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road to the 19th century

The tragedy is that one of the main parts of the 19th century that was good, the trains and later the trams, is the one that gets the least attention thanks to the ALL CONSUMING CAR

A modern rail system should be a principal goal of the infrastructure spending in January's federal budget. That means making sure that people, not cargo, take priority on the tracks.

Humans, as well as cargo - Globe and Mail - December 15, 2008

The Globe is entirely right. And the chance of that happening is zero.

Instead we will get bailouts and infrastructure for an assortment of 19th century industries that have been brutally OVER industrialised:

* mining
* forestry

Tories set to add forestry, mining to bailout list - Globe and Mail - December 15, 2008

and a bunch of money for car companies and roads, two 20th century developments that, particularly in North America are substantially responsible for:

* destroying the urban fabric
* enabling a hyper-individualistic society
* filling the landscape with cr*p stripmalls
* deliberately destroying the aforementioned train and tram systems
* pollution on an epic scale
* consumerism uber alles
* oh and as a bonus, killing 30,000 people in the US every year. Yeah you read that right, THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE A YEAR. (In Canada it is, not surprisingly, about 3000.)

So we'll spend a trillion dollars and get what, $15 billion on new technology and $985 billion on the same cr*p roads and cars and factory industrial everything that made the 20th century suck?

Awesome.

Labels: finance, rant

posted by Richard at 14:52 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)