I-Like-To-Bike

You offer National Lampoon writer and satirist P. J O'Rourke's obvious (to almost anybody) satire as an example of the fear people have of a Chinese plot to inflict bicycle transportation on the U.S.? Oh please say that this is all a humorous screenplay you are writing for entertainment purposes. You certainly are not serious, are you?

Perhaps you should read other work by Mr O'Rourke, such as "How to DRIVE FAST on DRUGS while getting your WING-WANG SQUEEZED and not SPILL YOUR DRINK" for more examples for spinning up your scenario. This essay was published in the same book as the essay you referenced.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030124...how2/how2.html

cooker

He keeps telling you he's not pursuing this as a business. It's interesting that I-L-T-B's critique is that the ideas will never happen and yours is that they already exist.

I-Like-To-Bike

Perhaps Machka and I were discussing different TP screenplays; so many are spewed out on this list in a wall-of-words, hyperbolic rhetoric, and weird vocabulary that it may be difficult for you and others to keep straight what so-called imaginative idea/dreamy concept/latest issue from the TP think tank is being discussed.

What specific TP "idea" did I say would never happen that Machka said already exists?

Ekdog

Surely there are more options than living in rural poverty and this:

China has some of the most insane traffic jams on this planet

Bandera

Absolutely, a well calibrated bull-_hit meter and adherence to Scope, Requirements, Budget and Timeline are essential to Project success.
Laughable, incoherent, impossible fantasies need to be dismissed out of hand to get on with real work, laughing at the laughable works for me.

-Bandera

Bandera

Quite possibly, Premier Li Keqiang would be the one to ask.

-Bandera

Bandera

Only on the inter-web.

-Bandera

Ekdog

As you had pointed out that you were a frequent visitor to the country who had your finger on the pulse of the populace, I thought I should ask you:

tandempower

I don't know if it's satire or not. I just googled the subject and that seemed to be an example of someone who actually published political/nationalist opposition to bike riding as a threat to automotivism. The simple fact is that there are plenty of people who treat industries like national protectorates and, as such, fight against any alternatives or substitutes that threaten to reduce business in that industry. Coal is the most obvious example of late, where every form of ideological defense has been used, talking in terms of a "war on coal" as if the point of regulation was not to alter energy markets but to attack the people invested in the industry. Auto interests are the same. As long as cycling remains marginalized, they're content, but the moment popularity seems like it could grow into a larger-scale alternative to driving, they attack it as being unAmerican, etc. They are abusing patriotic feelings to protect an industry for the sake of maintaining control over revenues.

If you want to discuss things I've said or anything else, you should make your tone neutral instead of frothing with insinuations of fictionality, etc. Your opinion of whether something is realistic or fiction-like is just your opinion. You should limit yourself to objective analysis and discussion because the level of bias you spew against me (and others) is offensive at an emotional level.



The laughter of madmen isn't a basis for reasonable discussion. Stop using reasonless rhetoric. If you were capable of discussing actual logic, I would say focus on that, but I don't think you are actually capable of it because your mind only thinks in terms of market standards and other cultural arbitrarities. You need to spend some time thinking about the physical basis of reality beyond normative aspects of business culture. Business culture changes through time, physics doesn't.

Bandera

Thanks for the vote of confidence but an analysis of the spectrum of possible options for Chinese cultural, economic, environmental and social life is above my pay grade and out of my area of expertise.
The folks at Brookings delve into these waters, we used them as a resource and sounding board with articles like this:

China's Approach to Economic Development and Industrial Policy | Brookings Institution

Also delve into The People's Republic of China's published work on the subject for their viewpoint as well.

-Bandera

I-Like-To-Bike

...enuff said.

cooker

You never give specifics - it's not your style to actually engage in debate.

tandempower

You imply ungrounded assumptions. There are many subtle cues in popular culture and the attitudes of people you encounter that indicate people think of transportation cycling as unAmerican. When there is a superbowl advertisement that has Bob Dylan talking about how American the automobile industry and culture are, it is just one part of a larger cultural mentality that America isn't about transportation freedom as much as it's about conformity to automotivism. Likewise, you'll hear people complain about bike lanes and other transportation reforms as being anti-car, with the implication that people should be pro-car because it's somehow patriotic or otherwise culturally mandatory to submit to automotivism. It takes a lot of critical thinking to reach a point of independence of mind to reject this false form of patriotism geared toward subjugating people economically. American freedom is about people deciding for themselves whether to bike or drive or take transit based on rational independent thinking, not thinking in terms of what's normal or popular or socially accepted or otherwise mindlessly conforming toward what others do in some form or other. When I say that people seem to view bicycle transportation as some kind of Chinese communist plot to thwart the US automotive industry, I'm just referring to a general tendency to think in socialistic terms about being for or against others instead of thinking just about in what ways bike transportation is good as a form of transportation, period, not how it supports or subverts some abstract ideas about what American culture is or should be.

mconlonx

There are. Plenty of people are still on bikes, but they are the poorer ones. It appears that as soon as a bit of wealth is amassed or income achieved, a typical Chinese will get some form of motorized transport. Scooters are very popular, so are small displacment (<200cc) motorcycles -- you'll see many more of these on the road than even cars on surface roads in cities and towns. I saw less 2-stroke scooters and motorcycles than I anticipated, which is good news for the environment, also people utilizing various forms of electric transport -- scooters, bikes, etc. -- which appeared to be an emerging popular trend back in 2008, and again a better environmental option than the popular clip-on 2-stroke engines.

They use motorbikes for utilitarian purposes, in many cases their only form of motorized transport (in contrast to many in the USA, where a two-wheeler is adjunct to car ownership), so I noted taxi-motorcycles, one where someone had a good size refrigerator on the back, one with a passenger carrying a hefty bit of sheet metal, and another with at least a dozen natural gas bottles strapped to it.

I-Like-To-Bike

I take that as an admission that you can not cite any difference of opinion that Machka and I had about the credibility or reality of any of TP's "imaginative ideas" offered to the public on this list or elsewhere on BF.

Roody

P.J. O'Rourke is a humorist and satirist. He is also a journalist and an ultra-conservative political columnist. He is a frequent proponent of cars and automobile interests.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/bo...er-t.html?_r=0

I-Like-To-Bike

A point should be made that some of our LCF comrades post as if they feel that there should be no debating of their economic, political, environmental, social, pronouncements on this list, no matter how strident, far fetched, or unrelated to living car free; only agreement, support and electronic back slapping and high-fiving is welcome.

Any disagreement, criticism or debate no matter how justified, is considered and described as negative, rude, mean, trollish, insulting unsupportive and/or unwelcome on their exclusive list. Debate of their P&R/Fooish/Trollhem-type pronouncements is actively discouraged by the hectoring and whining of would-be gatekeepers who desire only an echo-chamber for their own approved opinions.

cooker

Nonsense. Your idea of "debate" is hostile mockery - that's what I object to.

Or actually you said it better: "negative, rude, mean, trollish, insulting unsupportive and/or unwelcome"

I-Like-To-Bike

We can dance around this forever but I will end with, IMO your idea of "hostile mockery" is disagreement with or skepticism of economic, political, environmental, social pronouncements and so-called imaginative far fetched ideas made on this list that you and/or your comrades endorse.

Roody

I always think it's better policy to take up your beef directly with the person you're upset with, and point out specifically what's bothering you. Vague or generalized dissatisfaction generates a lot of heat but rarely gets results. (That said, I now realize that this post here is a pretty vague and generalized complaint. )

tandempower

'Strident' and 'far-fetched' are subjective concepts. How related or unrelated to car free living something is depends on the reasoning of why it is posted. I really don't mind criticism but you have to give reasons that can be discussed. Calling something 'far fetched' is just subjective opinion devoid of reason. How can you defend that something is less far-fetched than someone else says it is? You can't because it's subjective; the same as 'strident.' If you want to engage in critical discussion, do so based on logical argumentation instead of ad hom put downs and sarcasm.