It's more expensive than a regular car, but its less expensive than leaving behind your 500k house
Even these days, most homes in suburbia aren't 500k.
And if you get to foreclosure you don't have a choice about it.
buying an apartment in the city.
You do not "buy" an apartment. You
rent an apartment. If you buy it, it's a condo.
Imagine paying the bank for your suburban house that you can't sell, and paying the bank for your apartment
Again, you seem a little confused on how this works.
If you are foreclosed on there comes a point were you aren't paying any longer. You're bankrupt. Your credit is completely trashed. But since you can't get blood out of a turnip, and at that point you're a turnip, what you owe on the house you used to own is either reduced or eliminated. This means your mortgage lender takes a loss.
Subsequently, if you have an apartment you pay your
landlord rent, not a bank. If you're paying a bank, it's a condo. what's the difference? Renting is usually cheaper on a monthly basis. Usually, not always.
3. Many people can cut a day or so off from their job, and work longer hours on the days that they do work
ONLY if the employer is willing to accommodate this! Many are NOT.
Remember that this debate is about whether suburbia will survive. If gas is so expensive that most people are considering abandoning their homes, do you really think that employers would be so stubborn?
Hell, yes - your average employer doesn't give a fuck about how difficult it is for an employee to get to work, only that the person get there on time (or, even better, a little early). Employers are not obligated to subsidize the cost of commuting.
Some do - but that is entirely voluntary on their part.
Personally, I like the 4 long days/3 days off cycle and get it whenever I can, but it's been very rare I can do that.
I honestly think I'd be less productive on that cycle, but it sounds nice from a gas consumption standpoint. [/quote]
Depends on the job. In some cases you can be more productive. For jobs with a physical exertion component maybe not so much.
That was attempted post 9/11. The problem is, telepresence is still far from perfect, and there is a psychological component to face-to-face interaction that seems so desirable businesses are willing to pay for it. I agree that this is a good idea.
Some degree of moderation seems possible. Save the face to face meetings for the most critical projects, but use calls or webcams for less significant projects.
And we are moving in that direction, but we have to overcome entrenched attitudes as well as practical obstacles.
However, I think that telepresence might be more attractive if we had Star Wars style holograms instead of webcams and monitors. That would be amazing.
I think non-jerky video, large-screen video, and good sound systems are enough - it seems to help if the participants are life-size to each other, or close to it.
Of course, if people really do cut back on business travel the airlines will howl, but fuck 'em - they're mostly grossly mis-managed anyhow.
I'm no technical expert, but I've always wondered why they couldn't use an AI to fly the planes and then have pilots back at the airport to take over remotely if something went wrong with the AI.
I'd really like to address this, but have held off in part because it's WAY to easy for me to hijack a thread with any reference to aviation, and also because I've been working quite a bit these last few days and didn't have much time to compose a good answer to this.
In a nutshell - our AI isn't nowhere near good enough right now. More details later.
They have AI that can drive cars, and flying a plane seems to require less adaptation to new situations and learning than driving a car.
Yeah, that's what you'd
think - but during certain flight phases that is not true, and the penalties for fucking up are very, very steep.
I'm not an expert though, so I'm not sure if there are barriers to AI-planes beyond the fear of the passengers aboard.
At present there are, and they are very real barriers. I expect that, given enough time and money thrown at the problem these issues will be resolved, but it will be awhile.
Certainly, four people in my car beats one person on the average motorcycle when comparing fuel burn per passenger per mile.
You live next to four people who work close enough to you for a carpool to work? That's great if you're in that boat, but it's not a typical situation for the American suburbanite.
Of course, every individual must make the best situation
for their situation. As it happens, I'm currently carpooling to one job (housepainting) and not to the other (candy store).
Let's say the motorcycle get 60 mpg and my car gets 40. To avoid a lot of fractions, let's transport a person on the motorcycle 120 miles. That take 2 gallons for 1 person.
40 MPG is pretty high for a car and 60 MPG isn't the best one could get with a motorcycle.
Yes, 40 mpg is high for a car. That's one reason I bought that particular car, the high gas mileage. This gets back to examining one's particular situation.
Let's transport 4 people 120 miles in my car. That takes 3 gallons, which is more in absolute quantity, but divide by 4 people. That's 3/4 of a gallon per person for the same distance which is more than twice as fuel efficient as the motorcycle.
Oh yes, I agree that car-pooling is good if you can find 3 people who work where you do. The problem is that such a situation is highly atypical.
Yes, but it should be encourage where practical. There's an agency in my area that makes vans available to carpoolers - my former Chicago employer had 4 such groups taking advantage of this. Sometimes they would pick people up at their homes, in other cases they'd meet at a designated location that's near and centrally located for them all, then carpool from there. Both viable solutions, even if they won't work universally.
I think it would be neat if we designed suburbia so that people who worked in a specific area would live closer together in suburbia - but alas suburbia isn't designed that way so carpooling doesn't work for most people.
It's also impractical because people no longer typically work long-term for
one employer.
This doesn't mean motorcycles are a bad idea - for just one person they are the most fuel-efficient option, and when they can carry two also excellent - but they can't carry more than that, and many are single-seaters.
I agree that carpooling is a great option, but I'd imagine that most people who are able to carpool today are already carpooling.
I doubt it. There is great cultural resistance to carpooling.
But the amount of carpooling should probably grow as gas prices increase.
Quite possible.
But in the long run it's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy things in bulk when you can. Seriously, the less money I have the more bulk buying I do. In which case I'd argue rent a van for that once-a-month stock up and rely on local stores for the stuff that doesn't keep that long.
While I agree that it's cheaper, we're mostly debating about what will save the most gas. I'd imagine that the savings in gas of only using a motorcycle would outweigh the extra cost in gas of supplying local convenience stores.
But if doing it your way makes the food bill much more expensive then
for the individual/family that "stock up" buying in bulk trips will make more sense, and that is what they will do. With a stretched budget it is unlikely people will pay more overall so society overall uses less gas. They will make the choices that are most cost effective
for them. And sometimes not even then, if you get status and crap mixed into the decision making.
That's only possible if you have the money - and the cost of everything is rising. We already have people losing their "million dollar home, and most of their possession" against their will - they can't buy more insurance, they don't have the money.
But in a "Suburbia abandonment" scenario, the only person willing to buy your house would be a spectator.
I think you meant "speculator"
Sometimes downsizing is your best long term option, even if it's painful short-term.
But even CommanderWilkens agrees that in the long term suburbia is sustainable because of nuclear power and electric cars. His case is that it will die out too quickly for these options to go into play.
OK, the problem is that some things you need TODAY, not tomorrow. You need food TODAY, not two years from now when the price of rice and wheat comes back down. Sometimes you can NOT hang onto an item because you need to liquidate it to take care of
today's needs. Even if you sell it at a loss. Even if that means abandoning it because you can no longer afford the cost of maintaining it. If you have no money coming in you
can't hold onto a house or property long-term simply because you can't even pay the taxes on it, much less afford to maintain it.
Downsizing is a bad long term option because you'll lose the most valuable piece of property you own, and you'll have to keep paying bank payments on it.
Alright, what part of
sometimes you have no choice is failing to register with you? If you can't keep up house payments you get foreclosure - you
lose everything you put into that property. If you don't have a mortgage but you can't make the tax payments it takes a little longer but you
lose everything. That's the way the system works. When you get to that point
you no longer have a choice.
A LOT of people are in that spot
right now.
If people did leave Suburbia is droves, as CommanderWilkens suggests, what would happen is a few wealthy prospectors would buy off the houses from those droves at low prices. After 10-20 years when nuclear comes back and electric cars are viable, people will try to go back to Suburbia and will end up re-buying their houses at much greater prices.
Remember - those speculators have to pay taxes and maintain those properties for 10-20 years. That's a hell of a gamble. Prices go up ONLY if people are buying - if the move back to suburbia occurs at a trickle rather than a flood the prices won't be so inflated.
No thoughtful home-owner would willingly walk into that position by fleeing Suburbia.
That only works
if you have a choice. You don't seem to understand that sometimes there isn't a choice.
I paid $14k for a brand new CAR - why fuck would I spend more than on a vehicle with less utility?
Because you'll save money on gas. If fuel will be as rare as you're implying it will be, then the motorcycle is a logical choice.
But my car gets better mileage than most hybrids! I am not convinced that my gas savings would be sufficient to make up for the extra cost of a hybrid.
I bought a car for $14k that gets better mileage than most hybrids.
But can you convert it to a plug-in?
No. But since I have nowhere to plug a car into that's sort of a moot point, isn't it? There are no external outlets on my building, and I don't think I can get a car through the front door so I can recharge it in my front room. Or do you propose I pay for the cost of installing and external plug, too? And how do I keep other people from charging their vehicles on my electric bill?
Moreover, there are people with cars that get 20 MPG (think big SUVs).
That boggles my mind. My TRUCK gets better mileage than that!
Now - the guy I do painting for have a big ass truck, but since he'll pick up workers at their home, AND he has to carry a shitload of equipment for his contractors, a truck that can seat 6 people and haul a ton of shit
makes sense (it's that carpooling thing again). The truck gets low mileage, but when fully loaded the amount of people and stuff hauled at one time makes up for it. On days when he doesn't need that carrying capacity he drives a car.
Every suburbia I've ever seen or lived in has had a store with food within walking distance (<1 mile) - except in LA. LA has the worst transportation system and general layout that I've ever seen.
That is not the case where I live. Then again, I am physically able enough that if I hooked up a trailer to my bicycle I could still do the shopping for us two. My husband, however, is NOT capable of doing that.
-Loss of home, probably unable to sell home for any appreciable value
Happening already.
Houses in my neighborhood are selling for $300k-700k, pretty close to their peak value. Looking at charts on zillow, I don't see any sort of dramatic reduction in the value of suburban houses.
In my area home prices have fallen 20-40% in the last year.
Folks who bought 20 or more years ago can sell at the lower prices and still profit, but anyone who bought in the last 5 now has an "upside-down" mortage - they owe more than the house is worth. It's a question of can you make those payments long enough for the values to go up again, or do you cut your losses now and downsize to something more affordable.
Where exactly are people giving away their homes?
They are not "giving them away", they are
abandoning them because
they don't have the money to enable them to keep them. Lose your job, lose your home is the typical pattern.
Um... maybe you haven't noticed but lately homes are DEpreciating. Real estate does not always go up in value.
In the short term - perhaps. But in the long term real estate will always gain value.
How can someone who has been laid off and then takes a job earning 1/2 or 1/3 of what they did before (I'm in that group right now) possibly afford to maintain the payments on a property long term? You realize it may be a generation for the values to rise again?
Post peak oil it won't matter where you live - virtually everyone's standard of living is going to drop.
But more in the cities overflowing with poor, fleeing suburbanites who have to spend all of their money paying for a house that they had to abandon.
Where do you get this notion that they keep making payments on these properties? Even if a judge ruled that they had to keep paying
if you don't have a job you don't have money. "Abandonment" is just that - they walk away and
stop paying.
I personally think that if we implemented charter schools suburbia would slowly decline. A lot of the motivation behind suburbia is having communities and schools that are closed off from the poor. Give people the option of affordable voucher schools, and a large part of the motivations to live in suburbia is destroyed.
Not that simple. A lot of motivation I have for being where I am is SPACE - I have more room between me and the next building. There are fewer laws I have to live under. My taxes are lower. Prices are cheaper (for now). It's
more than just schools.
We only have to get employers to agree to this - the average worker has no control over this.
When Suburbia is dying how stubborn are they really going to be?
As stubborn as they want to be. How to get to work is the employees problem, not the employers.
) they were talking about how a lot of employers are switching over to four 10 hours shifts instead of five 8 hour shifts as a perk for their employees to save on commute time and gas.
