On Wed, June 11, 1997 at 12:21:10 (-0700) Wojtek Sokolowski writes: >... >How can one explain this strange phenomenon? Can't most people in this >country make a simple cost/benefit calculation that involves the fourth >grade math? Or perhaps they can, but they are willing to bear any costs >(including the loss of their constitutional rights, including freedom from >unreasonable searches and seizures, the right not to inciminate oneself, and >the right to a jury trial) for the fetish symbolising their social status, >national pride or the way of life? Or perhaps there is yet another >explanation of this paradox. Or maybe it is just me being duped to pay >$450/month for commuting, and most Americans pay only a fraction of that cost? > >Any hints or comments from this country's natives on this list would be >appreciated. Seriously. I really want to know why people's behaviour does >not seem to follow the rules of economic rationality. A quick answer: try using public transportation in any of a number of different cities and see how long it is before you buy a car. Here in Austin, there are huge swaths of the city which are not covered by public transportation (bus, no rail), and the city is not layed out in a compact manner---bedroom communities sit far from workplaces in general, and grocery stores and other consumer outlets are usually located fairly far from neighborhoods. In general, for most of this century, U.S. cities have been built and have expanded in ways to accommodate automobiles, and public funding of transportation is always under threat of (further) cuts. Under such situations, the hassle, the discomfort, the time wasted waiting for busses and transferring, etc. might make up quite a bit of the economic cost you lay out. Not to mention the massive (partly publicly subsidized?) advertising effort to cram automobiles down everyone's throats. Also, following Juliet Schor, automobiles are highly visible consumer products, with a high degree of "interpersonal comparison" (Keeping up with the Joneses). I am preparing a brief summary of an article she wrote about consumerism in general that you might like. I will post it when I'm finished. You might be interested in Peter Hall's _Cities of Tomorrow_ (Blackwell, updated edition, 1996), particularly chapter 9. You might also check out chapter 5 of Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja's, _The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century_ (University of California Press, 1996). Mike Davis also touches on this in his excellent book _City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles_ (Vintage Books, 1992) on p. 205. Bill
