Corporations that make it easy to plan a work schedule along a touring route. Free camping on public land. Pay-showers as common as convenient stores. Convenience stores with small, fast, washers that wash and centrifuge a small load of laundry with just a small amount of water and soap in just a few minutes. Ultralight overhead racks to fasten centrifuged laundry as a sun shade while they are drying.
Originally Posted by
gdhillard
Back in the fifties we had two parent families with only one parent working. That sounds a lot like a 2 1/2 day work week to me, if it had been split between the sexes. And somehow the family thrived on only one pay check.
I saw a documentary the other day made by the automotive industry in the 1950s. It celebrated the fact that there were enough cars in the US for everyone to ride in the front seat, meaning 1 car for every 3 people. The population was reported as 50 million.
50 million people with 17 million cars doesn't sound too bad for cyclists or anyone else, does it? If the cycling and transit-riding population had continued to grow with the number of cars staying constant, the US economy and environment would have grown much more sustainably.
If men (and their employers) had divided all the jobs into alternating shifts for men and women, families could have continued to operate using only one car and/or bicycles and transit. If men and women had shared the responsibility of cooking and performing other household labor themselves, costs would have stayed low and 40 total hours/week of family wages would have continued to be sufficient.
Unfortunately, instead of growing prosperous we grew gluttonous, prideful, jealous. lustful, and otherwise pushed in the direction of hyperconsumption and insatiability of economic growth.
Anyone else for rewinding to 1950 and getting it right this time?