Rollfast

If it helps you, we used to have TWO Circle K stores and a 7 Eleven in this small town of 10,000 but now the 7 Eleven is my nurse practitioner's office and the Circle K uptown an eye clinic while the one a few blocks away is a chiropractor's office.

tandempower

I've explained many aspects of this in many posts.

What's your point about cost? That it's low and people don't all flock to save money with low costs? A big part of that is that their economic choices are padded by patterns of waste that they don't flee from because they don't foresee that there will ever be consequences for the waste. This happens all the time in so many ways. There are so many things that would be good for people if they took advantage of opportunities, but instead of doing so they allow their fate to get ahead of them day after day until one day the house of cars comes crashing down and then they complain that life is unfair and they didn't see it coming and other people and government aren't doing enough to help them as innocent victims.

Are you trying to make a broader point with this? If so, what it is it?Your thinking defies your own logic. If freedom isn't supposed to impinge on others' freedom, then you can't expect people to submit to unlimited economic management in exchange for freedom. You can't expect people to measure their existence in relation to 'norms of society' if people's freedom ends at other people. When you apply a norm or an expectation for people to submit to the management of another person, you are expecting them to submit freely to external governance, which is the opposite of freedom. So idk in what sense what you're saying makes sense to you, but it is fundamentally self-contradicting.

Mobile 155

cooker

The relationship with society is a bit more complicated than that. A lot of expectation are placed on us and decisions made for us. Of course one tries to make the best of it, but the so-called freedom to reject norms comes with a penalty, including, of course, sometimes having to work harder. It's not as simple an option as you make it sound.

Maelochs

No it si EXACTLY as simple as he stated,and you even admit it.

You want it easy, take it easy. You want it hard, make it hard.

What you want is the Whole of Society to change to suit you.

Do you have a shred of care for others in you. A shred of Honesty?

You are the definition of "sophomoric."

You don't like the world ... depart.

the rest of us will make our choices and take responsibility for ourselves, out choices and our future.

Do you ever bother to think at all about the "choices" people born into poverty on the streets of Mumbai or in Somalia get?

You are blessed with more freedom, more choice, more opportunity than 75% of the people on this planet and you are whining.

Finally, I am done with you. You make me sick.

Mobile 155

Nor is it complicated. It is even less complicated for someone that "voluntarily" rejects the norms. "Voluntarily" rejects the expectations and decisions. So in effect it is pretty much that simple. Reject a society and its norms and accept the results of such a rejection. What complications do you see?

cooker

Wow, not the reaction I was expecting to a simple observation. I'm not whining at all - I'm well aware of my privilege (and I'll have you know it's higher than the 75th percentile (). The dimension that I think you are both missing or understating is that there is a coercive aspect to society. It's not just that you lose out on the conveniences and security that society offers. It's not that easy to opt out and do your own thing, because society does tend to enforce its ways to some degree. As for the Sowell (or some other judge's) quote, about your right to swing your fist, it's silly. Try swinging your fist to almost touch the tip of a judge's nose and see what happens.

Mobile 155

You missed the point of the Quote. Not by Sowell by the way I think it was Oliver Windall Holmes, is that your rights end where they run into my rights. The fact that the choices society places on us are hard is not an excuse for gaining pity when someone decided on their own to make the hard decision to reject that coercive pressure. You are perfectly free to tune in, turn on and drop out. Society should be perfectly free to hold back the benefits of giving into what you call coercion. Everyone is subject to their own choices, if that choice places you on the outskirts of any group realize the one rejecting the group values is responsible for the distance between themselves and that group not the group.

I know for you this is all just a exercise in conversation. at least that is how I see your interest, and you find the conversation something worth exploring. but there is an element of reality in this discussion as well.

Maelochs

My sincere apologies ...i thought this was more drivel form another poster.

My comments to you are the same ... but less forceful.

Anyone who has been around and seen some of what the world has to offer ... and knows what We have ... has NO business talking about "hard." That is like saying, My genitals hurt form having too much great sex," or "my hands are stiff from counting all my money."

Much of the world drinks water we wouldn't wash with. Most of the world lives on less food than they really need. most of the world gets sick ... and is sick. Doctor? What?

We don't live in a world tailored to our individual desires. if we died ... everyone would be kind and honest and tolerant of one another, and everyone would strive to live in balance with one another and with the world around us, which is also alive.

I have been 'temporarily) homeless in this country and had access to better food and shelter, and sanitation than many people who work all day in many other nations.

People who think this sis too hard are welcome to leave, or die ... or figure out how to make it better, but i can tell you, it starts with better people, not better rules or systems.

me ...I have sacrificed all my life to walk my path. I consider it totally fair ... and I have seen some unfairness.

I met a woman who was imprisoned for her faith, who was thrown naked into a cell full of male prisoners ... night after night ... as her jailers tried to break her will.

She never gave in. She chose her path and stuck to it. Eventually, her jailers gave up because nothing they could do ... no torture, no deprivation, no abuse ... nothing could break her. She sacrificed for her choices, and she never regretted and never wavered. She knew there would be prices to pay, but she did what she felt was right and she stuck to it.

Now ... you were saying how hard you had it?

Jim from Boston

Quote:

Originally Posted by cooker

…I'm well aware of my privilege (and I'll have you know it's higher than the 75th percentile (). The dimension that I think you are both missing or understating is that there is a coercive aspect to society.

It's not just that you lose out on the conveniences and security that society offers. It's not that easy to opt out and do your own thing, because society does tend to enforce its ways to some degree…

I have previously posted,

Mobile 155

Is this the industry or culture? Or is it competition and evolution? In my anthropology classes they might say some older Hunter Gatherers might have felt the same about planters and ranchers. I don't have the same grasp on it as you because southern California morphed away from such neighborhoods well before the car. The Red car was designed specifically so workers for Huntington and Hellman's workers could get to and from suburb developments where housing was more affordable. Cars only increased suburb development and the neighborhoods were suburban neighborhoods.

tandempower

I don't fundamentally disagree with all you are saying, and I certainly don't believe that people are entitled to having others work for them without them returning an equal amount of work. But we just disagree about the legitimacy of taking away freedom in order to sell it back to people. If you have a bike, you should either do the work of producing the bike or an equivalent amount of work to exchange for the privilege of someone else doing the bike-making work for you. The problem is when you don't do work, but rather you simply control money that is gained by selling people's freedom back to them. If I am free and you take my freedom away and expect me to work to buy it back, what are you doing in exchange for what you're getting from me?

cooker

Streetcar suburbs were quite a different thing from automobile suburbs. SInce they were set up for people who didn't drive, they tended to be fairly dense and walkable in their own way (duh) and in some cases were actual functioning small towns with mainstreet stores, that now suddenly had car-free access to the city too. My grandfather met my grandmother's sister (through whom he met my grandmother) at the streetcar stop at the village of Stoney Mountain, Manitoba, when they both rode 10 or miles to a high school at edge of Winnipeg. It was a fast trip as there were few stops. I bet those Huntingdon workers also lived in fairly dense surroundings, withe local walkability. So the streetcar supported LCF for commuting, and for the residential area as well.

Jim from Boston

According to “Creative Destruction,"Of course to the LCF proponents, this creative destruction of walkable neighborhoods more likely illustrates the Law of Unintended (backfired) Consequences.

cooker

What I call coercion, is coercion People who don't follow societal norms aren't always left to their own devices - they are subject to a lot of pressure to conform or in some cases are actively persecuted, and all kinds of rules and laws interfere with their freedom. Most of us find it a valuable trade-off to accept limitations on our freedom to participate in society, but there is no mistaking that there are limitations on our freedom, even if we pose no threat to anybody else.

Whether it's by Holmes or anyone, the fist swinging analogy just doesn't work. I might wish my neighbour's right to pollute the air with his car or factory exhaust ended at my nasal orifices (and even more so if I lived in Beijing), but of course I don't have the ability to stop inhaling it, and nobody seems willing to enforce my right not to be exposed to it. What does OWH have to say about that?

Mobile 155

Then you would lose your money. I have lived in several of the cities the Red Car helped Start. Huntington, Brea, I was born in and went to College in one of them. Fullerton, Santa Ana, Manhattan Beach, Corona is still a small little town, Now getting bigger with the addition of Malls. Remember when I posted the layout of Orange County? Some of those towns were in that layout. It is Suburbia with separate Industrial parks for factories and warehouses, Malls for shopping and little city centers surrounded by single family residences. But it was those same workers that started the bedroom communities. Shoot Beverly Hills was on the Red car line along with Burbank. Remember I grew up in the area.

Mobile 155

I guess I can see that. and non LCF people don't even think of it at all.

Mobile 155

I contend neither are rights, both may be consequences for living in any society. You have a right to vote and even complain. The neighbor has a right to vote and complain. Some people win and some lose and that is called life. However you don't live in Beijing so you have some choice. You could also move from where you are now if you wanted? I know I have moved several times.
By the way, you said people that reject the norm aren't always left to their own devices. My experience is quite often they are not only left alone they aren't even noticed or invited.

But what coercion can you cite does someone who voluntarily decided not to accept the norm faces that anyone else wouldn't face? What is the difference between what you are calling coercion and what I might call consequences of choice? Just at what point along the line does this coercion happen? Is it coercion that some people can't live in the high rent district or is that simply how life works?

cooker

There are a million subtle examples. There are only a few places where I can cross highway 401 on foot, so if I opt not to drive, not only do I lose out on the advantages offered by driving (my choice), but I face a huge new obstacle in living as a pedestrian due to other people's choices. And if my neighbourhood does get bad air pollution to the point that I can't tolerate it, you can cavalierly suggest that I am free to move, but in fact, I am forced to move, at my expense, because of other people's choices. If I decide to hide out in a cabin in the woods on property that I own and where i am completely self-sufficient, and never show my face in public, I'm still going to have to pay property taxes even though I am asking nothing of society. If I do it on publically owned wilderness land in a secret location, I might get away with it, but chances are I will eventually be discovered and evicted or fined or whatever.

Fine, society works for me, I am making the academic point that there is no opting out where you simply just lose out. You have to pay not to play or at the very least live with added hassles created by other people where you like it or not.

Mobile 155

Has any of this changed from the time of the Hunter Gatherers to today? If you want to be in the tribe you do what the tribe expects. No matter what the system is to be part of the system you either adapt or accept the consequences for not adapting. Is this different from how you grew up at home? This sounds more like how life in a group works. Losing out is the option, how much is your choice. If it was all that important people could reduce things by living off of the grid. We see it done all the time in magazines, books and the media. You just have to weigh the cost of joining society or rejecting society. Either way you pay. How much and why is pretty much up to you. I contend the bar for normal is pretty low however and not nearly the burden some some to think it is. ( Spend the day at Walmart and then define normal.)

And admit it, your neighbor might be car free and they might claim the exhaust from the car at your house effects their freedom. And you could complain their constant preaching about it hurts your peace of mind. So much for living with other people. Dropping out is no harder than living up to responsibility.

cooker

I'm sure they filled in the gaps between the lines with low density development once cars came to the masses, but how about the original housing stock the workers occupied starting in 1901 or whatever - any of that still around?

EDIT - the original Corona was contained within a circle one mile in diameter with a central business district, so everybody lived within half a mile of the action.
EDIT2 - looks like it has lost some of its rustic charm with the freeway slashing through part of the old circle and the downtown razed for parking lots. Sad. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8862.../data=!3m1!1e3

Maelochs

Mobile 155 (is that a reference to elf-propelled artillery? The Long Tom or the Paladin?) has it more right I think.

People invent “rights” to do all kinds of stuff … but if you are in the middle of the ocean, you have no “Right to Life.” Swim, or drown. If you feel your “rights” are being violated … cry in self-pity or shout with outrage as you drown.

I will save my energy for swimming.

No one has a “right” to clean air, or clean water, or enough food, or even life. What we mean by those supposed “fundamental rights” outlined in the Constitution (that’s the U.S. Constitution, for you foreigners from Maple Syrupville ) are simply things the Founders stole from Europen Enlightenment philosphers like John Locke (I hear) and which they Founders believed no Government should be able to legally take away without Due process (life, liberty, and property were the actual “rights,” but some one of the Founding Fathers considered how handy Eminent Domain might be.)

Those “rights” were3 are remain legal fictions. They are terms of art associated with the equally fictional “Social Contract” which none of us have ever read or signed.

Lots of smart people have discussed, described, invented “rights.” The UN has a Bill of Rights which includes food, shelter, and education … where did those ‘rights” come from?

They just used the familiar term, “rights,” to describe things they found desirable. “Desires” didn’t sound so compelling, but “rights” carried weight.

You have no right to anything you don’t have, and only for so long as you have it—in reality. In jurisprudence, which is a fictional world which only vaguely rests on the real world, (as Cooker notes) one’s rights do no tend where object meets nose … because air and water pollution are ubiquitous. Polluted water ends up in all our plants, which means it is in all our foods 9which makes the whole notion of “organic” a little comical.)

Yes … if you don’t like the polluted air in a city, move.

But I really don’t want to hear Any More Whining about the choices people have to make. Part of being an adult is realizing that the world demands Constant compromise, and dealing with it. If you cannot … go away and come back when you are grown.

For one thing … we Share this world, with people who hate us and don’t care about us and don’t know about us and a very few who think like us—in a few waysm, and disagree in others.

When I hear a person talking about compromise and the cost of choice, I hear an infant whining because s/he cannot get Everything the way he or she wants it. Guess what? None Of Us Can.

Be glad, too, because some people probably want you dead. And some other definitely want to enslaved.

Life demands hard choices and sometimes isn’t fun? Someone had to go to college to learn that? All I had to do was look at TV and see starving kids in Africa, dying in front of us. Their parents sit there, holding the dying kids, Knowing they kids are going to die. Nothing they can do,… too weak to walk to food, n0 one around to help.

Didn’t take much to realize that life could demand harsh choices.

But people who have almost everything and complain because they only have 94 percent … so?

Get off your butt and learn to organize. Learn to work the political realm, or learn to work philanthropists. Or both.

The people who Really wanted to get stuff changed, devoted their lives to it … and a very few made a visible difference, and a Whole lot more lived, labored, and died just moving the whole show a little bit closer to a place where that one more effort could push things past the tipping point.

Think how many people, Black and White, worked for literally Centuries to get legislation favoring racial equality passed in the U.S. The effort started before the nation was founded, continued after the 13th Amendment was ratified, and continues to this day. A Lot of people worked all their lives and saw basically no progress, knowing that massive social change takes a Loooong time.

Don’t come here and whine. You think something needs to change … get to work.

We are all Superman behind the keyboard, but we spend all our energy on long, pointless screeds on obscure websites, and feel satisfied if we produced a good one.

The next day, the world is exactly the same as the day before, because we didn’t actually do a damn thing to improve anything.

Yeah … this world is not set up to please any one individual …. So Everyone will have to accept some compromise.

If you can’t hack it, die or change things.

Mobile 155

Some of what they call the historic areas are. I remember some of the small little homes on my grandmother's block that I was told were there since about 1900. Corona has an old section as does Huntington Beach. Only a few of the houses are still standing however and those most often are the "best" examples. I once live in one in Riverside that was built in 1893. Not fr from the Mission Inn that was built in 1902. But I have a Plat Map and some Pictures of what Anaheim looked like in 1899 to 1900. Look at the map and then scroll through the archives of the neighborhoods. https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt5k40197q/
I have more personal knowledge on Santa Ana, Fullerton, Anaheim and Orange from old books my grandmother had.

cooker

Actually, Mobile 155 is the one who brought up rights. If as he suggested, one person's right to swing his fist ends at another person's nose (which is a bad analogy to begin with) then by his logic, one person's right to discharge diesel particulate into the air should also end at the other person's nose, but for some odd reason he doesn't see the obvious parallel.

Mobile 155

It is a legal issue Cooker. Holmes was indicating where your freedom to swing your arm comes into conflict with another's liberty for protection, rather than revenge, the justice system should be employed.