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I enjoy your posts and optimism. But unless we learn how to leave the oil in the ground and nurture our planet, I'll continue to be a pessimist. The short term can destroy the long term.
BTW, in case you didn't hear, we elected a psychopath/sociopath as our next president. Good luck with your optimism.
Hillary lost, but we elected someone almost as bad.
We own our own futures. Our personal decisions dictate our future. This begins the second we are able to start thinking for ourselves. How we apply ourselves in school and later in our work lives. How we manage our personal finances etc. People who look to the Government to provide for them are lost from the start.
I actually know someone who is outraged that social security doesn't pay enough for him to live. I asked what he saved for himself? Mind you this man was always the big spender. Hunting trips and cruises. The guy lived large. His reply was "The government promised social security would be enough."
I will never trust strangers to know my needs more than I do, or care about my future more than I do. We make our own dreams come true.
If you mean that a high school dropout can get a job on the factory floor, make a family wage, and work up the ladder to the executive suite - yes, I'd say that one's mostly dead.
If you mean that white religious conservatives run the nation, and everyone else puts up and shuts up - yes, that's pretty darn dead.
If you mean that america runs the world - that one's pretty darn dead too.
If you mean that each american is a legally equal citizen - well, we're not there yet, but we're closer than we used to be.
If you mean that americans are personally free to say, think, and be what they want - we're close.
There are certain realities that exist in the natural world. Ignoring facts and saying "You won't give up on a dream" is childish when you have no solid plan or evidence to prove that dream can be achieved.
You can't just "wish and hope" problems a way. You have to come up with real solutions.
My life is a living example of what I speak of. I have found the solutions to my problems, the fetters, roadblocks, and curbstones set in my way by an over reaching government, notwithstanding. And mankind has been adapting to, or conquering the localized "natural" conditions you speak of right from the beginning.
Like I said, you clearly have no frame of reference to understand, as you are fully indoctrinated into the belief that someone, or something must provide for you. That is the definition of "childish". Grow up, grow a pair, and contribute to your society by creating, at the very least, your own freedom, so as not to become a burden upon your fellow citizen.
Try as you will, you'll never convince me that half of the population of this, or any nation is incapable of taking care of themselves. They can only be convinced that they are incapable, and thus become slaves to their masters that dictate the course of their lives from the cradle to the grave.......good luck with all that, if that's the choice you've made.
Just because you've surrendered your freedom and autonomy, don't expect me, or millions of others, to do the same. You're the one that cannot come up with your own solutions, because you have been told you can't, and you believe it.
And this is the elephant in the room that a lot of people are either too ignorant or too afraid to acknowledge.
Everyone's standard of living will decline if we keep reproducing like rabbits.
The other elephant in the room is that the overwhelming majority of those "reproducing like rabbits" are low-IQ/dumb people with low incomes to match (further straining government welfare programs and schools, and thus putting UPWARD pressure on taxes). Dumb/low-IQ people that carelessly pop out babies without the proper planning, foresight, and resources are a BIG problem
Property taxes for example are a huge rip-off for childless/single people. Supposedly the taxes pay for schools and teacher's paychecks, but what happens if one doesn't have any kids? That arrangement doesn't sound very "fair" or "liberal" to me
QUALITY of people matters too, and the people overbreeding these days are almost all low-IQ/low-income types. Smart/responsible people are not having babies at the same level.
After several decades of the ^above^ trend it's NO WONDER quality of living is down, cost of living is up, social trust is down, culture is in the crapper, etc
The other elephant in the room is that the overwhelming majority of those "reproducing like rabbits" are low-IQ/dumb people with low incomes to match (further straining government welfare programs and schools, and thus putting UPWARD pressure on taxes). Dumb/low-IQ people that carelessly pop out babies without the proper planning, foresight, and resources are a BIG problem
Property taxes for example are a huge rip-off for childless/single people. Supposedly the taxes pay for schools and teacher's paychecks, but what happens if one doesn't have any kids? That arrangement doesn't sound very "fair" or "liberal" to me
QUALITY of people matters too, and the people overbreeding these days are almost all low-IQ/low-income types. Smart/responsible people are not having babies at the same level.
After several decades of the ^above^ trend it's NO WONDER quality of living is down, cost of living is up, social trust is down, culture is in the crapper, etc
A few changes to the tax code and the various welfare programs to take away the tax incentives to be married or have children and we'd see that change.
Re: Rail Transport
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Steel wheel on steel rail is 20 times more energy efficient than rubber tire on pavement.
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For a fixed and finite energy budget, to move the MOST people and cargo, the winner is electric traction rail in all its forms.
...
Transitioning back to electric traction rail not only saves fuel, cuts air pollution, but is far more efficient in space utilization, as well as eliminates traffic congestion.
Anyone who's become acquainted with my posts knows that I've been a railroad buff (and advocate) all my life, but the problem is that the basic configuration and suitability of rail technology for a mature post-industrial economy has changed, slowly but drastically, over the past seventy years.
At the close of World War II, the North American rail network, still almost entirely steam-powered and predominately coal-fired, had just undertaken and completed its greatest challenge. The system, marketed through a cumbersome framework of tariffs, was in theory capable of hauling anything, in any quantity, from any point with a rail spur, to any similar point.
The trucking industry, while growing quickly, was still in its infancy, and all-weather highways were still a long way from universal. For heavier freight, or freight moving in quantity, the railroads still held a monopoly unless shipper and consignee were close to navigable water, or the lading could move by pipeline.
But the writing was on the wall, particularly for high-value freight prone to damage and theft, or perishable cargo, and the diversion began in earnest as more and more of the Interstate Highway System was completed. Dressed meat from a packing industry relocated from Chicago to the Plains states became the classic example -- by the mid-1970's, very little of it still moved by rail. The virtual disappearance of small rail-oriented warehouses and piers all over New York Harbor is another.
The rail industry adapted by shifting its high-value freight to containers, (just as the maritime carriers had), and once standard sizes were agreed upon, a lot of freight found its way back to the rails -- but local pick-up and delivery was no longer sustainable. And the limited flexibility of electric operation tied to the umbilical cord of overhead wiring doomed the last two electrified freight operations.
The concept of smaller, faster, more-frequent freight movements offering direct, siding-to-siding delivery is definitely feasible; in fact, something akin to it has been practiced on a limited basis for low-value freight, such as aggregates (gravel) and particularly in regions like New England where there's excess track capacity, few conflicts with other movements, and an entrepreneurial spirit among small local carriers like the Providence and Worcester (spun off from the Penn Central forty years ago, and since expanded to most of New England and the Port of New York via what are known as trackage rights).
But the handful of major rail operators (we're down to seven in North America) aren't going to risk a large, investment, which took forty years to develop and, like electric utilities, generates reliable, but unspectacular returns on a very inflexible infrastructure, to likely gain little more than a trickle of high-demand carload freight. As with the rebuilding of suburban and exurban commuter traffic, the capital will be raised via public/private sector partnership -- or it won't be forthcoming at all.
The other elephant in the room is that the overwhelming majority of those "reproducing like rabbits" are low-IQ/dumb people with low incomes to match (further straining government welfare programs and schools, and thus putting UPWARD pressure on taxes). Dumb/low-IQ people that carelessly pop out babies without the proper planning, foresight, and resources are a BIG problem
Property taxes for example are a huge rip-off for childless/single people. Supposedly the taxes pay for schools and teacher's paychecks, but what happens if one doesn't have any kids? That arrangement doesn't sound very "fair" or "liberal" to me
QUALITY of people matters too, and the people overbreeding these days are almost all low-IQ/low-income types. Smart/responsible people are not having babies at the same level.
After several decades of the ^above^ trend it's NO WONDER quality of living is down, cost of living is up, social trust is down, culture is in the crapper, etc
"Smart/responsible" people, as you label them, are not having babies and "burdening the system" as you would say that way, I agree, but they can have other problems/issues that burden the system as well. One example would be of so called "smart" people or affluent ones having bad diets and unhealthy lifestyles (too much work, not enough exercise, not making the time for exercise, eating the wrong foods, etc.)creating overweight status and then creating a slew of health care problems related to that, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancer (many of these are lifestyle related and weight related--being overweight, for example, increases chances of all cancers). Cigarette smoking, too, for example, can lead to COPD (lung problems).
Chronic illness, much of it being preventable and can be attributed to middle and upper class people also, burdens all of us with higher health insurance premiums and health care costs costs, "burdening" the whole society. Many of these chronic diseases are directly lifestyle related and affect costs (higher) for all of us.
I enjoy your posts and optimism. But unless we learn how to leave the oil in the ground and nurture our planet, I'll continue to be a pessimist. The short term can destroy the long.
Mexico is drilling half the gulf of Mexico, china is expanding heavily into Africa and Russia is drilling as much add humanly possible.
Your belief that if only America stops drilling for oil or stops fraking that the world will be a happy and safe place. Enjoy your post in optimism.
I enjoy your posts and optimism. But unless we learn how to leave the oil in the ground and nurture our planet, I'll continue to be a pessimist. The short term can destroy the long term.
BTW, in case you didn't hear, we elected a psychopath/sociopath as our next president. Good luck with your optimism.
We did not elect a psychopath. We elected a sociopath, there are very significant differences. If we elected a psychopath I would be straight up terrified. Sociopaths are very common in both business and politics.
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