Treehugger’s Lloyd Alter is on his own jeremiad about cars, technology, suburbs, cars, that people don’t like cities, and cars. His post is about Elon Musk – you know, that smart smart guy behind Tesla, Sun City, SpaceX, PowerWall, the Boring Corporation, and a few others. The thing that many have noticed is that he is especially great at rent-seeking vast subsidies from various levels of government to keep his companies going. That, however, isn’t Alter’s rant – rather that Musk is enabling a future that goes completely against what Alter believes our future should be (in short, rack’em and stack’em in micro-apartments that would force you to walk everywhere and shop for your food every day because he hates anything big including normal size fridges). Anyways, it apparent he’s all in on “planners” being in charge and making many of decisions for “us” instead of we ourselves. Commenter “professor” seems to agree (emphasis mine):
Professor
Couldn’t agree more with this article. So much of today’s tech just seems like a bunch of band aid “solutions” to problems that wouldn’t exist if cities were planned properly as complete communities.
As someone who has written his fair share about the dangers of Sustainable Communities Initiative (as it was renamed from Agenda 21 here in NH), that grabbed my attention. So yes, I went satire on him:
granitegrok Professor
Yeah, I know. Some cities have had planners for, oh, a hundred years and still haven’t gotten it right. What’s with them, anyways?Oh yeah – people. People with their own ideas of what is right for them. But that would be chaos – can’t let them have all that freedom for the sake of “the common good”, right?
I really wanted to see if he go for the bait; I was not disappointed:
Professor granitegrok
At least in Toronto, our planners are great. It’s city council that f*cks everything up.
Yep, he went there and took a real big bite of that hook. Trust in the “professionals” as they have all of information to make all of the proper decisions for all of the residents (so why does Alter keep going off on what’s wrong in major cities?) – well, who doesn’t do that? They DO have all the answers but it is the elected officials that keep their heads from going where the sun don’t shine (at least for the topic in the post). Sometimes these Collectivists cannot just “get” that next step:
granitegrok Professor
Ah, so the planners are free from what Hayek called the hubris of knowledge then?Let me see if I get this right. The city council is at fault but isn’t the council elected by the voters? Thus, isn’t the council just carrying out the voters wishes?
So he, along with Alter, just don’t like the city that his fellow VOTERS like; after all, they are the ones putting the city council members into those seats. Now, far be it for me to side with the council / City Hall as those of you who have read the ‘Grok over the last decade plus know what I often think of elected officials quite a bit of the time. However, “professor” never answered that returning barb and the dangling question – isn’t your real problem with those voters? Voters who vote their own interests?
And that is the nub of the Treehugger conundrum – why doesn’t everyone think like us and put the environmental common good above everything (and everyone else) in life?
They can’t stand someone like me pushing Individual Freedom and Liberty for us ALL to make for ourselves. They seem to think that just because they have thought of something, government SHOULD be forcing whatever that is on the rest of us: no cars, no suburbs, no meat, no plastic bags, no drilling for petroleum, only “sustainable” living and renewable non-carbon based resources; the list goes on and on.
I’m with the Just Leave Me Alone coalition – I hate other people meddling in decisions that I should be making. Yet, “professor” seems to be just fine with outsourcing much of that responsibility to others to the point of “you are a weirdo – you WANT to make those decisions instead of “the professionals”?
Yep, and that’s why you, so far, can’t get the city you want – you keep getting outvoted by others you look down upon.
Have a nice day.
