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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

Arizona is a bit too warm for me, but a lot of people consider driving to be a positive.

I would rather spend 15 mins in my car than 15 mins on a bus. I'd rather live in a place that is sprawling because then everything is bigger - I'd rather have a large house than a small one, a large garden than a small one, and I'd rather shop at a big box store that is more likely to allow me to be hands on with everything I need vs. a teeny high street shop and ordering online.

I currently live somewhere quite urban and barely spend any time in the walkable/public transportable centre because there's not much I want to do there other than pubs and restaurants.

edit: The responses to my post are kind of weird, I'm not telling you to adopt my preferences.

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Reworded:

I love that my car lets me travel alone and without paying the full cost of the miles I log. I'm either terrified of public transit and/or the experiences I've had on it have generally sucked. I prefer bigger everything because I rarely think about the downsides and externalities, and was told from birth that bigger is better. I prefer a large house as long because I can afford somebody else to clean and maintain it, along with the utility bills and property taxes. I prefer a larger garden under the same conditions. I prefer stores that dominate and distort the market and allow me to avoid human interactions.

It would be more polite and useful to ask me to clarify rather than producing a strawman.

I don't prefer driving because it is inexpensive, I prefer it because it has greater utility for me. If the cost of fuel doubled or more I would still do it, I'd just be a bit more efficient with the journeys I do make.

I'm not terrified of the tube/trains/buses, I use them. It's just a bit shit, doesn't go to loads of places I want to go, and is generally less comfortable.

I do think that bigger is better. I don't pay for someone to clean or maintain my house, I do it myself.

I haven't been told that bigger is better, it simply is. For example, just yesterday I made a table. In order to do that I needed enough space to work in and store my tools. I could not do this in a smaller house or apartment.

Theoretically I could hire a workshop or go to a hackspace but that would be substantially more hassle than just walking into my garden or the garage or whatever.

I like human interactions. Just not with endless hordes in a super dense city centre. I prefer chatting with my neighbours, or someone on a hiking trail, or having people over, etc.

It sounds as if you just have different preferences to me. Different hobbies, desires, etc. That's fine, that's why you don't prefer driving. I do.

I live in a small village of 250 people in rural New Mexico, 25 miles from the nearest town. To get to almost anywhere I have to drive. When I socialize, it is mostly with neighbors or people on hiking trails. I have a large set of tools out back and space to use them.

Don't assume that my preferences are so different from yours (though your use of "the tube" suggests that you're located in SE England, so many things may be different).

My point was that all the preferences you expressed come with a cost, not only to you, but to everything and everyone else as well. Talking about these things as if they are merely personal choices is misleading, they are actually personal choices that, in aggregate, shape the world we all get to live in. And the specific set of choices that you listed, for the most part, in aggregate, have a negative impact on the world. I'm a participant in that too, clearly.

I disagree that these things have a negative impact on the world when you or I do them.

I think that if billions of people do them, we have issues, sure.

But there is a finite carrying capacity regardless of what we do.

We could live plugged in like the Matrix and there would still be an upper bound somewhere.

It is patently nonsensical to take the behaviour of one person or even a million people, scale it to 8 billion, and then claim that it's unsustainable as a result.

We have plenty of mechanisms to prevent that from happening. One obvious one is that, as a Brit, I'm legally not permitted to move to the US and live in the same way that someone in Arizona does, which puts a cap on my lifestyle. Most people are in situations like that - ever heard of the "golden billion"?

Kind of amusing, then, that I'm a Brit :)

What brought you all the way from the UK to rural New Mexico?

Nothing like that direct. I've lived in Seattle and Philadelphia before this. The rest of my history is easily discoverable online if you're really interested. Basically, my wife and I really like our house and the region where we live.

At least where I am 10 mins in a car can be up to 1.7 hours in a bus. And the same back.

If it was an apples to apples comparison then I would rather be driven than drive. But its not.

Take a bike. Might not be 10 minutes, but will be under 30. and cheaper than taking a bus, too.

Taking a bike when it's 110 F out may be better than walking to a bus stop and then waiting for a bus, but it's still not something that many people want to do...

Bikes are not great. Ebikes might be able to keep up with traffic but not legally. No bike lanes mean your in traffic with posted speeds of 35-40 MPH and actual speeds of 40-48 MPH.

Not to say I disagree with bikes. Ive got all the parts for an ebike just need to mount them. But its not really viable transport around here if you add in the dangers.

How does that work if everyone wants that? We don't have enough Earths to support 8 billion people living in sprawl.

Does it need to?

Why should everyone live the same way? I know tons of people who prefer city life, and more still who frankly don't really think about it either way.

Surely we all operate this way? My mate goes fishing, if everyone went fishing it doesn't work, but we don't all go fishing.

We might.

If we have 54 million square kilometers of habitable land that is not used for agriculture, and we scatter 8 billion people across it, then we end up with a population density of about 148 people per square kilometer -- which is approximately what Florida is today.

If that is your plan you need teleporters for everybody so you don't need to pave the world to get basic access.

It's not my plan. I was just evaluating one aspect of its practicality. It would be a shitty idea to propose that everyone live in exactly the same way.

Diversity is generally good. It's nice to have some options available.

(Even with universal teleporters, diversity is generally good.)

Do we have the resources to support such a sprawly civilization? It's not just the land, it's all the infrastructure (roads, plumbing, power, etc.) which isn't free.

No, of course not.

But the claim was about the unavailability of space, not of man-made infrastructure.

I said we don't have enough earths to support everyone living in sprawl. That's talking about resources, not just land.

If the fair distribution is that we have 150 people per square km i.e. approx 6500sqm or 1.5 acres per person, then realistically the answer has to be that some people have a lot more than that and some people have a lot less, because 1.5 acres isn't a large amount of land at all once you get outside of the city.

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