Roads are quite expensive, and there are many internet resources with tons of evidence and arguments about this: strong towns, not just bikes, climate town, etc.

Why so many vacant homes? The answer (as with everything in economics) is that the incentives are such that it's better to sit on a vacant home. In other words, our current system incentivizes hoarding homes.

If everyone's depressed, we shouldn't be asking "how do we get more SSRIs into these people?", but rather "how do we fix society so people aren't depressed?".

– Kurt Vonnegut

There can only be one captain. If I'm forced onto that ship as a slave, I will do everything I can to break the chains and free my comrades. No matter what kind of riches I'm promised, I won't be the captain of any slave ship, that's for sure.

Making it easier to obtain leverage doesn't make housing cheaper, it just makes the prices go even higher faster.

Once upon a time we didn't have the interstate system, but FDR created the New Deal, and with that the federal government created the interstate highway system we have today. We can do the same for rail, but the automobile lobbyists won't allow it.

I'd argue that the interstate highway system is probably the USA's greatest accomplishment, and one of the greatest public works projects. FDR sold it by framing it as a national defense initiative.

Maybe we need to use some of that national defense budget for public transit? Sadly, I don't think we'll ever have a politician with the kind of gumption necessary to save ourselves from ourselves.

The "rising tide lifts all boats" reaganomics argument is not wrong, but if it reaches the point (where it has now) where the working class is not seeing an inflation-adjusted increase in wealth, then they are (by definition) becoming poorer over time.

In "The Doors of Perception", Aldous Huxley describes it very well: it's like these drugs remove a sensory filter we normally have in place which makes the world feel like...well...reality. When you remove that filter, you're suddenly flooded with the sense that there's so much more to the universe, but in actual fact it's all just in your head. It's just your brain cells doing a lot of communication with each other in a way that is most likely nonsensical.

Some people come out the other side thinking they've found some magic, but more likely they've just experienced what was always there without the filter, and once it wears off you're the same person you were but perhaps with a sense of feeling like you're part of a big system (which we all are, called biology).

From a strictly biological perspective it makes sense, given that most life is based on DNA and we share a lot of DNA with things that we are very different from. We share about 60% of our DNA with bananas.

Plus, when you have drought, it damages the soil and plant life which would normally aid in capturing and retaining the rainfall. And when the rain does fall, instead of being absorbed into the soil it just creates erosion instead as the top layer dies.

People think about soil as just dirt, which it is not. Soil is effectively a living organism (or ecosystem of organisms).