[FRIAM] the Commons and Convenience

[Marcus Daniels]

Steve writes:

<   It is also hard to give up "convenience", once habituated toit.   I can
    barely imagine tying up a hardwired phone line to get 300 or 1200bps
    internet service today... I think I'd probably do without somehow.  I
    once walked, ran, rode my bike miles and miles to get where I needed to
    go (school, work, etc.) but now that I have been conditioned to jumping
    in a heated/AC car and driving 60-80 mph with a good quality sound
    system and dozens of radio stations, hundreds of CDs ripped to the hard
    drive and Bluetooth audio to allow me to chat with family and friends or
    do some business or listen to a podcast, I'd have a hard time even going
    back to driving 55 or having to leave my windows down to keep from
    feeling a little hot on a warm day, much less live with my own singing
    or a small handful of scratchy AM stations.  >

There's no need to fall back to a 300 baud.   Even a small community of ~ 20k people can build a fiber optic network -- an example is my dad's town.   There's no need to drive 55 mph or even drive.   High speed rail in China and Japan exceed 200 mph.   This is the shortsightedness and lack of imagination in individualism:  To deny or not even notice that many people have the same exact needs you do.   But I guess we will be routing money to clever things like rebuilding the houses destroyed on coastlines from climate change.  

Marcus