I don't think profits have anything to do with it. The US got pretty well committed to roads when we built the interstate highway system back in the 1950's when no one was really thinking about the issues with oil. The interstate made it possible to commute further to work, allowing greater numbers of the newly exploding middle class to purchase homes in suburbs rather than rent small apartments in cities. By the time the oil crisis hit in the 1970s, we'd invested a generation of massive economic growth into infrastructure that wasn't easily adaptable to any other form of transportation. Mass automobile traffic massively constricts the potential growth of our largest cities, but at this point, we'd pretty much have to rebuild everything from the ground up to change it. We're too spread out for commuter trains to work, and getting right of way to build them at this point is a nightmare. Most of our cities aren't designed to be walk-able, and you can't fix that either, because housing, places of work and stores are usually highly homogeneous and highly separated. Often, even if a place is within walking distance, it's just about impossible to get across the roads in order to get there.

This was already discussed....

The Federal Aid highway program (from which the interstate system eventually evolved) was boosted mostly by car manufacturers (bicycle manufacturers, for the pre-war instance of that bill). Car company men were invited to the bill signing party. Popular understanding is that the interstate system was Eisenhower's big national defense play, but the interstate system was just another iteration in a program that had already been executed for a long time.

What a lot of people don't remember is that the automotive sector was America's first "Silicon Valley". Car companies were once considered the big drivers of employment and innovation, so companies like GM and Ford got pretty much whatever policies they wanted, much like software companies do today.

I suppose then that this makes Ralph Nadar the Bruce Schneier of the 20th century.

Would be very interesting to see a Schneier third party run for president to make the case against pervasive hackable computer networks being promulgated by our own government programs, from the point of view of consumer protection.

I think it is very sad that our two-party system makes it all but impossible for coalitions to be built around parties that speak to single-issues (like campaign finance, or cybersecurity) that don't cater to the least common denominator of the party base (vs. what we get now, e.g., promising to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, etc.).

In fact I think this contributes to the negativity and partisanship, because we don't so much stand for issues as we do oppose the opposite side.

Well, certainly car companies supported it, but that doesn't mean that that was the only reason it developed. It had a ton of advantages, and the disadvantages weren't really obvious to anyone until it was too late.

It's not like the car boom was an artificial conspiracy. That was simply the most obvious and advantageous way to plan infrastructure given the technology of the time. If trolleys had been the most effective solution, trolly companies would have been supporting bills to expanded trolley infrastructure and buying out automobile companies.

Wait, I thought there actually was a conspiracy against the trolly system in at least Los Angeles, committed by tire companies and others? And I remember seeing pictures of decommissioned trollies being sent to the trash heap en masse.

Of course this could have just been the course of history and not knowing agents.

Edit: but boy oh boy does that wiki link make that seem an unlikely possibility....

Yeah that was definitely GM and Firestone and friends making themselves some customers. A shame, the world's most car dependent city could have continued to have trolleys on most north-south (EDIT:not north south) streets. But after the war they were unsafe, and everyone was going to have cars anyway! So let's put some busses in!

I thought most trolley systems were run by municipalities.

Generally now, but not always.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Railway

Okay, I wouldn't expect municipalities to run effective propaganda campaigns to defend the efficiency of the systems they run, if they run campaigns at all, whereas motor car companies had far more funds and willingness to do so. Even then, I would think any trolley companies would be highly controlled by a municipality and wouldn't be allowed to waste taxpayer money fighting propaganda battlea to keep themselves alive. I find it suspect to imply they failed because they weren't winning legal battles.

Like, GM was a huge company with hundreds of millions of dollars fighting localized companies with scarce organizing and funds, and each possibly what, 500-1000 employees? They were very different organizations.

As well, trolleys are "worse" by economic measures because they tend to only benefit people who can't afford cars. But they're a big benefit to actual people.

They also weren't well maintained during the war years, because they couldn't be, so it was an easy sell to portray them as dilapidated (they were) and dangerous and to show busses as a viable alternative that would play second fiddle to everyone owning their own car.

Sure, but they bought trolley cars from private companies, just as people who drive on highways drive in cars. My point is that it seems a bit silly to try and paint some narrative that highways were nothing but an excuse to boost the car industry. We were in a period of mass economic expansion, so we were going to invest in some sort of transportation infrastructure, it just happened that cars looked like the best option at the time. If it has been commuter trains, I expect that train car companies would have reacted similarly.

You can't really argue that the IHS was just a scam to help car companies when there were clear advantages to the car and mass consumer demand for what they offered. You could maybe argue that government and the automotive industry knew about the future problems that would cause and covered it up, but that's unlikely and there's no real evidence for it. Not everything is a crony capitalist conspiracy.

Haha! What an idiot.

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789839522140166

Wtf

****ing lmao

That's totally plausible, from what I remember car company advertisements were heavy in "futurism", how cars would make the future just so much better (which silicon valley types is this reminiscent of)? It's easy to work people's imaginations about the future with this sort of thing. Of course, what could rail companies do? Mass produce films ****ting on the futurist delusions of GM?



I wouldn't say political manipulation is the only reason for the rise of cars. It is, however, a significant part of the history. It's also a straightforward example in history of how rich people's actions can directly affect the legal apparatus of the country. Which many people are not aware of, they overemphasize the role of politicians and not the propaganda arms of corporations and the wealthy.

I don't know about what planners knew at this time, though I do recall them knowing American oil reserves wouldn't hold up yet still burned through them by the 1960s.

they nailed the part about tax cuts in 2001 tho

Holy crap, they really did. Nice catch.

Is anyone else sick of the "student loan debt" and "college is worthless" memes? It seems to be an ideology the right-wing and Republicans have been pushing, with some evidence, despite basically every statistic suggesting people with degrees end up better off than people without. And people like Mike Rowe are the frontmen helping push that ideology.

I mean, in what world is being lesser skilled a benefit? Not to say we should all be going to college, I just find this trend, and the push towards "saving" ****ty jobs like mining to be a trojan horse to creating a larger unskilled labor pool so that it's efficient to pay American workers next to nothing for ****ty, dangerous work.

Going to school for a degree makes sense if you want to be a doctor. It makes sense if you're learning a skill. It doesn't make sense to go into debt for a philosophy degree so that you can make foam art in lattes. It doesn't make sense to spend 4+ years of your life on an English degree to end up driving an Uber. University is useful, but it really isn't helping a lot of people because students are forced into this way of thinking that they need a college degree to be employable.

College isn't worthless by any stretch but for a lot of people it really isn't all that beneficial. It's high school away from your parents. It's glorified boarding school.

It does make you more employable though regardless of what you study.

Not always. People with degrees want more money. Employers are looking at the bottom line.

I had no idea Uber started checking to see if their drivers did a degree.

That's true, but I mean, if you look at things like, actual statistics, people with degrees have less unemployment and still earn more across the board than people without. So yes, there are cases where it isn't true, but the overall data suggests you're better off. Which is why I don't think it's a correct way to approach the subject.

Not to mention, it could be cheaper to hire graduates because it's a bare minimum guarantee of some level of competency.

Have you met a lot of recent college grads? I know this is anecdotal but that base level competency is not a guarantee.

Compared to a high school graduate walking in off the street, I'd expect more competency, but you're right it's no guarantee.

White men want more money than black women, but that doesn't seem to affect our employability much.

That has more to do with racism than the topic at hand.

So they think white men would do a better job?

A lot of white men think so.

They're willing to pay more money to get a better worker?

I see what you did there.

Excellent!

From personal experience, I can tell you that the few hundred extra dollars a month that a college grad might expect is basically nothing compared to the total cost of employment. That's why it's so easy to negotiate upwards, especially if you have some evidence that you're capable of following instructions and willing to commit to something for a few years (which is what degrees really prove, especially the more abstract ones like philosophy and English).

The main problem with advanced degrees isn't the price difference, it's the flight risk.

Anyway, all of this is why it's so easy to negotiate up on salary at most employers. The only companies that won't are scum of the earth "skill gap" firms that have policies against it, like the big non-union trade shops and cheap labor addicts. And those are the folks trying to convince people not to go to college in the first place!

I thought about adding in the worry that college grads will always be looking for "something better" but I'm lazy and didn't want to.

I'm also not arguing that people shouldn't go to college. It's just looked at more as "that thing you do after high school" rather than a useful tool for self improvement and advancement.

I think this is a well-accepted and mainstream ideology though. If you look at the percentage of degrees awarded, it's clear people are flocking to degrees they view as employable, and many humanities degrees are at historic lows.

I can't speak generally, but I did some research on academic program selection for my alma mater and students were surprisingly mindful of market demand and their career prospects.

The only real irrationality was in premed, but that's because of the guild system more than anything else. There actually is enough demand for doctors for them to be successful, they just aren't allowed to be. Sadly that means the single greatest source of "useless" degree today is actually bio sci, not things like English or philosophy.

That's true. There were about 1000 people in my college's (natural sciences) graduating class, and I believe 500 or so were biology majors. Clearly many of them were attempting premed and even more clearly most were not going to medical school.

Ironically that caused some of the premed-heavy intro courses to be some of the toughest I took. I had to take a lower division biology course and the material was absurdly hard and unnecessary, we had to have explicit knowledge of dates and specifics about experiments on DNA, and had to learn cellular biology at a surprisingly deep level. It was harder than many of the upper division math courses I was also taking. I think the goal was to weed out wannabe premed freshman and get them to switch to another college, ensuring the only way to get an A was to spend 10+ hours a week studying intro-level material.