Was the car a positive or negative development for society?

submitted by Ponderer from self.debatealtright

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[–]NayenezganiNot alt-right 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Far greater freedom of movement for the average person

You've probably seen the point raised by a lot of traditionalists that the normalization of cars as a means of transport causes urban places to be built with the assumption that the average denizen can drive. Which often shuts out young people who can't drive yet, the elderly, and the disabled. Obviously every community should be built so that employment and essentials -- such as schools, shops, medical services, and the like -- can be found within walking distance of one's residence. But cars will still have significant utility as individual transport between settlements, and hopefully there will be developments in sustainable transport in the future.

Biodiesel in particular can be produced from sewage sludge or waste vegetable oil and certain blends purportedly have better fuel efficiency. Apparently over 60% of biodiesel production originates from Europe. Locomotives of the British Royal Train have managed to operate on B100 with success, but one of the major downsides is that it is vulnerable to gelling. It doesn't function well in cold climates and can be destructive to certain materials.

[–]Ponderer[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Obviously every community should be built so that employment and essentials -- such as schools, shops, medical services, and the like -- can be found within walking distance of one's residence. But cars will still have significant utility as individual transport between settlements, and hopefully there will be developments in sustainable transport in the future.

This sounds like the ideal world. I could see some speculative fiction examining a society that works like this, where communities themselves are completely walkable, and only use cars to travel between them.

[–]NayenezganiNot alt-right 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This sounds like the ideal world. I could see some speculative fiction examining a society that works like this, where communities themselves are completely walkable, and only use cars to travel between them.

One of my main reasons for reading alt-right forums, other than keeping my finger on the political pulse of the West, is because I like seeing discussion about building a better society. Many ex-socialists claim that innate human selfishness was their motivation for losing confidence in that ideology. So what would society look like if people were grouped with others that they fundamentally trust and empathize with more? Sometimes I think the existence of different cultures/races is necessary to function as an Other, which strengthens the cooperation of the in-group.

Anyway, regarding urban planning. Maybe some sort of matrix can be created to determine approximate land size/composition for certain community specifications. You could plug in metrics like population size, desired industry composition, climate, etc. I've been thinking about natural patterns of settlement growth, and whether there are any universals for industrial development. Like most communities would be primarily agricultural up to a certain point, and after a certain population size it is almost inevitable that they would have at least one local IT company or food manufacturing plant to serve the community's needs, or something like that.

There are probably also optimal ratios of different industries to each other, e.g. maybe the medical sector in one settlement is too large compared to its agricultural sector. And skewed ratios between specific occupations in themselves definitely exist, e.g. too many nurses compared to doctors in a hospital or too many bakers compared to butchers in one town.

(By the way it appears I've neglected to focus more on the class aspect of cars but it was pretty obvious anyway. Poor people are very disadvantaged in the USA because of the urban structure, emphasis on cars, and generally abysmal public transport in many cities. And there's obviously people flexing on others and the possibility that people can get discriminated against based on the vehicles that they drive. It's still a cool technology though. I think there needs to be greater activism for the right to repair and people need to be more wary of excessively complicated newer models that are much more difficult to repair while not being significantly more useful.)

Edit: Typo.