.

-Dr House

[ComradeKeeling]

I have to agree with abood on this.

I wish I didnt have to have a car but the living situation im in right now i pretty much have to, i hope to move back to jacksonville in a place were i wont need it. Right now its 6 miles just to get to the nearest street, and then about 15 more miles to school.

and we have no mass transit

[QatzelOk]

I hate cars
by Richard West

I loathe cars. To begin with they kill lots of people, 3,431 last year in the UK and seriously injure more (35,976). Then I object to the effect they have on my daily life, the cities I have lived in, the noise, atmospheric pollution and domination of public space. How much of Belfast is given over to space for leaving the things on, never mind driving them around. But most of all I hate the weary, powerless apathy that cars generate in the population. Very likely, if you even got past the first sentence, you have probably already muttered, 'Yes, we know, people die on the roads, so what.' Well this apathy is no accident, if you will excuse the pun, it happens for a reason.

I now think of my slow apprehension of this state of affairs in relation to my own history of being run over. In common with most cyclists I have been knocked off my bike a number of times but three of these occasions stick in my memory particularly. The first occurred in rush hour traffic.
...

rest of article

[Rancid]

yea, i'm trying to reduce my dependence on cars as well..

I'm most likely moving within blocks of a train station. So i can ride the train to work, and to anywhere in the city. I'm probably going to buy a hybrid soon as well.

I don't believe i can become completely independent on cars.. but.. we'll see

[QatzelOk]

Published on Sunday, May 18, 2008 by The Philadelphia Inquirer
The American Car Culture Is Running Out of Gas
by John Timpane

Call it a change of plan.

Across the nation, the price of gasoline is sending more and more Americans to public transit.

This ridership surge points up three things: (1) These millions of new riders can do it. Most of them always could have. They just didn’t. (2): We’re not at the end of car culture yet . . . that’s a few generations off . . . but (3) it’s clear, in not-quite-hindsight, that the U.S. car culture does not work.

Meanwhile, more people are parking the car and hopping on the train or bus. Just ask the people at SEPTA. Director of public affairs Richard Maloney says: “It’s been a steady upward curve for the last 18 months, 14 percent growth in that time and 24 percent in the last three years, driven primarily by gasoline prices.” Growth is greatest, he says, in regional rail, among suburban communities, and among people with long car commutes.

On the eastern side of the Delaware, New Jersey Transit’s Trenton-to-Camden River Line had its best-ever quarter ended in September, averaging a record 7,900 riders a day, and followed that with another record quarter through December. And the Delaware River Port Authority says ridership on the PATCO High-Speed Line is up 7 percent from a year ago.

All of which fits a big national pattern. According to a May 10 New York Times survey, metro Minneapolis, Dallas, Seattle, and San Francisco all are seeing ridership spikes, with big gains both where public transit is long-established (New York, Boston) and where it is comparatively new (Houston, Charlotte, N.C.).

...



How, then, can I say that car culture doesn’t work? Because the cost to individual and communal life, and to the environment, has been too high. And the bill is just now coming due.

It’s not evil, just heedless. People take the opportunities they’re given. They have the right. The car symbolizes freedom, rights of passage, career, sexuality. We’ve created the national road system, bought hundreds of millions of cars, based hundreds of millions of lives on the assumption that Hey, we can just drive. But all that time, we’ve been burning resources, replacing none. (How much steel have we put back in the ground? How much oil?)

We’ve basically laid the environment to waste, millions of acres never to return, all because there was no plan B. Roads are good things - but where you build a road, you outrage an environment, and no one ever rectifies it. The sad sprawl of the 1980s and 1990s, when people let towns metastasize into hastily planned and built exurban strips - that worked well, didn’t it?

And does anyone think the morning and evening rush is good for us? Individually and as a society? Single drivers (70 percent and more in many metro area traffic jams) in single cars, edging ahead, until sometimes it seems as if the ambient blood pressure is about to blow? (Studies show traffic jams do contribute to stress and high blood pressure. But you knew that.)

And wasteful: The car commute amounts to a willing sacrifice of billions of hours of precious, productive time. U.S. Census figures suggest the average U.S. driver spends 100 hours commuting a year (the standard vacation, 10 work days of eight hours apiece, is only 80 hours). Philadelphia ranks fifth among cities with a long one-way commute (29.4 minutes); New Jersey ranks third among states (28.5 minutes). Traffic jams waste time, and therefore bucks: A 2007 Texas Traffic Institute study said that in 2005, folks wasted an average of 38 hours a year stalled, for grand totals of 4.2 billion hours, 2.9 billion gallons of fuel, and a loss to the economy of $78.2 billion. That’s what I call not working. (At least you can work on a train or bus.)

This has wrecked family life for many who live farther and farther from work - and so work farther and farther from home. It has created the commuter suburb, whose residents have little to do with their towns except, just about, the bed where they happen to sleep between commutes. How great is that?

...

[url=http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/18/9036/]rest of article

[/url]

[QatzelOk]

Why he hates cars

An interview with Hermann Knoflacher
.
.

Q: Are you opposed to the car?

HK: I am not opposed to the car. But I am aware of its impact on our society.

Q: Do you drive?

HK: I don't own a car, but I drive occasionally.

Q: So, what impact does motorization have on our society?

HK: An incredible one. The car is like a virus that beds in your brain and totally subverts behaviour, values, and perception. A normal person would call our present living space completely insane. We move into sealed houses more or less voluntarily, with noise-protected windows and leave the outside to the noise, dust, and exhaust of the cars. That is a full reversal of values, and we don't even notice it any more.

Q: In your opinion how did it come this far ?

HK: Our problem is upright walking. We consume a considerable amount of muscle and navigation energy in order to stabilize our body. Just think of the coordination problems when under the influence of alcohol. When driving we use only one sixth of our energy and feel incredibly fast and powerful. That is one part. The other one is urban planning that requires cars to be as close as possible to all of our social activities. That's how you destroy the natural habitat, public transit, local supply, and eventually the social network that humans have established in millennia.

Q: So the car destroys evolution?

HK: No, but the human accomplishments of past generations have been degraded by the car.

Q: Does the car era mean our cultural doom?

HK: I wouldn't say that, since a cultural doom is not the real problem in my eyes. It's only the latest layer of evolution to get lost. The permanent structural devastation caused by the car is much worse.

Q: Is driving addictive?

HK: Definitely! The car takes possession of people. The driver is more distinguished from a human than any insect.

Q: What do you mean by that?

HK: Mobility with the own body is something common between humans and insects. However, a driver does not need this. And no insects destroy the living space of their successors for their own convenience, or move so fast that it could kill themselves.

Q: In your opinion what should mobility in our society look like then?

HK: Every society needs mobility to satisfy its needs. If we could meet our needs locally we would be plants, not humans. Human mobility always emerges from local shortcomings.

Q: Why are we so proud of our mobility?

HK: You are talking about technical mobility. In historic terms we never were especially proud of mobility. On the contrary: mobility has always been a ballast. Settling down means getting rid of enforced mobility. Our mental mobility was enough to allow us to cultivate plants or domesticate animals.

Q: Is this why words such as gypsy or tramp are offensive?

HK: It's clear: The settled community have claimed their territory and refuse access to anybody else. Settled residences are seen as exclusive. Travellers challenge the ownership of the land of the settled people and are thus hated for doing so.

Q: You are both a critic of our traffic system and a planner. How does that work?

HK: At the start of my career I discovered that traditional traffic planning is merely based on assumptions. For a long time there was no consideration for the consequences for the society or the environment. Nobody cared about noise or pollution, about fatalities, about the economy being altered or unemployment being created. My goal is traffic planning on a scientific basis. Under this aspect it is my opinion that transportation is one of the most fascinating scientific areas.

Q: You criticize the lack of networking traffic planning with other scientific fields.

HK: Yes. Core statements in transportation are completely wrong from my point of view! The idea of mobility growth depends on an inchoate reflection of the system. There was the assumption of rising mobility by rising motorization. Today we know that only the number of car trips rises, while the overall amount of trips remains the same, because the use of public transportation and walking decrease at the same time. The other false assumption is that of saving time by higher speed. There are many evaluations of economic efficiency in traffic planning based on this assumption. In fact there is no such thing as saving time by higher speed. You only travel longer distances in the same period of time.

Q: How do you provide evidence for that?

HK: By critically watching the human time budget. It's interesting how the period of time for daily mobility is almost the same around the globe. But distances travelled are different. In the Sixties the philosopher Ivan Illich showed that the amount of energy invested into cars and road infrastructure would be sufficient to cover the distance by foot - and in a considerably more beautiful and peaceful environment.

Q: Doesn't social mobility increase when travelled distances increase?

HK: No. Quite the contrary. The additional distance is useless. Man covers greater distances for the same purposes as before. He does what he has always done, but travels farther.

Q: But we broaden our mind.

HK: How can I broaden my mind when I rush through the environment at 100 km/hr? You are really constricting your mind due to the speed.

Q: One experiences different things when travelling to India than to Bavaria.

HK: It does not depend on where you travel, but what you discover there. You won't experience more on a worn-out tourist trail in India than in Bavaria. Quite the contrary, with watchfulness and curiosity you may discover things in Bavaria you won't find in India. Speeds that exceed our evolutionary grown capabilities also exceed our perception. Mentally we cannot cope with the distances we have learnt to cover using technology.

Q: But we feel powerful.

HK: Of course. Mobility always equals power. By the way, studies have revealed that parents don't even consider their own children when it comes to opting for a parking space close to their front door or a low traffic zone. Restricted mobility, even at the risk of ones own offspring are accepted in favour of a convenient parking space.

Q: Is driving entirely insane?

HK: Considering the prerequisites man has created for his car driving, it is clearly the most convenient form of travelling, and thus quite rational. Look at the pedestrian infrastructure in comparison. Footpaths in their present shape are a joke! In earlier days the pedestrian was allowed to use the entire expanse of a street - for more than 7.000 years! We have pushed the pedestrians aside on the edge in last 50 years and now ask ourselves why this kind of mobility vanishes. The structures we have created forces people to drive!

Q: Are we living in a dictatorship of automobiles?

HK: Absolutely!

rest of interview

Professor Hermann Knoflacher has taught at the Institut fuer Verkehrsplanung und Verkehrstechnik at the Technische Universitaet in Vienna for more than 30 years. The 67-year-old professor became well known in Vienna for his innovative thinking on traffic issues. He developed pedestrian areas, put trams on separate roadways, and advocated a separate network of bicycle paths.

[QatzelOk]

Why We Are All Learning to Hate Cars
by Paul Harris



It is known as the Inland Empire: a vast stretch of land tucked in the high desert valleys east of Los Angeles. Once home to fruit trees and Indians, it is now a concrete sprawl of jammed freeways, endless suburbs and shopping malls.

But here, in the heartland of the four-wheel drive, a revolution is under way. What was once unthinkable is becoming a shocking reality: America's all-consuming love affair with the car is fading.

Surging petrol prices have worked where environmental arguments have failed. Many Americans have long been told to cut back on car use. Now, facing $4-a-gallon fuel, they have no choice.

Take Adam Garcia, a security guard who works near the railway station in Riverside. Like many Inland Empire residents, he commutes a huge distance: 100 miles a day. He used to think nothing of it. But now, faced with petrol costs that have tripled, he is taking action. He has even altered the engine of his car to boost its mileage. 'I have to. Everyone does. I can't afford to drive as much as I did,' he said.

Recent figures showed the steepest monthly drop in miles driven by Americans since 1942. At the same time car sales are collapsing, led by huge SUVs.

...

rest of article

[QatzelOk]

Because cars are the new smoking



1. Cost.

Both smoking and car ownership are expensive. Smoking cigs and driving fuel-hungry cars can burn horrendous holes in your wallet. Smokers can pay thousands a year for the cancer sticks alone, but the cost to their health is priceless. Drivers burn through thousands a year on fuel. Add the cost of the vehicle, maintenance and insurance, and your whacked with the stench of some serious cash gone up in smoke.

2. Addictive.

It took years for cigarette maker Philip Morris to admit nicotine is addictive. What about cars? One could argue that cars have a dependence on fuel consumption to function while people have a repetitive habitual reliance on cars. The increase in gas thefts certainly makes one consider how siphoning fuel from your neighbor’s gas tank could be considered addict behavior. Perhaps these fuel thieves are the new dope dealers. Drivers of gas guzzling cars are the addicts. Rather than adjust their driving lifestyle, they opt for the black market and buy the fuel stolen from their neighbors’ tanks.

3. Killers.

Smoking cigarettes will kill you. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports there are 5.4 million tobacco-related deaths every year. The situation is so deathly dire in developing nations that kagillionaires Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg have pledged $500 million to combat tobacco consumption in Asia, Africa, China, and India.

Cars are no life savers either. The WHO reports that worldwide, an estimated 1.2 million people are killed in road crashes each year and as many as 50 million are injured. Automobile related deaths are so common they fail to attract media attention in favor of less frequent types of tragedy. Sorry to be all doom and gloom.

4. Preventable.

Both smoking and automobile related deaths are preventable. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes tobacco use as “the single most important preventable risk to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature death worldwide.”

Car crashes are also preventable. Both the World Bank and the WHO jointly launched the World Report citing that unsafe road traffic systems are seriously harming global public health and development. The report contends that the level of road traffic injury is unacceptable and that it is largely avoidable.

5. Ostracized.

Where smokers are now treated as outcasts by being legislated and banned from practicing their nicotine addiction anywhere they please, I now see SUV drivers being sent a similar social message. Drivers of environment eating Hummers are feeling the brunt of public condemnation. Some drivers find their Humvee tires slashed, windows broken, and messages scratched into the bodies of their vehicles. The public has gone so far as to label SUV and Hummer owners as “Earth Fuc$ers” with minuscule member peens. Indeed, the bigger a man’s car, the smaller his dick?

6. Second Hand Fumes.

Both cigarettes and cars cause pollution in the forms of second hand smoke and exhaust emissions. Both forms of fumes contain a range of toxic substances which can seriously impact our health, including: cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma. Both cigarette smoke and car exhaust fumes are involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers and nondrivers.

7. Peer Pressure.

One of the biggest reasons teens start to smoke is peer influence. The Lung Association says, “Over 70 per cent of teens say that having friends who smoke and/or peer pressure is the number one reason for starting to smoke.” (source).

Peer pressure can also influence car buying decisions. The notion of “keeping up with the the Joneses” is alive and well in America. Look to your neighbor’s driveway and tell me how your car measures up. Blogger Frugal Dad writes on the financial peer pressure of owning a ride rad enough to “impress strangers at a red light.” He says, “Somewhere along the line we Americans decided a car was a reflection of our wealth, a sort of mobile status symbol.” Frugal Dad fully admits that peer pressure can cause one to justify spending hundreds more a month for a “new” ride when “many times a used alternative would do just fine.”

8. Deceptive Advertising.

The tobacco industry has used deceptive advertising techniques to lure kids and teens into smoking for years. Despite being prohibited from targeting youth in the advertising of tobacco products, the tobacco companies have “increased their cigarette marketing expenditures by 125 percent” marketing to kids (source). One of the most common tactics is the introduction of candy-flavored cigarettes and smokeless tobacco (see ads), and other tobacco-like candy.

Car companies use deceptive practices as well to sell cars, trucks, and SUVs. The use of financing programs, sweepstakes contests, money off MSRP, pre-approved credit, zero down, liquidation sales, and selling below dealer’s cost have all been tested in court as deceptive practices (source). The SUV automakers have also been slapped on the chassis by their deceptive advertising in “bluring the lines between SUVs and cars.” Attorney General Charlie Crist says, “Consumers were being deceived into believing SUVs have car-like handling and performance capabilities when in fact they are more like a truck.” Too bad no one mentioned fuel consumption. Yikes.

9. Glamorized.

The movies don’t show you emphysema, but they sure glamorize smoking. Tobacco companies pay movie producers big bucks to get their deathly product on the big screen in the form of product placement. Website Smoke Free Movies shows how “Big Tobacco” companies and Hollywood have influenced and glamorized smoking by placing smoking ads in films over the years. The more people who view their favorite actor lighting up, the more likely they themselves will strike a match. To combat tobacco placement in film, the Motion Picture Association of America will now rate films that “appear to glamorize smoking” with restrictive ratings and increasingly detailed advisories (source).

Cars have been featured as the stars in many a film over the decades. But it’s the glamorization and idealization of street racing and unsafe driving which bothers me most. Films like The Fast and the Furious have been blamed by media watchdogs for increasing illegal street racing (source). Others argue that films American Graffiti and Two-Lane Blacktop set these precedents decades earlier.

10. Land use.

How much land is required and how many forests are consumed to grow, harvest, and manufacture tobacco? How many miles of pavement are required to build the infrastructure to operate motor vehicles around the world? All of this land and these resources are being consumed for what?

The tobacco farms could be allocated to growing food. The pavement plowing over farm land at an alarming rate should also cause concern for anyone requiring food to survive. In the words of Joni Mitchell, I do believe “they paved paradise, they put up a parking lot.” I have to wonder though, is Joni a smoker?

source

[guzzipat]

I hate cars;
They just clog the roads up and make riding my motorcycle more dangerous and much slower. Plus the majority are useless drivers.

[QatzelOk]

Here's a short video that really captures the "love affair" that America was told it had with the automobile.