Resource Scarcity Myth and JHK

Resource Scarcity Myth and JHK

JHK - Kunstler is a great writer and has very interesting ideas and concepts, but I see a subtle thread of a resource scarcity myth that is present everywhere today with environmentalists and is totally false.

Check out his blog kunstler.com

and these last 2 blogs:

kunstler.com/blog/2010/04/false-spring.html

kunstler.com/blog/2010/04/my-hom … -fate.html

especially this response that gives a deep insight to how exactly things are today:

"This is part of a large family of ideologies and assumptions that rotate around resource scarcity. Peak oil, population explosion, energy is finishing, land is finishing, food is finishing, etc. are all false beliefs: there has never been so much of the above available and there will be increasingly so as time goes by. But these resource scarcities ideologies feed on the idea that you all have to “compete” for resources, “there is not enough around for everyone”, competition and fighting over resources because there are too little, and this ideology does a great favor to private businesses and corporations that can squeeze out money from poor people through the myth of resource scarcity. So then privatize health care, then housing, then water and eventually food, etc. Cut it off from everyone and make everyone pay for a very scarce resource like health care, housing, water etc.

Never has there been a greater lie: there are no resource scarcities, JHK concentrates himself on oil, but oil is only a small part of the equation of modern civilization, 80 % of that equation is technology, and technology can overcome all and any resource scarcities. Like I said above, we haven’t even begun tapping the potential of simple BUSES, let alone skyscrapers where even BUSES and transportation in general is not even needed ! substitute cars with elevators.

Oil is just carbon chemistry, there are many ways to create a substitute through genetic engineered bacteria, or ethanol as in Brazil, natural gas can be used, methane, biomasses, etc.

Population probably won’t ever reach 10 billion:

check out:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population … rowth_rate

So the excuse that there are too many people is BS. The real problem is that a group of people want to cut off the resources that should go to everyone, they want competition, fighting for resources, war, etc. They want racism, etc.

Since what we have is constant increase of wealth, free wealth through technology, societies don’t know how to deal with it psychologically, it goes against the real resource scarcities that mankind has had since up until about a hundred years ago when technology took over and solved all these problems.

There are even more extreme theories of our infinite resource society, like the technological singularity (computers becoming so smart that they themselves design ever smarter computers until they become no longer understandable by humans), or that medical advances will cross the point where the average lifetime exceeds more than one year every year, so no one will die anymore even if they wanted to because medicine has achieved immortality (but this would eventually increase the population ,hmmm…).

What I think is operating is that the worldwide economy generates so much wealth that societies don’t know how to deal with it, and that wealth generates even more in an endless cycle up to the point of an infinite resource society. I mean the economy goes in crisis mode if we decide to just consume 2 or 3 percent less of our normal consumption…

And maybe the Chinese and arabs in Dubai are building all those skyscrapers because they realize just how hugely energy efficient they are. An investment for the future.

The US builds McMansions, they build skyscrpapers…"

JHK thinks we will be going back to agriculture, others think we will be going back to manufacturing, others think we will be going back to services. Well, we won’t be going back to any of these things: and in fact agriculture will become even more large scale, even more optimized and will employ even less people worldwide then today. It will become even more chemical intensive. Manufacturing also will become more automated with robots and microprocessors, even more optimized and even fewer people will work in manufacturing worldwide. Services is and has always been a farse, they are not needed.

What we have is the result of applied science to production, technology has and will increasingly eliminate most work and labor as we know it. This is an automatic process, no one can do anything about it, the forces to eliminate work are just too many and too strong worldwide. What will happen is most people will not have any work anymore and will not need to work. We will simply get free salaries, and will buy baby, buy instead of drill baby, drill. The first countries that will understadn this and simply payy people to live, give them a basic guaranteed salary, and a high salary at that, something like 3,000 dollars a month will have finally understoos how the real economy works and will work in the future. We have huge excess capacity in all productive endeavors worldwide that don’t know how and whre to discharge, we don’t need more work, we need less.

There will be even more sprawl and even more skyscrapers built worlwide. Peak oil is a fantasy of JHK, he does not know that the chevy volt is a breakthrough that will kill his fantasy of peak oil, because it is uses the engine as a generator to produce electricity for the elctric motors, and this engine can be fed ehtanol or methane or gas, or biodiesel or french fried oil. And huge BUSES, mass trasit with SIMPLE BUSES will also kill his peak oil fantasy.

JHK has a fundamentalist, religious - fundamentalist approach to society, in the sense that pleasure must be punished, we shouldn’t have McMansions and consume and go around in cars, etc. But this view is false and distorted because the automatic economy through applied science to production has eliminated work and labor and imposes us to simply enjoy, consume and sprawl as much as possible. This is the truth not his punishing view of going back to the past and everyone becoming farmers again.

Worldwide economy globalization will impose a basic pay rate that goes from 100 to 800 dollars a month. This is the average, about 300 to 400 dollars a month, the real average salary that will become standard. Everything else will become free, health care, homes, food, etc. There is simply no way to stop the huge excess capacity and production machine worldwide, it is and will generate a huge amount of wealth, that we don’t know how to deal with psychologically.

JHK thinks we will be going back to agriculture, others think we will be going back to manufacturing, others think we will be going back to services. Well, we won’t be going back to any of these things: and in fact agriculture will become even more large scale, even more optimized and will employ even less people worldwide than today. It will become even more chemical intensive. Manufacturing also will become more automated with robots and microprocessors, even more optimized and even fewer people will work in manufacturing worldwide. Services is and has always been a farse, they are not needed.

What we have is the result of applied science to production, technology has and will increasingly eliminate most work and labor as we know it. This is an automatic process, no one can do anything about it, the forces to eliminate work are just too many and too strong worldwide. What will happen is most people will not have any work anymore and will not need to work. We will simply get free salaries, and will buy baby, buy instead of drill baby, drill. The first countries that will understand this and simply pay people to live, give them a basic guaranteed salary, and a high salary at that, something like 3,000 dollars a month will have finally understood how the real economy works and will function properly in the future. We have huge excess capacity in all productive endeavors worldwide that doesn’t know how and where to discharge, we don’t need more work, we need less.

There will be even more sprawl and even more skyscrapers built worlwide. Peak oil is a fantasy of JHK, he does not know that the chevy volt is a breakthrough that will kill his fantasy of peak oil, because it is uses the engine as a generator to produce electricity for the electric motors, and this engine can be fed ethanol or methane or gas, or biodiesel or french fried oil. And huge BUS trasnsit networks, mass transit with SIMPLE BUSES will also kill his peak oil fantasy.

JHK has a fundamentalist, religious - fundamentalist approach to society, in the sense that pleasure must be punished, we shouldn’t have McMansions and consume and go around in cars, etc. But this view is false and distorted because the automatic economy through applied science to production has eliminated work and labor and imposes us to simply enjoy, consume and sprawl as much as possible. This is the truth not his punishing view of going back to the past and everyone becoming farmers again.

Worldwide economy globalization will impose a basic pay rate that goes from 100 to 800 dollars a month. This is the average, about 300 to 400 dollars a month, the real average salary that will become standard. Everything else will become free, health care, homes, food, etc. There is simply no way to stop the huge excess capacity and production machine worldwide, it is and will generate a huge amount of wealth, that we don’t know how to deal with psychologically. There are 100 million manufacturing workers from Pakistan to Indonesia and in Latin America and you guys think manufacturing will be coming back ? Insane …

People here have no idea how much EXCESS CAPACITY is available worldwide: there are millions of workers in the world, millions of scientists working in technology and you guys think that just looking at a McMansion defines how society will evolve ? Worldwide economy has TOO MUCH MONEY on its hands, it seems to be around 100 trillion dollars available that DOESN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO ?!?!?? WHY ? because technology has automated manufacturing and agriculture, we can harness as much energy as we want from many sources, we can optimize energy uses with SIMPLE BUS networks controlled by internet scheduling, or by teleworking from the internet, etc. Are you guys crazy or what ? are you kidding me ? We now live in automated societies where work has been (should be) abolished and is no longer needed, we need free salaries, 3,000 dollars a month, FREE FOOD, FREE HEALTH CARE AND FREE HOMES! Wake up people, don’t buy knstler’s fundamentalist doom, it is all false.

Most economical interpretations that have been attempted have totally failed to predict the future: kunstler’s is just as useless and failed as it is biased towards what he would like happens and not what actually happens. What actually happens is that there are 100 million manufacturing workers across the world and he thinks “we should go back to making something of value”. There are probably just as many if not even more farmers across the world and he thinks “we should grow our own food in our backyard”. At least he dismisses services as the jokes that they are: financial jobs are just there to rip off people, banks just do the same, the whole health care fiasco is an arena of cruelty and squeezing out money from people when they are in pain. Nice “progress”, nice “services”. Well these services are not needed.

What is needed is a huge BUS transportation system, simple BUSES that can connect cities and suburbs, managed by public or private companies, doesn’t matter. Mass transit is what is needed to improve energy efficiency and kill the peak oil fantasy and lie-deception. Also cheap rents, the idea of owning a home is retarded and old fashioned, homes should be for rent, and should be very cheap. There is excess real estate capacity all across the world, look at the skyscrapers in China, Dubai, all the buldings in Spain, etc.

The world is now a globalized economy, get over it, it must be measured globally, it is now one unit.

Read the link:

gsd.harvard.edu/research/pub … jones.html

Notice EXCESS CAPACITY, overproduction are not concepts I discovered: they have been present for many decades, and get worse each year. Just robots and microprocessors automating jobs will create ever more free wealth, that societies don’t know how to deal with psychologically. Therefore the end mathematical solution to this is free salaries, mass transit, elimination of most work as no longer necessary. Or war and extreme conflict amongst many different sets of people over many resources and for many reasons.

If even a small percentage of production work in all sectors (primary, secondary and services) is serial and accumulative, there is absolutely no way that work will be available for future generations. By serial I mean for example how many buildings can you keep on building worldwide ? how many computer programs can you keep on writing worldwide ? how much further can you optimize production ? how many more new discoveries can possibly be made by thousands of scientists ? How many more consumer items can be produced and destroeyed yearly, etc.

From the link:

" Post-industrialism can be defined as the convergence of the “Information Age” and the “Service Economy.” Beginning in the 1970s, increasing competition from the recovered economies of Japan and Germany, as well as market saturation and stagflation, led American corporations to shift from strategies of high-volume mass production (Fordism) to strategies of high-quality, consumer-responsive, flexible production (post-Fordism).(4) Speed of innovation and changeable product lines have become key strategies for inducing demand, but require retoolable and increasingly computerized equipment and coordination.

This has occurred simultaneously with the development and mass production of computers and telecommunication networks. The availability of digital technologies and the need to better coordinate supply and demand (after the overproduction and recessions of the ’70s) has led to new corporate reliance on information about markets and inventories. New jobs were created in information services such as market research, advertising, and financial services, while telecommunications networks allowed corporations to shift manufacturing jobs to cheaper labor pools overseas or in suburbia, or to replace them through automation. While manufacturing is still an important function of the post-industrial economy, it has lost its dominant position to the production of images and information. Indeed, the hardware and software required for information management epitomizes the temporariness of post-industrialism. Even yearly upgrades do not keep pace with the speed of obsolescence. "

and also:

" Feverish construction through the ’80s produced nearly 4.6 billion square feet of total store space in the U.S. — about twenty square feet for every person in the country, the addition of a 34,000-square-foot store every hour.(22) Population grew 10% in the ’80s, retail floor space 80%.22"

This is called EXCESS CAPACITY, more labor executed than is necessary.

1. Has JHK ever seen other cities worldwide ? like Seoul, Tokyo, Bangkok, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, etc. ? So does he think that all of those city dwellers, with all of their skyscrapers, and the many new ones they are building, are all so stupid, that they don’t see the “impending collapse”, that they don’t see that energy is “finishing”, and they are doomed ? So does that mean JHK and other greens here, know the truth and future and all of those city dwellers and engineers, economists, etc. are all dumb and not knowledgable ? Very humble …

2. The crisis of today is a crisis of labor - work, and excess capacity, not energy. There is not enough labor, not enough new jobs or kinds of jobs possible in the future since technology automates and optimizes away labor. In fact JHK gave a perfect example of how technology killed more work than created new work by showing how going from coal to gas automated the labor process completely. Now what are all those thousands of office workers in those big buildings, WORLDWIDE, now remember not only NYC but also cities like those listed above, going to actually do 8 hours a day in those buildings ? how are they going to “generate profit” ? how are they going to justify the price of renting those office spaces with what they actually do ? What information manipulations are they performing that are worth so much ?

3. The crisis of NYC and other cities worldwide is excess real estate capacity, more real estate than can be occupied. Now consider this: London or Mexico City are flat cities, absolutely NO highrises at all, NOT EVEN BULDINGS WITH 4 LEVELS OF MORE (or very few at least), and they host a similar population as NYC. So what gives ? And if compared to Sao Paolo or Seoul, the difference is even more staggering, since these two cities have thousands of buildings with 10 or more stories. It means that London or Mexico city don’t have as much extra real state as compared to NYC, Seoul or Sao Paolo or Shanghai. And how much extra real estate do these cities have ? maybe to host combined, another 10 million people easily. More real estate available worldwide than can be occupied. Again, EXCESS CAPACITY.

4. Solution ? tear down thousands of buildings, demolish them worldwide, and build them all up again in a continuous cycle. Skyscrapers should last 5 years then, down they go again and build a new one.

Look at Dubai, they have office space if you need it, and then figure out what the office workers will “produce”…

5. In fact the way to use the present highway and road infrastructure in the USA is through a simple BUS SYSTEM. Is the word BUS a dirty word ? A bus that uses the chevy volt system, say diesel electric could easily kill any energy problems instantly.

Anyways BUSES, SIMPLE BUSES could greatly increase energy efficiency, each BUS could get rid of 20 cars from the road in the USA, imagine how much money that would save. And the BUSES could be made luxury, silent, well designed, with internet scheduling and calling all through the suburbs, there are untold hundreds of ways of optimizing SIMPLE BUS networks in the USA. Where are all the Silicon Valley Start ups when you need them ? Why don’t they figure out a technology that makes BUS usage in suburbia efficient ?

No, BUSES is a dirty word in the USA…

6. I would also say that there is no “normal economy”, there is no normal , end of story. There are just instantaneous combinations of forces interacting constantly and creating ever changing new configurations and combinations, none of which are normal or better or worse, except to a given person according to where he finds himself in that quirky combination of millions of decisions and will powers and energy configurations called the economy.

7. Having said that, the fact that there is no way millions of jobs needed worldwide can be invented, and since the “automatic market” certainly can’t create them out of thin air, they must simply be subsidized, millions of people worldwide must be paid 3,000 dollars a month just to keep that small part of the economic machine that actually does do concrete work (manufacturing and agriculture) working. There is this moralistic - ideological refrain from giving free salaries because it goes against an imagined meritocracy, or doesn’t allow the economy to grow, etc. But those who think like this don’t see the enormous amount of money that is given as free salaries anyways thanks to technology creating free wealth. This money is given in the form of paying fake jobs and bonuses at wall street and similar, in the from of hundreds of billions to the defense industry, in the 100 trillion dollars worldwide that play that giant poker game called the stock market, in the super bloated health care system in the USA that has way too many parasites and way to many people getting six figure salaries they don’t deserve, etc.

So just be honest about it and say: the era of working is essentially over, technology has automated - optimized work and you shall now get 3,000 dollars a month for living.

Also the scare of population explosion and resource scarcity is another myth: population is not growing so fast anymore, probably will never hit 15 billion and even if it does, the technology we have can host them easily in towers - skyscrapers, high class luxury ones at that, etc.

Another myth is the idea that research, technology and innovation will create “new jobs”. Now aside from the fact that the industries that are high tech like Microsoft, Google, Nokia, IBM etc don’t really need so many workers, and in fact have laid off workers often, these companies make loads of money because they become almost monopolies, they use some intellectual creation and make money over and over again with that one creation that pays itself back millions of times. This is exactly how they get rich. And in the process eliminate thousands of jobs in other sectors using the technology.

Technology kills jobs: the Z80 CPU in the 70s was completely designed and produced in 11 man years (11 men working a year). Imagine that kind of productivity if all tech workers could do the same. But that was a one time quirk in a given period of time, that will never repeat again. And high tech in the end is really based on a few thousand really smart, capable and productive engineers and scientists.

So an industry that really needs only 10,000 top notch technicians is not going to create “millions of new jobs”.

Doom and gloom, peak oil myth, energy and resource scarcity are myths and ghosts that cover up the real issues at hand: housing and work.

There is no reason on earth why housing should cost so much any place on earth, why people should all be forced to “buy houses”, why they have this need “to protect their investment”, etc. It is all a deception: what is needed is cheap rents for high quality homes, the resources are all there, the builders worldwide would build millions of homes in a month if they could get payed.

There is a precise will power, a precise intention to create a false scarcity in housing thereby robbing billions of dollars from normal workers who have normal pays. This is real class warfare that has been going on for decades, home ownership is a deception, myth and is retarded. But people have all been brainwashed: they should all demand cheap rents, the resources are there to build millions if not billions of homes, don’t buy into the deception of peak oil, we are all going to be poor, energy is finishing, etc. It only serves to compress the wealth of millions of normal working families worldwide.

While the rich and property owners laugh and get richer and richer…

Companies and economists have always been praising flexibility, the right to hire and fire and change geographical locations of companies from anywhere to anywhere, etc. Innovation, always change, you have to be willing to move where “the jobs are”, etc. Then why are people so retarded and brainwashed by these same ideologies that they “must buy a home”, etc ? Why don’t the same entities demand cheap rents for the flexibility of the market ? why don’t they themselves furnish the low rent HIGH QUALITY housing for their workers so they can get on with the new jobs and change where and when appropriate ? Why do they all always forget this small detail ?

Because it is a deception, because the same entities that want freedom to hire and fire and constantly change all the rules on the table, want you to buy a home, get stuck with it, and then undergo a great loss when you have to change to the new job, in the new “hot market”.

Lies and deceptions that have been brainwashing people for decades.

[b]There is a precise intentionality in the USA and Worldwide not to ever mention BUSES. When you mention BUSES on this blog or other blogs/forums people always say, “oh you mean that crap I rode in Detroit”, or “that horrible experience I had in that monkey of Austin Texas (less mass transit than in Bangladesh)”, etc. They can’t even imagine that BUSES can be made luxury, high quality, silent inside and out, with private compartments, with scheduling through internet, with a Rolls Royce type suspension system, etc. They can’t imagine how much can be achieved by simple BUSES.

There is an intentionality to not mention BUSES but instead talk about subways, high speed rail, railroads, etc. because rail transit is full of conflict and politics, costs alot of money and will never be done. But since BUSES can be deployed tomorrow morning all through the USA suburbs, the solution would be too easy, we couldn’t believe that the peak oil boogeyman can disappear so easily.

Also, skyscrapers are hugely energy efficient, you wouldn’t believe how much can be achieved with skyscrapers, in Asia they use the same mega building for residence, offices and Malls, you don’t even need BUSES you just need elevators. Wow, talk about saving on gasoline!!!

But you have these greens that criticize skyscrapers, don’t mention BUSES, but all want to grow their own food in their backyards. It is not going to happen, you wouldn’t believe how much excess manufacturing capacity is available worldwide, there are 100 million farmers in the world, let alone using chemical intensive - high tech farming that needs very few farmers to operate.

JHK is living in his own novel, is confusing his imagination with reality, it is like lets make believe energy is finishing, how are we going to deal ? He doesn’t get it that societies can adapt rapidly, can change how they operate very quickly if they want to, they can build a few thousand high quality - luxury skyscrapers, and you don’t even need transportation anymore.[/b]

How much does it cost to rent a home in LA or NYC, where all the jobs are ? alot, so people buy instead of renting. Why were so many people buying into a housing market that was always going up ? they were all brainwashed that they were going to get rich by just waiting that their house triples in value, etc. All this housing deception has brought on foreclosures, the subprime mess, the economic crisis, etc.

Why did the US government want everyone to become homeowners instead of renting ? for ideological reasons, to make banks get rich with the loans, etc.

Why doesn’t anyone ever mention the fact that rents should be aligned to the average going pay rate ? Is that so hard to imagine ? No there is a precise intentionality to brainwash everyone that they are going to get rich by buying homes, by being a property owner, etc. Why doesn’t Obama say, “let the home prices go down as much as possible, so rents become aligned with average salaries” ? Because there is an intentionality to create an artificial scaricty in homes, to squeeze money out of people for housing.

Since most jobs in the future will be minimum wage, 800 dollars a month, an average home should rent for 100 to 200 dollars a month. Of course those working in health care will make 6 or 7 figure salaries because they can squeeze out as much money as possible when people need health care and are in pain.

The Chinese are paranoid and are creating excess real estate, just like the Spain, they are afraid of resource scarcity.

This is part of a large family of ideologies and assumptions that rotate around resource scarcity. Peak oil, population explosion, energy is finishing, land is finishing, food is finishing, etc. are all false beliefs: there has never been so much of the above available and there will be increasingly so as time goes by. But these resource scarcities ideologies feed on the idea that you all have to “compete” for resources, “there is not enough around for everyone”, competition and fighting over resources because there are too little, and this ideology does a great favor to private businesses and corporations that can squeeze out money from poor people through the myth of resource scarcity. So then privatize health care, then housing, then water and eventually food, etc. Cut it off from everyone and make everyone pay for a very scarce resource like health care, housing, water etc.

Never has there been a greater lie: there are no resource scarcities, JHK concentrates himself on oil, but oil is only a small part of the equation of modern civilization, 80 % of that equation is technology, and technology can overcome all and any resource scarcities. Like I said above, we haven’t even begun tapping the potential of simple BUSES, let alone skyscrapers where even BUSES and transportation in general is not even needed ! substitute cars with elevators.

Oil is just carbon chemistry, there are many ways to create a substitute through genetic engineered bacteria, or ethanol as in Brazil, natural gas can be used, methane, biomasses, etc.

Population probably won’t ever reach 10 billion:

check out:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population … rowth_rate

So the excuse that there are too many people is BS. The real problem is that a group of people want to cut off the resources that should go to everyone, they want competition, fighting for resources, war, etc. They want racism, etc.

Since what we have is constant increase of wealth, free wealth through technology, societies don’t know how to deal with it psychologically, it goes against the real resource scarcities that mankind has had since up until about a hundred years ago when technology took over and solved all these problems.

There are even more extreme theories of our infinite resource society, like the technological singularity (computers becoming so smart that they themselves design ever smarter computers until they become no longer understandable by humans), or that medical advances will cross the point where the average lifetime exceeds more than one year every year, so no one will die anymore even if they wanted to because medicine has achieved immortality (but this would eventually increase the population ,hmmm…).

What I think is operating is that the worldwide economy generates so much wealth that societies don’t know how to deal with it, and that wealth generates even more in an endless cycle up to the point of an infinite resource society. I mean the economy goes in crisis mode if we decide to just consume 2 or 3 percent less of our normal consumption…

And maybe the Chinese and arabs in Dubai are building all those skyscrapers because they realize just how hugely energy efficient they are. An investment for the future.

The US builds McMansions, they build skyscrpapers…

Another thing that doesn’t make sense is when kunstler says the suburbs are the greatest misallocation of resources in history. Now, I find this absurd: all of the suburbs in the USA can continue to be exactly as they are, you just need to add sidewalks and tear down a few homes or identify and area within each subdivision that can become a small retail - office center and some parks. It is easy as pie, there are hundreds of architects and creative people in the USA that could imagine and slightly modify the suburbs and eliminate all those things that are wrong with them according to JHK. It seems to me that it is either all or nothing, the dark ages and the world made by hand, or McMansion suburbs with no sidewalks, no buses etc. There is no in between, but this is absurd, there are hundreds of ways to slightly modify the suburbs and make them user friendly.

Maybe “health care” can create millions of jobs by inventing thousands of new sicknesses and selling thousands of “new drugs”, that will then create another set of new sicknesses, etc. If we are all sick health care can create millions of jobs that pay 6 figure incomes. Health Care = Insane …

In fact environmentalists are anti-progress and racists for the most part. They are always talking about how limited resources are because they don’t want them to be shared. They never talk about BUSES, about skyscrapers, etc. They want the dark ages. I calculated that one tenth the area of the USA could easily host a TRILLION people in a skyscraper arrangment of buildings where you have residence, offices and retail at very little cost in energy terms because you just use elevators and need no cars or roads for the most part.

The whole concept of resource scarcity is imposed from the living arangment that is chosen and from the behaviors that are imposed from the outset like commuting to offices in LA from the distant suburb, etc. You just need to change some variables and all of a sudden we all gain those rsources back. Think how idiotic garages are in homes, a room for the car: think how much housing resources could be gained by converting them to rooms, or converting half of the front lawn and backyard to home extensions and rooms. As of today, all of the USA homes could host 10 billion people.

There are no resource limitations only precise intentionalities to brainwash people that there are by imposing contorted living arrangments and behaviors that create the limitations. In the computer field they have been saying for decades that there are not enough math and physics and engineering majors, brainwshing everyone of an imagined resource limitation: there have never been so many technicians available worldwide, but for some strange reason they are never enough. This is another example of an imagined resource scarcity myth imposed for political and ideological reason.

I AGREE WITH:

[b]There is a precise intentionality in the USA and Worldwide not to ever mention BUSES. When you mention BUSES on this blog or other blogs/forums people always say, “oh you mean that crap I rode in Detroit”, or “that horrible experience I had in that monkey of Austin Texas (less mass transit than in Bangladesh)”, etc. They can’t even imagine that BUSES can be made luxury, high quality, silent inside and out, with private compartments, with scheduling through internet, with a Rolls Royce type suspension system, etc. They can’t imagine how much can be achieved by simple BUSES.

There is an intentionality to not mention BUSES but instead talk about subways, high speed rail, railroads, etc. because rail transit is full of conflict and politics, costs alot of money and will never be done. But since BUSES can be deployed tomorrow morning all through the USA suburbs, the solution would be too easy, we couldn’t believe that the peak oil boogeyman can disappear so easily.

Also, skyscrapers are hugely energy efficient, you wouldn’t believe how much can be achieved with skyscrapers, in Asia they use the same mega building for residence, offices and Malls, you don’t even need BUSES you just need elevators. Wow, talk about saving on gasoline!!![/b]

Environmentalists are always pro-progress. They condone environmental progress, not environmental regress. Some emphasize technological solutions and others emphasize the problems that come with technology. I have no idea why you think environmentalists are mostly racists. That’s a particularly bizarre claim.

Face it old6598, the world as we idealize it is aging, and it will die. It would be great if we could treat the world with respect - as with a person who ages with grace, we could actually treat our world well, while at the same time accepting the truths of sickness and death as natural and unavoidable.

Your ideas are reasonable on a much, much smaller scale. It seems the only way to force such grand ideas to work out is through dictatorship. Contrary to your idealistic assertions, the associated energy costs of the completely top-down approach you seem to advocate would be staggering. I mean, the very roads that create a society that could produce such a city of high-rises would then - what? - get removed? How do you maintain these skyscrapers without a complex industrial infrastructure? The level of state control that this vision of yours would require is mind-blowing.

Well it was a science fiction scenario the trillion people in skyscrapers, but the idea behind it is that there are hundreds of possibilities and options that can be tried out and experimented while JHK has a very rigid either all or nothing view, etc. Just imagine how many variations can be applied in the USA suburbs (if you know the USA or have been there). The Chinese may very well dominate because they can build all that they need freely without all of the constraints of democracy and the fake - crappy constraints of capitalism with their insane and primitive, stone age profit motive. In fact they are building high speed rail, apartments etc. while everyone in the west is hoping the invisible hand of the market creates what millions of people need out of thin air.

Public debt is also part of the Resource Scarcity Myth: this is all a make believe economic model, nothing behind all of the numbers make any sense and is true, it is all invented. With all the labor worldwide that is idle, all of that untapped potential and the USA is supposed to have 10 trillion dollars debt, and future debt of 50 trillion, JAPAN has 4 trillion dollars debt, etc ? What a bunch of BS, these debts don’t count nothing, they are all just numbers on computer screens, can never be paid back by anyone in any sense, especially with all the unemployment and pay rates worldwide etc. but serve to brainwash the poor how much they have to sacrifice, how much “they are in debt”. They will eventually be erased from the computer screens wth a mouse click.

The truth is the economic system with its technology and automation and optimizations can generate way too much wealth for everyone that they need to invent all this capitalist BS of investment, profit and debts to not share all the trillions of dollars of automatic money with everyone.

That clears up a lot. I’ve never read Kunstler by the way.

My last calculation was considering puny skyscrapers with 20 floors, but if you consider the future maybe 200 floors ones (dubai has one with 100 floors), the holding capacity of all of the continental USA is population 1,000 TRILLION. Resource Scarcity my ass. And that is that number of people living in high quality skyscrapers, with luxury and offices, residential and retail a short elevators trip away.

Talking about debts before, I forgot to mention also Italy, they have public debt of 2 trillion dollars, I am wondering how on earth and who on earth is going to pay back that make believe money. You have these huge debts all over the world, what a circus full of clowns, what a total farse…

Is it daft of me at this point to ask where the resources come from to support this high-tech future?

By all the excess capacity present in the world, by automation doing 90 % of the work, etc. Read the first paragraph…

So, for instance, you think intensive chemical-based agriculture will solve the world hunger problem? Even aside from the political side of the issue (i.e. that it is wars, dictators, etc. that contribute most to world hunger), the green revolution is widely seen as non-sustainable, as it depends for its success on an adversarial relationship to all of the natural material sources of food. Witness the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer for instance.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing for an alternative idealistic vision. As I said before, the world as we idealize it is dying, and will die. At the same time, I think we can awaken to what it means to live with some grace and dignity on this earth. The global warming debate always amazes me, for instance. Do we really need to know whether global warming is a fact or not? Can’t we treat our environment better nonetheless? I think it’s very sad. But hey, that’s life I guess.

Do you really think this economy needs “work” to operate ? Do you really think the USA workforce of 70 million “service sector” jobs is actually producing anything ? Aside from health care (and only a very few really necessary and important parts of it, therefore all the billions of dollars to insurance companies is fake work), police, fire dept, and schools, and some other things, the rest of the “service economy” is an excuse of “fake work” for real food and energy. This is because we live in automatic economies where technology does all the work, computers all the thinking and we are no longer needed to do much of any work anymore.

That is the way a trillion dollars of bailout money can pop into existence for Europe and in the past for AIG, banks, for military adventures across the world, etc.

Another thing I just can’t understand is when all the economists of all colors and nations insist that the “economy has to grow” in order to pay back the debts and create more work, etc. But exactly what has to grow ? Do we need more houses built ? more cars built ? do we need more banks, more people working in banks ? How many more products and houses and cars and furniture can we possibly make and exchange ?

If anything, the west as in USA, EU and JAPAN can’t really grow much anymore, these places are saturated with consumer items. Maybe we can tear down all homes and cars every three years and make - buy everything all over again. Then you can have a “growing” economy.

Of course the only economies that will really grow in this sense will be Latin America, India, China, Indonesia and a few others as they transit from low class to middle class, but once that 20 to 30 year growth window is achieved, they will go in low growth to no growth pattern as in “The Lost Decades of JAPAN”.

But even so, manufacturig as such does not follow a linear law of more items produced, more labor needed: actually most optimized factories can produce even 3 times more of any item with very few new “hires”. So what gives ? Aside from the fact that manufacturing is done by robotys or in China and Indonesia for 200 dollars a month salaries, what gives ? EXACTLY WHAT ON EARTH HAS TO GROW FOR THE ECONOMY TO GROW ?

Hint, Hint … Maybe health care, as in make everyone sick and needing as many pills as possible to get them even more sick and needing more pills, operations, hospitals etc. Yeah, get everyone all sick and busted, 100 million people working in hospitals to cure and render even more sick 200 million people…

The problems today are excess capacity in all productive endeavors, work not being necessary anymore as in WORK IS OBSOLETE, IS NOT NEEDED, THERE IS NOT ENOUGH POSSIBLE ACTIVITY TO KEEP MILLIONS OF PEOPLE BUSY WORLDWIDE FOR 8 HOURS A DAY.

But everyone wants to beat up the next poorest guy, they all want someone next to them to have less: in greece the whole world goes against them “retiring early”, the fact that unmarried daughters get a free salary, 1,000 euros a month etc. In the USA everyone hates the workers who have “union jobs”, they are the enemy. There is the great desire to make the poor beat up each other, to place poor against poor.

But they don’t understand that if you don’t just give away those free salaries, that money will just end up in the same pockets of those 10 million rich families worldwide. Either you give the free money to the low and middle class, or it will just make the rich richer.

The system today cannot in no way provide jobs to millions people because these jobs are not needed, robots and computers and third world workers working for 200 dollars a month can do all the work that is needed.

The company owners will only hire if they can really make a large profit out of the workers, which means you can’t pay them more than 200 or 300 dollars a month.

There are as of today in the USA and worldwide hundreds of thousands of very good technicians, engineers, etc. of all colors kinds and stripes to “overhaul” the grid and fix plumbing. There is on the other hand a precise intentionality to not let these people do this work: that don’t want to fix the grid or plumbing BECAUSE THERE IS VERY LITTLE YIELD, OR PROFIT FROM THESE SIMPLE, NOT EXCITING, BACK TO EARTH activities. It is capitalism, with its idiotic, stone age, profit motive, that doesn’t want to do anything that doesn’t provide a mega profit and super yield from activity and labor.

The US could solve all of its housing, transportation problems, etc in probably two years if it had a very strong central government that would decide to blast a few trillion dollars on excellent high speed, quiet and advanced BUS service all through the USA - suburbs, well constructed town houses in moderately density suburbs, etc.

Instead what do all the US governments do (left or right) give billions to banks to play rip off the next stooge. And always complain about the need to be “competitive”, more reserch more innovation. A bunch of idiotic fluff to not do that little real work that must be done.

Town houses with cheap rents, costing what they should according to the future going salaries: the future salaries in the USA will be between 500 and 1,000 dollars a month in case you haven’t noticed with whom the USA is “competing” with, therefore rents should be 100 to 200 dollars a month. And no more buying houses, that is retarded, only the rich buy houses, normal workers rent and can always change where they want to work and live according to a healthy , dynamic rent housing market.

The entire idea of research, innovation, high technologies that create new “jobs”, that make “the economy grow” comes from an era between 1975 and 2000 when Microprocessors first, then Personal Computers and then the Internet created thousands of new companies, new kinds of jobs, new jobs and organizations that effectively did make the economy grow. Problem is : THAT ERA IS OVER.

In that era, the US did not have the competition of China, India or South Korea, there was alot that could be invented, there was some relationship between research → innovation → new jobs → economic growth. But that relationship is gone now, will never come back because it was a one time fluke, a one shot quirk of events in a window of time, with a given technology and evolution of, that won’t be repeated again and for sure not in that fashion, and rarely generating new jobs and economic growth. If anything it will probably kill more jobs, concentrate more wealth in the Cpatilist Social Class if it ever even happens again.

WE NEED CHEAP RENTS FOR HIGH QUALITY HOUSES, MASS TRANSIT IN LUXURY BUSES, AND FREE SALARIES, 3,000 DOLLARS A MONTH. THE RESOURCES ARE ALL OUT THERE, BUT ONLY A FEW GREEDY PIGS WANT TO HOG THEM ALL UP

check out:

kunstler.com/blog/2010/05/and-ch … -free.html

Modern economies need more “work” like a hole in the head. Many have this insane, old fashion idea that more work or more effort, more activity will make economies “richer”, will increase their GDP, or that there is some kind of metaphysical or spiritual value in work or more work or effort or breaking your back planting food in your backyard, etc. It is a kind of guilt complex against pleasure, an idea that more “work” is better.

Well, I have got news for you: there has never been an era where more work generates more poverty, where there is no need for any more work (that is why unemployment worldwide is increasing), the relationship of work to wealth is not only nonlinear, but there is as of today no relationship at all. It is an imaginary item right wingers like to talk about to blame the victims, to blame the unemployed that they are unemployed because they don’t want to work or are lazy.

Actually all of that extra work, all of that hard work building McMansions across the USA or all those houses in Spain, all of those loans and all of the new financial instruments created subprime loaning, defaults, and the housing bubble. The law of diminishing returns has become the law of negative returns as far as “work” is concerned. get over it, work is obsolete is not needed, we live in high performance automatic economies where work is actually negative, is destructive, creates excess capacity, too many items, too many cars, etc.

There is this anti-pleasure, punishing mentality against the fact that robots and automation are eliminating work: this is good, this frees people so they can watch TV, which is the best thing they can possibly do (at least they don’t go in the streets and beat each other up, which is what they would do instead). All of the work that is being created today is work against other people, is internal fights between people that are then defined as work, like lawyers fighting each other, doctors fighting insurance companies, people struggling between each other to sell some crap to other people. This service economy does not produce anything but frustration and fights between people, is a negative returns system.

Robots will do all our work, Computers will do all our thinking and MOST OF ALL THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY NEW MINDS WILL BE DOING ALL OUR LIVING . These minds will be modified, new brains - minds with computer chips inside them, with new neural circuits modifying all of the organization of memories, cause and effects between emotions, sense organs, reality etc. These will do all our living while we will be free to watch TV and do nothing, that’s right do absolutely nothing, no more “work”, no more “thinking” and especially no more “living”, but simply watching TV and enjoying.

If you have a guilt complex about this, then go into some slave labor factory in China or India and work 14 hours a day or better billions of these guilt-complexed reactionary workaholics can build trillions of skyscrapers, 300 floors high for millions of years all by hand 24 hours a day. This way they will feel achieved and satisfied.

The science of economy doesn’t exist, what exists is instantaneous interactions between people according to some temporary imagined patterns and laws that can change in a jiffy. There is no laws of economics, but only relationships (which are ultimately just fights, hidden fights between people), there is no wealth creation or progress but only people interacting and mostly fighting, an arms wrestling between who dominates who and who has more power, at least temporarily.

On a side note, The USA cities along with those of Canada, Australia and some of the northern European cities are probably the only ones worldwide that have suburbs, or some kinds of single family homes. Almost all the countries you can see with goggle maps - street view all have dense towns and cities and then country side right outside of them.

Robots will be doing all our work, Computers will be doing all our thinking and Artificial Minds will be doing all our living . This is an automatic process, you can’t stop, so just accept it and deal with it.

Check out:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=162692

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=163667

And get educated instead of growing crap in your backyard. AND WATCH TV ALL DAY LONG, you will be doing some good to humanity.

Also check out all of these blogs:

kunstler.com/blog/2010/05/

Check out this response from:

kunstler.com/blog/2010/05/welcom … ation.html

Just to put things in prespective:

JHK is CRAZY. The guys writing on this forum are mostly all completely crazy, outside of reality, not knowing anything at all about the real world. They have all these fairy tale models within the comfort zone of their own minds, within the non threatening and completely pridictable and controlling environment of their own mind and thought paths.

The truth is 90 % of the REST OF THE WORLD outside of the United States is a monstrous SLUM! they are all mostly poor, high density towns cities without parking, without any kinds of real super big stores like in the US malls and strip malls, crowded, crappy, very few sidewalks, tiny homes 4 in 40 square meters if you are lucky or “rich”, no running water for the most part, no toilet or sanitation for the most part, crappy roads for the most part, no electricity for the most part, polluted, very little public transportation for the most part, no work, no money, no anything. Take a look at 90 % of India, China, Latin America, Africa, most of Europe. Are you guys kidding me ?

The USA suburbs would appear to be utopia to most of these folks, would be paradise on earth. Everyone has a “huge” home by their standards, fresh air, front and backyard, green grass, opne air, peace and quiet, wide comfortable roads, wide sidewalks, etc.

The USA is terribly spoiled, really, REALLY spoiled big time, so spoiled that they are really unaware of how massively high their standard of living is compard to 90 % of the rest of the world. Just one Walmart has more choice, more retail room, more parking, more everything than most of the entire city of Paris or London.

Wake up, the USA is way too rich to know what to do with itself so it is chewing itself out, self destructing with health care costs, layoffs, etc.

Is it daft of me at this point to ask, what should they do instead of “watching TV” ? “socialize”, you guys are crazy, how much socialization can people take, especially after a day of work, fighting other humans essentially. And this myth of community, talking to others is so much BS, it isn’t even funny. There is a thread against pleasure in these forums, a punishing thread going on against people just sitting, minding their own business and watching TV. Well those people are the best in the world, they don’t bother anyone, and they are doing the most productive thing in the world, minding their own business and enjoying.

Dealing with other people and socialization is mostly a big pain in the ass for almost everyone, the TV culture is the future of humanity, is the solution to all our problems essentially.

Then you have this thread against consumerism, against people going out and constantly buying stuff. Well guess what ? if it weren’t for this “evil” consumerism you all would be starving to death! Why is the USA the only economic locomotive of the earth ? why is the USA the only country that hugely dominates the economy, is the real only engine of the economy worldwide ? because they have huge consumerism, they have mega malls, highways, a huge standard of living and consumption, enough to feed the industries of the whole world.

South Korea, JAPAN and Germany have been growing economically for 30 or more years, yet they have only one fifth at most of the consumption of the USA, they are esentially poor, can’t do anything except work for their american boses making them their TVs and cell phones, and cars, etc. Why ? because they have a culture that doesn’t cultivate the beauty of constantly buying things, new things, it doesn’t matter, just the buying gnerates economic activity. They will never even come close to the USA, in fact no nation will ever come close to the wealth of the USA, exactly because they have no consmuerism, they have no malls, mega malls. They don’t have single family homes with basement and attic where you can even place all the crap you buy: in fact an average single family home in the USA would be something only the very rich of JAPAN, South Korea or Germany could afford. Face it, the REST OF THE WORLD is poor and will reamin poor until they become exactly as the USA and that is what they all want to do: as soon as they have some money they try to build thier own single family home and start trying to consume.

Europe is against stores being open 24 - 7, what assholes! they are against mega malls, what assholes ! They have no consumption compared to the US, and even though the economic crisis was generated in and for the US, they are paying a much bigger price because they don’t want to follow the american model. What assholes, they will starve to death, good. And don’t get me started on JAPAN, the country of the lost decades and death by overtime - overwork. What assholes, don’t they know that people have to buy and consume like crazy for an economy to survive ? What assholes!

Homes with a basement, an attic all the goods inside of them and front lawns and backyards and 2 or 3 car garages ? This is utopia for most of the world, and in fact is the richest possible society that will ever be and has been. From here on it is all downward and downfall, thanks to all you idiots complaining against it.

You all have fairy tale models of the world within the controlled environment of your own minds. Instead of consumerism, “people should grow their own food in their backyard”. Well 6 billion people worldwide don’t have a backyard and dont’ even know what it is. And they mostly work in “agriculture”, the “primary” sector of the economy. And they are mostly starving and desperately trying to get into one of China’s or India’s sweatshop factories of 14 hours a day work for 100 dollars a month, just to get away from growing food, to get away from agriculture. This goes to show how clueless you all are.

Wake up guys, the economy of the 80s and 90s is over, globalization has been achieved, all of a sudden there are 100 million new workers from Indonesia to Argentina available with a decent education and very disciplined that work for a salary betwen 100 to 800 dollars a month. The handwriting is on the wall, you will all have to adapt to a standard worldwide salary of 400 dollars a month, mark my words.

AND YOU WILL ALL END UP WORKING FOR THE MAN, NOT IN YOUR BACKYARDS.

“Well 6 billion people worldwide don’t have a backyard and dont’ even know what it is. And they mostly work in “agriculture”, the “primary” sector of the economy. And they are mostly starving and desperately trying to get into one of China’s or India’s sweatshop factories of 14 hours a day work for 100 dollars a month, just to get away from growing food, to get away from agriculture. This goes to show how clueless you all are.”

Check out this:

engadget.com/2010/05/19/the- … -fully-tr/

Why would all of these guys leave the countryside and their agriculture for this ? How is it that they don’t see growing food and agriculture so “cool”, so “good for the planet”, etc. ? Is it just how one is brainwashed, what goals and values are programmed in the minds of people that let them see working “in the city” and “climbing up an imaginary ladder”, better then staying in the country and growing food, mostly starving ?

And why are they “starving” in the first place if they are growing food and working in agriculture ? The same situation 300 million agricultural workers in India, Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian countries find themselves. Maybe they don’t think we will all being growing food in our “backyards” because of an imaginary “peak oil”.

On a side note, this is why the USA is the only consumer nation worldwide and is forced to buy everything produced in the world, no other countries and not even the richer Western ones for the most part give out salaries that allow people to consume. Therefore the USA must buy most of the world’s goods. This is the fault of the REST OF THE WORLD everyone here so cherises and thinks is so better and so great. The truth is the rest of the world sucks big time, is repressive and can’t consume and, as in Germany, France and JAPAN they are actually proud of it and think they are somehow superior spiritually and metaphysically for this.

There is no reference system, there are only fairytale models of the world in the controlled environments of minds. A consensus of what the world is, is produced by sheer numbers, not by reality which is non-existent, if everyone thinks hitler is right then they all become nazis. The world is nothing, has no direction or meaning, only that direction that we force it to have until our mostly wrong model of it fails: then another model will take hold, a consensus will be built and the cycle repeats.

Think when everyone was buying homes and the prices were always going up, it seemed like a law of physics until it failed. Subprime loans, housing bubble, etc.

Everyone can be seen or defined as evil or good according to the models we have all been brainwashed with, there will always be conflict as a result of competing models that are all wrong and false: not because there is a right model, but because our minds are arbitrary constructions programmed according to arbitrary pain/pleasure circuits by evolution, that create arbitrary laws, and arbitrary societies and groups and group interactions. The world is independent of our minds, has nothing to do with it, our minds are always wrong.

JHK thinks that the suburbs are evil, and anyone driving a SUV is evil, that there is a “better” world. He is deluded, we need trillions of cars, trillions of jets, we need complete mass pollution by every kind of wild chemical producable, because pollution doesn’t even exist, it is only a different from of the same energy, and with the new artificial bacteria that have been recently invented, they can clean it all up in a jiffy.

we need free salaries, cheap rents because this economic system has generated and keeps on generating and especially KEEPS ON INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY, EXCESS CAPACITY in all productive endeavors. And huge BUS systems, luxury BUSES with rolls royce suspensions, private compartments, silent inside and out all across the USA suburbs.

And buying homes is retarded. RENT.

We are infinitely programmable machines, we can be programmed to act and behave in any possible way. Foxconn workers are programmed as robots and are doing a good job, are happy.

On a side note, minimum wage in developed Western or western like countries US, EU, JAPAN, South Korea, etc. is from 700 dollars to 1,200 dollars a month. Now take away 500 dollars a month rent for one bedroom house, 500 dollars for food and car, plus some extra obligatory expenses and western factory workers are probably making minus 200 to minus 300 dollars a month. So Foxconn workers have at least 100 dollars still available for free money at the end of the month since Chinese workers and similar worldwide don’t have to pay for room and board, the house and food is for free, company paid. Western workers have a debt of 200 to 300 dollars at the end of the month if they at least want to keep on eating.

Chinese workers are richer than western workers, but western workers are always blamed of being too rich, for making salaries that are 10 times chinese workers. And in fact only the minimum wage is and will be offered to western workers for this or else they are not “competitive”. Beware, the worldwide avarage going salary will end up being 400 dollars a month. Adapt.

What a rip off…

Check out:

kunstler.com/blog/2010/06/which-horizon.html

The entire debate on public transit in the USA (and worldwide also, most of the world has the same problems, don’t be fooled, in many cases even much worse) is always framed ideologically, as right vs left, or consumerism vs greens, or something against something else, else, etc. It is always framed as a fight, as extremism, as something that is not normal, as exaggerations both in the impact of cars and peak oil, and in the impact of public transit “changing a way of life”.

This is all wrong, if there is to be any success in providing mass transit (as opposed to “public” transit, since private companies can come online also with mass transit) it must be done gradually, intelligently and with no political - ideological - peak oil, etc. conotations. It can be done: start with a slight increase in gasoline to pay for a slight increase in BUS transit in communities, kick out the trouble makers from BUSES, make the tickets cost more to filter out the poor slobs that want to “express themselves”, get internet calling the BUSES from online, make the BUSES luxury, high class, make them be perceived as “cool”, as “middle class”, get companies and government agencies start using BUS services to get their employees to work, etc.

Ever so often hike up the price of gasoline and with the extra tax furnish MORE BUSES, make an excuse as it is some kind of carbon tax, some kind of tax to pay off the trillion dollar bailouts governments gave banks to hog the money up and enjoy. Give people the freedom to keep on using their cars as much as they want, but make it increasingly convenient to use mass transit, so they use private cars only on some errands and not all.

This must start from the USA, because the rest of the world is too stupid to do it on their own: they just imitate the American Model and think that that is the way to go: so now they are all building highways and building and buying cars like crazy: China, India and Latin America should have known better, but since America is run by cars, to be modern and progressive, all the other developing countries must run by cars too.

It is even much worse and even more insane that the REST OF THE WORLD wants to imitate the USA, since they already have high density towns and cities that occupy a very small area compared to the USA suburbs and can benefit hugely by more mass transit.

And stop talking about railroads, it will never done, it costs too much, BUSES are the real alternatives to cars. Silent inside and out, with private compartments, high class luxury BUSES. You already use all the money spent in the highway system without having to spend more.

But since JHK and all you environmentalists are ideologically and religiously driven to FIGHT and be AGAINST cars and suburbs, this fight defines all of you, you love hating cars and suburbs and you all are really not interested at all in solving the problems pragmatically, you just make it more and more improbable that they will ever be solved. If there were 10 people out of a community of 100 in the USA suburbs that would like BUSES, after reading JHK, they would dwindle down to only one, becasue JHKs extremism has the opposite effect of what he “professes” it should have. But secretly he and all of you love this suburb hating, imaginary “peak oil collapse”, grow your own food in your bakyards BS. But none of you love BUSES.