Wow, I can't wait to really respond to this post! holy hogwash, Batman! sorry kids, I'm way, way too tired to do it justice after about 24 hours of moving shop in preparation for the landlord visit to our illegal warehouse living situation (the Visit of the Lord got put off another day after all that stress, so we're all still sitting here biting our nails about whether we're gonna get evicted (we did some seriously illegal building that he hasn't seen yet and there's no way to hide the fact that we;re living in a commercial space).
anyway I'll give you a piece of my mind (no it ain't going to be a flame) tomorrow. But in short, oh boy, you're so talking to the wrong person about cars being the personal enabler of the poor !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Actually, on that note, why is it that if you mention poverty and the dreaded 'society' word (or maybe it was poverty and the dreaded 'culture' word) to some people you can almost automatically expect to start hearing people bring up or allude to your supposed middle class guilt? (he brought up the other s-word, socialism- too!) I'm FROM the extreme poverty I'm talking aobut- urban not rural in my case- but I'm not some college grad idolizing idolizing what some poor redneck in north carolina went through. Anyhow those people were my friends a few years back and I know what I'm talking about there. In my case it's also personal- it's my mother I'm talking about when I go on about car culture and lack of public transportation limiting people's choices- you messed with my momma, dude :) anyway I do know very, very first hand how badly lack of car ownership or driving ability (license or whatever) limits where you can live and how much money you make. Next installment of speech tomorrow. mark by the way I;m still not arguing against insurance, mandatory insurance, or DUI laws, etc. Im not going to be sitting there telling the parent of a kid that just ran out in front of my car that I can't pay for their medical bills. --- In biofuel@yahoogroups.com, "aegent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Mark, > > I agree with some of your post but must respectfully disagree with the > "car-culture and rural poverty in the US" argument. > > On insurance, the issue is who is liable the driver or the car. If the > costs were fairly allocated it would fix part of the problem. Gov't. > seems to make problems worse whenever they get involved. > > I also lived in rural america (Kentucky) and I even lived below the > poverty line. These "car, wealthy people, society is the fault" > arguments never seem to place any value on the individual decisions > made by the people. Its always culture, society, or some other bad guy > that caused all their problems. > > My view is that the only reason anyone in america is poor is by their > own choice. I have heard so many arguments against getting education > when I lived in rural areas. "you don't need that", "book learnin > won't make you smarter", "got book learning but no common sense", "Why > you can stay here and work for less than minimum wage, you don't need > that college". > > Having been below the poverty line and having worked my way up to > middle class, I have no liberal guilt. I am happy to talk to people > about how to resolve this but too many people have bought into the > socialist view that the reason they are poor is because someone else > took their share of the pie. Personal and individual decisions are a > major and possibly the most significant part of this equation. Been > there, done that. > > From what I saw, the personal auto is the great enabler of the poor. > It allows people to get to jobs that pay well but would be too far to > walk to or even bicycle to. Public transit makes a lot of sense in > high population density areas but it is not practical in rural areas. > Envision a usable public transit system in rural areas. Is this a once > a day bus or an hourly bus? How much would it cost? Who would pay for > it? Could it even be paid for (i.e. is there enough money anywhere to > build this system). > > I used to work in downtown Denver. When I was there I used the public > transit system as it only cost about 10 extra minutes to get to work. > Later I contracted further south and now the trip was over two hours > each way versus 45 minutes by car. Carving 4 or 5 hours out of a poor > persons day is not the way to make them rich or enable them. Public > transit has to address the most ridership for the most people. We keep > forgetting how sparse that the US population is when compared to > Europe or Japan. > > BTW: There is always the tractor, I've seen ppl traveling by that > vehicle and that does not even require a license. > > td > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
