Now he's writing policy for the White House, sadly.
Ah, that brings back some memories. Thanks
The experiment is still going on in North Korea and Cuba. I think what we saw in the Soviet Union is actually the middle road. North Korea shows us what can happen in the worst case scenario, which Cuba shows us the best scenario... which is still not great.
We'll know that communism has succeeded when we find a communist country that doesn't prevent its citizens from leaving.
Look at manufacturing and worker coops. Some succeed, some fail.
Yes. Because they are voluntary. When the government forces communism on you, it is not.
Nothing the Obama administration has done has been original or remarkable.
Except he was elected in part by presenting the case that his predecessor (and by association, a candidate from the same party) wasn't open and clear or honest with the country. He said that his administration would be the most transparent in history. And of course he hadn't been in office for week before he proved to be MORE opaque, more controlling of the media, and more comfortable simply lying his ass off than any president in recent memory. Bill Clinton's compulsive lying seems like little league by comparison.
It's Obama's own finger-wagging lecturing prior to holding office to which it makes sense to hold up his own behavior. That wasn't him being surprised by the realities of office (though, clearly, he had no idea what he was getting himself into, having never run anything in his life, before hand), this was him simply realizing that there was no need to keep up the facade once in office.
I'm not going to permit you to strawman me by associating me with someone else I've never read and do not attach myself.
If you want to argue against my position, then argue against my position. Not someone else's position.
As to your statement about commute distances and congestion, that is caused by imbalances between working space and living space.
Rezone portions of areas that suffer too much commuting TO them to be residential and zone areas that suffer too much people commuting FROM them to commercial space. The system will balance out if you keep doing it.
People cannot commute to a place that has no jobs. You cannot have a skyscraper of commuters to a three story office building.
The math is unavoidable.
The issue in Los Angeles, is that you have some very desirable real estate in the west where wealthier people live. They have their businesses there because they don't want to commute that far. Then all their employees have to commute from very far away to go to work every day.
Your solution is to increase density to such a point that their workers can live about as close to the businesses as their bosses.
Well, does that work in New York City or London or Tokyo? Nope. Properly values skyrocket and apartments shrink to the size of closets while commute times and distances tend to remain the same.
Your solution does not solve the problem You've just masked the issue by expanding your problem and necessitating additional infrastructure to compensate for the additional problems your density created.
Consider an alternative approach. What if there is less commercial/office space in the area everyone is commuting to? What if instead of asking the employees to commute to the boss, you instead force the boss to commute to the employees? Instantly the system becomes more sustainable. You reduce office space in areas that have become congestion problems and increase residential space while also keeping an eye on density so that you don't exceed what nearby resources can handle.
I saw both and agree. He seems to have no energy. The Ford spark is not in evidence.
Look at John Wayne's later movies as a counter example. To the day the man died he had the spark. Ford looks like he's guttered out.
Wrong. Transit works everywhere. Massive cattle car transit only works in hyper dense environments... but why is that desirable?
Does massive cattle car transit reduce commute distances? Nope. Commute times? Nope.
So what is the point?
To allow for greater density.
So mass transit is a solution to how to allow for more density but it doesn't actually solve the problem you had before you increased density. That being the commute times and distances which basically remain the same or if anything increase.
Look at the Japanese bullet train as an example. It allows people from the distant suburbs of Tokyo to commute to work every day. But do they get to work faster then people that go to work in Los Angeles? Nope. Takes about the same amount of time.
You're viewing density as an end unto itself which is insane because density is actually very inefficient in many ways. It also has serious political, cultural, and civic drawbacks.
Democracy doesn't really work in major cities. The population is too high. The city employees amongst others tend to own the political system in major cities and not the actual residents who are by and large hostage to the process.
Density made sense in the early 20th century before airplanes and the internet. But today it makes no sense besides offering a superior dating pool for young people. Once you're settled, the urban environment is typically counter to your interests. Which is why most people that are married try to move to the suburbs where they can get a more reasonable environment.
Los Angeles is interesting because it is a major suburban city. It is all sprawl. And the sprawl is beautiful. But for it to work, density has to be controlled and the balance between work space and living space must be kept in balance.
Wrong. If you increase density you will not stop long commuting distances or patterns. Look at any hyper dense city and tell me if there are not commute distances at least as long as you find in Los Angeles?
There are. Increasing density does not solve the problem. The problem is density and an imbalance between office space and living space.
Another idea if you don't like reducing density which is actually required here... but if you don't like that, then another idea is to rezone office buildings into apartment buildings.
In one stroke you reduce the amount of jobs in an area that people can commute to while at the same time increasing the amount of living space. In doing this, you make it impossible for more people to work in that area while making it inevitable that more people will live there. This automatically will reduce the commute issue.
If the system is out of balance, then increasing density will not alleviate it. You fix an out of balance system by balancing it.
First, you balance density by limiting it to what local services can handle. You do not allow density beyond what the roads, water, power, schools, police, etc can handle.
Second, if you have massive commutes, then you reduce office space in areas where people are commuting to and increase residential space... until the system comes into balance.
Balance. It requires wisdom, discipline, and patience. Just increasing density infinitely is moronic.
Wrong. Increasing density does not reduce commute distances. People commute from long distances in very dense cities. Look at Tokyo or New York City. You have people commuting to work in both of those cities from at least as far as you have them commuting in Los Angeles.
All increasing density does is require the construction of massive cattle car transit systems. And these do not aliviate the road situation. The roads if anything become more congested as the congestion taxes prove. However, you now have an additional problem on top of that because you are now also utterly dependent on an additional transit system.
Reducing density reduces the number of people that can commute to a given area. You can't have a skyscraper worth of people commuting to a three story office building.
What is more, you can also zone existing commercial space to residential/apartment space. If I turn an office building into an apartment, then you're not going to have people commuting to that office building... and now a big building exists that can sell apartment space. Two birds with one stone.
Increasing density does not solve the problem. It makes it worse. IF you have too many people commuting to an area, then either reduce the size of existing office building permits or rezone existing office space to apartments to shift the balance to something more healthy. Keep doing that until the commuting patterns become more reasonable.
The california drought for example is a well known weather pattern. We get that drought every couple decades and always have.
Last time was in the 1970s. It is difficult to link because natural forces are actually the cause of that drought.
As to other droughts, I really couldn't speak to every single one on earth. Just the ones I am personally aware of... and without exception, they're all normal natural processes that have been recorded in those regions for as long as we've kept records.
Attributing any known and consistent weather pattern to global warming is dishonest or ignorant. Pick one.
It is like blaming summer on global warming or winter on global cooling. Neither one is valid unless we consider changes in the earth's orbit to be global warming/cooling.
We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.
With your bare hands?!?