We don’t have a lot amount of choice in our employment and consumer spending because of regulatory capture and economies of scale. Without any new coordination mechanism, getting off oil will have to be a top-down change.
Big oil has convinced us to cut down our own “carbon footprint” to encourage purity testing and exhaustion instead of collective action. They know it’s an externalities problem… do we?
We don’t have a lot amount of choice in our employment and consumer spending because of regulatory capture and economies of scale.
That’s true to a degree. But all too often, I see employment and consumer choices influenced by propaganda rather than raw economic forces. Whether or not you attend college is often not an economic choice but one of peer pressure and social expectation. Whether you move into the city or stay remote in the suburbs/exurbs is as much an expression of your social anxieties (amplified by “if it bleeds, it leads” local media coverage) as your economic position. While driving isn’t typically a choice, the size and shape of your vehicle absolutely is. People opting for increasingly large and ostentacious large-cab trucks and luxury SUVs are not acting under economic constraints. Often, Americans will pay a premium to live remote, drive a gas-guzzler, and subsist on disposables as an expression of their wealth.
This isn’t a problem other countries have. Germany, Japan, South Africa, India, Brazil, Mexico, even fucking Russia have figured out how to build densely and leverage mass transit to bring down waste. The Americans are uniquely incapable of developing efficiently. A big part of that is purely cultural, with white Americans having fled to the suburbs to avoid their black neighbors in the 70s/80s and putting a premium on one story ranch homes even in areas like San Fransisco or Chicago or Atlanta, where land is at a premium.
We don’t have a lot amount of choice in our employment and consumer spending because of regulatory capture and economies of scale. Without any new coordination mechanism, getting off oil will have to be a top-down change.
Big oil has convinced us to cut down our own “carbon footprint” to encourage purity testing and exhaustion instead of collective action. They know it’s an externalities problem… do we?
That’s true to a degree. But all too often, I see employment and consumer choices influenced by propaganda rather than raw economic forces. Whether or not you attend college is often not an economic choice but one of peer pressure and social expectation. Whether you move into the city or stay remote in the suburbs/exurbs is as much an expression of your social anxieties (amplified by “if it bleeds, it leads” local media coverage) as your economic position. While driving isn’t typically a choice, the size and shape of your vehicle absolutely is. People opting for increasingly large and ostentacious large-cab trucks and luxury SUVs are not acting under economic constraints. Often, Americans will pay a premium to live remote, drive a gas-guzzler, and subsist on disposables as an expression of their wealth.
This isn’t a problem other countries have. Germany, Japan, South Africa, India, Brazil, Mexico, even fucking Russia have figured out how to build densely and leverage mass transit to bring down waste. The Americans are uniquely incapable of developing efficiently. A big part of that is purely cultural, with white Americans having fled to the suburbs to avoid their black neighbors in the 70s/80s and putting a premium on one story ranch homes even in areas like San Fransisco or Chicago or Atlanta, where land is at a premium.