So...one thing that's been kind of annoying me about the far left lately is their obsession with the green new deal, and specifically, replacing cars with forms of public transportation. I feel like this segment of lefties are grossly out of touch with the rest of the public, and while they mean well, their romanticization of stuff like trains and public transportation is cringey.
The pros and cons of cars and public transportation
I'm going to be honest. I'm mixed on the idea of cars in some ways. I personally don't drive. I never had a real desire to. For me, it came down to money. While cars are seen as a form of "freedom" in a lot of Americana, as in, you can go where you want, when you want, for me, I saw them as the opposite. Mainly because of how they tied people into the larger wage slavery system. Let's put it this way. If you want a car, you need to work for them. Cars are expensive. An old junker can cost anything from a few hundred to a few thousand to acquire, with newer cars costing in the tens of thousands range. And then you have insurance. And then if you get in an accident, you'll have expensive deductibles, and yeah. I just see them as money black holes intended to entrap people in a cycle of wage slavery. And for me, I would use a car to go to work, and then spend the money I get from work to pay for a car I don't really want or need otherwise. And we're supposed to want this because....America and milestone of adulthood or something. I mean, it never made much sense to me.
Still, despite this, let's be frank about public transportation. It SUCKS. Say I wanted to get to college when I went. It I was driven there by my dad, it would take about 5 minutes. It was across town a couple miles away, and it didn't take long to get to itself. But let's discuss the other options of getting there. First you can walk. Walking is kind of grueling, I've done walkathons in school before that would have me walk from my school up to the college, and then I would go from the college, back to my school, and then walk home. It kind of sucked. And honestly, I wouldn't want to do it as part of a non school event. Because in my area there's a lot of crime. And people can get jumped, or mugged, or end up being found with a bunch of bullet holes in them. Yeah. Kind of happens when you live in a city with a high crime rate. So what's the other option? The bus. The bus is cheap. Getting to and from school would cost somewhere around $3-4 a day. Okay, so let's start at my house. I would have to walk to the bus stop, which wasn't that far, but I would have two options to get to the bus terminal. I could either take one route that was a long way and only came once every 45 minutes, or another route which came every 20. I would opt for the 20 minute one. But, let's be honest, these buses aren't reliable, they get there when they get there. And because they drive on a very busy street with lots of traffic, the buses can often come at irregular times. They could be early, they could be late. Once I waited an hour for a bus only for all 3 servicing that route to come all at the same time in like a conga line. It was a joke. And obviously this meant the buses were crowded. You often couldnt sit. And for older people, while they get priorities for the seats, they're gonna be pushed around, which isn't good for them. So then you get to the terminal. Well, the route to go back up to the college only comes once every 45 minutes. If I got lucky I could catch it right before it took off back to college, but often times, I would barely miss it causing me to be stuck in the terminal for 45 minutes. I would have to leave for college over an hour early just to get up there. And while a quicker route was often available in the afternoon due to the high school getting out, otherwise it would take an equal amount of time to get home. And if it's past dark, then you run the risk of getting jumped walking home from the terminal. yeah.
Honestly, I see why people like cars. Cars are convenient. You get in them when you wanna go somewhere and you just go. Sure, they're expensive, and environmentally damaging in a lot of ways, but they offer significant advantages. And let's not forget about the convenience of being able to put say, groceries in your car and get to and from the store quickly, rather than having to haul that stuff on the bus and spend an hour getting home.
This is what I feel like people don't understand about buses and stuff. Buses, trains, etc, they might work in some certain dense cities like New York or Chicago, but for most people, they don't work very well. If you're in a smaller city like me, they're hit and miss. And if you're in, say, a rural area, well, at this point you're screwed. you might have ONE stop in your town if you're lucky, and even then generally no. And they often have limited hours when you live that far away when they are available.
Even if we increased funding and invested in this stuff, the nature of trains, buses, etc., is just going to be like this. They take a lot of time, they're very inconvenient, they can occasionally be dangerous due to the nature of the areas that they service. Most people aren't going to want to give up their cars for this stuff.
If you want to discourage car use, you'll need to impose stuff like a carbon tax and even then I feel like many people will continue to pursue personal vehicles even if prohibitively expensive. because the tradeoffs of public transportation are just that high.
Realistic solutions
So what is the solution?
Well, electric vehicles. Biden is trying to invest in electric fuelling stations to make electric vehicles viable. And while electric vehicles currently have downsides such as costs (teslas are expensive), and limited range, as time goes on, technology will make batteries better where they become more viable over time. It is estimated in the next couple decades electric cars will take over fossil fuel based cars, and president Biden is explicitly trying to make it happen. But let's be honest, it will take time. We need to build the infrastructure to make them work, we need more development of battery and charging technology to make them as convenient as fuel based cars, and we need time for market penetration to do its job.
All in all, while some investments in public transportation should be made, I feel like the electric car approach works better with American expectations and the way of life than public transportation would. Fossil fuels are a problem. We need to wean ourselves off of them. But weaning takes time, and we need solutions that aren't going to cause massive backlash. While you'll always have those angry "rolling coal" style morons who will resist any form of change, I think if we can make electric vehicles as convenient or almost as convenient as gas powered vehicles, and make them cheap and affordable enough, most will eventually adopt them without much fuss.
But you know what they WON'T do? Want to take the bus. Or some bullet train. Seriously, the green new deal types want these massive infrastructure programs to build high speed rail and stuff like that, but let's be honest, that stuff will only be convenient for certain city goers going from major city to other major city. Pushing that stuff for people who don't live near major cities makes no sense. I know to some extent some people talk about rail paths from my city down to, say, Philly, for the sake of us getting jobs down there, but seriously, who is really going to want to wait for a train to come, spend 2.5 hours on a train (according to the current estimate), get to philly, and then mess with SEPTA for another hour getting to their job? And do it again to get home? Especially when anyone who wants to drive can get there in roughly 1.5 hours? Again, it just makes little sense to me. It's this weird romanticized idea that sounds nice on paper until you realize it would never actually work in practice.
I mean, yeah, maybe we should have SOME high speed rail system to replace, say, fossil fuel based jets. Say you want to go from New York to Los Angeles. You can either spend a week by car, or a few hours by plane. Maybe high speed rail would allow you to get there in say, a day. You go 200 MPH, you get there in say 15 hours in theory. It might be nice. I don't know. I mean, some of these ideas sound like they COULD work, but I feel like the left over romanticizes them in trying to sell them.
The fact is though, our infrastructure is based on cars. And I know a lot of people don't like that. But that's how it is, and I don't think changing it works well at this point. While alternative options should exist, I don't ever see a society where we all give up our cars and want to take public transportation all the time. Maybe those who are poorer and don't want to put out the money for a car will do that, but public transportation in America is something people do when they are poor. Or otherwise don't want to drive. And not wanting to drive is seen as weird. Maybe in NYC it makes sense to rely on public transportation, but everywhere else just about, just, no.
Conclusion
I know this is one of those things that ruffles the feathers of the left. They talk so much about the green new deal, and massive infrastructure projects. But honestly? Most people I don't think would want to do public transportation. public transportation is slower, more crowded, less convenient, and generally unattractive. The only good thing about it is it being relatively cheap to the end user. But it's a tradeoff. And most Americans love their cars. Honestly, I think building on Biden's initiatives to expand infrastructure to allow for electric charging stations and pushing electric cars is the solution over public transportation. And even then, it will take a good 15-30 years for the technology to mature enough that it's become the norm. While I can see some value in SOME green new deal initatives like SOME high speed rail system, I really don't know how commercially viable it would be. I could see that stuff replacing planes over time, which would be good for the environment, but even then, I doubt it will be as convenient as air travel either.
Also, let's be honest, a big reason the left talks like this is they seem to have this romanticization of infrastructure jobs, when honestly, if we want to cut down on pollution, why not just let people work from home, or even better, not have to work at all? The pandemic showed we could reduce our work force by 1/3 and still keep basic operations running. And while most wouldn't wanna live like that, I think the options are viable. I think our insistence that we all work in the first place creates this problem. Everyone having to get to a job means everyone has to commute. Which means everyone is driving in their cars every morning to go to offices where they don't want to be and arguably don't have to be. It's nonsense. Our capitalist system drives all of this productivity, but with this productivity comes a lot of pollution. While we can create some jobs in making such things more energy efficient, if it comes at the expense of convenience it seems like an overall step backwards for society. Better still in my book would be to just try to reduce the number of jobs we need to do. After all, David Graeber, the late anti work activist, said shortly before his death, that if we are going "to save the world, we're going to have to stop working." And you know what, while that isn't a panacea environmentally itself, it is true to some degree, and we really do need to do a little of A and a little of B. While we can learn a bit from the green new deal, we can't rely on it to save us. To some extent, we need to break our addiction to work in the first place too, and stop prioritizing productivity over the environment or even general human well being. All of these jobs do not necessarily make the world a better place, and they are destructive.
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