Hi Weird Harold,
This thread has been surprising in some ways.
We agree on a lot of things, but trying to blame IC engines for all the current sins of the world seems a bit much.
Suggesting Americans are at fault for liking privately owned vehicles seems bizarre when privately owned and operated vehicles have been around for millennia.
Your praise of RR seems odd given how quickly privately owned and operated RR carriages and trains came along; the royals and rich of Europe had them in the 1840's, they were widespread in the US by the 1850's, for example George B McClellan had a private car as one of the Illinois Central RR's Vice President's.
Listing all the rich and famous who exploited the RR for private purposes in its first century could take longer than any poster here should have to read.
Restricting ownership of any power, transportation or communication system from the general public and popular majority because some elitist thinks it's bad for some reason demonstrates the danger of popular fads especially those espoused by the 'chattering classes' who appear to prefer authoritarian leaders who agree with their programed biases than really benefiting the 'common people' they profess to want to help.
Given the expression of concern over the relative recent pollution expressed in the series, RFC is both mindful of it and has inner circles characters seeking to minimize it as much as possible, so trust him to deal with it.
Fretting over how much coal or oil when he's already stated there's plenty of both, especially for an oil based economy seems silly and not very observant of the textev.
Given how worried people are over RFC being able to finish the current series arc in a couple of books after HFQ, worrying about a transitory period in Safehold's energy history seems rather moot, especially if its part of what's cut to meet Tor's size limits.
L
Weird Harold wrote:Zakharra wrote: *nods* Mass transit just isn't practical for most of the US either. It's only a practical solution for large cities. I live in the countryside as well and there is no way that mass transit, or even taking a train/bus into town would work (you'd have to take multiple trips just to get everything you need if you were shopping in bulk). You can pack a car or truck with what your getting and make it all in one trip. That's not possible with public transportation.
You can fit more into an inter-city train's baggage car than you can in even a 2.5 ton farm truck, let alone a "personal vehicle" of any size.
A mass-transit, electric powered system would require a different mindset that the post-WWII "Me First" attitude of Americans. Of course, Amazon and E-Bay might well dominate the Market-place much sooner than the R/W.
In the era of J.C Penney, Montgomery Ward, and other mail-order companies, it was possible to order everything from diapers for the baby to highway bridges for the town -- it just wasn't possible to get overnight delivery.
It really wasn't necessary for most rural people to go any further than the nearest railway station.
Zakharra wrote:It seems like a fair number of people here hate the IC engine with a passion for some reason. So I'd like to ask those that don't like it, WHY don't you like the IC engine? Despite the problems an IC engine has, it is extremely convenient for a lot of people. It frees up people from needing to live within walking distance of their work or a railroad. It seems like thew benefits outweigh the costs to a large degree.
I don't hate Internal Combustion Engines, I hate the fact that they turn fossil fuels into air pollution and use up (burn) a finite resource that has better uses.
In the real world, I'm an advocate of converting the installed base of IC engines to Hydrogen or some other renewable, less polluting fuel. I'm an advocate of rational, economically feasible, mass transit both inner-city and inter-city.
Safehold has the opportunity to avoid the installed base of IC engines that so limits real-world solutions to fuel shortages and ecological issues.