The Little Red School Bus
February 25, 2010 by admin
Filed under Blogroll, Woulda-Missed-If-Driving
This was a welcome sight in my neighborhood – a family bike-pooling to school, all on one bike! It’s a trusty Workcycles Bakfiets cargo bike. “We call it the Little Red School Bus,” the mom of three said. Rain or shine, this bus gets the kids to school and home again, carbon-free.
“…mom of three.”? How sustainable is it for folks to have more than 2 kids? Ever hear of population growth. 6.8 billion is enough. In fact, way too many. Just sayin’
While population control is an issue, it is really Industrial Capitalism that is doing the severe damage to the world, not mothers who are trying to raise kids without a car.
Industrial Capitalism? Are you making a slur against the very system that is going to make the salvation of this planet possible? Look around. EVERYTHING you enjoy in your life, including the computer you “wrote in on” exists because of the freedoms and incentives fostered by capitalism, “industrial” or otherwise. Earth’s problems are complex and the solutions will not come easily. Without the profit motive and capitalism they won’t come at all. They sure as heck will not come from government, no matter how much money it taxes out of the pockets of its citizens who work and produce the things that make living safe and enjoyable. All of it: the work, the food, infrastructure, medical care, electricity, clean water, housing, entertainment and even the construction of bicycles, stops when people are no longer incentivized to work and produce. If we want the planet to survive, capitalism MUST survive and capitalists MUST be properly incentivized to invent solutions that do not yet exist, and they must be properly compensated. Bikes are great, but they share a very obvious negative with cars: neither is a practical longterm solution to our transportation needs. I say unleash the engineers and pay them to invent, out of thin air, the solutions we need. Get government out of the way and let capitalism work. Please give capitalism more thought before you buy into the negative and inaccurate propaganda about it.