Originally Posted by
Walter S
I don't see why competition is consistently increased or decreased unless you specifically import people from economically depressed areas. The flow of people can go in both directions, such as between two cities.
The whole premise of anti-competition is really fundamentally flawed because it's based on the assumption that there have to be a limited number of positions of relatively elite privilege as well as positions of relative suffering and deprivation to motivate economic competition. If people were content with forms of economic consumption that don't result in scarcity and resource-competition when broadly aspired to, why would it matter who does what job? All jobs would just be for the sake of maintaining an economy that provides the means for everyone to live.
Within the paradigm of competition for scarce positions of elite privilege and specialized skill positions, however, broader commuting means the ability to consolidate markets and positions across multiple localities. One insurance company, for example, could consolidate four offices in four different cities if employees from those four cities could all commute 100 miles or more to meet at the same office somewhere (or even by telecommuting, really). This doesn't bother me because I think ultimately it's better to have greater efficiency, less jobs, and figure out some other way to fulfill human needs - but for people who can't fathom fulfillment of human economic needs except by reducing unemployment levels, consolidation is a threatening prospect.
Originally Posted by
Walter S
If this mode of transportation is only suitable for going between cities though then I'm not sure what sort of real societal benefit there is to be found. It consumes more energy to travel a long distance than to travel a short distance so why not strive to design communities to be small and self reliant? I read once that before trains were developed, over 50% of the population had never traveled more than 20 miles from home. Now we live in a society where that would seem like closing ones self off from a world of rich experiences. But it is enlightening to think in these terms because in the context of society only a couple hundred years ago, that's how people lived from birth to death. Was it so bad?
I would like to see cultural evolution where both things occur; more local independence and greater freedom to migrate around locally independent communities. These hyperloop tubes won't necessarily need to limit travel to and from smaller areas. Each 'tube launch' would just need to be planned with a certain destination along the tube. The thing goes so fast, you can probably shoot off more than one capsule per minute. I suppose it would be more efficient to shoot off the longest distance capsules in series so that the stopping and restarting of shorter trips doesn't clog up tube-traffic, but probably you could plan certain times of day when shorter trips are allowed.
Now we live in a world where billions of people feel that they need daily access to a much wider berth than that, with many flying in jet aircraft from continent to continent on a regular basis. And all this happens while they expend much less personal effort getting there than a person two hundred years ago would spend going a few miles into town.
True. The problem is abuse of these technologies in support of laziness and greed. You could also fly a thousand miles once every few years and then walk or bike the same distance over a period of months or years. There's nothing about using fast, mechanized transit that precludes slower, human-powered transit except the norms of culture and scheduling that evolve to push people into containing their travel within narrow windows that practically mandate using the fastest mode of transportation.
Originally Posted by
Roody
This sums up what I believe will be the largest social/economic issue of the 21st century. Local or central? My thought is that a system like hyperloop will most benefit wealthier individuals and larger cities. (Much like jet travel.)
It would be nice to see economic reforms that make it possible for both local and central forms of travel to occur without mutual exclusion and waste. The problem is that for such reforms to occur, the currently wasteful and necessarily-exclusive trends have to be cut back and less exclusive forms grown to viably substantial levels.