This took some time to write.
I've been gone for 2 days, but I'm back. So here are my answers.
This is the type of thing that I don't understand when it comes to Chomskians.
When you say, "Most of the traffic though would be train based, because it makes economic sense. Think of this in terms of public policy."
Public policy? Who comes up with public policy given that if you accept Chomsky's preference for anarcho-syndicalism (or libertarian socialism or whatever you choose to call it) then you are going to have to entrust transportation policy to an institution which you simply hope won't act in its own interest.
And at the same time you are saying that it should not be up to people to drive cars if they wish but you are going to have to somehow persuade everyone that travelling by train is better. Are trains necessary in an anarcho-syndalicalist world, by the way? Would it make economic sense to have people commuting hundreds or even thousands of kilometres? Are you suggesting some kind of planned economy? And if so, who is going to make the decisions?
You're misunderstanding what an ideology means here. I for example vote democrat and don't trust republicans on... 99% of the issues. Now lets say the republicans are voting on killing either 50 percent of illegal immigrants or 100 percent of illegal immigrants I would prefer the lesser of two evils so if it came down to it I would lobby for the 50 percent while doing my best at hiding as many as I can in my basement. You see my point. I don't exclude myself from choosing something just because I don't have my idealistic choice. And to answer your question who comes up with that public policy, easy, senators, congressmen and think tanks (and sometimes universities and political science trade schools). And even though I think the gov't has an entrenched corruption problem I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And for the record Chomsky thinks the whole anarchist ideology that he loves so much is pretty much a pipe dream and won't happen. He doesn't actually lobby for it, he just sees it as an ideal alternative given his hippy we should all love each other mores. There's a reality out there and we have to function in it. And not a planned economy, New York State has a pretty good train system connecting Manhattan to DC to New Jersey, and we don't have a planned economy here... Well in fact the truth is we here in America do have a planned economy it's called DARPA which does all the expensive research (that companies won’t risk the money on) to grow the economy under the guise of military development, well that and subsidies (corporate welfare) to companies such as Boeing (which would collapse without welfare) So yea the whole US is a free market enterprise is bullsheet rhetoric aimed towards the unenlightened (which is most)
Well, if you say so, Chomsky thinks the nation state is merely a set of institutions made up of greedy opportunists. Okay, but where would he stand on such issues as independence movements for occupied countries. In some way it would seem to make a mockery of the distinction between occupied nations and any other nations as everyone would be in the same boat.
Well that is a good question, First he's and me are not absolutists.(then I would be an anti-gov't libertarian)These institutions provide a service and if they would magically disappear the whole country would starve to death within months. Criticism doesn't mean I want it all gone, just some things should be better. We as humans should be better custodians of humanity. Now the way you would rate these movements would be on their legitimacy at home(like a democracy for example) And their place in the big picture, meaning context. It's not ideal(nothing really is) But if you look at occupied palestine for example. You have a seemingly extremist gov't being elected in Gaza and as soon as they are they're punished by sanctions by the US because the people voted against US interests. So, by implication we don't like democracies if they don't vote the way we like. So yea that’s where I stand, in ambivalence... With my democratic ideals and a population that isn't sympathetic towards me. So yea, no simple with us or against us mentality.
And as for Europeans and British being "more educated" or "politically active" I would like to know what evidence you give for that.
Well the education system in the us has been a joke for the longest time, I think we might be ranked 18th in the world(yes the number one country in the world is ranked 18th on such an important statistic.) And there has been a serious cancerous growth of antipathy towards rational thinking in politics ever since reagan abolished the fairness doctrine. A little context is in order, the fairness doctrine was passed somewhere in the fifties or forties and it was the result of a study of how the nazis came into power. The Fairness Doctrine was a set of rules to stop that from happening here in the states. For example an organization couldn't monopolize the political narrative. So if a radio station dedicated an hour to right with radio, they would have to dedicate an hour to left wing radio. This way people would be knowledgeable on both sides. The country as a whole took a nice right wing turn after that doctrine was abolished. You look at the political radio markets in the US, it's all mostly right wing (business friendly, so yea obviously a corporation would chose that) Europe is more lefty that US so I don't have actual names of these rhetorical controls for European countries (where would I look, honestly) I debated with one of my professors and his word is gonna be the authority on this, given he gave me some details that I can't remember.
Is it true that the richer the rich get the poorer the poor will get? How do you think that living standards for most Americans compare with their living standards in the 1950's? Better or worse?
Well it's a mixed bag and not in the common man's favor. Technology has made some things much better. For example computers and internet(you heard of it, yes) have really improved the quality of life tremendously, but things like employment opportunity, purchasing power, and social safety nets have actually been declining ever since the late seventies. There is this myth about the American dream, that if you come here and work hard you can make it... Well the best time for that would have been the sixties. Ever since deregulation began, wages stopped growing, unions have been busted to the point only the public sector is left, and without those "corrupt" unions the weekend is disappearing, overtime isn't being honored in the private sector.(again not an absolutist statement, but definitely the norm for overtime not to be honored) and general work life has suffered.
For Checkmite
Even if we allow that he's using "third world" to expressly mean "an un- or underdeveloped country", he's still completely wrong because the example he gives to justify calling the US a "third world country" is so ridiculous. Are we really going to place the US in the same "economic and social development" category as nations that have no commuter rail system, or no rail service at all, simply because our fastest passenger trains can only go 150 mph? How does that make any sense whatsoever? And in any case, what value does "rail technology advancement" have as a metric of a country's overall economic or social health, if transportation needs are sufficiently met by other methods? Certainly, roads and airports rather than rails may not be the most cost effective in the long run, but they're still practically adequate - and since when does that qualify any country for "third world" status?
The point isn't lack of rail technology makes us "third world" it's a symptom of an overall business needs(benefits few) overrides the needs of the many to the point it starts to degrade the overall economy( the derivatives fiasco being the prime example... or subprime) we're still very rich compared to the real world, so we're gonna be better off than them for a long time, So a literal comparison won't make much sense. But compared to what we had in the fifties, we're in bad shape. I mean at that point we had like 50% of the world’s wealth, now it's 25%, so there has been degradation. (I can also point out that nearly 90 % of all the US wealth is owned by like 5 %) And some parts of America do resemble third world, Compton comes to mind, most ghettos in every major city (there is a reason they're called ghettos) Detroit, And much more third world conditions popped up after the 2008 financial crisis.(tent cities and the like) I'm glad we're not Somalia( a true no gov't paradise for the tea party set) but I am also pissed that we're in this sheethole. Not at the fact that someone is criticizing America, but at substantial facts that dictate life!!!
Evidence? From my understanding, Eisenhower was primarily motivated after seeing the autobahns in German
Thats called rhetoric, public policy with billions of dollars at stake doesn't get decided by nostalgia. No really it doesn't.
One dramatic example of the destruction of public transportation is the "Los Angelizing" of the US economy, a huge state-corporate campaign to direct consumer preferences to "suburban sprawl and individualized transport -- as opposed to clustered suburbanization compatible with a mix of rail, bus, and motor car transport," Richard Du Boff observes in his economic history of the United States, a policy that involved "massive destruction of central city capital stock" and "relocating rather than augmenting the supply of housing, commercial structures, and public infrastructure." The role of the federal government was to provide funds for "complete motorization and the crippling of surface mass transit"; this was the major thrust of the Federal Highway Acts of 1944, 1956, and 1968, implementing a strategy designed by GM chairman Alfred Sloan. Huge sums were spent on interstate highways without interference, as Congress surrendered control to the Bureau of Public Roads; about 1 percent of the sum was devoted to rail transit. The Federal Highway Administration estimated total expenditures at $80 billion by 1981, with another $40 billion planned for the next decade. State and local governments managed the process on the scene.
The private sector operated in parallel: "Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines, a holding company sponsored and funded by GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California, bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities (including New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, and Los Angeles) to be dismantled and replaced with GM buses... In 1949 GM and its partners were convicted in U.S.district court in Chicago of criminal conspiracy in this matter and fined $5,000."
A congressional architect of the highway program, John Blatnik of Minnesota, observed that "It put a nice solid floor across the whole economy in times of recession." These government programs supplemented the huge subsidy to high technology industry through the military system, which provided the primary stimulus and support needed to sustain the moribund system of private enterprise that had collapsed in the 1930s.
The general impact on culture and society was immense, apart from the economy itself. Democratic decision-making played little role in this massive project of redesigning the contemporary world, and only in marginal respects was it a reflection of consumer choice. Consumers made choices no doubt, as voters do, within a narrowly determined framework of options designed by those who own the society and manage it with their own interests in mind. The real world bears little resemblance to the dreamy fantasies now fashionable about History converging to an ideal of liberal democracy that is the ultimate realization of Freedom.
I could go on about Sloan on his Nazi support and destruction of public transportation (which makes sense from the point of view that public works were preferred to his cars)
It seems, rather, that what Chomsky (or you, if you are misreading him) has fallen into is the lazy argument of "the evil corporations did it." You also fail to mention the cost-effectiveness in building roads vs. trains - a mile of road is substantially cheaper than a mile of track. America in the 50's was much more rural and a highway system provides for a much more decentralized system than rail. This goes back to cost-effectiveness, but when you have large populations in rural areas, building roads to connect them makes traveling between remote areas and/or to cities is a much more efficient system than building rail lines to every podunk town. So no, that's not "what it was."
Not lazy argument, actual documented proof, read the above with Alfred P. Sloan and his strategy. And maybe it's my fault that I didn't specify, but a mixture of rail, highway and bus. Whichever made sense in context.
