Calling all economic experts

[jtr1962]

I would suggest that your thinking above needs to be balanced out by the HUGE demands of cities, all provided by mass transport of goods and services and trash and waste into and out of the city. All those people crammed into that small a space certainly does mean that they don't need cars and can walk or take public transit

I think you're missing my point a bit. The suburbs have pretty much the same demands for goods and services cities do, but spread out over a much larger area, thus costing much more per capita to deliver. In short, they have the same problems of a large city without also having the many advantages of one. Also, a car in NYC is a convenience, not a necessity. Indeed, for many trips a car is actually slower, and always more costly. A lot of the cars which are here are actually suburban commuters. And a lot more people might have had more convenient public transit if not for the suburbancentric public policy which funded highways instead of mass transit for the last 50 years.

Large urban cities suffer from much the same problems, and are, in a sense, highly unnatural. If you stopped the supplies into and out of NYC, it would collapse into a disaster area in a matter of days.

As would the suburbs. Old rural America was way more self-sufficient than either. As for unnatural, man has lived in large cities for centuries in order to put many conveniences within walking distance. The relatively new development of suburbia is probably more unnatural than anything else as it's basically a place designed for automobiles.

Not that I disagree with what you wrote, though. Just that I'm pretty much a Distributist when it come to this sort of thing. I want to see more local production and consumption of goods, and more small businesses owned by local individuals. I don't think it's a really great idea to have all the grain grown in one part of the country and all the fruit in another. Nor do I think it's a great idea to reduce the genetic diversity of your crops down to a handful of varieties, or even just ONE strain. I guess the potato famine in Ireland is a lesson not learned, but lost to history.

I agree, but if anything the trends for the last 50 years are what has produced the current situation. By turning valuable farmland into suburban housing tracts you had to utilize your remaining farmland more efficiently. That means factory farming.

 

[js]

jtr,

No, I understood where you were coming from regarding the suburbs, I think. I never contradicted you there.

I'm not missing your point. I pretty much agree with it. BUT, not entirely, and now that you've said more, I find more that I would take issue with.

First, the place we agree: the suburbs are the worst of both worlds, roughly speaking.

It's just that you seem to see the suburbs as some kind of city planning gone wrong. If only all those people could have been put into cities instead, we could all ride the subway and have fewer cars and more farmland to suport the cities. But instead of doing that sensible (according to you) thing, government and society have supported suburbia by unnatural and unwarranted financial and moral support for roads and cars and infrastructure, thus creating this repulsive half-breed known as the "burbs".

I disagree.

The suburbs were created because it's unnatural to cram all those people into that small a space, and limits are reached. People need work to live and support themselves and their families. The work is often to be found only in the cities, but finding apartments or condos in the city is both hard, and far more costly. Thus they live in the suburbs and work in the city.

You can't lay the blame for the suburbs and "urban sprawl" clearly on any one factor, and you can't simply say all those people should move to the cities. Suburbia is intertwined with a great many of the strands that make up the warp and weft of modern society.

It's a flat oversimplification to say that the suburbs have all the disadvantages of a large city without any of the advantages. How about home ownership? How about a front lawn? How about trees and a very different sort of neighborhood?

Humans have indeed lived in cities for centuries untold, but the balance has shifted dramatically. It used to be that the great majority of people were involved directly in the production of food and related products. Now less than 2 percent of the population is directly involved in food production.

It's a common myth that factory farms are more efficient.

Not true.

By far the MOST efficient use of farm land is in very small farms, 3 acres or less--and we're talking like 2 to 3 times more efficient than factory farms.

Further, the whole agribusiness system of production is only possible because of cheap oil. Take that away and the costs of food items will start to rise dramatically. That's really the second part of the story of our times. The first part could possibly be summarized under the heading "Gold" and would involve a tale of the rise of the fiat currency system and modern economics.

The second part could possibly fall under the heading "Wheat" and would involve a tale of the unsettling of America and the heart rending relocation of the rural population into the cities and urban centers. We're in for a RUDE FREAKING awakening when oil starst to rise in price--and more than that, when the agribusiness industry is FORCED to start to pay and benefit its workers something like the way other industrial workers are compensated.

You say the answer is cities, and see the suburbs as somehow optional--as if we could have a city without surrounding suburbs.

I say that the two go hand in hand. It's not simply the fault of taxes being used for highways.

I say that the only answer will be the serious re-population of rural America. This will not really happen until food prices rise to 5 to 10 times what they are now; until the inverted triangle tips over and more people take a hand in food production, with many many small farms serving local markets.

It's a myth and a modern stupid stuborn prejudice that we somehow "can't go back" to that. OF COURSE WE CAN! And we will. It's already happening. There are more and more small local farms (some of them organic, some of them not) here in the Fingerlakes region of NY every year, and Ithaca's farmers market and co-operatives are among the best in the country.

Some people will always be city people, and there will always be cities, and there need to be cities. But right now, far too many people have been forced due to "the economy" into urban lifestyles that they have no wish for, and that do not suit them.

In general, it's probably not their fault that they live in the suburbs. It's the fault of our unnatural and unstable modern economy and the choices that have been made over the last century by many different forces and entities.

 

[tygger]

Im not doubting what the US congress, president, etc are saying, what Im trying to say is: why China would change their economic policy to benefit the US? They will change the rate when they think its time to do it, and be sure it won't be because the US asked, in the first place it will be because it benefits them...

Pablo

You're right. Its laughable that the treasury secretary would ask China to manipulate its currency for the US' benefit. But its much easier for politicians to blame China's low Yuan for our troubles than their own irresponsibiliy. Its almost as silly as Bush asking the Saudis to produce more oil.

 

[jtr1962]

It's just that you seem to see the suburbs as some kind of city planning gone wrong. If only all those people could have been put into cities instead, we could all ride the subway and have fewer cars and more farmland to suport the cities. But instead of doing that sensible (according to you) thing, government and society have supported suburbia by unnatural and unwarranted financial and moral support for roads and cars and infrastructure, thus creating this repulsive half-breed known as the "burbs".

I disagree.

The suburbs were created because it's unnatural to cram all those people into that small a space, and limits are reached. People need work to live and support themselves and their families. The work is often to be found only in the cities, but finding apartments or condos in the city is both hard, and far more costly. Thus they live in the suburbs and work in the city.

I'm not totally disagreeing with you here, but the picture is a bit more complex than that. Even though what I'm writing here in response is lengthy, it's but a small part of the whole story.

As far as my research has led me to determine, the suburbs were largely created to sell cars. Up until the great experiment begun in the 1950s, cars were mostly a solution in search of a problem. Sure, they were useful in rural areas, but they were little more than expensive toys for most city dwellers. Yes, they had some utility, but for the most part they were optional. Lots of people could live without a car, and did. The burgeoning auto industry wanted to sell more cars, but couldn't unless lifestyles changed such that autos were necessary for daily life. The auto industry at the time represented a way for the heavy industries used in WWII to continue to employ a large workforce. Building roads and other facilities for autos would create yet more employment. I'm not implying there was any evil here. I highly doubt the long term ramifications of what was being done were thought out. The politicians of the time simply saw it as an economic stimulus package. The benefits of more open space which you mentioned were the carrot used to entice people to relocate to the new suburbs. To urban dwellers living in a crowded tenement, this undoubtably had some appeal.

Unfortunately, this change of lifestyle had dire consequences. To be sure, the cities of the time were far from utopia. They were often dirty, smelly, overcrowded, lacking in amenties. However, there was nothing wrong with them that couldn't be fixed. Lack of personal space could be alleviated by building taller buildings, but with much more parkland in between them. This was also solve the overcrowding and sanitary problems. The transportation grid already existed in the form of urban railways. They simply needed to be brought up to current standards of technology, and expanded where needed. Ironically, doing all of these things would have created as much employment as the alternative, but because it wasn't really "new" like the autos or suburbia, it didn't appeal to the public's fancy.

Anyway, the very changes which brought suburbia into existence nearly destroyed urban America. Besides the obvious, such as lack of funding for rail transit, there was also a "brain drain" from the cities. Those who did well left the cities in droves, leaving mostly the underclass. Soon, cities became ghettos of the poor, places to drive through as quickly as possible on your way to or from work. Central business districts where suburbanites worked were slower to decline, but as more jobs flocked to the suburbs in time many did. For a time in the 1970s it was even thought that cities were an anachronism, no longer necessary in the scheme of things. Of course, this line of thought didn't account for what would happen to the millions of poor stuck in inner cities who couldn't afford the house in suburbia. It also didn't account for the small percentage of not so poor who stubbornly rejected the suburban lifestyle. This last group is probably what kept the cities alive enough for their resurgence in the early 1990s.

The resurgence of cities is not without its own set of problems. Unfortunately, the decades of infrastructure neglect in favor of the auto make rebuilding cities more expensive than it would have to be. Wholesale abandonment of many railway lines means that cities will have many of the same transportation problems as the suburbs, at least until such time as we can replicate what once was to reduce auto dependence. However, the fact that cities survived is testament to their not being obsolete, even in this day and age of instant communication. There is an inherent need among many humans to be in close proximity to thousands of other humans. This is no more unnatural than many other ways of living. There are also great advantages to things being an easy walk away, without direct dependence on mechanized transport. There is inarguably still an indirect dependence on such transport to get supplies into the city, but for that much more efficient rail and water transport is largely adequate. And in time cities are perfectly capable of locally producing much of what they need once cheap sources of power are available, along the lines of the distributism model. I envision a few 100-story hydroponic gardens powered by fission or fusion growing all of the food needed in NYC, for example. As much as it was cheap oil funding factory farming, it will likely be cheap fission or fusion power enabling things to be grown and consumed locally. At its essence, all you really need to grow food is a source of cheap, abundant power. The sun is still that source, but once we have another, we don't even need the most precious commodity of all, fertile land, in order to feed ourselves.

It's a common myth that factory farms are more efficient.

Not true.

By far the MOST efficient use of farm land is in very small farms, 3 acres or less--and we're talking like 2 to 3 times more efficient than factory farms.

I won't even try to argue this as it seems that you may well be right. And incidentally I also happen to like the model of lots of small mom and pop farms over what we have now. Factory farming produces mostly tasteless, generic food. It also provides mostly lousy jobs. I agree a return to rural America seems inevitable. What better way to run our society than to have those who hunger for open space running their own small farms, while those who prefer the urban lifestyle can reside in our revived cities. And it will all be interconnected by a system of mostly railway as in the days of old, but with more modern technology. So in essence I'm agreeing completely here with your last paragraph:

I say that the only answer will be the serious re-population of rural America. This will not really happen until food prices rise to 5 to 10 times what they are now; until the inverted triangle tips over and more people take a hand in food production, with many many small farms serving local markets.

It's a myth and a modern stupid stuborn prejudice that we somehow "can't go back" to that. OF COURSE WE CAN! And we will. It's already happening. There are more and more small local farms (some of them organic, some of them not) here in the Fingerlakes region of NY every year, and Ithaca's farmers market and co-operatives are among the best in the country.

Some people will always be city people, and there will always be cities, and there need to be cities. But right now, far too many people have been forced due to "the economy" into urban lifestyles that they have no wish for, and that do not suit them.

I guess the old saying everything old is new again will prove to be true. Since the cities can't handle the entire influx of displaced suburbanites, nor would many of them want to live in cities anyway, the new small farm business will offer them a new way of life. They'll have all the things they moved to suburbia for, such as open space, cleaner air, etc. but without the need to spend half their lives in a automobile. In essence we'll probably go to a combination of very low density or very high density living arrangements, with in between ones (suburbs and exurbs) pretty much gone. And most of the Interstate highway system will be gone as well since the need for frequent intercity trips (i.e. the aforementioned 50 mile daily commutes to work) will vanish. High-speed trains will largely replace the car and aeroplane in that function, performing the same function as the steam railroads of old, but powered by electricity from solar, nuclear, or hydroelectric sources instead of coal. I don't know how the auto will fit into any of this. They'll undoubtably exist for the trips into town in rural areas. Perhaps some urbanites will have a small electric grocery getter, but then again a shopping cart or bike with a trailer can serve just as well. Mostly gone will be the need for long-distance fossil fuel powered Interstate cruisers.

 

[daveman]

You're right. Its laughable that the treasury secretary would ask China to manipulate its currency for the US' benefit.

Henry Paulson took at least 2 trips (I think it was more like 4) last year to China for meetings with various Chinese officials to try to convince them into raising the Yuan.

But its much easier for politicians to blame China's low Yuan for our troubles than their own irresponsibiliy.

What are you saying, that China's competitive advantage over the U.S. isn't due to their cheap Yuan?

 

[PEU]

What are you saying, that China's competitive advantage over the U.S. isn't due to their cheap Yuan?

Of course my friend!

There isn't a single way to become competitive in the global markets nowadays, there are many, governments use rate change as a tool to this purpose.

A brief history of my country regarding this can put some light in this matter:

As posted by me before in this thread, we had a crisis in 1989 that led to hyperinflation. The only way to keep the money value was to exchange it for US dollars as fast as you can. This was done by the worker, middle and upper classes.

So after the crisis was history the minister of economy at the time had the idea to change our currency and put it par with the dollar, 1peso=1dollar and the dollar was legal tender here, why not? everyone was doing it to protect the value of the hard earned money, government just made a law what all of us were doing.

As you can imagine, a deficitary government at the time, barely had the reserves in the central bank to meet this now imposed 1=1 parity (we cannot print dollars as the US) so our economy was stable for about a year or two. But the government kept printing pesos (again, we cannot print dollars doh!) but the exchange rate remained the same. If you do the math, you quickly figure out that the money needs to be backed with something.
Enter the era of Carlos Menem, our president during the 90s. A carnival of foreign debt bonds was used to back the ever expanding amount of pesos being printed without reserves in the central bank, this was done, of course, to not have inflation.

Another consequence of this, but this time for the general population was that the peso was "strong" This meant that it was cheaper for us to visit Miami than our own country for example.
This was also the death sentence of the local industry, when the peso became "strong" many quickly realized that importing stuff was cheaper than manufacturing it here, so during most of the 90's our industry almost died in slow agony.
These bonds were used, by foreign companies, to buy the Govt owned water/telephones/petrol/energy companies at pitty prices, as these bonds sometimes held only 1/10 of its value...

Fast forward to 2001, our next crisis, I also posted links about this early in this thread.

The carnival of bonds was over, our foreign debt skyrocketed, lots of dead people in the streets, we had 5 presidents in a week, one of them proclaimed in congress: "we will not honor the foreing debt" and everyone applauded... morons :shakehead

After the turmoil settled, the dollar no longer was tied to the peso, people with dollars in their accounts had them converted to bonds, and the rate went from 1=1 to 1dollar=4pesos to settle around 1=3

But there was a benefit of this new exchange rate, our almost defunct industry, with years of not updating their machinery, was all of the sudden "competitive", not because all of us went to work 20 hours a day for low wages, but because our products were cheap again for the global markets...

Over the recent years this led to an increase in reserves in the central bank, we paid all our debt with the IMF (International Money Fund) and other debts are being paid, our national foreign debt is slowly decreasing, or at least not increasing at the pace it used to grow.

Having more reserves meant that the peso/dollar rate would decrease right? NO, the govt keept the 3ish=1 rate so the industry remains "competitive"


So, in this brief history of my country I guess you can learn some things:

1- exchange rates can be modified at will by the governments.
2- if you pay using bonds, iou's, etc at some point these must be paid in hard cash
3- if you print money without real reserves, sooner or later it will lose it buying power.
4- if you don't have hard cash, iou's/bond owners will buy your land, basic industries for cheap.
5- the industry benefits from devalued currency, it makes them more competitive.

Like Hitler's failure to conquer Russia failed in the same way that Napoleon attempt, history repeats itself, there is something to learn by the US from Argentina failures in the last 20 years.


Pablo

 

[js]

jtr,

OK. Wow. I don't even know where to start.

In fact, I don't think I will. Let's agree to disagree where we disagree, and to agree where we agree.

Let me just sumarize the main differences thusly: if you think that we can dispense with land (via hydroponics and fission or fusion energy) and with roads and that we will have robot shoppers in some George Jetson future-rama world . . well, I think you're wrong.

As for the suburbs and cars being foisted on the public back in the 50's, I bet there's something to that and that you have a good point there, but, nonetheless, it doesn't bear on the situation today. Even if back then there had been no push for cars and roads and suburbs, there would have been a natural spontaneous demand for them both (without any policy decision from the powers-that-be) by the 70's and 80's, if not sooner.

 

[js]

PEU,

Fantastic post!

 

[MarNav1]

Reguarding PEU's point's 3 and 4. We don't have any real reserves or hard cash either one. Federal Reserve notes don't qualify on either count. The hard currency was taken away from us in 1933, and the people of the United States were forced to use monopoly money since that time. Our land, homes, industries have been gone for quite some time. The ONLY reason everything hasn't come down already is that people have been duped into believing that Federal Reserve Notes and Dollars are the same thing. They are NOT the same thing and never have been the same thing. And now it has been taken one step further to where your "money" is simply numbers on a computer screen, in the next few years after some planned economic "crises" there will be no more money it will all be numbers on a screen. Probably 60-75% of it is now. We have been living in Disneyland for 75 years or so already. The "easy" credit is done on purpose to get people "indebted" to the banks and when enough of us fall for the trick they call in the loans or raise the interest rates and then you are scrambling to keep up with payments etc and the trap is closed. This is part of the reason we are seeing so many homes going down now, the middle class guy just can't keep the "game" going any more. The simple fact of the matter is the country is not "going" broke, the Congress declared bankruptcy many years ago. The United States and everything in it has been owned by the bankers for many years now.

 

[PEU]

Are you sure the US dont have reserves? look again.

They could buy your banks, heck, they are already doing it:
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKL2141450720080121?rpc=44

They could mandate what do you pay for energy, they already doing it too: oil prices.

They could buy the land, etc, in brief, they could buy whatever is on sale or listed in the stock market...

Hopefully the next US president will have more common sense and stop the spending carnival.

Am I in a depressive mood? maybe, read today news, its a black Monday for stock markets worldwide. I'm really intrigued about what will happen tomorrow when US markets reopen...


Pablo

 

[MarNav1]

What would they use for reserves? Federal reserve notes? You can't use monopoly money for reserves or anything else for that matter. You can't use numbers on a computer screen for reserves either. All that is left for "reserves" is the property of the US, that is gone too. All that has been used these past years are IOU's, IE Federal Reserve Notes. The only thing left is "sweat" equity, IE the slaves go out and perpetually work and dont get paid for it. You can figure out who the slaves are I'm sure. Thus the story about Pharaoh in the book of Exodus telling the Hebrew slaves to make bricks without straw, is being repeated right now before our eyes. What is the worlds so called "reserve" currency? The Dollar Bill? Nope. Federal Reserve Notes ie monopoly money. There is a world of difference there, do some research and you will see the scam going on here.

 

[PEU]

I think you missunderstood me.

Now foreign companies/govts keep the US iou/bonds in their reserves because they trust the US.

These papers hold their face value, they even pay interests.

But if in the future they decide to let these go, for any reason they see fit, they will use them to purchase US goods, like they did in my country.

Even worst, if you flood the market with these bonds, and creditors lose their faith in their value, they of course will lose value, for example: you could buy bonds at 75% their face value or even less (Argentina bonds, when we defaulted our foreign debt, were valued at around 10% its face value)

These iou/bonds are legal tender and they keep their face value in the US, no matter the value these were purchased in the open market.

So you see, you purchase money at a discount, but you use it in the US at face value... nice proposition if you are on the buying side right?


Pablo

 

[MarNav1]

I think you missunderstood me.

Now foreign companies/govts keep the US iou/bonds in their reserves because they trust the US.

These papers hold their face value, they even pay interests.

But if in the future they decide to let these go, for any reason they see fit, they will use them to purchase US goods, like they did in my country.

Even worst, if you flood the market with these bonds, and creditors lose their faith in their value, they of course will lose value, for example: you could buy bonds at 75% their face value or even less (Argentina bonds, when we defaulted our foreign debt, were valued at around 10% its face value)

These iou/bonds are legal tender and they keep their face value in the US, no matter the value these were purchased in the open market.

So you see, you purchase money at a discount, but you use it in the US at face value... nice proposition if you are on the buying side right?


Pablo

No I didn't misunderstand you. What I an trying to point out is FRN's have zero value. When you buy anything with FRN's it is a PROMISE to pay, the item in question that you bought is NEVER paid for. It's only a PROMISE to pay for the item. Same way with your paycheck, it is a PROMISE to pay that is never fulfilled. The reason this is true is because FRN's are not lawful money so you don't have a way to pay. You can postpone payment indefinately. You cannot print FRN's in your basement and use them to buy anything, they would jail you for counterfeiting. Yet the Federal Reserve can and does it everyday and has for years. There is only one reason why this is possible, the courts and the Congress and Senate have been bought off. If you doubt what I am saying go into almost any courtroom in the US and look at the flag. It will have a gold fringe on it which means the "common law" ie gold and silver coin ie "lawful" money has been replaced by "Admiralty law" ie FRN's ie the law of the banker. The bankers hate lawful money because it is an honest money system and it makes it much harder for them to defraud the common man. Use google and do some searches and study these things here, you will see more clearly what is going on. :huh:

 

[LuxLuthor]

OMG, so much craziness being thrown about in this topic....some of it may be technically accurate, but as you saw in world markets today, the US economy is at the center of the world's economy, and all interconnected in very intricate manners.

Many of these conversations remind me of a good friend who at best, described himself as a survivalist. Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's he had a 5,000 gallon diesel oil storage tank put into his back yard, then an elaborate underground survival bunker stocked with many tons of dehydrated and canned foods. In addition, he began liquidating his holdings and accumulating gold and silver coins, firearms and other bizarre habits. He died 2 years ago still defending his ridiculous actions.

The world has way too much investment and dependency on many aspects of the US global position. It is obvious there is no other place for any of the world's powers to go as an alternative to US investments and markets. You don't see a world reaction like we saw today when France or Argentina's economy gets in trouble.

Once this correction and financial bloodbath satisfies all the "nervious nellies," naysayers, doom and gloomers, get ready to buy stock. There is no other game in town. There are always cycles, and they are mostly created or exaggerated by "crowd panic theory." No one wants to be the last person in a theater after some idiot yells "fire."

Again, for those who have extra money set aside, you are about to have a very rare investment opportunity...and it's not in gold or gold stocks.

 

[kelmo]

Are you refering to the housing market?

 

[daveman]

OMG, so much craziness being thrown about in this topic....some of it may be technically accurate, but as you saw in world markets today, the US economy is at the center of the world's economy, and all interconnected in very intricate manners.

Many of these conversations remind me of a good friend who at best, described himself as a survivalist. Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's he had a 5,000 gallon diesel oil storage tank put into his back yard, then an elaborate underground survival bunker stocked with many tons of dehydrated and canned foods. In addition, he began liquidating his holdings and accumulating gold and silver coins, firearms and other bizarre habits. He died 2 years ago still defending his ridiculous actions.

The world has way too much investment and dependency on many aspects of the US global position. It is obvious there is no other place for any of the world's powers to go as an alternative to US investments and markets. You don't see a world reaction like we saw today when France or Argentina's economy gets in trouble.

Once this correction and financial bloodbath satisfies all the "nervious nellies," naysayers, doom and gloomers, get ready to buy stock. There is no other game in town. There are always cycles, and they are mostly created or exaggerated by "crowd panic theory." No one wants to be the last person in a theater after some idiot yells "fire."

Again, for those who have extra money set aside, you are about to have a very rare investment opportunity...and it's not in gold or gold stocks.

Lux Luthor, I disagree with everything in your post to the last possible degree, and I believe within 10 years time, you will disagree with what you have posted here as well.
Good luck with those stocks.

 

[tygger]

What are you saying, that China's competitive advantage over the U.S. isn't due to their cheap Yuan?

I'd say their competitive advantage has much more to do with things like how our respective economies are structured. Production vs. consumption. Plus the availability of easy personal credit is a huge factor, enabling americans to spend way outside the realm of their earning capacity.

 

[jtr1962]

jtr,

OK. Wow. I don't even know where to start.

In fact, I don't think I will. Let's agree to disagree where we disagree, and to agree where we agree.

Fair enough. At this point I went off on so many tangents I don't think it's possible to address everything I said anyway in a reasonable amount of time. I could literally write a book on this subject. Indeed, I may well do that one day.

Let me just sumarize the main differences thusly: if you think that we can dispense with land (via hydroponics and fission or fusion energy) and with roads and that we will have robot shoppers in some George Jetson future-rama world . . well, I think you're wrong.

I never mentioned anything about robot shoppers, but fact is androids doing a lot of the menial chores of society will come to pass. Whether this happens in 10 years, 20, or 100 I don't know, but it will happen. What this means economically is anybody's guess. My take on it is that in time the concept of money may well be meaningless. You'll have the means to turn raw materials into whatever you want for practically the cost of the raw materials themselves, and to recycle them when they're no longer useful. That will mean a society where goods and services don't need pricing to ration them. I think it'll be a good thing but I also think getting there will be painful.

As for dispensing with land for growing food, it'll happen once we have cheap abundant energy, and the cost of using land for growing food is more than using it for housing. Or perhaps climate change decreasing the amount of arable land will push us into this also. I didn't say this new way of providing food will happen soon. It may well be a century before all the pieces are in place. I think something like our Internet was envisioned even in the 1800s but the technology to build it didn't come of age until nearly the 21st century. Same thing here.

As for the suburbs and cars being foisted on the public back in the 50's, I bet there's something to that and that you have a good point there, but, nonetheless, it doesn't bear on the situation today. Even if back then there had been no push for cars and roads and suburbs, there would have been a natural spontaneous demand for them both (without any policy decision from the powers-that-be) by the 70's and 80's, if not sooner.

Several things besides marketing created the demand for cars. One as I mentioned was the decision not to invest in our cities. Had we done this to make them more liveable, there would have been less desire to move to far flung places which required an automoble. Had we not neglected passenger rail transport, there would have been less need for autos also. Sure, some city dwellers had cars even in the days before we built suburbia, but they were mainly the upper class who used them occasionally to go to their country homes. Almost nobody needed or felt like driving every single day.

Another big factor was the Interstate Highway system. Prior to its construction, it was actually faster to travel by train. The new highways tipped the balance in favor of the auto in many cases. Trains still could have competed had they used new technology. Indeed, state of the art railways are about 2 to 3 times faster than driving even now. However, the political will wasn't there because trains were "old", cars and aeroplanes were "new". Anyway, once you could travel as fast or faster by car than by train, that was the final nail in the coffin of passenger rail train. Once the mainline passenger service went, the interurban, trolley, and subway networks which connected them locally disappeared to a large extent, forcing many to rely on cars even for local travel. In short, we dismantled a great, comprehensive system instead of modernizing it. We replaced it with a new system where the price of entry was much steeper (namely buying a car and getting a license instead of just paying a fare). This new system favored mainly the middle and upper classes. The poor were pretty much left without viable transportation, or at best substandard public transit suffering from lack of funding.

Had our cities and our public transportation networks not be neglected, I honestly highly doubt there would have been any huge demand for autos or suburbia, at least not to the point that auto ownership is practically universal. Many would have stayed in the cities. Even today, look at a viable city like New York. Fully half the Manhattanites don't have a driver's license. Even more don't own cars. Car ownership is higher in the outer boroughs, but even here it's far from universal. And it would be far less had we built more subways in the outer boroughs. In short, public policy was largely responsible for creating the difference in auto ownership between what existed in the 1940s, versus what we have today. Some people love cars and would own them regardless. The majority however would get rid of them in a heartbeat if they had equally convenient ways to get to work or run their errands. Public policy made many of those other ways just disappear. You can't walk to the store even if you wanted to in much of the USA. In essence, we removed choices. Doing so in a democracy is always a bad thing. It will have long term repercussions for the economy.

Note that I didn't even get into the indirect costs of autos/suburbia yet. In a nutshell, they include a public health epidemic of obesity, cancer, diabetes, and traumatic injury. Funny how when the robber barons ran the railroads the public was up in arms over the few hundred to perhaps a thousand annual deaths on the railroads due to lack of safety devices. Nowadays we quietly tolerate 50,000 deaths and 2 million annual injuries from the automobile with barely a whimper. I wonder why? That's a real question I'm asking as I so far haven't found any rational answer.

 

[thesurefire]

jtr1962,

Convenience. Id rather be 10 times as likely to die and spend 10 times less time in transit then take 10 times as long getting there but be 10 times safer. The bottom line is that while driving may be the most dangerous thing most of us do day to day, it has allowed us as a race to accomplish great things. Do you think we would be where we are today without the automobile?

I'd rather die at 70 and have feel like I lived every minute then live to 120.

in NYC, what is the ratio of cab drivers to everyone else? how about that same ratio is say LA?

 

[MarNav1]

Well I did my best, what more can I say? If that is "crazyness" then so be it. If acquiring real money and some guns is a "bizarre" habit then I guess we deserve what we are getting. I'll offer no more on the subject, I have better things to do.