>If you’ve stepped outside a devolved country for even a few days…
I've noticed, especially recently, that a lot of tech people are hilariously out of touch with anything outside of first-world metropolitian environments.
Americans are famous for not realizing that there's an entire world outside their borders. They think everyone needs to go 80 mph on the highway, sorry _freeway_ for 1-2 hours to get to their job.
For example, anytime I see someone espousing the virtues of EVs and lambasting pickup trucks and SUVs, or how <popular> infrastructure should be just erected, nearly every time they are only concerned/knowledgable with city life and don't have a single clue what life in rural/undeveloped regions are like. Sometimes I wonder if they even understand how the world functions in general.
Incidentally, yes, some people do need to drive an hour or two down the freeway to commute. Not everyone has the luxury of, nor necessarily likes, city life with decent public transport and tight population density.
Most of the world's population lives in cities, and the trend shows no sign of abating, even with the pandemic. It is completely fair to prioritize energy and land usage there.
A rural/suburban lifestyle where you commute hours a day is inherently energy-intensive, and the rising price of oil is going to put a serious cramp in the lifestyles of wannabe ranchers. Not to mention that roads and oil is pretty seriously subsidized by governments as they are essential for commerce. What happens when oil gets too expensive even after subsidies? Let's see. So far the SPR of the US has had the biggest drawdown in its history just in 2022 in an attempt to rein in the price of oil. I daresay that ends with the Midterms.
You can have decent public transport with low population density, it just costs more (but probably less, or at least not more by a lot, than alternatives, if all externalities are included). Switzerland has villages of hundreds of people served by regular frequent rail (and it's pretty much the norm). Bulgaria, the poorest country in the EU, has that too (in very specific cases, not as a general rule, but still).
I've noticed, especially recently, that a lot of tech people are hilariously out of touch with anything outside of first-world metropolitian environments.