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Why are urban planners always trying to force buses, rail systems, bike lanes, etc. down our throats when we're clearly an automobile-centric society? Why are urban planners always trying to coerce people out of their automobiles and onto trains like cattle by enacting high gasoline taxes, using highway funds to subsidize mass transit, and by tearing down roadways to build bicycle lanes? Why is it that urban planners have such contempt for private automobiles?
And don't give me this garbage about how we're all gonna die because cars cause "global warming". First of all, automobiles don't pollute (CO2 is not a pollutant), second there's no such thing as global warming, everyone knows it's just a scheme for rich urban planners in the government to further enrich themselves by taxing us all into poverty in the name of "saving the planet."
Third, we're not running out of oil. On the contrary, there's an abundance of oil. The only problem is that we rely almost 100% on an unstable part of the world to meet our oil supply needs. We could drill our own oil, but for decades urban planners have cut off our access to our own oil because they say it's bad for the environment. Either way, there's more than enough oil. Most urban planners wish we would run out of oil, but it's ain't happening.
Oil is efficient, clean, cheap, and renewable, and it's the lifeblood of our economy. Private automobiles represent freedom, individual liberty, private property, and free enterprise. We would never be such a prosperous society without the invention of automobiles. With automobiles, we can go where we want, when we want, how fast we want, in the comfort and privacy of our own car. It seems to me urban planners want to take that freedom away from us and make us all beholden to the government for our transportation needs.
I guess it makes sense, since this only makes it easier for urban planners to enslave us to a large, central, authoritarian government. Like urban planner economic policies that ensure everyone has the same amount of wealth, no matter how hard they work, socialized (public) transportation ensures everyone has the limited mobility, no matter how much money they have. Ergo, we can't all be rich, so no one should be allowed to be rich. We can't all own fancy cars, so no one should be allowed to own a car (with the exception of rich urban planners of course). Rich urban planners are always the exception to their own rules. Rich urban planners are allowed to have billions of dollars and pay less taxes than the middle class. They're allowed to ride around in limousines while us plebes are forced by the government to ride around packed in buses like cattle. Maybe that's the real reason urban planners want to abolish private automobiles, so that they can have the roads all to themselves, and the peasants are forced into buses and trains. Discuss.
Because urban planners spent a century forcing taxpayer-funded highways and roads down our throats back when we were a railroad and streetcar-centric society, and we've pretty much done all we can with it? Because we can't afford to subsidize the automobile and the roads anymore, and the kind of community they build isn't good for our economy, our health or our environment?
Nearly everything in your post is incorrect, by the way. If you were able to magically teleport every drop of oil under the United States into tanks, you'd have enough gasoline for about five years at current oil consumption rates. But because most of it is in very hard-to-reach places, and isn't all that high-quality, extracting it will cost a lot of money--it will cost more than simply buying it from other parts of the world.
Oil is renewable? (It takes millions and millions of years.) Automobiles don't pollute? (Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are not the same thing.) Oil is clean? (Guess you haven't looked at the Gulf of Mexico lately.) The auto-centric system represents free enterprise? (Tell me the last time you drove on a privately-owned highway.) It's hard to not simply assume this is a gigantic troll post--you are asserting so many laughably, comically incorrect things, it would make a pretty decent comedy routine. That side-splitter about "rich urban planners riding around in limousines" makes for a heck of a punchline!
I'm not going to address most of your post, mainly because others will do so better than I could. But I have to take issue with saying that the automobile represents freedom.
your post sets up a caricature of the urban planner as you see him/her and then rants against said caricature (aka a straw man argument).
the reality is that planners are pragmatic; look at the books of most suburbs built in the '60s or '70s and you'll see why some planners might be concerned about the sustainability of the places we are building.
the reason we have the ability to travel everywhere easily by automobile has everything to do with government and very little to do with the free market. and governments' role in auto-based society is leaving a lot of municipalities broke.
i've never met a practicing planner opposed to the car. just because you love pineapples (the car), does that mean other people shouldn't be allowed to eat bananas (public transit)?
Why are urban planners always trying to force buses, rail systems, bike lanes, etc. down our throats when we're clearly an automobile-centric society? Why are urban planners always trying to coerce people out of their automobiles and onto trains like cattle by enacting high gasoline taxes, using highway funds to subsidize mass transit, and by tearing down roadways to build bicycle lanes? Why is it that urban planners have such contempt for private automobiles?
And don't give me this garbage about how we're all gonna die because cars cause "global warming". First of all, automobiles don't pollute (CO2 is not a pollutant), second there's no such thing as global warming, everyone knows it's just a scheme for rich urban planners in the government to further enrich themselves by taxing us all into poverty in the name of "saving the planet."
Third, we're not running out of oil. On the contrary, there's an abundance of oil. The only problem is that we rely almost 100% on an unstable part of the world to meet our oil supply needs. We could drill our own oil, but for decades urban planners have cut off our access to our own oil because they say it's bad for the environment. Either way, there's more than enough oil. Most urban planners wish we would run out of oil, but it's ain't happening.
Oil is efficient, clean, cheap, and renewable, and it's the lifeblood of our economy. Private automobiles represent freedom, individual liberty, private property, and free enterprise. We would never be such a prosperous society without the invention of automobiles. With automobiles, we can go where we want, when we want, how fast we want, in the comfort and privacy of our own car. It seems to me urban planners want to take that freedom away from us and make us all beholden to the government for our transportation needs.
I guess it makes sense, since this only makes it easier for urban planners to enslave us to a large, central, authoritarian government. Like urban planner economic policies that ensure everyone has the same amount of wealth, no matter how hard they work, socialized (public) transportation ensures everyone has the limited mobility, no matter how much money they have. Ergo, we can't all be rich, so no one should be allowed to be rich. We can't all own fancy cars, so no one should be allowed to own a car (with the exception of rich urban planners of course). Rich urban planners are always the exception to their own rules. Rich urban planners are allowed to have billions of dollars and pay less taxes than the middle class. They're allowed to ride around in limousines while us plebes are forced by the government to ride around packed in buses like cattle. Maybe that's the real reason urban planners want to abolish private automobiles, so that they can have the roads all to themselves, and the peasants are forced into buses and trains. Discuss.
Just about every single statement you made is ridiculously wrong. You don't want a discussion-you're just here to rant...
I'm liberal. I'm into urban planning and mass transit. But, I just got back from Europe and I just have to say... I really do love my car. It's clean. It takes me everywhere I want to go. It's just sitting out there in the parking lot waiting for me to get in it - there's no timetable.
And it's affordable. But if you think that the cost of me driving it is not partially subsidized in obvious and in 'round-about ways by people who do not drive, you're kidding yourself. It's efficient for me. For everyone to have a car like me is not very efficient for society as a whole. Therein lies the dilemma.
Oil is efficient, clean, cheap, and renewable, and it's the lifeblood of our economy.
Wait, oil is renewable? Are you talking about biofuels, or what?
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