The New Soviet man   at Wikipedia [edited]
=== ===
Ideologists of Communism claimed that it creates not only a new society, but also a new man. Leon Trotsky: "The Communist man of the future will master his own feelings, raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, make them transparent, extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, a superman."
=== ===

The biologist Lysenko fit into this. He claimed that changes to organisms could be immediately inherited. Change the society and a new Man would quickly emerge.

A New Soviet Man did emerge, but with unexpected qualities.

en.wikipedia dot org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus
Homo Sovieticus
=== ===
Proponents of the Soviet system said it would create a new, better kind of person. Homo Sovieticus was invented by opponents to describe the real result of Soviet policies.

•   Indifference to work and lack of initiative.
•   Disrespect for common property and petty theft for personal use and for profit.
•   Isolation from world culture with restrictions on travel and little information. This led to "Western idolatry" about what little was known about the West.
•   Obedience or passive acceptance of everything imposed by the government.
•   Avoidance of individual responsibility for anything.
•   A tendency to drink heavily, into a stupor.
=== ===

Why would you use current usage for projected traffic? That's an incorrect use of stats.

California is, of course, THE example of how you cannot pave your way to less traffic, because more roads make more room for vehicles, lather, rinse, repeat. It is logical to figure that the process can be reversed. Already, there are areas where people realize owning a car isn't reasonable.

Every form of transportation is a congestible resource Radwaste. Side walks, bikes, buses, and yes roads. Commutes to and from work are largely the same amount of time over the last hundred years. But as transportation has improved the distance has increased to match the increase in speed.

It is logical to figure that the process can be reversed. Already, there are areas where people realize owning a car isn't reasonable.

Posted by: Radwaste at August 19, 2015 10:37 AM

LA isn't one of them. You don't wish away a 4800 square mile county. The roads got built and expanded for a reason. It was the only way to sustain the economy.

And.....

At what expense, do you walk that back, and what are the unintended consequences?

A lot of cities have destroyed their downtowns, by making them inconvenient to get to.

Jobs downtown were replaced by centers out in the suburbs or telecommuting,

Yes, it is logical to think that the process might be reversible, but that is a kindergarten level of analysis

The next step is, at what cost? And is the cure going to be worse than the original problem?

Why do I always suspect that when a mayor comes up with a bone headed solution like this, it is because some big political donor who stands to benefit from the fall out, or the construction contacts has planted it, in the mayor's fertile socialist brain? A brain funded by OPM.

"LA isn't one of them."

Sigh. So quick, so sure...

There is no way I am confusing anything in SoCal with NYC, which moves people far more efficiently than anything in the Earthquake State...

Heh. Who's performing the "kindergarden level of analysis", when you don't even realize that no, the automobile was NOT "the only way to build and sustain the economy". It is simply the way that was chosen: cheap now, expensive later.

Ask Detroit about their long-term plans.

You've been warned by events, not by humble little ol' me, that California will not (that's will not, no maybes in there) continue the way it has.

Two plus two equals four. Two plus three equals five. Nap time! Don't miss it!

"So quick, so sure...

There is no way I am confusing anything in SoCal with NYC, which moves people far more efficiently than anything in the Earthquake State..."

Yes, I am certain. I have lived in New York, and I have lived in the west,

LA didn't chose to develop around the automobile, the automobile, and trucks allowed the development of Southern California,

The only thing Detroit has in common with LA, is fifty years of tax and spend, short sighed democratic government and union control.

Even today, stop all wheeled traffic into New York, and put it all on subways, and busses. I dare you. In 48 hours, every grocery store will be stripped bare, and every restaurant will be out of every item on the menu.

You clearly have no idea what a small percentage of cargo, trains can carry from the fields, and the factories and the ports to the cities, and the rest of the country. At best they are an intermediate transportation choice. Trucks and cars deliver cargo and people to the trains, and have to be there to pick it up again on the other end.

The entire developed world runs on trucks, and automobiles.

And no one is riding any fucking bicyle for nine months of the year in North Dakota. But I suppose you think that the corn and wheat they grow up there, gets to the mill and then to the store, on the backs of unicorns?

Isab - how many more fallacies do you want to introduce before you accuse me of using them again?

"LA" did not choose the automobile of their own volition. It was not planned. It was what was handy. Development always has future costs, and now, those costs are coming to light.

And clearly, you have not followed this blog at all - or you have a particular blindness where I am concerned. How many times have you pointed out that the risks to the nation via terrorism include shipping methods by linking to the Emergency Response Guidebook used by all shippers to control their cargo?

Have you posted anything about transportation energy costs? I have.

"Yes, I am certain. I have lived in New York, and I have lived in the west,..." Good for you. Now, rather than be offended because I dare post, you should probably notice that there are areas in LA where owning a car is unreasonable.

Now, this should be interesting: what do you want the State of California to do?

"Development always has future costs, and now, those costs are coming to light."

Are they? You mention Detroit, but it wasn't automobile use that depopulated Detroit. The mayor waxing poetic about killing white people might have, but the car certainly wasn't an issue.

Even in this case, you have car congestion. And the mayor wants to increase that congestion. This hardly seems like a cost of the car and more a cost of voting for nut bags.

No, Rad, the question is, what do you want to do? One of the major goals of Communism was to restrict access to transportation to VIPs. Cutting off access to transportation is a great way to cow and control the population. Leftists dream of a day when most people will be forever confined to a neighborhood, where access to outside ideas can be cut off and political purity can be enforced. A world of people in boxes, all wearing identical uniforms, all interchangable parts. It's ironic considering how often leftists trumpet their intellectual superiority based on their assumption that they have traveled more than other people.

And I'll repeat my assetion about why mass transit doesn't work. It's inherent in the word "mass"; it assumes that there are a whole bunch of people at point A that need to get to point B. That may have been true back in the days when most towns had "the plant" which accountd for the bulk of the town's employment. It doesn't describe our society today. There aren't a whole bunch of people at point A; there are a few people at points B, C, and D, and they variously need to get to points E, F, and G. This is something mass transit does very poorly and inefficiently. Even in Manhattan (which is unique in North America), the mass transit system, despite being very expensive for its users, has to be heavily subsidized to keep it going.

Lived in a city where they spent large sums of money redoing the old train station. Everything worked great except ...

Limited automobile/taxi access. Bus service infrequent and no one getting off the trains really knew where the routes went. Funny.

Now, this should be interesting: what do you want the State of California to do?

Posted by: Radwaste at August 19, 2015 10:36 PM

Nothing?

I want the state of California to do whatever they want to do, until people realize it is a shitty place to live, and move elsewhere, or they get their act together, and actually start investing in infrastructure that supports economic development, rather than impeding it?

California is going to be bankrupted by CALPERs in less than ten years. There are going be be several mass transit projects collecting cobwebs while the retired folks, and the illegal immigrants Uber their way around in the new google cars.

I want the state of California to do whatever they want to do, until people realize it is a shitty place to live, and move elsewhere,

At which point the brain dead assholes start forcing the same polices on the are they now live

I want the state of California to do whatever they want to do, until people realize it is a shitty place to live, and move elsewhere,

At which point the brain dead assholes start forcing the same polices on the are they now live

Posted by: lujlp at August 20, 2015 10:26 AM

Most of the financial irresponsible states are now running out of other people's money.

That which cannot go on, will not continue.

In Colorado, we are already seeing a lot of pushback against the liberal politicians. The biggest offenders in the status quo blue state model are the government employees.
Their political power does not transfer well into other states, where if they move, they have limited ability to extract money from the new state's treasury.
Thank god for the republic.

Of course, this reality lies behind the democrats desire to federalize everything, including health care. It is a way for the democrats to get their hooks into the red states.

CD,

Mass transit can work. And you are wrong about NY. Their subway system turns a profit. They cook the books to claim they don't, but they are quite self sufficient.

The key is in how you run it. A mass transit system has fixed costs. One passenger or 100, the cost of a bus running that route is the same. So the trick for profitability is a subscription model. Trying to charge people based on how much they use is both complicated, expensive, and unrelated to costs. Successful systems charge a flat fee for time based access to the network. I.e. $25 for a one week pass.

And as you point out, run the routes people actually want to take! Houston ran a light rail from the football stadium to the medical complex. I don't care how many injuries the players get, they just can't generate the ridership to support that train. Once that train extended from the outer residential districts to the inner commercial ones the train was full.

As the letter writer pointed out, convert busy streets into one way streets. I would add reserve one lane for light rail. Not complicated, but also not the mayor's true goal.

" It is a way for the democrats to get their hooks into the red states. "

You mean the red welfare states who suck up the tax revenues provided to the Feds by the blue states, of course.

http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-are-welfare-queens-2011-8?op=1

Gog,

So why not give it to them? They are asking the blue states to cut that spending, so why haven't the blue states cut it?

Gog,

So why not give it to them? They are asking the blue states to cut that spending, so why haven't the blue states cut it?

Posted by: Ben at August 20, 2015 2:54 PM

The numbers that Gog uses are the worst kind of fudging. The state that I live in consists of two large national parks, an equally large Indian reservation, and over half the rest of the lands in the state are owned by the Feds and managed by the BLM

There is also an Air Force base.

The study he cites counts all the money that goes to pay that veritable army of Federal employees and military sent here by the Feds as *welfare* to the state of Wyoming.

The Feds counts all the mo

"The numbers that Gog uses are the worst kind of fudging."

And the numbers that you fail to provide are the best kind of fudging.

Remember, California-haters: Reagan was from California. Nixon was from California. Hating on California is just hating on Republican Presidents.

"And the numbers that you fail to provide are the best kind of fudging."

Which numbers would you like to see Gog? I would settle for the base data, of the study you linked to.

Who cares that Regan was kinda from California? He was born in Illinois. Is that somehow relevant too?

I had a comment, something around the idiocy of the don't build roads, they just attract more traffic comment above - which is about the equivalent of don't build bigger opera houses because...

It's been obliterated by the image of Amy roller skating round NYC. Can there be hotpants?