You're not wrong, but not every problem needs to be solved and there are 8 billion people. In my experience it's usually better to align yourself with those you communicate well with, and avoid the ones you don't.
I read that comment as a sarcastic take on it's parent, not a continuation of the sentiment.
FWIW, I think therapy is awesome and should be embraced by more people. Probably a good thing for founders to have their own version of it. Renowned therapist Esther Perel has (had?) a podcast called How's Work? where she mediated conversations with business partners.
Higher temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere and aridification at the same time. That's why there can be drought plus record breaking rainfall at the same time.
Plus, when you have drought, it damages the soil and plant life which would normally aid in capturing and retaining the rainfall. And when the rain does fall, instead of being absorbed into the soil it just creates erosion instead as the top layer dies.
People think about soil as just dirt, which it is not. Soil is effectively a living organism (or ecosystem of organisms).
Will there be low wages with huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent? Young people know the future is not bright, and I encourage them to enjoy their lives while they still can.
This world view seems like a potential death spiral. As world views become bleak, is encouraging people to say "fuck it" and maximize for enjoyment really the best move? Whatever happened to working hard to build a future for oneself? Yes, I understand there are higher powers that be and people with much more powers than you and I that are ruining the future but is the answer really to lay down and be engulfed in the pleasure-filled dopamine high ebbs and flows of the meta-verse?
It's like the chicken and egg problem. What came first? Societal collapse or the willingness of its citizens to lay down and take it?
Both cause eachother. Which variable is the one we can actually change?
Yes, enjoy your lives but only to the extent to where you step away from the grind and reevaluate your priorities, take a look at what is important to you. Hunker down into the priorities that matter and remove the cruft of distractions.
> What came first? Societal collapse or the willingness of its citizens to lay down and take it?
The previous poster's description of the problem isn't by force of nature. It's by other people ("huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent"). Perhaps the CEOs should offer some concessions to the young workers.
Indeed. Eventually there will be a revolution if the wealth concentration trend continues. I'm on the side of the working class forever and always, as I grew up dirt poor (and got exceptionally lucky because of my early interest in computers) and my family is still dirt poor today, so I have a good idea of what it's _actually_ like to starve.
> Eventually there will be a revolution if the wealth concentration trend continues.
I think surveillance and drone/robocop technology will make popular revolutions a thing of the past. People will be actively monitored if they even smell slightly rebellious to an algorithm, will be warned if they seem to be taking themselves seriously, and will be imprisoned if they don't have the appropriate reaction to a warning.
People need privacy and private ways to communicate in order to rebel. All of our movements will be monitored by our phones and street cameras with facial recognition. Cellphone conversations will be terminated with a warning if the algo detects Russian/Chinese/Iranian//North Korean/French(since 2031) propaganda being used to sow discord and evil.
We'll get back to remembering that wars, even civil, are when inbred princes and kings argue, not people with healthy genetics.
Housing is treated as an investment these days, instead of as housing. That's the fundamental cause of unaffordability, and it exacerbates the problem. It's easily fixed with the right policies, but at this point it can never be fixed (with a huge political left turn, maybe).
Making it easier to obtain leverage doesn't make housing cheaper, it just makes the prices go even higher faster.
It's the same with money, when money deflates it's treated as an investment too, not a medium of exchange.
Just like housing being too expensive ruins it's ability to provide housing for everyone, money being too expensive causes a recession and unemployment.
The difference however is that money can be created through borrowing so it doesn't go up in value but housing is restricted through zoning and the availability of land, you just can't make more of it.
You're correct, but the other thing with housing is that we actually have a supply glut. There are something like 16 million vacant homes in the US (according to numbers from an internet search).
Why so many vacant homes? The answer (as with everything in economics) is that the incentives are such that it's better to sit on a vacant home. In other words, our current system incentivizes hoarding homes.
This is false, "vacant homes" has no relation to "vacant homes you'd want to live in". Half could be condemned shacks in Detroit and the other half could be homes people have signed leases for but aren't moving in till next week.
And it's impossible to make squatting on a vacant home worthwhile, when you could be earning rent from it.
The person you replied to has some...interesting opinions about psychedelics...anyway...
> As world views become bleak, is encouraging people to say "fuck it" and maximize for enjoyment really the best move?
The answer to this question is obviously yes. Why wouldn't anyone maximize for life enjoyment? I hardly think that's equivalent to saying "fuck it."
Here's the thing: the video talks about the career track of semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan being limited. When we're talking careers that require education and training, people are going to look at the opportunity cost of choosing one vocation over another.
Whether people want to do this work really just depends on how much these roles are going to pay.
I also think it's incredibly realistic and mature for the youngest generation to acknowledge how their earning potential is being squandered into healthcare, housing, and education that all consistently grow faster than inflation. They are fully aware that employers make minimal investment in employees' education or training, prefer external hires for senior leadership and management rather than promoting from within, and purposefully optimize for their own employees to job hop. Every employee I know is 100% aware that any extra effort they put into their work isn't going to be rewarded with extra pay, and that promotions and pay raises that they can get are never as high as switching jobs.
I applaud every young person who sets boundaries and refuses to go above and beyond for employers who don't go above and beyond for their employees.
You should try psychedelics, or at least read a few books on them. It probably won't change your life, but it'll definitely give you new perspectives. In my case, I think it made me a better person, and I find I have much better relationships now.
Is badgering people to do psychedelics in situations with zero contextual relevance to doing psychedelics one of the ways in which you've become a better person, or is that a remaining negative personality trait where a few more psychedelic sessions might cure you of the affliction?
Once the captain abandons ship, why should anyone else be manning their posts? If you do not have the power to change the situation, the best move is to adapt to it, and in times of societal collapse that means looking out for yourself.
Why get on the ship in the first place? Was I forced onto the ship as a slave to be sold to the highest bidder in America? Or am I the captain of the ship who will get to keep all the riches?
There can only be one captain. If I'm forced onto that ship as a slave, I will do everything I can to break the chains and free my comrades. No matter what kind of riches I'm promised, I won't be the captain of any slave ship, that's for sure.
> If I'm forced onto that ship as a slave, I will do everything I can to break the chains and free my comrades.
And you'll be thrown overboard and everyone else (other than the people who you pulled into your plan, who will swim with you) will just get on with the business of surviving. You're not braver than or morally superior to millions of imported slaves. The Atlantic was filled with slaves who didn't think that the material world applied to them.
And what are they building toward if most people are consistently losing wages under inflation and the wealthy keep getting wealth injections from the government? Many people sees this only going two ways, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer so they will likely spend their lifetime just barely surviving, or there is a huge economic crash from the top heavy economy in which case anything they built gets smashed to pieces anyways.
Most people these days have seen multiple large economic crashes and swings and have very little faith that our economic systems are stable or sustainable. Prospects for the bottom 2/3 of the population are negative, stability is questionable, long term sustainability isn't anywhere near feasible yet.
You get one life, might as well enjoy it while you can. Not just labor your days away for the short term benefits of the few.
I think what is most insidious about this world view is that working on solutions to the issues appear as support for the viewpoint. We're all problem solvers here and we all know that the first thing to creating something new is recognizing a problem that can be solved. It can then be broken down into many sub problems that can either be worked on individually or need to be solved in tandem. But breaking down our problems and revealing its complexities are often not seen as the first steps towards solutions, but rather seen as a larger force that we need to overcome. It ignores the momentum that we see every day in our solutions: hardest at first, but once the ball is rolling things start to fall into place (often making progress, unfortunately, difficult to measure. Especially when you're in the thick of it). That frustration and setbacks can make it hard to move forward, but we always find a way in the end. We wouldn't be problem solvers if we didn't.
I don't know about you all, but I'm not willing to say "fuck it." There's enough beauty in the world to enjoy and seek to preserve. We've clearly made changes in the past and made things better. While we stand on the shoulders of giants, they are in reality 3 dudes in a trench coat sitting on one another. Personally, I take pride in trying to build a better future for my (non-existent) children and generations to come. We're all in this together and I think a lot of us want to build that Sci-Fi utopia that we read about and dreamed of as children. We can still make that world, but not if we say "fuck it."
The reality is that our decisions determine if we live in the Cyberpunk Dystopia or the Sci-Fi Star Trek-esk Utopia. Giving up is choosing the former and actively participating in its creation.
I reject the idea that depression is the source of your problems. It's just a symptom. Treating depression as anything other than a symptom won't make you happier, at best you'll feel numb, but likely maintain your profound sense of sadness.
If everyone's depressed, we shouldn't be asking "how do we get more SSRIs into these people?", but rather "how do we fix society so people aren't depressed?".
It's a prisoners dilemma. Someone cheats and you can either not cheat and be treated like a fool while the cheater gets all the status and attention and calls you stupid and says that you deserve it or you can cheat, walk toward the cliff and fall off together with the cheater.
From a societal standpoint we should teach our children to just let themselves be cheated and work anyway and shoulder the burden of the cheaters because even if cheaters ruin your life, they only ruin your life, not society as a whole, which only is only ruined if you cheat back.
If life is ultimately meaningless then why not? The world you are talking about where people work to better the future for themselves and their progeny is reliant on life having some kind of purpose or meaning. If the universe is the result of random chance and life itself is the result of accidental chemical processes then life doesn't have inherent meaning.
Why SHOULD someone who believes the things I've mentioned do anything except attempt to maximize personal pleasure?
The worst thing is that enjoyment and consumerism of all sorts is relative. Once you get access to food, shelter and clothing (and healthcare) ....everything else only feels necessary because someone else on Instagram had it.
3 things have led to a greater dejection among the youth:
1. Rising rents and low access to shelter (basic need). Rising costs of Healthcare causes dejection to.
2. Continuous exposure to 'perfect' ultra-high consumerism lives through social media.
3. Climate change led doomerism about if the world will even exist in a few decades.
___________
This culminates into a deep resentment towards older folk. Old people disproportionately own property, stress from the Healthcare system and contributed most to climate change in their hayday.....all while controlling power in the top levels of govt.
The probable solutions are all hard to organically execute. Do we create counter brainwashing systems to make people live within their silos (ignorance is bliss)? Do we trade off guilt driven doomerism about climate change for 'the climate will be just fine' narratives ? Do we push for pro-child policies, so children aid in building longterm hope and long term plans for millennials and gen z ? Do we loosen zoning rules to allow for cheaper housing for the young, even if that means boomers assets reduce in value ? Do we regulate industries such as Healthcare and education to be cheaper by increasing access, even if that means less 'fancy' services and arguably lower quality doctors ?
All hard questions, but those are the peaceful solition. To quote JFK : "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable".
I just finished reading a book called The Dictators Handbook, which is a tounge-and-cheek title for a book about a political science topic called selectorate theory.
It said that corporations have a similar political makeup to communist dictatorships because the number of key supporters (shareholders) a CEO needs to stay in power represents a relatively small proportion of people in the company.
As a result, the CEOs only need to keep the largest shareholders happy. Smaller shareholders and workers merely accept the direction of the company. Their opinions don’t matter.
This is why we see CEOs have massive pay and generous severance packages, while workers struggle to pay rents and qualify for government benefits.
There was a saying in factories in the Soviet Union “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”. We see this same sentiment with workers today with “quiet quitting”. Putting in more work provides no added benefits. Incentives are misaligned, and this leads to inefficiencies that will lead to our downfall.
Forget the metaverse, try LSD and psilocybin. I think the only reason Zuck is pushing this VR nonsense is that he took too much and now he thinks he can put ads in your VR trip.
I think it’s the opposite; he’s such a square which explains why his imagination is stuck on literally creating Snow Crash.
Anyone who has tripped balls and come out OK is not so addicted to literalness as Zuck. They realize a multiverse of perspectives lives within them. It doesn’t need to be made “real”.
That's a neat way to think about it. I think a lot of the hype about AI or whatever is just because so many techies have tried these substances and realized that the brain is such a weird thing, and now they think they can emulate it, commodify it, and sell it for a monthly subscription fee. The truth is, we have no idea how the brain _actually_ works.
In "The Doors of Perception", Aldous Huxley describes it very well: it's like these drugs remove a sensory filter we normally have in place which makes the world feel like...well...reality. When you remove that filter, you're suddenly flooded with the sense that there's so much more to the universe, but in actual fact it's all just in your head. It's just your brain cells doing a lot of communication with each other in a way that is most likely nonsensical.
Some people come out the other side thinking they've found some magic, but more likely they've just experienced what was always there without the filter, and once it wears off you're the same person you were but perhaps with a sense of feeling like you're part of a big system (which we all are, called biology).
From a strictly biological perspective it makes sense, given that most life is based on DNA and we share a lot of DNA with things that we are very different from. We share about 60% of our DNA with bananas.
As a young (ish) person, I wholeheartedly disagree with and reject this worldview, and would argue you're doing others an enormous disservice by promoting it.
There are enormous challenges. Life literally depends on solving them. Suggesting that they can't be solved is tantamount to telling humanity to give up and die.
> Suggesting that they can't be solved is tantamount to telling humanity to give up and die.
Not only that, but it is _actively_ participating in the cyberpunk dystopia that they are saying is inevitable. If evil only needs good men to do nothing to grow, problems only need us to give up to become worse. (I'm clearly no poet)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You're talking on a form full of people who code for a living. Many who have seen their lives become substantially better. There are many problems and challenges that we still face, but that doesn't mean there are no solutions.
I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me here. I'm well aware of this. I'm saying that we need to do something about it or stop complaining. If you complain and take no further steps you are advocating for the issues, not condemning them.
Yes and that is why it is better if humanity didn't exist. I.e. nobody plays.
Entertain the idea that every human has the option to be reincarnated when they die. How many people would voluntarily kill themselves to have a chance at being born to rich parents? It wouldn't surprise me if one third of the world population is constantly killing themselves for that lottery ticket.
Completely agree. I see others are not liking this comment. I suspect they have an interest in young people continuing to slave themselves for less and less. The cold truth is that young people can cause a hell of a lot of trouble if they do it en mass. I encourage them to not only enjoy their lives but to be ready to buck the system hard when the time comes. This world can't continue this way and the ones pushing for it are not going to stop and cut the youth a fair deal until they feel their backs against the wall and the real fear sets in. They are a thick bunch, you have to get through to them this way.
This is a "doomer" comment and should be called out as such. It doesn't reflect the reality that in general globally, people enjoy a higher quality of life than previous generations do.
Once you realize the game can't be won by doing what master tells you, you can start to beat the game. Master will not tell you how to beat him, for him to succeed you must fail.
But a lot of people aren't even doing that. They're choosing to pick more lucrative career paths such as pushing JavaScript for cat photo social networks, working on ways to increase engagement for users to see ads, and whatever other ways FAANGs previously propped up by low interest rates, or startups propped up by VC funding, make money.
That work isn't necessarily easier, but it's not semiconductor manufacturing, or rebuilding American infrastructure, or being essential workers during a pandemic, or whatever other important but far less-paying work than consumer software engineering (or say, the financial industry).
If software engineering is such a cushy, desirable, lucrative job, why don't more people do it?
It's easy to forget the thousands of hours it takes to become competent in this field once you've been in it for a while. Most people simply do not care enough to take the time to learn to do it despite being fully capable. It ain't rocket surgery.
> If software engineering is such a cushy, desirable, lucrative job, why don't more people do it?
Lots of people are, and try, that's why bootcamps and Leetcode prep have been so big for the past decade. More and more people are joining, but also there's a lot of demand so jobs are unfilled.
(You're also completely failing to read when I said "that work isn't necessarily easier".)
My point is that a lot of people gravitate towards those hot industries, definitely more people than those going to lesser-paying industries in say semiconductor manufacturing, which is what TFA is about. My point is your comment about "attitudes exacerbating downward mobility" have nothing to do with why people don't want to work in semiconductor manufacturing.
"That work isn't necessarily easier", is obviously implying that it can be easier, or is roughly equivalent. Your entire comment was a clever way of turning the tables on software engineers. Please don't insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise.
> My point is your comment about "attitudes exacerbating downward mobility" have nothing to do with why people don't want to work in semiconductor manufacturing.
It has everything to do with why they don't want to do software engineering. I can't tell you how many of my educated peers think it's "lame" or "selling out" to work in a skilled career rather than being a bartender, activist, starving artist, etc.
> Your entire comment was a clever way of turning the tables on software engineers. Please don't insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise.
Thank you for calling me clever, but getting personal in a comment section isn't exactly amenable to discussion. Not to mention, ignoring all of the other points mentioned in the reply. I will accept your compliment, however.
> It has everything to do with why they don't want to do software engineering. I can't tell you how many of my educated peers think it's "lame" or "selling out" to work in a skilled career rather than being a bartender, activist, starving artist, etc.
What does that have to do with them not wanting to work in semiconductor manufacturing, which generally pays less than median software engineering salaries and is less sought-after? Do you actually have any comments germane to the discussion at hand? Are your educated peers actually eschewing well-paid skilled careers, either in software engineering or not, in favor of those other professions you've listed? What other careers are they pursuing instead? Are you attempting to establish a link between them calling those professions '"lame" or "selling out"' and downwards mobility? How old are these peers, and do they actually exist? What is your actual point here?
Gee, Weird how a little realism is somehow making a downward mobility.
The fact is that a good deal of workers are struggling to get by while the folks at the top get bonuses equal to more than a few weeks pay. Being realistic, even when hidden under a layer of sarcasm, is preferable lest things not change.
The NFLPA and NBAPA are wildly ineffective and are unable to adequately advocate for their players’ needs.
However, I would chalk that up to immature and young guys not voting for their best interests. When you’re up against the best leaders and lawyers money can buy, your union is bound to seem ineffective.
It's also an unsympathetic postion from the outsider. These are multi-million dollar salaries that are making complaints about locker room amenities and what not. Complaining about having to play 3 days out of 7 also falls on deaf ears a bit. You're being paid to play a game at the most elite levels purely for entertainment purposes. Rather than complaining about playing time, how about asking "are you not entertained?" If you're too tired, sit on the bench and let someone else play.
This is like saying your restaurant chain is unsuccessful because it only has 1/5 the locations as McDonalds.
That's still a _lot_ of freakin' restaurants my guy. Costco is the only counterexample that I know of to "all workplaces need unions in order to guarantee workers' quality of life", but I think they might be the exception that proves the rule. That they've grown to be that big and treated their employees that well is a testament to how good economically, long term, it is to treat your employees as the valuable assets they are.
smaller number of SKUs and not consistent. you can find something on a visit, and then it is not available on a subsequent visit. but i now know this going in, and still benefit from the items that are available
The idea is that if you see something that interests you, you buy it now, and there's always something new on each visit. It's annoying for certain things, but at the same time it allows them to avoid having the same stock on the floor because people are on the fence about a purchase.
Depends on how you look at it. Costco had a 20 year head start, and with the way returns compound they should really be MUCH bigger than Amazon if capitalism worked well for the working class.
Personally I spend most of my money at Costco when I can because I prefer giving money to companies that treat their workers better (or at least better than Amazon).
I'm saying that capitalism is designed to enrich the owning class at the expense of the working class. It's just a system to transfer wealth toward those who already have it.
The "rising tide lifts all boats" reaganomics argument is not wrong, but if it reaches the point (where it has now) where the working class is not seeing an inflation-adjusted increase in wealth, then they are (by definition) becoming poorer over time.
which system other than capitalism has worked better, historically? Because the alternatives seem to be worse.
The issue isn't capitalism its the political leadership who aren't interested in creating an environment where workers are rewarded in line with their productivity.
and yet when anyone in the US suggests single player healthcare, higher income taxes, or more restraints on corporations, they get accused of being socialist.
US gov will just ban Alibaba for nationalistic reasons before that happens. Besides, all the crap you buy from Amazon is coming from China already, and a good chunk of it is just straight off Alibaba.
I don't work at Amazon, but I have a few insights here through insider backchannels. It basically all comes down to numbers and the amount of money spent on opposing the union versus how much money they will save on suppressing wages if the union fails. In other words, it's pretty good ROI to invest in union busting at all costs because the cost of a few lawyers and consultants is much lower than paying living wages.
It's unlikely that Amazon employees will be reprimanded or whatever, but they probably will use a different law firm next time around.
Does the calculation include losses due to people avoiding them?
Many boycott them here in Sweden, in part due to their views on unions. And while they often have the lowest price in comparisons, they are not doing to good economically last I heard.
Good luck and I hope you succeed, but the (unfortunate) reality check I'll give you is that money rules everything, and if you get even the slightest bit of traction, there is more than a trillion dollars in market cap behind ensuring you (and nobody else) will ever succeed.
The only way to get ahead these days is to either 1) flout the laws or 2) have enough capital and political influence to force your way to success, such as with regulatory capture.
That is a very pessimistic way of looking at things. While it is true that there are entrenched interests that do what they can to prevent any new entrants from disrupting their dominance, I feel obligated to point out that this has always been the case. Just to point to how bad things in US have been at one point, I would like to point out the oft-discussed robber barons and the origin of antitrust laws.
Edit: I forgot to add a conclusion somehow.
And yet, somehow we ended up with Googles, FBs, Amazons, Teslas and multiple other in tech sector alone over the past few decades. Neither of those started even close to existing dominant forces in the market.
I don't understand your objection. The country was run by robber barons and started to move toward some sort of revolution (however you would describe FDR getting four terms), then antitrust laws ended it. Then we stopped enforcing antitrust laws, and got Google, Amazon, Disney, etc..
> That is a very pessimistic way of looking at things.
This isn't a real criticism. It's either an accurate way of looking at things or not. And I think the obvious odds that Amazon wouldn't just buy it and shut it down if it made it up the difficult road of getting any significant traction are 1. That's how business works now, that's actually success. Tech companies are making this exact argument during antitrust hearings - that not allowing them to buy businesses up and shut them down would destroy the startup scene.
edit: it would have a lot better chance if somebody would paint Amazon as either being intolerably liberal, intolerably conservative, or both at the same time. Open the angry Boomer spigot.
Tesla exists. Cars are an existing and crowded market. And yet, despite that, Tesla managed to not only enter, but survive. If that is possible, parent's claim that:
"The only way to get ahead these days is to either 1) flout the laws or 2) have enough capital and political influence to force your way to success, such as with regulatory capture."
is simply not accurate.
<< It's either an accurate way of looking at things or not.
Until a transit strike paralyzes it. Or until a storm shuts it down. Or until government decides to shut it down Covid-style. Or until the trains turn into homeless shelters with meth-overdosing zombies. Last thing in the world I want to do is spend time with “the public.” Or have to haul kids and groceries via train. Or have to get to a doctors appointment on one side of town and then another event on the other side of town and minimal time to connect those dots. I also don’t want to walk multiple blocks during heat waves, storms, or snow.
People have had protests in the middle of a free way, so human action resulting in paralyzed transportation isn't novel. Storms, car crashes etc have "paralyzed" roads. Bridges have fallen into water ways paralyzing transit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-5_Skagit_River_bridge_collap...
> Or until government decides to shut it down Covid-style...
If you have widely used public transportation, then it can't be shut down. The public won't allow it. It goes from infrastructure to critical infrastructure. You would probably see enforced mask mandates.
If you have public transportation used by the middle or upper class, the tolerance for homeless and drugs will decrease.
> Last thing in the world...
And this is the fundamental selfishness. You want to rob cities of economies of scale so they can subsidize your posh suburban life style. Meanwhile, there's a whole bunch of people just like you, and the end result is hour long commutes for 20 minute's of distance or 10 lane freeways that somehow seem to be some of the most clogged in the nation. You have bad experiences with American "public transportation" but probably haven't experienced functional transportation. Your point to point trip in a city could be unencumbered by the spectre of traffic.
> I also don’t want to walk multiple blocks during heat waves, storms, or snow.
If you travel to Asia, you will find that functional transportation often comes with sprawling subterranean complexes or covered walkways. Even when it doesn't there are umbrellas for sale everywhere.
You still have to park and travel from your parking to your destination. I don't know about you, but that's frequently been blocks of walking for me in any city.
American public transportation is bad. It's not reasonable to point to our bad transportation and say public transportation as an idea is bad. It is a vastly more pleasant experience in other places.
Local buses were shut down for almost 2 years from Covid. Tons of businesses shut down for sole reason that people couldn’t get to work. Not having a car is insane.
The first time you go to a city that has incredible public transportation you will have a very transformative experience. Go spend a month in Seoul or Taipei.
Cars are poison. They poison walk-ability, they poison commuting, they damage health from their exhaust, deprivation of walking, and crashes, they require attention to operate and thus literally steal your life hours. Cars require parking and parking spaces. Cars require wide roads which reduces density. Cars require surface level roads. Cars create traffic. Cars spit in the face of economies of scale.
When I lived in the center of a city, I could run my finger across my window seal and it would come up black from all the car exhaust that had settled on it. That is going into our lungs.
Structuring the operations of life around cars is insane.
This is a tired old argument that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The majority of people live in cities, not rural homesteads.
Once upon a time we didn't have the interstate system, but FDR created the New Deal, and with that the federal government created the interstate highway system we have today. We can do the same for rail, but the automobile lobbyists won't allow it.
I'd argue that the interstate highway system is probably the USA's greatest accomplishment, and one of the greatest public works projects. FDR sold it by framing it as a national defense initiative.
Maybe we need to use some of that national defense budget for public transit? Sadly, I don't think we'll ever have a politician with the kind of gumption necessary to save ourselves from ourselves.
Let's say you're right, and cities are low density. So what? What precludes them from having good public transit? Roads exist, why can't they be rail lines instead?
Roads are quite expensive, and there are many internet resources with tons of evidence and arguments about this: strong towns, not just bikes, climate town, etc.
Roads are much easier to interconnect than rails because road vehicles can make much sharper turns and handle steeper grades.
Point to point navigation has high utility and is difficult to acheive with rail.
Minimum viable roads are actually quite inexpensive: clear large vegetation from the path and there's a usable road. You can incrementally improve with path markers, grading, gravel, pavement, etc. Minimum viable rail is a much higher standard, which needs grading, railbed preparation, laying the rail, signalling and operations.
