Winners and losers in a contracting world

[Little John]

In most cases trains will be more efficient. Steel wheels on steel rails have far less friction.
An electric train has effectively infinite range, whereas a battery vehicle has a range limited by battery capacity.
Less staff needed by railways, a train with one or two staff can carry 1,000 passengers. that would need at least a dozen buses each with a driver.
Or nearly 1,000 cars, consider the road space taken up.
A freight train can carry 1,000 tons or more, that would need several dozen trucks for road transport.

Trains are also faster in many cases.

http://energyskeptic.com/2016/what-is-m ... l-or-auto/

Since the 1970s, studies have always shown buses are more energy efficient than rail (and cars and airplanes).

After the 1973 and 1979 energy crises hundreds of energy efficiency studies were done but they don’t come up in internet searches since they are images (see May 1976 Bibliography for Transportation energy conservation, Transportation Center Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, Il at http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/675 ... 2648/m1/1/ ). Yet despite the inevitable decline of oil production, similar studies are rarely done today.

One of these early studies by Mittal (1977) found if every seat had a passenger, a bus was by far the most energy efficient transportation mode (energy intensity BTU seat/mile):

Bus 500 Rail 1000 Compact car 1100 Average car 1600 Airplane 3600

A compact car comes close to being nearly as good as rail if all 4 seats are taken. When Mittal did this study, the average compact car had an average of 20 mpg. But the best subcompact cars would have beaten rail since their combined 1977 city/highway miles per gallon were quite high: Honda Civic 44 (in 2016 at best 35), Honda Accord 42 (in 2016 at best 31), Toyota Corolla 41 (in 2016 at best 32), and so on (USDOE/AFDC 1977).

Based on actual ridership, rather than all seats filled, buses were still the most energy efficient, and compact autos (2.4 passengers) were even more energy efficient than trains:

Bus 1100, Compact auto 1900, Rail (Metroliner) 2000, Average Auto 2650, Rail intercity 3500, Airplane 6500

The Mittal study found that autos are most efficient from 50 to 60 mph. But passenger trains reach peak energy efficiency at cruising speeds in the range of 20 to 30 mph, so to increase ridership and get people out of their cars, trains operate at faster, energy-inefficient speeds.

[vtsnowedin]

Then add in that train and bus travel involve small trips at both ends between your door and the station or bus stop and again at the other other end between station and office or store. Imagine bringing home two weeks of groceries on a train or bus that fit nicely in the trunk or back seat of your car.
Americans love their automobiles because of this utility and the freedom it gives the operators. We may well give up ICE engines and switch to Full EVs as long as we can park them in our driveway or garage ready to go on our own personal schedules instead of having to catch a train or bus on theirs.

[fuzzy]

Then add in that train and bus travel involve small trips at both ends between your door and the station or bus stop and again at the other other end between station and office or store. Imagine bringing home two weeks of groceries on a train or bus that fit nicely in the trunk or back seat of your car.
Americans love their automobiles because of this utility and the freedom it gives the operators. We may well give up ICE engines and switch to Full EVs as long as we can park them in our driveway or garage ready to go on our own personal schedules instead of having to catch a train or bus on theirs.

Local buses, trams and trains used to work well when they have a critical mass of users and economic routes. People used to have the choice of local shops and high streets. It is unstable as any decline below critical numbers avalanches the problems and the network fails.

[emordnilap]

Lack of a car never used to be a problem in the UK. Indeed, many people still never dream of learning to drive.

[kenneal - lagger]

Those figures from LJ above are from 1977 and are way out of date and relate to the US and, probably, to US diesel trains rather than modern electric ones used both in the US, UK and Europe.

This Wikipedia article also brings in the passenger capacity of various forms of transport which is very important if you add the energy content of a road widening scheme into the energy use of a car.

Most rail infrastructure is relatively old whereas most main roads have had considerable widening and junction improvements made over the last few years to meet the increased demand. Spending on road improvements and maintenance vastly exceeds that for rail.

As VT pointed out there are usually further journeys at each end of a rail or bus trip but these could be carried out on foot by scooter or bike and by bus. Carrying shopping home can be avoided by online booking of deliveries from most supermarkets in the UK.

[UndercoverElephant]

OK...trying to move this on. I am planning on posting this elsewhere, and I am hoping to improve it a bit first with feedback from this forum. What do I need to add?

Let's imagine a few years from now it has become widely understood that catastrophic climate change can no longer be stopped, and that the 20th century pro-globalisation world order, including the growth-based fiat-money economic system, are unsustainable, unfixable and in the process of collapsing. Though the contemporary political spectrum will still exist, the whole thing will now be placed into a new context of serious existential threat, and that will “focus minds�, opening up the possibility of radical political and economic change. I have been politically homeless for over thirty years. Now, for the first time, I can sense an opportunity for very real change.

This change must be a package – it must offer a whole new system, which is coherent and based on science, reason and realism, not hysterical pseudoscience, emotion and idealism. The existing Green Politics is not fit for purpose and must be comprehensively re-assesed. In the autumn of 2019, with the UK politically deadlocked over brexit, green party leader Caroline Lucas called for “an all-female cross-party emergency cabinet to stop brexit�. There will be no more perfect illustration of the bankruptcy of contemporary green politics. Brexit had already been voted for in a national referendum, so she was calling for something anti-democratic (because educated middle-class liberals are morally superior and know best, right?), and conducting pointless gender warfare at the same time (because women know best, right?). Why all female? This has precisely nothing to do with either brexit or environmentalism. How could she have thought this was a sane, helpful intervention? All it did was make the Green Party look stupid. The problem is that she is a middle-class globalist intersectional leftist saying things that have very little appeal outside that demographic. Caroline Lucas doesn't offer a way forwards; she's a dinosaur.

The new politics must reach out to as much of the political spectrum as possible. It will necessarily defy the existing categorisations of “left� and “right�. The goal must be to soften the impact of global collapse, and to work towards long-term sustainability at a national level. Not anti-globalist, but recognising that the tide of politics has turned against globalisation, that meaningful global agreements on things like climate change are likely to remain elusive, and that we now need to embark on major reform at the sovereign level where real change is possible without international agreement. Nation states have insufficient power to fix the world, but theoretically they can at least try to fix themselves.

Many people will object strongly to some elements of the package, but the goal must be for them to understand why the whole package is necessary. There are massive compromises required, but the prize is the avoidance of total collapse, and a real chance of survival for them, their communities and their nation.

What needs to go:

Growth-based economics. Refusal to accept the limits to growth of economic activity, consumption and population.

Offshore banking. The existing arrangement is a global plutocracy, where the very rich opt out of national systems and hide their vast wealth in tax havens. These have to be shut down or cut off.

Opaque central banking. An end to widespread ignorance about what money is, how it is created and what central banks do. Possibly a completely new money system.

“Consumerism� and the use of the belief that happiness comes from consumption and status symbols in order to provoke unsustainable economic activity.

Planned obsolescence, forcing people to continually throw stuff away and buy the new version.

Leftist intersectional politics, especially third-wave feminism. The demonisation of straight, white males must end. It must be acknowledged that, at least in the western world, we already have gender equality. We''ve had a century of progress towards women's rights, during which time absolutely nothing has been done to fix historical gender imbalances that worked against men. Society needs to move on now, because we've made absolutely no progress towards real sustainability, and we've run out of time. The left's culture war cannot be part of the new politics. This is absolutely necessary if it is to have any appeal to the rest of the political spectrum.

Attempts to keep elderly people alive for as long as possible, even when they have very poor quality of life (and in some cases actually want to die). End of life care is already a huge drain on our health system – it costs a vast amount, and provides very little of anything worth having. It also robs people of inheriting wealth at a time when that inheritance could make a critical difference to their life chances.


What needs to replace it:

Explicit recognition of the limits to growth, including population growth. This is NOT optional or negotiable, and must include a maximum 2-child policy and tight control of immigration. This policy will meet stiff opposition but that resistance must be broken. It must be crystal clear that any compromise here puts us at the top of a slippery slope that will destroy the entire project. If there is one fundamental mistake that got us into this mess, it was a past failure to accept the limits to growth. Both the right and the left have been guilty, the right on economic grounds, and the left on idealistic/humanitarian grounds.

Negative growth economics. Somehow we need to create an economic system which is designed to cope with a falling population and long-term contraction in economic activity.

Wealth/land taxes designed to reduce economic inequality by levelling-down the top. Levelling down the obscene wealth at the top can easily be achieved with political will. Levelling-up the entire bottom will be somewhere between extremely difficult and completely impossible.

Manufacturing of goods designed to last (be repairable, recyclable). We need a legal framework and/or major tax incentives to force manufacturers to supply products which are designed to make society sustainable instead of the maximise profit in a free market which has no concept of ecological sustainability.

Prioritisation of quality of life over quantity of life. Recognition that for most people, quality of life after the age of 80 is poor. Provision of dignity in death. In reality this means choosing not to provide expensive life-extending medical treatment to people whose lives are no longer worth living anyway.

What needs to stay:

Some sort of meritocracy (true meritocracy, not plutocracy). Fincancial/monetary system redesigned to allow genuine meritocracy and fairness (though not socialism as most people currently understand it). There will still be winners and losers in society. This cannot be eliminated completely, partly because people aren't born equal (in terms of natural abilities) and because some people work much harder than others, and partly because we are talking about an era of global breakdown and collapse. Some elements on the left instinctively don't like this – they want equality of outcome for all people, not just equality of opportunity. That was unrealistic in the world as we've known it, and it is just an unrealistic in a collapsing world. We are desperately going to need innovation, so there has to be some possibility for people to be (relatively) upwardly-mobile. We can't expect people to work their backsides off out of the good of their hearts, while other people site on their backsides leeching off the system (yes, there are some people who do this). This unavoidably means some people will be downwardly-mobile too.

Democracy. Too risky to get rid of that safety mechanism.

International trade of some description, and a monetary system to allow that to be possible.

[Little John]

You say that any approach must be based on "based on science, reason and realism".

Nope

It must be based on the broad self interests of the majority.

"Science", "reason" and "realism" are certainly tools in servicing the broad self interest of the majority. But, they are equally tools that may be put to the service of the narrow self interest of a minority, as is currently progressively more the case. And everyone can now see that. Which is precisely why current beurgois appeals to "reason", "science" and "realism" are now so despised by the majority.

If the above is not done, then you may be assured that the narrow self interest of every man for himself will be the order of the day.

But, that's because these concepts have no intrinsic truth to them anyway when push comes to shove in terms of the fundamental economics of life. If being unreasonable and unscientific serves one's narrow interests more effectively than being reasonable and scientific in a world where the interests of the majority to which one belongs are not being served more broadly, that is being "realistic" in terms of those fundamental economics I mentioned.

[UndercoverElephant]

You say that any approach must be based on "based on science, reason and realism".

Nope

It must be based on the broad self interests of the majority.

It is not in the broad self-interests of the majority to base it on anything else. If it isn't realistic (in a scientific sense, not political), then it is useless. So that is a false dichotomy.

All I mean is we have to get real, and it should be obvious from the rest of agenda that it is designed to appeal to the majority of ordinary people (once they accept the old system is f***ed).

[kenneal - lagger]

I have deleted the parts which I broadly agree with and will comment on these following parts of your post, UE.

Could you also provide definition of the word intersectional, please?

The new politics must reach out to as much of the political spectrum as possible. It will necessarily defy the existing categorisations of “left� and “right�. The goal must be to soften the impact of global collapse, and to work towards long-term sustainability at a national level. Not anti-globalist, but recognising that the tide of politics has turned against globalisation, that meaningful global agreements on things like climate change are likely to remain elusive, and that we now need to embark on major reform at the sovereign level where real change is possible without international agreement. Nation states have insufficient power to fix the world, but theoretically they can at least try to fix themselves.

I agree that the new politics must reach out but if we do that we will end up with many different parties with slightly differing views: think Labour Brexit, Labour Remainer, LJ socialist, UE socialist and Momentum for just one part of the spectrum. You then end up with not just Nation States not having the power to fix the world but not having the power to fix themselves. Think how Israeli politics is faction riven and how very small parties can have inordinate influence on major ones often to the detriment of the nation and the world.

We must all learn to work together while acknowledging minor differences. What is needed is to have more individuals involved in our political parties, maybe with a few more but hopefully not, in order to get a more general consensus of ideas in those parties.

Also we need to ban corporate donations and bribes and the employment of politicians in senior positions after retirement from politics as a bribe; the current lobbying system must go and only overt approaches to politicians should be allowed. Also the revolving door between the tops of the civil service and industry must go.

What needs to go:

.........we already have gender equality. We've had a century of progress towards women's rights, during which time absolutely nothing has been done to fix historical gender imbalances that worked against men. Society needs to move on now, because we've made absolutely no progress towards real sustainability, and we've run out of time.

I think you're going to turn off about half your audience with that UE.

Yes, the west has made great strides towards gender equality but there is still a glass ceiling in many circumstances and it certainly cannot be said that women have equality in pay yet. I would leave out the bit about men's equality; the disadvantages that a few men find are nowhere near those that many more women experience.

The left's culture war cannot be part of the new politics. This is absolutely necessary if it is to have any appeal to the rest of the political spectrum.

Again you're losing a large part of your audience by only addressing the faults of the left. There are almost as many faults on the right which would need addressing as well.

You are showing up a major fault of the left and that is the anger shown towards each other by many leftists over seemingly minor differences in approach and emphasis which is one of the major points which turn people off politics. The endless LJ/UE arguments (fights?) on this board being an example of this.

Attempts to keep elderly people alive for as long as possible, even when they have very poor quality of life (and in some cases actually want to die). End of life care is already a huge drain on our health system – it costs a vast amount, and provides very little of anything worth having. It also robs people of inheriting wealth at a time when that inheritance could make a critical difference to their life chances.

More needs to be made of the voluntary nature of this culling of the old or you will lose an ever enlarging proportion of your audience. Something more along this line might be better -

At a certain age ( to be decided after a poll and regularly updated) people should be asked if they wish to have a "Do Not Resuscitate" order placed on their medical file if resuscitating would leave that person bedridden or mentally incapable after treatment.

Perhaps it might be better to leave out the monetary advantages for the young. It doesn't make the young look very good in the eyes of their older relatives!

What needs to replace it:

Explicit recognition of the limits to growth, including population growth. This is NOT optional or negotiable, and must include a maximum 2-child policy and tight control of immigration. This policy will meet stiff opposition but that resistance must be broken. It must be crystal clear that any compromise here puts us at the top of a slippery slope that will destroy the entire project. If there is one fundamental mistake that got us into this mess, it was a past failure to accept the limits to growth. Both the right and the left have been guilty, the right on economic grounds, and the left on idealistic/humanitarian grounds.

A two child policy is not needed as the education of women over most of the world has resulted in a de facto decrease in the birth rate to under 2.3 children per couple, i.e. below the replacement rate. The increase in population due until 2050 is as a result of existing young people coming to child bearing age. The population will naturally decrease after 2050 so no two child policy is necessary. The population might decrease quicker if certain religions didn't advocate the power of men over women and be anti birth control: those religions know which I am referring to without naming names.

Also the left have been just as guilty in constantly striving for economic growth.

Wealth/land taxes designed to reduce economic inequality by levelling-down the top. Levelling down the obscene wealth at the top can easily be achieved with political will. Levelling-up the entire bottom will be somewhere between extremely difficult and completely impossible.

This will be a problem, as it always has been, due to the mobility of wealth unless the taxation can be achieved on a global scale. But we come up against the problem of countries which wish to attract free money by deducting a slightly lower level of taxation; think Ireland v's UK. Once a serious discussion on the matter starts in any one country the wealthy start to move their money to a safe haven so by the time laws are enacted the money is gone and untaxable.

Serious persuasion is needed to convince the seriously wealthy that their balls won't be cut off or their long lost Dad won't think less of them by having less money. That is about the level of it with many, not all, extremely wealthy people.

Manufacturing of goods designed to last (be repairable, recyclable). We need a legal framework and/or major tax incentives to force manufacturers to supply products which are designed to make society sustainable instead of the maximise profit in a free market which has no concept of ecological sustainability.

Maximising profit on an article means that it is produced as efficiently as possible. What we have to do is cost environmental and social requirements, which are currently left out, into the equation. This will add cost to all products making them more expensive and less likely to be thrown away after a short time and make their repair much more economic.

Prioritisation of quality of life over quantity of life. Recognition that for most people, quality of life after the age of 80 is poor.

That is not true. For some people, and that is getting smaller as medical and nutritional advances take place, the quality of life might not be good but for the majority, in this country anyway, quality of life can be very good.

What needs to stay:

Some sort of meritocracy (true meritocracy, not plutocracy).

A wages spread of five to one is thought by many to be a fair spread. The Ecology Building Society for many years worked on this basis with the CEO not earning more than five times the lowest paid member of staff. As the CEO, who had been in that position since the start of the society, came up for retirement though it was found impossible to recruit a suitably qualified person on that level of salary so the spread had to be increased.

That sort of thing is necessary but will have to be legally imposed with no loopholes. It will cause mass unemployment in the executive jet, luxury car, luxury yacht, even large yacht and McMansion markets though.

[Little John]

Ken Neil. Yes it can be said women have equal pay for equal work. We can say this because it is the law.

You are showing up a major fault of the left and that is the anger shown towards each other by many leftists over seemingly minor differences in approach and emphasis which is one of the major points which turn people off politics. The endless LJ/UE arguments (fights?) on this board being an example of this.

And you are showing a major ignorance in the petite bourgeoisie of both the "left" and "right" in this country by laughably thinking this is still about Left and Right

[kenneal - lagger]

You say that any approach must be based on "based on science, reason and realism".

Nope

It must be based on the broad self interests of the majority.

Nope

It must be based on the broad self interests of the majority while taking the interests of the minority into account.

Unless you do that you have no better system than we nominally have now. I say nominally because we supposedly have a system which works for the majority, i.e. a democracy, but that democracy has been subverted to the interests of the few very rich. We need a system which is fair to all which means that there should not be anyone who is either very rich or very poor. But we also have to recognise the right of people to live a tribal and or subsistence lifestyle independent of our "civilised" systems even if they might be seen as impoverished to our western eye.

[kenneal - lagger]

LJ, I realised at the age of sixteen or seventeen in the mid 1960s when my best mate for life up to that point went off to work as an apprentice and joined the Union that the "working man" in this country is deeply conservative. He suddenly became very right wing in his attitudes towards immigrants and gays, non of whom worked where he did, while before we hadn't spoken about either matters.

The local union was also of the same opinions even if the national union was ambivalent or maintained a strict silence on these matters so they didn't disturb the brothers. It would seem that the upper working class has always looked down on their brothers lower down the caste system as people who you tolerate and organise so that you can keep your own elevated position and power: left wing paternalism, Stalinism?

[kenneal - lagger]

Ken Neil. Yes it can be said women have equal pay for equal work. We can say this because it is the law. .........

Please reread as I certainly did not say that. What I did say was

"and it certainly cannot be said that women have equality in pay yet."

This is even while it is law and that is why so many women will be incensed that a man is saying that they have equality.

[UndercoverElephant]

I have deleted the parts which I broadly agree with and will comment on these following parts of your post, UE.

Could you also provide definition of the word intersectional, please?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

I agree that the new politics must reach out but if we do that we will end up with many different parties with slightly differing views: think Labour Brexit, Labour Remainer, LJ socialist, UE socialist and Momentum for just one part of the spectrum. You then end up with not just Nation States not having the power to fix the world but not having the power to fix themselves. Think how Israeli politics is faction riven and how very small parties can have inordinate influence on major ones often to the detriment of the nation and the world.

Hmmm. I am not sure what you are saying here. The whole point of this exercise is to come up with a package that works as a package, and for a broad enough demographic to win political power.

We must all learn to work together while acknowledging minor differences.

I can't work with people who defend offshore banking. Some people need to be taken out of the equation, politically. The people at Davos won't be in control this time.

Also we need to ban corporate donations and bribes and the employment of politicians in senior positions after retirement from politics as a bribe; the current lobbying system must go and only overt approaches to politicians should be allowed. Also the revolving door between the tops of the civil service and industry must go.

Agreed.

I think you're going to turn off about half your audience with that UE.

Maybe now. I am not sure that will be the case when collapse has become an acknowledged part of reality.

Yes, the west has made great strides towards gender equality but there is still a glass ceiling in many circumstances and it certainly cannot be said that women have equality in pay yet.

Yes they do, or very close. The "gender pay gap" is a myth. It refers to a difference in overall pay, without taking account of hours worked, qualifications, experience or even what sort of job is being done. This is what I mean by "gender warfare". It's dishonest, and an attempt to discriminate against men. Something has to change here.

The left's culture war cannot be part of the new politics. This is absolutely necessary if it is to have any appeal to the rest of the political spectrum.

Again you're losing a large part of your audience by only addressing the faults of the left. There are almost as many faults on the right which would need addressing as well.

I have not just addressed the faults of the left though. I am saying we need a wealth tax and land reform and an end to offshore banking, for example. What other faults of the right would you want to see addressed?

You are showing up a major fault of the left and that is the anger shown towards each other by many leftists over seemingly minor differences in approach and emphasis which is one of the major points which turn people off politics.

I am saying that this has to end, not trying to continue it. That is exactly why the culture war has to end - you won't get a better example of what you are talking about than the argument about TERFs. I am saying that whole framing of leftist politics must go.

More needs to be made of the voluntary nature of this culling of the old or you will lose an ever enlarging proportion of your audience. Something more along this line might be better -

At a certain age ( to be decided after a poll and regularly updated) people should be asked if they wish to have a "Do Not Resuscitate" order placed on their medical file if resuscitating would leave that person bedridden or mentally incapable after treatment.

That is fair enough.

A two child policy is not needed as the education of women over most of the world has resulted in a de facto decrease in the birth rate to under 2.3 children per couple, i.e. below the replacement rate.

I disagree in the strongest terms possible. It is absolutely needed, both to get the population down as fast as possible, and to serve as a potent reminder to everybody as to how we got into this mess and ensure the problem is never repeated. This is a deal-breaker for me. Population control is absolutely necessary.

This will be a problem, as it always has been, due to the mobility of wealth unless the taxation can be achieved on a global scale.

That is exactly why tax havens must be shut down, yes.

But we come up against the problem of countries which wish to attract free money by deducting a slightly lower level of taxation; think Ireland v's UK. Once a serious discussion on the matter starts in any one country the wealthy start to move their money to a safe haven so by the time laws are enacted the money is gone and untaxable.

Then this problem must be anticipated and solved.

Serious persuasion is needed to convince the seriously wealthy that their balls won't be cut off or their long lost Dad won't think less of them by having less money. That is about the level of it with many, not all, extremely wealthy people.

Not persuasion, no. They must be forced to comply, whether they like it or not.

Maximising profit on an article means that it is produced as efficiently as possible. What we have to do is cost environmental and social requirements, which are currently left out, into the equation. This will add cost to all products making them more expensive and less likely to be thrown away after a short time and make their repair much more economic.

OK thanks, I will add that.

What needs to stay:

Some sort of meritocracy (true meritocracy, not plutocracy).

It will cause mass unemployment in the executive jet, luxury car, luxury yacht, even large yacht and McMansion markets though.

Those markets aren't needed. They do nothing for sustainability.

[UndercoverElephant]

We need a system which is fair to all which means that there should not be anyone who is either very rich or very poor.

We may not be able to get rid of the very poor, given the context of collapse. We can try, but have to recognise it may be impossible.