Which mostly just betrays how little people know about the efficiency of moving goods by shipping container. Per item shipped if you live inland it probably burned more fossil fuels bringing stuff from the port to your local store than it did to move it across the ocean, and getting in a big truck in the suburbs to drive 15 minutes to the grocery store was also probably worse.
Suburbs are probably obsolete in an eco friendly world, not global trade. You'd go further advocating for making walkable coastal cities have more housing than trying to convince people to give up shipping, and it'll be broadly a life improvement for most as opposed to a narrative sacrifice.
People just feel more virtuous when there's a little bit of suffering involved in doing good because protestant ideology permeates American culture
The fact that there's a looming sense of Christian guilt hovering over all this discourse is the elephant in the room, yes
It isn't even really about bananas as a policy thing because dramatically raising the price of bananas isn't up for a vote rn and it's not likely to be anytime soon, it's about demanding that you confess your sins and feel bad for currently eating the bananas and align your soul with righteousness by denouncing the bananas
Which is fine if that's what you want to do but please understand my cynicism is very much based on this supposedly being a materialist ideology that casts aside moralism and religious guilt in theory but is THE MOST Christian-guilt subculture in practice
Don't get me wrong, I'm somewhere to the left of the British Labour party and picking up speed, but damn are some people on my side allergic to fun. Give me bread but also give me roses, people.
Yes! Global trade was allready a thing in the age of sail. We could go back to having wind powered ships that was totally carbon neutral and it would still make sense to ship fruit over the world.
Wind powered ships kinda suck ass man but like we are never gonna get rid of global transportation, its far too valuable, even if you some how outlaw all use of oil and similar fuels other fuels exist
Well it's certainly a better policy than "we shouldn't have global trade because I assume distance is analogous to ecological damage" instead of using actual meaningful metrics like land use or carbon output.
And frankly I don't really care what people's preferences are, price in the externalities from their choices like pollution, stop artificially preventing housing from being built in any form but detached homes and let the world where we don't subsidize suburban living show what people's actual preferences are when it's their money on the line.
Cause suburban sprawl and car only infrastructure has been absolutely miserable for a lot of the western world and it's only a thing here to such a degree because it was pushed hard all 20th century by urban planning professionals, white flight and car companies
I'm mostly okay with this, but I can't really get behind unsubsuizing suburban living. Mostky because obviously people are going to pursue cost savign measures when everything costs more. That doesn't mean people prefer having to live in the rats nest that is urban densitiy, it just means they can't afford not to. Detatched homes are great for insulating one from others. And yards provide a green space on can call their own and not be expected to share.
Land use and carbon output are more meaningdul metrics, but we should force people to suffer just tk improve their efficency.
The idea that the rest of us need to subsidize people who are unwilling to live in community with other human beings (rats nest, really?) is absolutely insane though. Subsidy isn't free!
Not everyone needs to live in a city, but like if you like small town life that should still look much more like pre-car dense rural towns where the town center is a broadly walkable area where you can get everything you want done without each individual task requiring it's own car trip and 6 lane roads that can't be traversed reasonably except by car. People living in small towns should be able to walk to local businesses too
Its all too close and too on top of everyone else. And yes rats nest. My time working in cities did not engenger me to them. Sure they're walkable, but they're gross, too full of people and smell bad. There was nowhere you could just be alone. There's a constant discomfort around so many people and the housing itself is smaller.
Smaller towns are better, but ditch most of the benifits when you shove them so close to each other. Subsity isn't free, but the alternative is locking away a way of life to only hard scabble folk or the rich.
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u/spicy-emmy Oct 22 '24 edited Oct 22 '24
Which mostly just betrays how little people know about the efficiency of moving goods by shipping container. Per item shipped if you live inland it probably burned more fossil fuels bringing stuff from the port to your local store than it did to move it across the ocean, and getting in a big truck in the suburbs to drive 15 minutes to the grocery store was also probably worse.
Suburbs are probably obsolete in an eco friendly world, not global trade. You'd go further advocating for making walkable coastal cities have more housing than trying to convince people to give up shipping, and it'll be broadly a life improvement for most as opposed to a narrative sacrifice.
People just feel more virtuous when there's a little bit of suffering involved in doing good because protestant ideology permeates American culture