> At one point is history, we built a great western civilization. There must have been great incentive to do that, despite the ideologies at play over the past several hundred years. How do we recreate those conditions?
The conditions were no different; likely they were worse (much worse depending on how far back you go). Read a detailed history of some past era and you'll see much that is similar to what you see today.
It's a very conservative notion that we are somehow worse today, and that our ancestors were somehow greater. That pessimism, which includes pessimism about our ability to act as a community (i.e., about government), keeps us from moving forward: Many people buy it and won't even try. We can't build mass transit because people are sure we can't do anything.
Our ancestors were very human (again, read that history), corrupt, confused, political, just like we are, but in many ways worse off because they didn't have the institutions they and their descendents built over the centuries, from democracy to civil rights to education. They did it; so can we. They had plenty of naysayers too.
We've been given all that; handed it on a silver platter. What are we building for our descendents?
By discussing these issues and being open-minded, pragmatic, and rational, and by evaluating them on a cost/benefit basis. We might learn something new; I don't see the intelligence in pursuing close-mindedness.
A comparison between a government-built mass transit system and government murder of citizens is a good example of how ideology undermines the ability to intelligently discuss issues.
1) Maybe this is a conversion problem, as in converting shoppers into customers. In my experience, public transit is difficult to grasp the first few times you use it, and complex even after that. Think of all the steps involved, and the uncertainties. Think of running out the door and using mass transit in a new city (NY if you haven't been there, or DC). Mass transit systems require users to acquire expertise to use. Signage, just as a start, is awful; identifying routes based on their endpoints is meaningless information. It's not hard to imagine how the user's interface with the system could be made much simpler, so no matter where I am I can easily and confidently learn the fastest way to get someplace else, and pay and use the system simply.
2) People deriding public transit as impossibly unpleasant or who say government couldn't possibly execute it should see how well it works in places where it's funded. New Yorkers generally love their mass transit. European cities have much better and more popular systems. It's widely done; the question is why you think the U.S. so much less competent to do it than all these other countries.
> My car takes me from right where I am, to exactly where I want to go, exactly when I want it to, in a minimum of time.
There are ups and downs to both options. With public transit, someone else drives and you can get work done (or nap or whatever else you wnat to do), so the time cost arguably is less.
I don't agree. Other cities have good public transit, and especially other countries have shown it to be viable. I don't think NY's traffic has as much to do with it as their excellent public transit.
I find this fear of city denizens exists almost exclusively in people in rural areas, who spend little time in cities. People in cities generally are pretty cool about any risk and used to rubbing shoulders with all types. Also, having spent a lot of time with those people, they know the risk is very small. (Of course both groups are self-selected to an extent.)
To go off on a tangent, but it's ironic that gun control is the same way: People in much safer rural areas insist guns are necessary for self-defense; people in higher-crime cities generally favor gun control.
It's sad that instead of talking about what works best and how to solve problems, ideology is injected into the discussion by attempting to make it an issue of 'social-engineering' / 'environmental cause' vs. 'freedom'.
I always thought any ideology was dangerous, something to be shunned. It's a primary cause of wars and suffering, and of paralysis like the what we see in the US Congress now. Like anger, often part of current ideologies, it innoculates humans from thinking rationally by ruling out any discussion or thought, and thus it enables people to do dangerous, irrational, and bad things. (Often those effects are the intent of the ideological leaders, to manipulate their followers.) Once upon a time I thought we all learned that in school; if we did, many seem to have forgotten.
The conditions were no different; likely they were worse (much worse depending on how far back you go). Read a detailed history of some past era and you'll see much that is similar to what you see today.
It's a very conservative notion that we are somehow worse today, and that our ancestors were somehow greater. That pessimism, which includes pessimism about our ability to act as a community (i.e., about government), keeps us from moving forward: Many people buy it and won't even try. We can't build mass transit because people are sure we can't do anything.
Our ancestors were very human (again, read that history), corrupt, confused, political, just like we are, but in many ways worse off because they didn't have the institutions they and their descendents built over the centuries, from democracy to civil rights to education. They did it; so can we. They had plenty of naysayers too.
We've been given all that; handed it on a silver platter. What are we building for our descendents?