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jingleghost t1_ivy4itf wrote

Rising socialism and/or nationalism in many western societies.

Post war capitalism ideals are falling short for the majority of people as the wealth gap continues to increase. Especially in younger generations (>40) that on paper don’t own a lot compared with older boomers. For them, socialism looks quite appealing and rightly so.

Nationalism is going to increase too fuelled by mass migration of peoples from the typically ‘underdeveloped’ nations. As our fossil fuel habit catches up with us (weaning ourselves off as well as pollution) and climate change hits those in poorer countries first, we’ll see a lot of people on the move. Que the nationalistic rhetoric from populist leaders.

Less people will be driving.

Fewer flights.

People living in larger family/friend units to share costs of living (financial and also time consuming - child care etc)

Will tech still innovate? Probably but at a slower rate and it won’t be accessible for the masses unless it’s wrapped up with personal ID and social credit scoring stuff.

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Surur t1_ivzlhl4 wrote

> Less people will be driving.

You know as Africa becomes richer and doubles in population more people will be driving, right?

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YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_iw1sa74 wrote

I doubt Africa and other developing regions will go through that. Rich countries are trying to get rid of cars. It makes no sense for the poorer ones to adopt outdated and inefficient technology.

Just like how India and Africa are making huge investments into renewables from the get go, they’ll probably skip the car inferno rich countries have and jump straight to public transport.

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Surur t1_iw249iu wrote

> It makes no sense for the poorer ones to adopt outdated and inefficient technology.

Yes, they will jump straight to EVs lol.

> India and Africa are making huge investments into renewables from the get go, they’ll probably skip the car inferno rich countries have and jump straight to public transport.

Look at India lol. Look at China lol.

> jump straight to public transport.

Hahahahahaha hahahaha

Lol. Imagine thinking public transport is progress.

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YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_iw271kl wrote

It is, though. I’d recommend you check things like r/fuckcars or literally any urban planning youtube channel, journal, news article, etc. nowadays.

There’s a war on cars in europe (and even in the US) and I’m here for it. We need to take back our streets, and amazing and convenient public transport is achievable.

The world bulldozed the cities to find space for cars a few decades ago. Finally, we’re going back. Look at Paris or Barcelona, for instance. Huge changes are happening every day. Lanes disappearing, gugantic investments in public transport, creation of parks, reduction of parking spots, car free zones in the centre of cities, etc.

—— The figures you showed for china and India don’t take into account population growth, the percentage of commuters in different types of transportation, the investments in alternative forma of transportation nor what those countries consider a car (in Asia, small vehicles are a lot of times considered as cars)

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Test19s t1_iwa07cp wrote

The US and Europe are largely overcorrecting from excessive car use. Very few multi-city countries are anywhere near Singapore.

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Surur t1_iw2b0l0 wrote

The carfucky people are jokes. Do you even know what transport is like in much of Africa - its private, not public, busses and shared taxis. When people can use their own transport they prefer it, and its much safer.

How exactly do you expect this PT revolution to evolve lol.

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YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_iw2bn8k wrote

With investment in public infrastructure. They wouldn’t be the first countries to do it, nor the last.

Look at singapore, for example. From no infrastructure and poor to a public transport hub.

Of course people feel unsafe in dirty crowded old falling apart buses. The whole point is that they don’t have to be dirty crowded old and falling apart with the right investment in the sector.

Road construction and maintenance is much more expensive than public transport infrastructure, so don’t tell me they don’t have the money to pour into these projects.

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Surur t1_iw2c4g6 wrote

> Road construction and maintenance is much more expensive than public transport infrastructure, so don’t tell me they don’t have the money to pour into these projects.

This is 100% wrong and I have no idea where you got this idea.

Train tracks are about 10-100x as costly as roads per mile, and running PT is much more expensive than maintaining roads.

For exactly this reason you will not see massive investment in PT.

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YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_iw2d7cx wrote

Those numbers are completely incorrect lol. And especially so when taking into account the negative externalities that road construction, maintenance and individual transport creates and also the opportunity cost of not having denser living spaces (which increases tax revenues).

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Surur t1_iw2g3b6 wrote

> And especially so when taking into account the negative externalities that road construction, maintenance and individual transport creates and also the opportunity cost of not having denser living spaces (which increases tax revenues).

Ignoring whether these things are real or not, do you actually think anyone will care?

> Those numbers are completely incorrect lol.

You swallowed too much propaganda.

> In the United States, most recent and in-progress light-rail lines cost more than $100 million per mile. Two light-rail extensions in Minneapolis, the Blue Line Extension and the Southwest LRT, cost $120 million and $130 million per mile, respectively. Dallas’ Orange Line light rail, 14 miles long, cost somewhere between $1.3 billion and $1.8 billion. Portland’s Orange Line cost about $200 million per mile. Houston’s Green and Purple Lines together cost $1.3 billion for about 10 miles of light rail.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/the-u-s-gets-less-subway-for-its-money-than-its-peers

For roads:

> New Construction 2 Lane Undivided Urban Arterial with 4' Bike Lanes: U01 $4,285,161.73

https://www.fdot.gov/programmanagement/estimates/documents/costpermilemodelsreports

That's $4 million vs $100 million btw.

People have been lying to you, and you have swallowed it up.

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YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_iw2if6u wrote

Dude, did you even read the title of the article you posted? “Why It's So Expensive to Build Urban Rail in the U.S.”

You’re comparing the inflated US figures to those of the industry. The US is simply the most car centric place in the entire free world. It’s not a good representative of the cost of roads vs public transport. The article itself says it.

Also, I’m not American. So, if I’d accept to play that unfair game, I have no reason to. It doesn’t affect me at all.

Also, of course cities and countries will consider the negative externalities and the effect on tax revenues… what do you think their job is? Urban planners, economists, politicians, etc. just sit around approving random projects all day? It’s literally what a bunch of people are hired to do. Industrial economists in particular: that’s their entire job (analysing externalities).

Believe it or not, but companies and governments take years to approve projects for a reason (sometimes inefficiencies, yes, but also because there’s a bunch of stuff to consider).

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Surur t1_iw2iu5u wrote

> Also, I’m not American.

So you think this is a uniquely US problem? In UK they are about to cancel HS2 high speed rail because cost spiralled to more than £100 billion

Tell me which country you are in, and I will look up your local figures.

> Also, of course cities and countries will consider the negative externalities and the effect on tax revenues… what do you think their job is?

No, they look at their budget, and what they have to spend now lol. You live in a fantasy world, especially when it comes to developing economies.

So you are in Portugal:

> In February 2009, the government of Portugal announced plans to build a high-speed rail line from Lisbon to Madrid; this plan was cancelled in March 2012 amidst a bailout programme of financial assistance to the Portuguese Republic.[1] The project was valued at €7.8 billion and the government had claimed it would create 100,000 jobs.[2] The line would link to Spain's Southwest Corridor.

Lol

In Portugal the government spends more than 200,000 Euro per mile on rail track per year.

In Portugal the government spends around 70,000 Euro per km on roads.

> In some other countries (i.e. Austria, Croatia, The Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and Japan) the infrastructure costs are significantly above € 40,000 per kilometre road network. In Portugal and Croatia, the large-scale investment programmes in the 1990s and the first decade of this century largely explains the high cost levels

https://cedelft.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/CE_Delft_4K83_Overview_transport_infrastructure_expenditures_costs_Final.pdf

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Able-Emotion4416 t1_iwbhtty wrote

It happened again and again in the past. For example for tobacco, leaded gasoline, banned pesticides (banned in the Western world), banned dirty fuel, etc. Whenever the West moves on into new tech, regulations, lifestyle, the old stuff gets dumped into African countries.

For two main reasons:

  1. African legislator don't immediately "copy-past" Western laws. And by the time they realize their mistake, it's usually too late, as powerful lobbies and private interests resist any change (e.g. African countries have unsuccessfully tried several times to ban 2nd hand clothing. But the economics are just too powerful, and they get bullied into giving up any bans)

  2. prices. As soon as the Western world bans traditional cars (i.e. internal combustion vehicles), their prices will collapse. And Africans will buy them.

And most interestingly, if the same patterns continue, Western companies will have branches in African countries making internal combustion cars for the African markets. (just like DDT is still being made and sold in Africa, even though it has been banned in the Western world since the 1970s already... and by Western branches or Western owned companies)

Capitalism is super weird. It has no ethics, nor a humane/STEM logic, only greed...

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Alive-Activity9932 t1_ivy7uvx wrote

My fave part about this is climate change's bias to poorer countriesgif

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jingleghost t1_ivy97ws wrote

A lot of poorer countries have populations where upwards of 50% still work the land and live subsistence lifestyles. Alter the climate and crops fail and guess what, those people are going to want to move en masse.

Meanwhile richer countries who already import a lot of calories just end up paying a bit more (which we currently are doing)

This starts a feedback loop as those middling countries now want to export more as the price is high thus damaging domestic food supply.

It’s not climate change as a conscience entity looking at places on a map deciding who to pick on!

What do think happens when the global temperature increases 2 degrees? Does everyone just turn their a/c up a notch?

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Alive-Activity9932 t1_ivy9z0f wrote

> What do think happens when the global temperature increases 2 degrees? Does everyone just turn their a/c up a notch?

Lol! Honestly I just wanted to know your reasoning since I actually live in a 3rd world country where agriculture is the backbone of economy. Thanks

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jingleghost t1_ivyaa44 wrote

Interesting.

Can you describe any effects you’ve noticed so far? What are food prices like?

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Alive-Activity9932 t1_ivybmz8 wrote

Staple food crops have almost tripled in price since last year and more farmers are actually exporting their crops for better markets which makes the prices surge even more locally. On top of all that we're experiencing like a semi-drought from irregular rain patterns and such. Oh and I almost forgot some water sources have almost completely dried including ones used for HEP so pretty much the whole nation is experiencing daily power outages, with prior warning of course. I live in Tanzania in case you're wondering.

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jingleghost t1_ivyc0ts wrote

I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine how difficult life must feel, I just hope you and family stay well in the coming years

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Alive-Activity9932 t1_ivycyz7 wrote

Thanks internet stranger it probably sounds worse to you than it actually is. The thing about us 3rd worlders is we tend to be resilient, so atm it is still bearable. gif

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jingleghost t1_ivydp2t wrote

I’ve read a lot of opinions on societal collapse and generally, if things turn bad globally then it’s the people from poorer countries who will stand it better. More skilled and experienced to look after themselves and ensure their basics are met.

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