Who Will Get to Own Driverless Cars? "Some people have predicted that, by 2030, 95 percent of all travel will be by shared driverless cars. The prediction is based on an estimate that the cost of using a shared car will be so much less than the cost of owning a car that hardly anyone will want to own a car. * * * As the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Marc Scribner, points out, “many of the transportation departments in major U.S. cities are defined by their incompetence and corruption,” so giving them power over who gets to own the means of transportation is a particularly bad idea. But this proposal also is a part of urban planners’ schemes to make Americans live in ways that Americans don’t want to live. Apparently, the fear is that owners of private vehicles are more likely to let their cars wander around with zero occupants or park in precious spaces that should be dedicated to someone’s microhouse. A ban on private vehicles also puts up a barrier at the edge of the dense urban area, however that is defined, requiring anyone who lives outside to transfer from their private vehicle to a shared vehicle when they cross the boundary. * * * Urban areas are only getting denser in places with growth boundaries or similar policies. Overall, the claim that people are moving back to the cities is a myth; in fact, 90 percent of population growth is in the suburbs and less than 1 percent is in downtowns. A recent survey asked people, “where do you want to live in five years?” and most answered they want to move to lower-density areas." That nicely outlines what is likely to happen in the Smart Growth progressive cities. Much more below including a forecast of what to expect over the next few decades. The urban and transportation planners will act in a way which will incentivize many to leave the downtown area altogether and move even further away from the city. These dense area boundaries will reduce the number of people interested in crossing them causing businesses within to move out or satellite across the boundary. This shift will be supported by the +90% of people who want to live in a less dense community, the increasing number of people who work remotely, Millennials and GenZ. The Screwed Millennial Generation Gets Smart | Newgeography.com
The fact that Millennials and GenZ are likely to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors is causing the Boomers and the urban types to choke. The Boomers thought they had indoctrinated the Millennials to their goals of urbanization, and anti-materialism. The millennials are unlikely to follow in the footsteps of the boomers and more likely to follow in the footsteps of the Silent generation which preceded them. The elemental composition of the generations across time follows a four-season pattern. The first generation raises the second and creates a push back over everything from society to politics to child-rearing, and so on. What we end up with is an oscillation in one direction followed by a pendulum swing to the other, again followed by another pendulum swing, and so on. The pendulum in this instance does not swing back and forth, but swings in a box-like configuration are creating the four different but repeating generational patterns. Over the past 80-100 years, the generations included the GI, Silent, Boomer, GenX, and Millennial. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny The GI (Hero) fought WWII and are oft considered a Hero generation for fighting to defeat collectivism during the last Crisis Change. Words defining this generational type are commonly kingly, harmonizing, mechanical, warfighting, institutionalizing, and constructive. The Silent (Artist) came along behind and pushed back against the chaos and violence of the Crisis Change and created a coherent, thriving well-mannered society, which resulted in social order, stability, economic growth, and prosperity. Words defining this generational type are commonly aristocratic, admiring, preparatory, conformist, hypocritical, and adaptive. The Boomers (Prophets) came along and pushed back against the well-mannered, social order finding the society lacking in spirituality, and triggered an emotive social/religious awakening. Words defining this generational type are commonly populist, ignoring, revolutionary, war-declaring, moralizing, and reflective. The GenX (Nomad) came along behind and pushed back against the chaos of the emotive awakening and created a more pragmatic society focused on business, and wealth accumulation. Words defining this generational type are commonly anarchic, despising, reactionary, personal, anti-custom, cynical, and competitive. The Millennials (the new Hero generation) which are mostly now of the age of majority, will not be a repeat of the GI generation but they will rhyme with them. They too will likely face a Crisis Change. I suspect that just as the Hero generations Fourth Turning began with the Great Depression, so the Millennials Fourth Turning started with the Great Recession although that is open for debate. Regardless, the war-declaring nature of the Boomers (a pushback from their draft dodging, indulged youth) is likely to find a war somewhere to declare. The Boomers like the last generation of Prophets will declare Total War and fight to an incredibly bloody and deadly conclusion. I believe the US soldiers will find a way to escape the death and devastation of Total War. The enemy, however, will not fare so well. Woe be unto America if we should repeat the cycle of civil wars which drove our first (the Revolutionary War) and second (the Civil War) "Fourth Turnings." This should be a warning to the progressives who are itching for a New Confederacy and Civil War. Should this war come, it will be the progressives who fare poorly. Optimistically, the current Fourth Turning will follow the last, and if war comes, it will be a foreign, not domestic, war. The Civil War Fourth Turning was a shortened generational turning. I suspect this was so because the Crisis Change was the Civil War and the abrupt end of slavery. After that, the cycle did not need a Hero generation; it required the Artist generation's aristocratic, admiring, preparatory, conformist, adaptive traits which would generate social order, stability, economic growth, and prosperity. The present generational Fourth Turning is likely to be either longer or shorter than usual. The Civil War Fourth Turning (1860-1865) was shortened from a full generation to five years because what needed to be done, ending slavery, was done immediately due to the war and its outcome. It is not clear that we will be able to accomplish all we need to during this turning in such a short period, so it may be much longer than the usual 20-year generational period, it may take 25-years or more. What we will likely need to accomplish is the shift to the reformation of K-12, and higher education; reorganization of local governments including addressing the pension, debt, and other governmental crises; restructuring of the federal government; restructuring the international order; the economic model shift from the Industrial Age to the Ownership Age; and much more. It is not clear which of these, if any, or all, we will address, but it seems highly likely that this Fourth Turning will set the stage for a Pheonix-like reduction, reformation, and reconstitution of most, if not all, of these institutions. The Fourth Turning is likely to end with these bodies collapsed and in flames. The following First Turning is expected to be where we see these new institutions created, formed, and launched. Because we are entering a socio-economic phase where America is undergoing a shift from the Industrial Age to the Ownership Age, I expect that jobs will begin to disappear and we will find new, and better, ways to redistribute wealth through society. Part of this will include an exodus from the cities, and a new way of living in exurbs, and the rural areas surrounding the cities. As I noted above, I suspect that the New Smart Growth urbanist will facilitate this through their authoritarian policies and draconian edicts. This change will be shocking and disruptive. I expect changes we should expect after a Fourth Turning, like the incredible changes from the go-go flapper libertine 1920s of the last Third Turning to the staid, conservative, respectable First Turning of the 1950s. (The previous Fourth Turning lasted from 1929-1946.) Today, I expect to see a sea change from the social breakdown of the hysterical postmodernist culture wars, anti-free speech spasm of the current generational Third Turning (1984 -2008) to the gentrified aristocratic conformity, teamwork, economic growth, and prosperity of the next First Turning (unknown dates). I expect this Fourth Turning to last from 2008-2026 or 2028 but, perhaps longer. Friends often tell me I am daft for believing that Americans will be able to reduce the mass insanity of the Cultural Wars to social conformity within a few decades. They find this especially tricky since it is already 2018. However, America did just that from 1929-1946 and then spent the next decade sorting out the institutions like the new international order, the Cold War, American SuperPower status, and others. We've done nearly as much before, I am sure we can do it again. It seems impossible because these periods only come every 80-100 years about the time that the last people who remember them die out. To understand the present, we need to understand the past - 80 years ago, and the past before that 160 years ago, and before that 240 years ago. Only then can we have clear insight into where we are going, and what we should expect. But then, that would require we know something about history. These periods do not repeat, but they do rhyme. If the Smart Growth Planners are successful in altering the urban landscape as I believe, I will, for the first time, raise my glass in a toast to them. It will also be the last, as their time will be at an end. Boohya! An earlier Fourth Turning article: Add Clapper and Brennan to the list of corrupted Obama administration officials fearful of prison
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