Ted took the bus, buses are cheaper than trains in the US. It was someone riding dirt bikes through his property, he axed his way through a wall in the cabin and took a shit in their bathtub.
@@mrosskne He actually does make very good points. Ironically we don't even need roads for logistics since we actually have a train infrastructure setup which is actually more efficient than trucks. The only reason we don't use trains as much is because of labor unions. I first came to similar conclusions he does in this vid when I started doing parkour. You quickly realize how hard it is to take a path that is not predesigned. To a degree, that means the layout is well designed, but when the path is only efficient due to manmade barriers forcing you to go down that path, then it is a little contrived.
How are trains any better? Rails are just roads with extra steps. In fact, they have the same problems baldy described in the video, except you can't have your own train so you have to share them with other people, and the train companies have a monopoly on their use so you have no choice but to pay whatever they charge for tickets.
@@jazz_musician I disagree trains unlike cars can move numerous people far more efficiently than if every single person was confined to one vehicle each. Trains do not have the problems of widespread congestion, and are often far cheaper than having to buy a car and fill it up constantly. There is no charge for repairs, tire changes and spark plugs. Trains also tend to be far safer than traviling by car. Death from car accidents are sky-high. If you dislike the concept of train companies having a monopoly then you can support a renationalization effort.
@JC S I think that's a good point and arguably moving centers of production/housing/energy and so on closer to where people actually work is of most importance. Nevertheless I don't think any internal problems that might exist with timetabling necessarily diminish train led transport or any public transit system for that matter whether it's trams or underground subway systems. The point should be to improve them so that demand can be met without people then having to rely on cars.
I think he was talking about roads FORCING you to have a car. A better allegory would be you beeing forced to buy a speced out computer because school/university is exclusively beeing held online with 4K only Streams. What if you could not afford a good computer or your Internet was bad? Too bad, you're being forced to get it anyway
@@pieterwillembotha6719 inb4 some "essential" piece of software your company uses relies on a fucking web-based UI that lags like shit despite being able to work completely offline if needed.
This sounds very... American to me? From what I've heard, and correct me if I'm wrong, in the US it is fairly normal to have huge malls around, even in smaller-ish city. While here in sausage land (Germany), there are smaller general/grocery stores around. Yes they're mostly part of bigger chains, but the huge malls are rather the exception than the rule. Friends I have that live in bigger cities always boast about how they can walk everywhere, some dont have cars in general. While I rely on my car since I live in a more rural area.
There are many people in cities who boast about not having a car here, but the fact they have to boast anywhere tells you it's something rare and usually the result of conscious preplanning and choice. Of course American cities, due to suburbanization and housing projects are mostly not generally safe to walk around too, unless you know the place, but that's another issue.
@@LukeSmithxyz Nah I can tell you basic stuff you talk about in the vid, that's a problem (mostly) not present in Europe. I commute to my work 60 kilometers away from me every day without a car, while living in a city smaller than the 20 largest cities of Germany. I have friends who commute to university everyday (around 40 kilometers) while living in a vilage smaller than 2000 people. They don't have a license yet. It's just the infrastructure that is lacking, and some countries have been better in maintaining and improving it than others. Although I can totally understand from a US viewpoint that the development there is horrible.
@@MinecraftBPs I think public transport, especially trains, just aren't that common in the US? And don't get me wrong I fucking hate the Deutsche Bahn, but for many it is a suitable alternative to driving.
It's less of a problem in European cities because they have a long history before cars. The cities were built around people walking rather than driving and that culture continues today. That may change though, which is one of the point he is making; "optional now is mandatory later."
>Australia and Canada UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are basically the same in many ways, like public transport. In this case all are shitty
@@kot3405 Actually except very rural places in most of Australia the public transport is abundant enough to not need a car. Buses and trams in particular. It's just that most people prefer using a car (except when going deep into the city where parking is expensive), public transport is slower, and usually more expensive.
@@skyworm8006 I just suppose that it''s worse than Middle and West Europe's. I live in rural area and know people that don't have a car. Buses get almost everywhere, and if you want to get somewhere far away there are trains. I don't necessairly disagree with Luke, i just don't think it's that big of a deal over here in Europe compared to other countries.
@@skyworm8006 In Sydney the infrastructure is fucking shit. Buses and trains are constantly full, packed like sardines is a rather apt description of the current state of affairs. At least it was before covid-19. But right before that, buses would constantly skip stops because they were full. Then there was a meltdown two years ago where the entire network collapsed for three hours due to _one_ train having a roof hatch dangerously close to overhead power lines, and switches to kill the power to the lines had to be turned off manually instead of remotely because they were from the 1920s.
This is my philosophy on cars: 1) Get a fairly inexpensive yet reliable used car through a private sale (preferably built before the year 2000) 2) Drive it until something goes wrong 3) Learn to fix it yourself if you can. (This is where the pre-2000 part comes in: you CAN fix it, and it's actually fairly simple.) 4) If you can't fix it yourself, have a mechanic do it for you 5) Never worry about a car payment Roads are like the internet. Many people let them run their entire lives without even realizing it, all while blindlessly believing they are actually liberating. Thanks for the rant, I like these types of discussions.
>NOOOOO! you can't just build roads and allow economic and technological forces to take place! You will create systemic dependence!! > hehe cars go brrr
Uh-oh! :) "When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace one’s movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation." - Ted Kaczynski
I live in the Netherlands, and I feel like these things (except for the car keys of course) don't really apply here, or at least to a lesser extent. Over here people are a lot less reliant on cars for several reasons; Firstly, many things were built before cars were a thing, but in the US things are a lot newer and thus are more often built with cars in mind. Secondly, the Netherlands is a very small and densely populated country, so that also means everything has to be close together. As a result we are a lot less reliant on cars (although the reliance of cars still exists) and we are a more reliant on bikes, but walking is in most cases still a viable option, with exceptions. This is also because the Netherlands is flat, so you never have to go uphill. We have a pretty good public transport system too. I do think the Netherlands is slowly becoming more reliant on cars, and we already are for some things, work is an example that comes to mind, but I don't think that it will be as bad as in the US (at least not for a while.) Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
You forgot to mention that we were on our way to become a car country in the 70's. But due to an oil crisis, car free Sundays, and protests sparked by child death in traffic ("Stop de Kindermoord") the country became more bicycle focused.
I live in Czechia, they have a great public transportation system (7/24) and a cheap one, so here also cars are not so required.I lived in Groningen too, it was sooo lovely!
Even for the car keys man, you don't have to buy a big high tech SUV when you buy a car (if you're not american), you can simply buy a cheap car that won't have any electronic in the keys...
@@mrosskne If cars didn't exist in rural areas you would be living like a serf and have zero access to modern technology, which you can still do you if just ignore cars and move to the middle of nowhere
I think that texting and driving is the ultimate representation of our current society. Operating a dangerous and expensive, oil guzzling machine across a strip of government funded sludge that cuts through what used to be a cohesive ecosystem, all the while being too behaviorally programmed to resist the impulse to check and interact with the device in your pocket in order to share near-useless information with another person right at that moment, all the while endangering your fellow man.
I feel the same way about smartphones. They aren’t 100% mandatory, but every year it feels like we get closer and closer. Especially in university when there are apps that are required for classes that you can only use on mobile. Very depressing.
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
Coming from Finland/Europe a high speed train travel would be the obvious choice. I love the option to work while travelling and even having the options like restaurant cars and toilets in the train make car travelling very unattractive. Compared to a highway, a train track doesn’t need nearly as much space as a highway, accodents are much rarer and a train requires less energy per traveller (which means cheaper costs in total). Train tracks are also awesome way to transport cargo between big cargo hubs. There’s always need for cars, but a car shouldn’t be the default for everyone or every use.
Public transit is even worse than roads. Where roads make you reliant on centralized systems for goods and services, but promote independence in terms of owning your own method of transportation which allows you to set your own schedule, public transit both promotes centralized systems and dependence on the system for transportation and schedule setting. With a car you can decide where you go and when you go somewhere. With a train, the government or the private company that owns and operates the train decides when and where you get to go. They can even decide that they don't want you to be able to go somewhere and just not build a train stop/tracks at that location. This reliance on the government for even day-to-day functions like transportation or universal healthcare are why Europeans are generally more left leaning and authoritarian than Americans even though we share common ancestry and culture and is one of the least desirable aspects of European culture.
@@StpMakinMeChangMyNam Using public transit doesn’t mean you can’t use a car, it means that if there happens to be transit connection to a place I’m going I have the option to choose if I want to drive. For me having different options means freedom, and if public transit feels limiting to you, don’t use it. But I think that there are many people who could enjoy using a train for example. I much rather pay for someone else to focus on the traffic, while I can work, eat, sleep or drink whatever I want, but if you enjoy driving, nobody is going to stop you
@@jimbo-dev you may not rely on a train and still have a car, but many people will not. If you give the entire population a convenient option, many of them will treat it as the only option and become dependent. That's why public transit creates a weak and reliant people. Not because everyone will rely on it, but enough people will to change the general tone of society.
@@StpMakinMeChangMyNam if something breaks you figure out solutions. Being dependent on something is expected and that’s just a sign of being able to participate in society and that isn’t weakness in my opinion
@@jimbo-dev Well that's fine, you can say being dependent on other people in order to go to the grocery store, or work, or wherever isn't weak if you want. We're just fundamentally going to disagree on that. In my opinion that's pretty pathetic.
Now let's talk about how I ride my bicycle everywhere on the roads in an urban environment but still have to appease everyone around me because I'm the odd one on a bicycle and not in a car and get flipped off and called names and people don't get over for me because "roads are for cars." And they're adding bike lanes but people fight and get the construction delayed and blocked because they "don't ever see anyone on a bicycle on this road" and they "need more lanes for cars" because they "take this road everyday to work" and their car "is more important than this guy being able to get around without dying on his bicycle."
I went to USA recently and I thought I could walk places. Boy was I wrong. Missing side walks, odd looks from people and nearly passing out due to underestimated distances.
In European cities you can walk around, use collective transportation or ride a bicycle. Also there is more store diversoty. But the salaries are lower than in the USA. You have it better economically in the USA.
I adhere to the philosophy. My shop only sells right foot shoes, size 11. If you need the left foot, walk to the other shop down the street. Whoops. I meant, after the river close to the third tree. Be careful, the way is NOT paved.
It's one thing to recognize the bizarre choices we've been funneled into by having a wholly unfettered road system in the US, it's another to see the costs moved over to transport and assume that they are the source of all of our misery and that it would magically disappear if we didn't have them. You could say the exact same thing about having to use and pay for public transportation, or having an internet connection, or having to spend time with friends and neighbors. It's odd that you bring up people working cradle to the grave to pay for these things when the concept of retirement never existed before roads. Yes people spend ridiculous amounts of time and money on cars to commute long distances to work and are dependent on "the system". But that is not because the roads are evil, it is because they must incur a higher cost to acquire opportunity a problem that has existed much longer than roads have. It also presumes that we can't make changes without getting rid of roads, which we can.
The guy has tunnel vision. Despite making interesting videos, he hardly thinks for himself and just regurgitates ted kaczynski. He doesn't even know much about the world around him, to assume situation in US is something that inevitably comes from industrial revolution.
Public transportation cost is not comparable to cars. The concept of a 40 hour work week didn't exist either. If you're going to appeal to history don't cherrypick.
Luke, i usually agree and share your opinion on this kind of stuff, but i have to disagree on this one. (I hope this is not a meme video lol) First of all, what do you mean by Roads? Do you just mean like highways, or concrete high-speed paths? We need roads, roads are the physical medium in which we get to point A to point B, you would have to take a road to move somewhere, in any case. What i think you mean in the video is that you hate CARS. @1:59 "You could walk to the store", yep, thats what CARS prived us from, not roads. Originally, you could walk to the nearest store, but u would still have to walk through a road. @4:30 "You have to have a vehicle to do stuff...", Again, u mean cars, not roads Ensurance, traffic, centralization...This is all basically CAR related problems, roads have nothing to do with this xD Roads are natural to humans (you might have the argument of concrete roads here, but still), cars are not Im not sure if im missing the point here, but yeah, i heard the word car like 20 times more than roads.
Not exactly, cars are just a tool, sure Luke is not very precise by saying roads are bad, he's most likely referring to highways and land development in the US, it turns out dependency on cars are directly linked to how land is developed where bigger suburban regions makes dificult to introduce muti use terrains wich make it easier to just put a big store farther from residential places, a more dense and human design is what he is referring to, wich is actually a problem several new city planers are looking for to fix, as for the ghost towns derived from bigger, faster roads are mainly because of convenience where people just look for the fastest route and it usually means less exposure to the local markets. Theres a channel City Beautiful that talks more on this topic and why the US has an inefficient road design focus and ways on how to fix it
isn't this like saying you don't hate the heads side of the coin, you hate the tails side? commuter vehicles are useless without roadways, and roadways are pointless wastes of rock without cars
the thing im most upset about is roads have plowed over so much wild land, so much habitats, every insect run over trying to cross the road, every bug squished mid flight, every insect extinct, tragic
Glad someone mentioned this. During an early morning drive from central Virginia to Washington DC, I passed more than a dozen animals of all sizes, tragically killed by of our high-speed metal monsters that are foreign to their environment. Made me incredibly sad.
"There's something adventurous and independent about driving on this road", he says as he shows thousands of other people driving the same road. At least there were no traffic jams.
You can get by without a car if the city is big enough and you live sufficiently "inside" of it in the US too. I used to live in the US, but in a suburban area, and i definitely needed a car. And sure, living in a dense urban environment might be a solution to this, but Luke is not about that, and neither am I Now I live in Europe too, but in a rural area, and I need a car to go places and get a lot of things (there is a small family-run store where I live, but they obviously dont have everything I would ever need or want.) There is some public transport in my area, but it sucks. But that's not the point. Public transport or your own car, they still require roads; or rather, because there are roads you absolutely need buses and cars because they way things have gone up to this point in time and the problems that's caused, which is what Luke talks about in the video Europe or America, The Great Road Question remains
One thing I actually love about my zone (aka, the pseudo-rural Portugal 5 minutes from the capital) is that I can walk to all supermarkets. Lidl, Aldi, Continente, a Chinese shop, primary and middle schools in 5 minutes and a high school in around 20 minutes, a Pool in 20 minutes of walking, a lot of cool cafés. And because it is Portugal, you can go from site to side of the country in around 6 hours, starting in the north, ending in the south.
the problems you mention about roads seem too usa specific. I've never had to drive 20 minutes to go grocery shopping because everywhere I evre lived I had a super market within 5-10 minute walking distance due to the fact that hyper markets are not the norm and supermarket chains can build small locations that have everything you need everywhere around town
The reason Wallmarts are built 20 minutes away isn't because everyone has cars. It's because of zoning laws. In other words, you're not allowed to build a Wallmart in the city because that's a "residential area". I live in Bucharest, and we have one of the highest number of cars per capita in Europe. And even with that it's hard to find a place without a convenience store at every corner or with a general store more than 15 minutes of walking away.
I think this is a particularly American problem. When I lived in Germany I could walk everywhere and my family almost never used the car. Nowadays I live in a small town in Mexico, within 1km of my house there are 3 general stores, a butcher, two drugstores, a gym, two restaurants (not chains), a laundry, a hairdresser and a shoe store. If it weren't for my job I would have no need to leave my neighbourhood. The parts of Mexico where you actually need a car to do basic stuff are usually affluent cities like Merida that are filled with retired Americans and New Rich idiots who want to live like Americans.
Most modern cars are built so that they need a very good quality road to move on or else they get stuck. Most countries also have laws that make the cars with real off-road capabilities legally unroadworthy. Often it's also illegal to drive anywhere else than on road. That's how we are forced to use roads when traveling long distances on dry land.
I think one of the reason people complaining the "modern life" is that they don't have actual experience of the old days. As a person who born after 80's in Shanghai China, I experienced the difference. When I was a kid, there's no telephone, very few cars and the public transportation is very inconvenient. After 30+ years, looking back those days, and look the life now, I feel lucky that now we can similar life experience like some developed countries. although there are some problems like traffic jam, people relations... etc, but what we have now like the roads, the technology brought us are really make the life better. Human society is always fragile, it's not like if you back to the old life style, it would be not fragile. Overall I think it's not easy for human being to reach the current stage, so it's better to appreciate it, adopt it than to revert it. Thanks.
Summary: Roads lead to consolidation. Consolidation leads to socio-economic "single point of failure" (either unplanned or deliberate) products and services which are beyond the capacity of the majority to replace. Corollary: Personally, all of us moving our work to the cloud is fantastic. Until the next big solar flare. Technology pandemic. No internet, no datacenters, fried satellites, no cellphones. A true apocalypse.
You just made a good point here, roads can easily make us way too dependant but it would be also good to hear from you what can be done to change the situation for the better
the problem isn't roads it's cars and minimum requirements for businesses to build "free" parking which pushes everything farther apart making cars a requirement to get around. the solution is parking maximums, public transit, mixed zoning.
This sounds more like a problem with cars, because roads and therefore car-centric cities came after the car became popular. In words, this is an argument for public transit not against roads lol
@Evermore only if I were to haul regularly over a non-walkable/rideable distance. Don't see any need for a car for most people here. Hand-/bicycle-carriges can get you a long way in the City or in villages. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere or have goods to transport, that are too heavy to carry, there is really no need.
I think the 20 minute grocery drive is more a failure of city planning rather than a concequence of roads. Roads do enable central planners to get away with bad work more easily though.
We've seen the same thing happen with smartphones recently. The last couple of years everything is moving to smartphones (think of banking for instance) and institutions are pushing this move to smartphone, I'm feeling that they'll be mandatory in a couple years time too. There are banks who don't have physical offices anymore here.
I think we should get rid of not roads, but cars, keep busses, and add in trains That way we have access to fast easy (and safer) travel than we do today Without uprooting everything
@@tdhfc no car is just a hassle and only useful if you live or do business in rural areas. Most people move to big cities because you are less dependant on cars and don't need deal with the expenses of owning a car. Cars have lot of expenses like driving license, gas, repairs and parking
the answer is to bring semi-autonomous broad-purpose manufacturing machines to small businesses and communities autarky at a community level, with the same benefits of current scale economies 3d printers are the first device of this category, but their purpose is too narrow and their efficacy isnt yet competitive
This exactly. Its not freedom to need a car, its freedom to have the option of having a car. 15 minutes cites are a really good idea but conservatives go in their head that you would be allowed to go further than 15 minutes, when in reality its that you dont NEED to go further than 15 minutes.
I think the major problem is the lack of sense of community. There’s no loyalty to the immediate community. This trend has been going this way for a long time. People don’t identify with the small town they come from, but rather the broader area, state or even country. This lack of immediate community sense has been detrimental; which made the shift of the governments having a greater influence on the individual. It’s sad seeing people identifying with the governments rather than their immediate community.
I am over three score years old. I have been raising pretty much every point you have made here repeatedly for about twenty years. Typically people look at me like a grumpy, senile, old man lost in a modern world and shaking his stick at progress. (Not that I have a stick) I have no idea how old you are but I'm glad to hear that someone much younger than me has noticed the same issues. As it happens I decided to give up the car about twenty years ago, having noticed I was spending half my life sitting in traffic jams on motorways in the UK. That ended up in a move to a different city in a different country, Helsinki, where it is still possible to walk to the local store and take a ten minute bus ride to work.
>abolishes city roads and brings back small town centers with all your needs >owns a small house and fertile land >gets snowed in one winter and starves to death because he cant walk to the store for a month without getting frostbite
You missed a huge criticism that cars & roads have done immense damage to proper, healthy communal living and to relationships in general. A major cause of atomization and for validation of the liberal individualist mindset.
This is mostly an american problem however. It's got to do with your "bigger is better" culture that hates minimalism. I've only been to Florida, but it fits your description so well.
Where I live, some towns still have local grocery stores, but going between towns without a car is a nightmare because a lot of roads don't even have a shoulder. Commutes that could easily be done with a bicycle are turned into Russian roulette because you have to share the road with a 2-ton guided missile. Even mopeds aren't safe because they top out at 30mph while most rural roads are at least 45mph. This means that, at the very minimum you need a 250cc motorcycle, which costs ~$4000 new, not including the costs of safety gear, insurance, training, risk...
This might sound ridiculous at first, but you can bet that the day my boss told me they were moving the offices to a complex outside the city, triplicating the time it took for me to go to work and back every day... by the gods I raged.
