Rising Fuel Prices

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

None of that just happened - it is based on decisions made over time - both collectively and personally.

Do Americans buy 24 or 30 rolls of toilet paper at a time because we have giant cars or do we have giant cars because we prefer to buy 24 or 30 rolls of toilet paper at a time. (Why do we use TP at all?)

Really it comes down to most Americans not knowing that how we "normally" live isn't typical not only in the developed world but even in our country over time.

People in the USA used to get groceries every day back when people lived in mixed use communities where shopping and housing were in the same place. Then we chose to throw out city planing and allow developers to build subdivisions miles outside of town so that people had to drive to get to work and shop.

The average house size today would be a mansion to people even 50 years ago. Our average new house construction today is 2700 sq ft! So again - do we live in huge houses because we choose to buy 24 rolls of TP at a time or do we buy 24 rolls of TP at a time because we live in giant houses.

Building giant houses also feeds into to the high cost of housing and the fact that some young people can't afford to live in their own communities. (Of course gentrification isn't new - it is just starting to hit small and rural communities)

So we have chosen to live in giant houses, away from work and shopping, and then drive everyday in very inefficient cars. And then we complain that energy is expensive because we have made our entire lives dependent on cheap energy.

Speaking to the larger audience, most of this is simply leveraging economies of scale. It's very inefficient to have dozens of smaller grocery stores compared with a larger one. More time is lost daily shopping than completing fewer trips. Just in time consumerism tends not to be so efficient for many people in the US.

I'll have to visit Europe one day, because I tend not to take an interest in places until I visit. I just wonder how a typical European family of 3 goes camping, for instance. Perhaps europeans leverage trailers much more than in the US, but the Mazda CX-5 is minimum utility for my family of 3. It barely accomplishes the tasks I routinely need it for. The Prius had even better utility, but alas that wasn't an option. My point though is that a Yaris or any sedan wouldn't be a good fit.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by aerohead

The entire COPOUT-26 in Scotland could have been done entirely over ZOOM...

Not effectively. ZOOM meetings are a horrible way to get anything productive accomplished even without counting all the side discussion that take place outside of the official events.

Back when I was visiting customers on a regular basis a huge amount of businesses really got done over lunch and dinner.

[freebeard]

I'll have to visit Europe one day, because I tend not to take an interest in places until I visit.

I feel the same way about Vietnam. I think of them as the good commies. The only other time I was elsewhere was Victoria B.C. for a day or two. They were still driving Chevy sixes with split manifolds.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I feel the same way about Vietnam. I think of them as the good commies. The only other time I was elsewhere was Victoria B.C. for a day or two. They were still driving Chevy sixes with split manifolds.

I choose a Peterson framing of sovereign individuals possessed by bad ideas. This allows me to ally with the individual in their struggle to defeat evil ideologies.

That framing doesn't appear to me to arbitrary either, but more representative of reality. After all, bad ideas persist long after the ones afflicted by them are deceased.

Fortunately the opposite is also true, that good ideas outlive their hosts.

In that way, people don't have ideas, but ideas have people. While ideas have a dependency on people, they don't have a dependency on particular individuals. We're mere vessels of idea pathogens. Some have symbiotic relationships with their hosts, and others simply leech and cause decay.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'll have to visit Europe one day, because I tend not to take an interest in places until I visit. I just wonder how a typical European family of 3 goes camping, for instance. Perhaps europeans leverage trailers much more than in the US, but the Mazda CX-5 is minimum utility for my family of 3. It barely accomplishes the tasks I routinely need it for. The Prius had even better utility, but alas that wasn't an option. My point though is that a Yaris or any sedan wouldn't be a good fit.

Yes, travel is an eye opening experience. Especially, when you have time to get to know people and sit and talk with them over time. My 4-5 trips to Europe per year visiting customers was great for that. Relationships are formed around a dining table.

As to camping in Europe. Hut to hut hiking is popular. Instead of carrying everything you need on your back you just carry a daypack and stop each night at a "hut" that has beds and someone to cook your meals. I haven't done it in Europe but we did some in Ecuador and it was great.

For car camping - light tow behind trailers are popular. Pretty much every vehicle has twice the towing rating in the EU compared to the US for the same vehicle. A lot of that is mandatory trailer brakes and reduced speed limits when towing. For RVs about the biggest you will find is what we call a B-plus in the USA and van based RVs rule.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

In that way, people don't have ideas, but ideas have people.

The Selfish Meme - IEEE Spectrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org › the-selfish-meme
—Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. At the end of his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, geneticist Richard Dawkins proposed the idea of the meme, which he described as "a unit of cultural transmission ...

What's in a Meme? | Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason ...
https://richarddawkins.net › 2014 › 02 › whats-in-a-meme
The meme first appeared in Richard Dawkins' first book, "The Selfish Gene" (1976), and was an attempt to understand why some behaviours, from an evolutionary perspective, seemed to make no sense but, somehow or other, were found to be very common in human societies.

Internet offers a coping mechanism: https://knowyourmeme.com/

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by Autobahnschleicher

There are more fuel efficient alternatives to trucks, such as vans.
A Mercedes Sprinter (sold as Dodge in the US) can transport every bit as much as a truck and get far better fuel economy.
Alternatively one could get a normal car and a trailer, then loadthe materials on the trailer and only use the trailer when materials need to be moved.
As for AWD and winter:
You don't realy need AWD, you need proper winter/snow tires and weight on the driven axle, something that 2wd trucks lack.
However this whole case is not at all representative for the average person at all.

This is what I've been preaching for years.

People don't believe me when I tell them we get around fine in the winter with any 2WD vehicle (FWD or RWD) and a good set of tires. Friends will come up in an AWD monster of a vehicle to visit us in the winter and I'll offer to take them somewhere in my car and they'll automatically say, "wouldn't it be better to go in the truck so we don't get stuck?" as if I were new here (at least 6th generation Coloradan Mountain-man).

My wife, who was never around snow or ice until she married me, learned how to drive a stickshift the first year of our marriage. She drove around an old 1984 Toyota RWD pickup and then a FWD 1993 Mazda 323 and NEVER got stuck in either, ever. And her job had and still has her driving all over to many different locations, now in the 2013 Avalon. But most people must think I made that story up.

I love my 8ft flatbed trailer I bought new for $400. I can fit full sized sheets of drywall and plywood. I have even transported pianos and other big things with it. It's much easier than lifting a piano or drywall high enough to get it into a pickup bed.

As far as vehicle selection goes, the used car market has been where most people go. Sadly, that limits you to what the rich buy. You can find plenty of semiused pickups for cheap, because there are lots rich people that buy pickups just because that's what they like (and never ever put a thing in the bed, except maybe their dogs). That usually isn't the same story for vans.

People are also just sold on the idea of pickups being better. Even after having all their tools stolen out of the back of their pickups, it still doesn't seem to cross their mind that maybe a van would be better. I guess because there usually aren't very many AWD or 4WD van options, but lots of 4WD pickups, and well, I already explained what people generaly thing about that around here.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by JSH

In the EU the best selling car in the EU is the VW Golf. It is a family car there and on the larger side of normal cars. A lot of the best sellers are superminis - what we call subcompacts in the USA. Toyota Yaris, VW Polo, Renault Clio, Peugeot 208, Opel Corsa - they are all subcompact cars that are in the best selling 10 cars in Europe.

Brazil had a larger European influence since the VW Beetle, even though the American landyachts once used to be the rule. Well, some models specific to "emerging" markets and often not available in Europe have been offered here instead of some European counterpart, and supermini-based sedans became quite widespread as they tend to address better the needs for a single car to an entire household, even when those underpowered naturally-aspirated 1.0L engines were often the only one available due to lower taxation.

Europeans drive small cars because gas is expensive. They aren't shorter than Americans yet somehow they manage to fit families in much smaller cars than what we drive in the USA

Odd enough, this beauty used to be a luxury car in Brazil.

Just like their construction workers, plumbers, and electricians manage to build things without everyone driving a F-150

Nowadays you could even find something like this at a construction site.



While it's still easy to see a 4-cyl S10 being used for actual work, often heavier than what some American contractor would do with its own F-150.

[Autobahnschleicher]

Originally Posted by hayden55

I kinda laughed at that quote. I mean my Prius weighs over 1,5 tons and has a 1.8L engine. Do you consider that a big SUV? I think the whole going somewhere without a car is just a social disconnect. How often and how far are you going places without a car? It sounds like things in your city are a lot closer. How far do you travel to things in your daily life where you live?

In case of the Prius, I think the battery and hybrid drivetrain are to blame for that weight.
It is not a SUV as that cars body is designed very differently, wich shows in its aerodynamic drag and highway fuel economy.
However it isn't even that fuel efficient, a lot of diesels beat it on the highway.

As for how far I go without a car on a regular basis, that's about 70 km one way, 140 km roundtrip if I took my car.
Usualy I take the train for that trip, sometimes by moped but I did that trip by bike a few times when I was crazy fit.
For other stuff it depends, I tend to ride my bike a lot for anything <10 km each direction unless I need to transport a lot of stuff.

[Autobahnschleicher]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

This is what I've been preaching for years.

People don't believe me when I tell them we get around fine in the winter with any 2WD vehicle (FWD or RWD) and a good set of tires. Friends will come up in an AWD monster of a vehicle to visit us in the winter and I'll offer to take them somewhere in my car and they'll automatically say, "wouldn't it be better to go in the truck so we don't get stuck?" as if I were new here (at least 6th generation Coloradan Mountain-man).

My wife, who was never around snow or ice until she married me, learned how to drive a stickshift the first year of our marriage. She drove around an old 1984 Toyota RWD pickup and then a FWD 1993 Mazda 323 and NEVER got stuck in either, ever. And her job had and still has her driving all over to many different locations, now in the 2013 Avalon. But most people must think I made that story up.

Even my RWD sports car has no issues at all in snow.
Even when I got surprised by by snow on summer tires in the mountains once, I had no issues.
However I did have to drive carefully as I did not expect my high performance summer tires to perform well at all under braking or cornering.
But then again, AWD doesn't help with braking or cornering either.

What happens with AWD trucks on improper tires and bad drives, has been seen in Texas not that long ago.
It's not a bad idea to visit an empty parking lot in snow for a little practice.
Many people seem to not know how to handle snow/ice and keep a car under controll and crash in snow due to that.