slagjumper

There are some advantages to car and gas use and many down sides. The chief advatage from a Materialism point of view is that they allow you to do more work and therefore be more productive. But if you have no gas, or not enough money to buy gas, the advantages of gas-burning cars fade away. As a result there is less money for roads, and developement of alternative vehicles. But none of this is the fault of bikes. Increases in bike use is an effect of changing economics.

It is just as foolish to pump up roads and car facilites in a time of decreasing car use, as it would be to use a John Deere to harvest rice in China in 1950, or for a 19th century person to have a modern computer.

However, the car in our society is no mere blender, since the whole damn economy is dependant on it and oil. Without cars, there would have been no suburbs, no exxon, 10s of thousands of jobs would be lost directly, and even more in the ripple effecs, no drive throughs, car washes, road paint makers, traffic cops, on and on.

Now before you all get hot, you have to also figure that there are many jobs that we dont have any more or have a tiny fraction of what once was. Milkmen, cowboys, lamplighters, bank tellers, switchboard operators, etc. No great loss huh?

There is nothing that will return the car as we know it to its once high place in our culture, the sooner we come to grips with that as a nation, the sooner we can get on with working through the problems of this transition.

Truth is that change sucks for most people.