kids electric car garage image
Lleh
I don't mean what do you think is reasonably possible given the present circimstances. I don't mean the names of the leaders who can make it happen. I just want to know what you really want America to be like in the best of all possible (or impossible) futures. What will your kids and grandkids and great great grandkids experience in the best America you can envision?
Answer
What I would want the nation to be and what it is most likely to become are two entirely different things.
It would have been nice if Americans discovered to concentrate their living into compact but livable cities, rather than the sometimes insane urban sprawl. I myself live outside the nearby city, but in a housing development that is surrounded by meadows. Unfortunately, that scene will soon change when the nearby airport expands.
We spread out so much, not to farm or do ranching or such then-localized economic activity. But it is to live apart from where we work. If this country did as a hundred years ago, in this aspect alone, there would be people living near where they work. There also were trams and trolleys in network through some rural areas, so not everyone had to have a horse or car in order to live their lives. But today, mass transit solutions are impossible (or impossibly expensive) because we are not conveniently concentrated.
I would like to see the use of solar cells on every roof, storing up energy (probably in basements or garage batteries or fuel cells) during the day and keeping the home conveniently comfortable at night when we return from work or whatever. While some, though not all, manufacturing processes are terrible polluters, perhaps the alternative, mechanical processes would work (their efficiencies are greater, but need more maintenance considerations) such as mirrors that heat fluids into gases. I would think that telecommuting would be a bigger thing, more people comfortably working from the comfort of home, but with technology keeping them sufficiently connected to keep them from loneliness (or loafing). With robots and automation, a home with a basement or a workshop in the backyard could even be a mini-assembly stage of industry.
Closed-cycle processes need to be employed, not so much as the "green thing to do" but because they are less polluting and more manageable. Electric cars (charged up by my home's own electricity, generated by the sunlight that naturally falls on my roof, currently merely heating my attic and the air around it) could help me get around.
Another thing is the old concept of staged transportation. Air travel is only for long distances where the travel must necessarily be swift (family emergency in a distant city, an engineer needed to fix a unique problem) or for very long distances. Trains were for regional transport of people. Buses were for local transport. Of course, as suggested before, places like work, church, and the grocery should be close enough to walk there.
Finally, I suspect that some common services might need something akin, but not directly, to socialization of medicine and transport. I like capitalism and the freedom it allows. But until we discover on our own the ways to nicely live together we are missing the convenient opportunities to do such common things as provide an inexpensive and unburdening transportation or medical system. We largely do that with education.
Unfortunately, politics and historical baggage make my 'vision' impossible, impractical, or undesireable, even to me. Getting the needed agreement simply won't happen. The ideas have been around a long time, good ideas, but unworkable unless forced upon us -- undesireable if they are forced.
What I would want the nation to be and what it is most likely to become are two entirely different things.
It would have been nice if Americans discovered to concentrate their living into compact but livable cities, rather than the sometimes insane urban sprawl. I myself live outside the nearby city, but in a housing development that is surrounded by meadows. Unfortunately, that scene will soon change when the nearby airport expands.
We spread out so much, not to farm or do ranching or such then-localized economic activity. But it is to live apart from where we work. If this country did as a hundred years ago, in this aspect alone, there would be people living near where they work. There also were trams and trolleys in network through some rural areas, so not everyone had to have a horse or car in order to live their lives. But today, mass transit solutions are impossible (or impossibly expensive) because we are not conveniently concentrated.
I would like to see the use of solar cells on every roof, storing up energy (probably in basements or garage batteries or fuel cells) during the day and keeping the home conveniently comfortable at night when we return from work or whatever. While some, though not all, manufacturing processes are terrible polluters, perhaps the alternative, mechanical processes would work (their efficiencies are greater, but need more maintenance considerations) such as mirrors that heat fluids into gases. I would think that telecommuting would be a bigger thing, more people comfortably working from the comfort of home, but with technology keeping them sufficiently connected to keep them from loneliness (or loafing). With robots and automation, a home with a basement or a workshop in the backyard could even be a mini-assembly stage of industry.
Closed-cycle processes need to be employed, not so much as the "green thing to do" but because they are less polluting and more manageable. Electric cars (charged up by my home's own electricity, generated by the sunlight that naturally falls on my roof, currently merely heating my attic and the air around it) could help me get around.
Another thing is the old concept of staged transportation. Air travel is only for long distances where the travel must necessarily be swift (family emergency in a distant city, an engineer needed to fix a unique problem) or for very long distances. Trains were for regional transport of people. Buses were for local transport. Of course, as suggested before, places like work, church, and the grocery should be close enough to walk there.
Finally, I suspect that some common services might need something akin, but not directly, to socialization of medicine and transport. I like capitalism and the freedom it allows. But until we discover on our own the ways to nicely live together we are missing the convenient opportunities to do such common things as provide an inexpensive and unburdening transportation or medical system. We largely do that with education.
Unfortunately, politics and historical baggage make my 'vision' impossible, impractical, or undesireable, even to me. Getting the needed agreement simply won't happen. The ideas have been around a long time, good ideas, but unworkable unless forced upon us -- undesireable if they are forced.
What Is The Best Item You Ever Found At A Thrift Store Or Yard Sale?
elvisgurly
What is the best item you ever found at a thrift store or yard sale?
Do you think thrift stores charge reasonable prices or charge way too much?
Answer
My wife found one of those kid's electric cars for $5...and the guy threw in a toddler bike with training wheels for 50 cents.
But the killer of all garage sale items was the lady trucker who bought what she thought was just some old painting of flowers...turned out to be an $18M Van Gogh. Lucky lady!!!
My wife found one of those kid's electric cars for $5...and the guy threw in a toddler bike with training wheels for 50 cents.
But the killer of all garage sale items was the lady trucker who bought what she thought was just some old painting of flowers...turned out to be an $18M Van Gogh. Lucky lady!!!
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