by Tinker » Tue Jun 29, 2010 3:27 pm
Right. The United States is spread out and people commute very far, and our infrastructure for public transit isn't very good. Also, it's hard to implement public transit because our towns aren't laid out around the idea of public transit. I live in the only part of the US where we walk a lot and have good public transit, and as a result the populace is a lot less obese than the rest of the nation.
Azari is right about the 'bigger is better' culture that is a blight upon American culture. But we simply could not adapt to $ 7 per gallon gas in the short term. At the same time gas in America is cheaper because we provide a lot of our own fuel. We get almost none of our fuel from the Middle-East. We're one of the largest producers of oil in the world. What Azari also doesn't understand is that domestic consumption is the engine of the American economy, so he thinks we should retool our entire economy to look outward, I think this is a bias that comes from living in a third world country that is on the rise. Shades of Cassowary, but as I see it America is already where Iran or Singapore have been developing toward. Our problems are the problems of being already developed and on the decline, as opposed to having reached the valley of decline and on our way back up. In short Iran has nothing to teach us as Iran has never been a fully-developed technical economy in all of its history. America could increase Iran's prosperity overnight if the right treaties were signed. All we'd have to do is send Halliburton over to build a couple of refineries and Iran would suddenly be a net exporter of refined oil, and would have reduced the cost of importing refined oil. It's oil reserves would suddenly be worth a whole lot more than they are today.
The suggestions are coming off as a millionaire who is suddenly seeing good growth giving the billionaire whose assets have declined for the past two years business advice.
The canary didn't die because this mine is dangerous, it died because it's lazy and wasn't raised with a proper work ethic.