Social engineering, environmental causes, and freedom are exactly what this is about (as well as congestion, which I forgot to mention earlier). How should decisions about a society be made? If public transit is a social good, is it okay to encourage it by taxing people out of their cars? Even though people clearly prefer their cars for all of these reasons? What if city planners fail to foresee a technological innovation (like fleets of self-driving cars) and end up spending billions and inconveniencing millions over an ultimately unnecessary cause?
Let's use another issue for example. If we wanted to end Cosa Nostra (the capital-M Mafia), and didn't care about freedom, the cops could tomorrow round up all of the known members and throw them in jail forever. Or better yet, execute them. That would end the whole ordeal. We don't do that because we think there's a greater good in freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. We believe in due process and the rule of law. There's in fact good logical arguments underpinning and supporting the utility of these ideas, but we don't need to trot them out every time we invoke the ideas themselves. They are cornerstones of our very successful civilization.
By discussing these issues and being open-minded, pragmatic, and rational, and by evaluating them on a cost/benefit basis. We might learn something new; I don't see the intelligence in pursuing close-mindedness.
A comparison between a government-built mass transit system and government murder of citizens is a good example of how ideology undermines the ability to intelligently discuss issues.
>By discussing these issues and being open-minded, pragmatic, and rational, and by evaluating them on a cost/benefit basis.
And that's exactly what I'm doing. It sounds like you just want to discount all of the arguments of one side for being 'ideological'. That's a specious argument. Freedom is as much a good as environmental cleanliness and the lack of congestion. Why should it be excluded from your cost/benefit analysis?
The way they've always been made: a combination of social and economic pressures. "Social engineering" is a misnomer. The phrase makes us think we can engineer humans into creating a group of humans (ie: a society) that values what we want them to value and behaves the way we want them to behave. Never once in the history of man has this succeeded.
What if city planners fail to foresee a technological innovation (like fleets of self-driving cars) and end up spending billions and inconveniencing millions over an ultimately unnecessary cause?
That's how the nonsense of suburbs and extensive car culture began: city planners following an ideology. Instead of selling what was practical for the individual, they coined and sold the american dream.
Let's use another issue for example. If we wanted to end Cosa Nostra (the capital-M Mafia), and didn't care about freedom, the cops could tomorrow round up all of the known members and throw them in jail forever. Or better yet, execute them. That would end the whole ordeal. We don't do that because we think there's a greater good in freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. We believe in due process and the rule of law. There's in fact good logical arguments underpinning and supporting the utility of these ideas, but we don't need to trot them out every time we invoke the ideas themselves. They are cornerstones of our very successful civilization.