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Whenever I see an argument like this I'm confused by how hand-wavey "just achieve societal change" is. Like, sure, there's various issues with various technolog

Whenever I see an argument like this I'm confused by how hand-wavey "just achieve societal change" is. Like, sure, there's various issues with various technological approaches, but it's not as if the kind of broad social change that'd see private cars outlawed develops overnight. If anything, the last couple of decades demonstrate pretty convincingly and depressingly that putting together real momentum (read: won referendums on things like carbon taxes, _not_ push polls) is capital-H Hard. It's absolutely true that various bad actors play a factor in that level of difficulty, but they're not going to shut up and go away if we clap our hands and wish really hard either. Consider [1]: this is in a constituency electorally dominated by one of the most avowedly socially-liberal cities in the US and year after year it goes down by similar margins, and that's incredibly anodyne compared to straight-up getting rid of private cars. Conversely, supply-side energy mix changes have, over the same timeframe, made drastic improvements in emissions-per-capita without requiring much/any self-sacrifice. Martyrdom doesn't really scale in the same way. So: what's your plan for gaining the power required to implement your scenario, taking into account the apparent ineffectiveness of decades of messaging? "just ban the cars" would be sensical if you were emperor for a day, but failing any miracles it seems to me that the real distraction is this sort of utopianism. --- [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_Emissions_Fee_Measure_(2018) https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...

cardanome 4y ago
Transitioning from car-centric to human-centric cities is not about sacrifice. It is about understanding how cars actually keep cities from being places that could be much more enjoyable to live in. Having finding trouble an apartment? Without all the wasted space for cars we could have much denser cities. Problem solved! Want to have a place where children can actually play outside safely? Again, ban cars and you don't have to move to the country or suburbia. Tired of how loud cities are? Oh boy, do I have a solution for that. I am not preaching sacrifice, I am saying if we change some things we can achieve much better living conditions for everyone, a plus in living standard. So it is more of a matter of getting people to be conscious about how things actually work. So no, I am not Utopian. The point still stands that Tech wont solve the issues. It is sink or swim for humanity.
- bluescrn 4y ago
  'Take away cars and meat from the poors and forcibly relocate them into tiny pods in Mega-City One' Don't you see any problems with that plan?
  - cardanome 4y ago
    I have never owned a car in my life. Am I living in 1984? It is really not a big deal.
    - bluescrn 4y ago
      It's not about car-free life. It's about dense cities being terrible places to live unless you're at a level of wealth high enough to isolate yourself from the poverty, crime, noise, etc in a secure luxury apartment in an upmarket area. IMHO, big cities are dying, they're a relic of the past. The Internet had already killed physical retail. The pandemic killed off more businesses while WFH workers fled the cities. Soft-on-crime policy trends seem to be hastening the decline. And in a digitally connected world there's simply fewer reasons to physically pack ever more people into small spaces.
      - cardanome 4y ago
        Cities in the Netherlands are very good and safe places to raise kids in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw It is just a matter for human instead of car-centric city planning. This will also help with poverty and crime.
- YarickR2 4y ago
  OMG . Not personal, but you're delusional and/or straight up lying. Denser cities are more enjoyable to live ? Wrong. Denser cities safer for children to play outside ? Wrong. Cities are loud because of cars ? With all that increased density you will have your surroundings much noisier when it hurts most - at the end of the day, when everyone is back from the job, and having a good time at home. Loud music, celebrations, brawls, arguments, etc. No, cramping more people in the same space will not this space more livable; ask Chinese .
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Worth noting that Washington implemented a plan that is basically the same as that proposal: https://ecology.wa.gov/About-us/Who-we-are/News/2021/Aug-6-State-begins-work-to-implement-Climate-Commi https://ecology.wa.gov/About-us/Who-we-are/News/2021/Aug-6-S...
- livueta 4y ago
  That's true, though the intent behind posting the referendum was as a reflection of (lack of) direct public support for potentially personally painful measures. Getting something done through legislative channels obviously isn't worthless or meaningless, but it's not as direct of a reflection of a willingness to incur changes as a referendum is. In a unipolar state like WA, the actions of the legislature can be pretty divorced from actual popular sentiment, and runs the risk of being undone by referendum - which has a lot of precedent in fairly recent WA history.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    It's a bit circular to refer to it as personally painful measures though, and that seems to be a regular trope. Carbon taxes etc., are fairly subtle and boring technocratic method to achieve a goal. The reaction to them is almost entirely based on false impressions, a nested series of false impressions actually. There is no problem, there is no solution, this solution would make things worse, this solution would hurt me personally. this solution is just a scam and so on. "I don't want to do the thing that economists say is most efficient, because it would be painful" as a democratic opinion doesn't really make any sense. If it's efficient then you can use the efficiency gains to compensate anyone who loses out. And then that deliberately misinformed reaction is somehow raised as yet another reason for not doing the most sensible thing, and to talk about how "painful" it would be to stop polluting and incentivize efficiency. And the only reason we appear to need to talk about what people want in this weird, third-hand, circular way, is that if you actually ask people what they want, then they say they want to address climate change. And since that answer isn't acceptable to some people, they need to come up with elaborate ways to prove that people don't actually want what they say they want, and that economists say is the best thing to do.

cardanome 4y ago

Transitioning from car-centric to human-centric cities is not about sacrifice. It is about understanding how cars actually keep cities from being places that could be much more enjoyable to live in. Having finding trouble an apartment? Without all the wasted space for cars we could have much denser cities. Problem solved! Want to have a place where children can actually play outside safely? Again, ban cars and you don't have to move to the country or suburbia. Tired of how loud cities are? Oh boy, do I have a solution for that. I am not preaching sacrifice, I am saying if we change some things we can achieve much better living conditions for everyone, a plus in living standard. So it is more of a matter of getting people to be conscious about how things actually work. So no, I am not Utopian. The point still stands that Tech wont solve the issues. It is sink or swim for humanity.

bluescrn 4y ago
'Take away cars and meat from the poors and forcibly relocate them into tiny pods in Mega-City One' Don't you see any problems with that plan?
- cardanome 4y ago
  I have never owned a car in my life. Am I living in 1984? It is really not a big deal.
  - bluescrn 4y ago
    It's not about car-free life. It's about dense cities being terrible places to live unless you're at a level of wealth high enough to isolate yourself from the poverty, crime, noise, etc in a secure luxury apartment in an upmarket area. IMHO, big cities are dying, they're a relic of the past. The Internet had already killed physical retail. The pandemic killed off more businesses while WFH workers fled the cities. Soft-on-crime policy trends seem to be hastening the decline. And in a digitally connected world there's simply fewer reasons to physically pack ever more people into small spaces.
    - cardanome 4y ago
      Cities in the Netherlands are very good and safe places to raise kids in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw It is just a matter for human instead of car-centric city planning. This will also help with poverty and crime.
YarickR2 4y ago
OMG . Not personal, but you're delusional and/or straight up lying. Denser cities are more enjoyable to live ? Wrong. Denser cities safer for children to play outside ? Wrong. Cities are loud because of cars ? With all that increased density you will have your surroundings much noisier when it hurts most - at the end of the day, when everyone is back from the job, and having a good time at home. Loud music, celebrations, brawls, arguments, etc. No, cramping more people in the same space will not this space more livable; ask Chinese .

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Worth noting that Washington implemented a plan that is basically the same as that proposal: https://ecology.wa.gov/About-us/Who-we-are/News/2021/Aug-6-State-begins-work-to-implement-Climate-Commi https://ecology.wa.gov/About-us/Who-we-are/News/2021/Aug-6-S...

livueta 4y ago
That's true, though the intent behind posting the referendum was as a reflection of (lack of) direct public support for potentially personally painful measures. Getting something done through legislative channels obviously isn't worthless or meaningless, but it's not as direct of a reflection of a willingness to incur changes as a referendum is. In a unipolar state like WA, the actions of the legislature can be pretty divorced from actual popular sentiment, and runs the risk of being undone by referendum - which has a lot of precedent in fairly recent WA history.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  It's a bit circular to refer to it as personally painful measures though, and that seems to be a regular trope. Carbon taxes etc., are fairly subtle and boring technocratic method to achieve a goal. The reaction to them is almost entirely based on false impressions, a nested series of false impressions actually. There is no problem, there is no solution, this solution would make things worse, this solution would hurt me personally. this solution is just a scam and so on. "I don't want to do the thing that economists say is most efficient, because it would be painful" as a democratic opinion doesn't really make any sense. If it's efficient then you can use the efficiency gains to compensate anyone who loses out. And then that deliberately misinformed reaction is somehow raised as yet another reason for not doing the most sensible thing, and to talk about how "painful" it would be to stop polluting and incentivize efficiency. And the only reason we appear to need to talk about what people want in this weird, third-hand, circular way, is that if you actually ask people what they want, then they say they want to address climate change. And since that answer isn't acceptable to some people, they need to come up with elaborate ways to prove that people don't actually want what they say they want, and that economists say is the best thing to do.