modern hippies fail at hippiedom, exhibit 37

[amw]

I read the news every day. Any given day in my life you can be sure of two things. I will drink coffee and i will read the news. To be honest, i mostly just glance the headlines because that's enough to give me general overview of what is going on in the world, but there are always a couple of articles a day that warrant a clickthrough

Comments

[amw]

Even though i am not really a militant anti-capitalist, i do sometimes get the point of anti-capitalist environmentalists when they point out exactly what you just said - America is the richest country, so of course it's also the country that destroys the most, consumes the most, pollutes the most... Their theory is that it's wealth that is at the root of all the problems, so that's why wealth redistribution has to be the first item on the agenda.

The tragic thing about gated communities in the US is that they are so close to getting it right. I remember when i was cycling through Florida, and passing all of these hideous walled compounds, i did kind of understand the concept. I don't know if Hilton Head is like this, but in quite a few of these planned communities in Florida, it's legal to drive electric golf carts. You can drive a little electric vehicle from your front door to the local community hall to go dancing, and to the church to worship, and to the corner store for supplies, and to the golf course too! Traffic is slow, there's no emissions, everything you need is nearby... It's idyllic!

But how they mess it up is all these people with a golf cart in their driveway also have a multi-car garage with a truck and an RV and a boat. And they don't ride the golf cart to the local shops, they get in their truck and drive to Walmart and Home Depot and whatever other big box store 20 miles away. Golf carts aren't legal on public roads so even if they wanted to take one they couldn't. So then the roads between these gated communities jam up with people in trucks because taxes are too low to maintain public roads suitable for the population, and traffic can't flow through the area naturally because huge swathes of the land are closed off to outsiders... And it's like, man, it was right there! You so nearly had it right! All that was needed was for these communities to be publicly-owned and taxpayer-funded, to build golf cart and e-bike greenways everywhere, to allow development to occur as-needed and without zoning, so people will start to open more shops around where the people live, instead of miles away... Although then we get back into capitalism being the problem again because big box stores in the US have so much power that it makes it economically unviable for a mom'n'pop to compete by opening up a hardware store that only serves the residents of Golf Cart Village #27. Taxing private vehicle usage at a much, much higher rate might make it more viable, i suppose?

But i guess it's a circular problem in the US because so many people have become so accustomed to taking a car everywhere for everything - work, shopping, visiting friends and so on - that even when they retire in a planned community designed for the ultimate in convenience and easy living... they still drive everywhere! Ah well.