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When you can't get gas for your car, it's a large, heavy, utterly useless pile of metal. When you can't get electricity for your e-bike, it's a large, heavy, b
by vkou 4y ago
When you can't get gas for your car, it's a large, heavy, utterly useless pile of metal.
When you can't get electricity for your e-bike, it's a large, heavy, but still functional bicycle.
If you build your society around automobiles as a form of transportation, you become critically dependent on enormous supply chains beyond your control. Collapse those supply chains, and modern America would be uninhabitable without the automobile.
If you build your society around e-bikes as a form of transportation, you'll be... Mildly inconvenienced if those supply chains break down.
One of the factors that many Amish groups use when deciding to adopt novel technology is determining how reliant that would make them on the outside world. Automobiles generally have a very hard time passing this test. Bicycles, and electric bicycles have a much easier time.
I've also never heard of having no choice but buying into a predatory 20% APR loan to buy a bicycle.
- alexvoda 4y agoIgnoring of course the very many ways they are reliant on the outside world for their lifestyle to be possible.
- vkou 4y agoNo man, or village is an island. That doesn't mean that you should blindly enslave yourself to reliance on things beyond your control, when you can help it. You tell me, how well has, say, reliance on foreign fossil fuels worked out for Germany last year? What if the winter were a few degrees colder? Or in the US, during the oil shocks? How well is Russia's reliance on trade with the rest of the world, and the decline of its industrial base working out for it?
- swatcoder 4y agoIs there a community free from someone’s claim of contradiction and inconsistency? Is there a point to this kind of snark? If you have concerns about the Amish community, tradition, or lifestyle, I’m sure they’re more interesting than the philosophical gotcha games that one could target at anyone.
- alexvoda 4y agoI am not trying to be snarky or play gotcha games. I am pointing out that the Amish lifestyle is an artifact of American society and would not be possible in many other parts of the world. They are playing life in such an easy mode that they decided to have self-imposed restrictions. The electric grid is one of humanities greatest achievement, one that many places unfortunately still can not afford to build. And more generally I am criticizing the fetishization of self-reliance in its many forms (preppers, bunker builders, gun ownership, etc.) that is so popular with some people. It is a fundamentally nearsighted privilege by selectively ignoring other forms of reliance. Self reliance is not an attitude of resilience, it is one of isolation, selfishness and ruthless competition. It is precisely the goals for which people came together in cooperation that are humanities greatest achievements. Cooperation and interdependence are higher moral virtues.
- Aeolun 4y ago> When you can't get electricity for your e-bike, it's a large, heavy, but still functional bicycle. For some definition of functional. I really do not enjoy using my electric bicycle without electric assistance. Something about the electric engine makes it really heavy to use without that assistance. I’d much rather have a bike that didn’t use electricity in the first place.
- EngManagerIsMe 4y agoMine works fine? It feels like a heavy bike, which it is, of course, but it's still very much an adequate bike. Given that ebikes are more efficient than bikes, and bikes are more efficient than walking/cars/trains, the ebike seems like a fantastic piece of kit. (Plus, the added benefits of cardiovascular exercise, which it has been shown is still present in ebikes.)
- rowanajmarshall 4y agoSame, but the fail-state of a car of plane is a block of steel with an indoors, markedly less useful than a heavy-but-functioning bike.
- ars 4y ago> When you can't get electricity for your e-bike, it's a large, heavy, but still functional bicycle. Not mine. It has pedals but they are not enough to actually make it move, except downhill. It has a fixed gear ratio. And there are plenty of e-bikes with no pedals at all. > I've also never heard of having no choice but buying into a predatory 20% APR loan to buy a bicycle. You are not required to do that with a car either. > Collapse those supply chains, and modern America would be uninhabitable without the automobile. The automobile is the least of your issue. There would be no food or water either.
- loeg 4y ago> And there are plenty of e-bikes with no pedals at all. That's a moped, not an ebike. I agree with your points about car loans and supply chains, though.
- noman-land 4y agoMopeds have pedals, hence the ped part of moped. Scooters do not have pedals.
- jessekv 4y agoHmm for some reason I always thought it was a shortening of "motorised pedestrian" haha. On the other hand, I have seen models with holes next to the transmission that can accept a pair of removable pedals stowed under the seat. Completely worthless for locomotion, but sufficient to be classified as a bicycle for legal reasons.
- indecisive_user 4y agoPerhaps it's region dependent, but mopeds in the US typically don't have pedals. This source is from the UK but applies similarly https://www.thebikeinsurer.co.uk/learner-guides/scooter-vs-moped-whats-the-difference/ https://www.thebikeinsurer.co.uk/learner-guides/scooter-vs-m...
- petesergeant 4y agoThis isn’t true in practice for any country that uses English as a first language, where moped simply means an underpowered scooter.
- 8note 4y ago> If you build your society around automobiles as a form of transportation, you become critically dependent on enormous supply chains beyond your control. Sufficient but not necessary. You can build enormous supply chains on ships and trains just fine