Too Stupid to Survive

Coming home from the annual meet-up of the New Urbanists, I was already agitated from the shenanigans of United Airlines — two-hour delay, blown connection — when I waded into this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine for further evidence that our ruling elites are too stupid to survive (and perhaps the US with them).  Exhibit A was the magazine's lead article about California's proposed high-speed rail project by Jon Gertner.

The article began with a description of California's current rail service between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. A commission of nine-year-olds in a place like Germany could run a better system, of course. It's never on schedule. The equipment breaks down incessantly. A substantial leg of the trip requires a transfer to a bus (along with everybody's luggage) with no working toilet.  You get the picture: Kazakhstan without the basic competence.

The proposed solution to this is the most expensive public works program in the history of the world, at a time when both the state of California and the US federal government are effectively bankrupt.  By the way, I wouldn't argue that California shouldn't have high-speed rail.  It might have been nice if, say, in the late 20th century, some far-seeing governor had noticed what was going on in France, Germany, and Spain but, alas....  It would have been nice, too, if the doltish George W. Bush, when addressing extreme airport congestion in 2003, had considered serious upgrades in normal train service between the many US cities 500 miles or so apart. The idea never entered his walnut brain.

The sad truth is it's too late now.  But the additional sad truth, at this point, is that Californians (and US public in general) would benefit tremendously from normal rail service on a par with the standards of 1927, when speeds of 100 miles-per-hour were common and the trains ran absolutely on time (and frequently, too) without computers (imagine that!). The tracks are still there, waiting to be fixed.  In our current condition of psychotic techno-grandiosity, this is all too hopelessly quaint, not cutting edge enough, pathetically un-"hot." The fact that it is not even considered by the editors of The New York Times, not to mention the governor of California, the President of the United States, and all the agency heads and departmental chiefs and think tank gurus and university engineering professors, is something that will have historians of the future rolling their ey es.  But for the moment all it shows is that we are collectively too stupid to survive as an advanced society.

Ironically (if you go for gallows irony) a sidebar in the same issue of The NY Times Sunday Magazine featured the latest architect's wet dream of an airport-of-the-future (p.35). Note to the editors and architects: commercial aviation is toast (we just don't know it yet). We're back in the $70-plus a barrel-of-oil aviation death-zone for airlines.

Also ironically proving that America is not alone in techno-triumphalist mental illness was another big article in the same magazine featuring French President Nicolas Sarkozy's neo-Modernist fantasies for vast new construction projects in Paris.  Note to Sarko: the developed world's metroplexes are headed for shocking contraction, not further expansion. I know this is counter-intuitive, but a little applied prayerful research will bear it out.  And, by the way, the last thing any city on earth needs is more skyscrapers — i.e. buildings that have no chance of ever being renovated when they reach the senility stage of their design-life.  For really mind-blowing statements, this one from that article is a standout: "Paris's current problems as a city can be traced to the very thing that makes it most delightful — its beauty."  Right.   So, the solution will be to make it more like Houston.

Actually, I doubt the French people consider these schemes anymore plausible than ur-Modernist Le Corbusier's 1924 proposal to bulldoze half of the Right Bank and replace it with dozens of identical skyscrapers. The French people laughed at Corbu, and put their vertical slums outside the city center, but notice that we Americans actually did it, replacing our old human-scaled center cities with priapic arrays of glass-and-steel tubes surrounded by parking lagoons. Anyway, nobody in the OECD world will have the energy to carry out anything like this again, not even France with its nuke plants.

Which brings me back to the New Urbanist annual meet-up last week in Denver. Given the gathering conditions of what I variously call The Long Emergency or the economic clusterf**k, they have had to shift their focus starkly. For years, their stock-in-trade was the greenfield New Town or Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND), a severe reform of conventional suburban development.  That sort of reform work was only possible when 1.) the continued expansion of suburbia seemed utterly inevitable, requiring heroic mitigation and 2.) when they could team up with the production home-builders to get their TND projects built.  To the group's credit, they realize that these conditions are no more. Suburbia is now craterin g, both as a re pository of wealth in real estate and as a practical matter of everyday existence.  They get that the energy crisis and all its implications are real and that our response to it had better be deft.  They understand that the capital resources we thought we had for Big Projects are flying into a black hole at the speed of light. Mostly they see that he time for "cutting edge" fashionista techno-triumphalist grandiosity is over.

To put it bluntly, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is perhaps the only surviving collective intelligence left in the United States that is producing ideas consistent with the reality.  They recognize that our survival depends on downscaling and re-localization. They recognize the crisis we will soon face in food production, and the desperate need to reactivate the relationship between the way we inhabit the landscape and the way we feed ourselves. They recognize that the solution to the liquid fuels crisis is not cars that can run by other means but walkable towns and cities connected by public transit.

This is exactly what you will not find in the pages of The New York Times or the political corridors of power.  Oh, by the way, the Obama administration contacted one of the leading lights of the New Urbanism in the weeks after the inauguration.  He never heard back from the White House.  I guess they're not interested

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Allow me to remind you that James Howard Kunstler will be joining us on the Whiskey Bar panel in Vancouver. It's Ten Years of Reckoning, Shooters, and our flagship newsletter The Daily Reckoning is the belle of the ball…but your Whiskey crew still plans to make our discussion the highlight of the event. Hope you'll be there to join us. Just click here to read more.

The reader who fired off those vicious emails about our silver promotion sent me one more gem of an e-mail…

Professor Gary,

Thanks for the English lesson. Grammar was never my thing but then I don't write for a living.

I guess you didn't receive the letter SPLITTING HAIR.  I sent it to the above address and to the AGORA address .I think you will find my sources in that letter more to the point of fact.

 If you are angry with me, you are misdirecting your emotion. If you research my Splitting Hairs letter you may understand what and why I wrote the first two letters. You seem to find pleasure in belittling (putting people down and humiliating them) .Why is that? I guess a previous writer from New Jersey was not completely wrong of his opinion about black, oops, afro-Americans who find themselves in positions of so-called power. It is easy to judge people as I am sure you have discovered. You may proclaim your Whiskey & Gunpowder to represent the everyday person on the street. I personally think my title for you and what you think and write is Champagne & Babypowder.

Once again thanks for the grammar and spelling lessons, but mostly thanks for revealing your TRUE NATURE.

Oy, every time with the references to my race. Would these words be easier to take coming from a white man? Does it bother you that a Negro would get so uppity?

I suppose it's just human nature to lash out at someone's otherness when they've pissed you off. (After all, what do we all yell when someone of a different race cuts us off in traffic? Be honest…)

And I don't care why you wrote your first two letters because you were challenging and insulting. You get as you give.

As for my true nature: I'm a bit of a misanthropic, curmudgeonly loner who honestly believes that nine out of every 10 bipeds on this planet are a waste of space, but I adore dogs and babies. Most of the one out of 10 who are worth my time are probably reading this newsletter.

Now I have to thank all of you who lent your support when that (former) reader questioned our silver coin promotion and my integrity…

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Gary,
 
I just had to respond concerning the "reader" who attacked you about the "Silver Eagle Coin'. (While you were sitting, minding your own business, at the bar)

Don't you wish that a few more of your readers were literate? I'm sure that it would make your job so much more pleasant. If this "reader" doesn't know the difference between 'uncirculated', MS69, and MS70, he should keep it to himself. I too am a coin collector and have purchased coins from the major dealers including First Federal.

No I am not a 'shill' for, or an employee of First Federal. I have, however, found their prices to be competitive.
 
Note to the "reader": Two words- Rosetta Stone (English version)
 
Note to Gary: When sitting at the bar, don't have your back to the door; sneak attacks will happen!
 
P.S.: 'Angora' is a rabbit. We raised them on the farm when I was a kid.
 
I enjoy your work, Gary. Keep it up!

Thank you very much. And I'm a big fan of rabbits. The bunny is my totem animal. Like your editor, bunnies are cuddly but surprisingly violent.

...Just finished reading your reply to the grumbling idiot about the Silver Eagles, MS-70 ratings, etc. They walk among us. Distrustful skeptics, always expecting to get 'prime' for free, without having to sift through the necessary 'fluff' extras that allow 'free' to even exist. Can't simply pass on an offer; they have to spout off when someone's perceived to be screwing people over, in the name of lucre. My response would be: "You tell them, diaper."

Same type who get defensive about opposing political rants, and union labor policies that effect business economics. Your comebacks to the email criticisms are usually right on the mark. (Big: "Yeah!" with a fist thrust into the air above me.) BTW, I live in a suburb of Detroit, with a brother in the union at GM. I formerly worked with a supplier to the auto plants. So, I don't agree with some of the cold harsh realities, but am infinitely better prepared for an uncertain future, as a result of reading Agora and other publishers, and acting on some of the nuggets of wisdom that can be found in your publications.

Personally, I love W&G, the wide variety of topics and writers, and the education so generously provided, free of charge.

Keep up the good work, and don't let the bastards get you down. You've even taught me the fine art of making a strong counterpoint to an argument, by backing it up with sound facts. Bravo.

Thank you. How boring would it be if we agreed on every little thing? Perfect agreement sounds an awful lot like hell or the hive-mind state about which the nannies and meddlers dream.  I just hope today's missive from James Howard Kunstler concerning the future of the car doesn't have you pounding the "unsubscribe" button.

Based on today's comments from a disgruntled reader I took the time to look into the silver coin offer and wound up buying 5 for myself.
 
I got acquainted with Bob Allison and talked for 30 minutes. I like his approach and plan to buy gold coins from him. His association with Agora and your organization gives him and his firm credibility.
 
So relax, because if the disgruntled reader hadn't written his diatribe I probably would not have proceeded with my plan to buy coins.

Well, we didn't see that one coming! Thanks and I'm thrilled to hear it.

First and foremost the Whiskey Bar is a place for folks like us to gather and exchange ideas. At least, that's what I've been trying to make it. We're fellow travelers here, bound by ideas about self-determination and the right not to be meddled with or coerced…not by the voting booth and not by government guns.

The bar needs to make a buck, 'tis true, but any advertisements that appear herein will be on the up-and-up. I want you to keep coming back because I really enjoy the conversation.

Speaking of which, I would love to see your responses to Mr. Kunstler's latest missive. Allow me to reiterate a point I think a lot of otherwise sensible people aren't getting: "…the solution to the liquid fuels crisis is not cars that can run by other means but walkable towns and cities connected by public transit."

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It galls me that all those socialists in Europe get to have all those beautiful, pedestrian-oriented towns and cities linked by efficient rail. It makes it seem as if they actually did something right…and I won't stand for it!

Built environments catering to the pedestrian are the most pleasant places on earth. We are losing nothing by being forced by circumstances to return to them. We stand to lose a lot if we cling to the tyranny of the automobile-centric model. I'm not saying the automobile doesn't have its place; we ought just to rethink how much we've been catering to the damned thing.

I await your howls of protest and thoughtful rebuttals.