I also eagerly await the day when more people bicycle. Every other biker on the street gladdens my heart with the knowlege that we are creating a constituency for a more Megan-and-bicycle friendly world. Bike lanes! Bike racks in front of stores! Drivers and pedestrians who treat us as the special vehicles we are, rather than slow cars or fast walkers.
So as you can imagine, I'm pretty sympathetic to analyses which purport to show that bikes are economically great stuff. The problem is that these studies invariably seem to come out of the field of pseudoeconomics, which is like pseudoscience but with fake financial figures that scientifically prove you should do what you already wanted to do anyway. The leading lights of this field are found, of course, in the field of stadium construction analyses, where consultants with green eyeshades and team t-shirts produce, using only a toaster oven and 7,000 reams of 28 lb laser paper, reports showing that spending several hundred million dollars constructing a new stadium will ultimately generate 17 trillion dollars for the economy of Skokie, Illinois.
Though no one else approaches this level of creative artistry, the pseudoeconomists are rife throughout the policy world, especially among interest groups, and in local politics. Little wonder, then, that the infection frequently spreads into the environmental movement, as with this post from Gristmill. Along with fairly sensible claims about the health and pollution benefits of building bikeways to substitute for car trips, it does things like ignore non-monetary costs (whatever the bikeway land is currently being used for presumably has some value for someone), and flagrantly abuses trade theory in talking about the glories of local jobs.
Besides, lots of cyclists on the street make for a lively, inviting community -- the kind of place where families want to live, where business owners and retirees want to stay. And those things make a huge difference to local economies. Every retiree who stays in a neighborhood effectively creates a local job through his or her spending, as I noted in "Green-Collar Jobs."
Repeat after me: a community gets wealthier by making itself more productive. It does not get wealthier by making sure that more of what it consumes is produced locally.
Matt Yglesias and I cannot enrich the Atlantic community by giving up blogging in favor of hand crafting cunning little decorative objets out of gingham and rickrack and selling them to our officemates. Though Matt is a hell of a fine seamstress, and I myself am widely sought after for my exquisite color sense, we can produce our new line of country-inspired home collectibles only if we write less. Though it is true we would have created two jobs right here in the Watergate, not to mention a large number of ribbon-encrusted dust collectors, we would have lost two associate editor jobs. And people are willing to give us a lot more for our writing than for Matt's new line of Little House on the Prairie themed crocheted beer cozies .
Similarly, a bike path is good for the economy to the extent that it makes people more productive. It is not good for the economy because it produces local jobs maintaining the bike path, selling bicycles, or repairing the inevitable physical consequences of bicycle-car collisions.
Moreover, even if local spending were as fantastic as boosters claim, keeping a retiree in the community doesn't create any jobs; what that retiree spends would, to a rough approximateion, have been spent by whoever lived in his house. The only way to generate extra spending, and jobs, from retirees, is to build more houses to put them in.
P.J. had it right.
http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/misc/menace.html
I skimmed what you wrote (I'm fixing dinner, and you've made similar arguments in the past), and I read & commented at Grist. I think the way you look at the economy is different from how Durning (and local governments) look at it. If I understand you, you're seeing the whole economy, where shifting money around from one place to another may be good or may be bad, but mostly you're indifferent to it. Local governments look for how much money is coming in for taxes and jobs. And import substitution (along with importers of dollars, like retirees living off of investment income or social security) does that. It may not be a net winner for the economy (and may, over time, in your way of looking at it, lead to lower productivity, since people aren't able to get the same kinds of scale), but I think it is a winner for localities.
MM wrote: Please no silly pseudostatistics about the calories burned cycling to and from work; there's no way they're exceeded by the pint of fossil fuels you burned idling in DC traffic....eagerly await the day when more people bicycle.
Working your gut like that produces more flattus than usual, which contains methane, a GHG ten times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Just FYI.
"flagrantly abuses trade theory..."
What about all the non-tradable goods that must be consumed in close proximity to where they are produced? For instance, a cafe. It seems reasonable to believe that people want to consume cafes in pleasant neighborhoods close to home, so where would Gristmill be wrong about this?.
Free trade doctrinaires like Megan and Dan drezner seem to leave their more questioning selves behind whenever anyone questions free trade orthodoxy. They tend to look less to the facts of the situation than to the theory for confirmation.
In response to Megan & anony-mouse ... in regards to methane, CO2, etc. ... I find this Ecovangelism obsessed with the minute iniquities that result from civilized living atavistic and a waste of the time at hand. I can't imagine what must inspire people to flagellate themselves so, that this hyper-vigilant marshaling of some future pastoral utopia comes only if we all resign to asceticism.
Thinking about this a little more--I don't expect that my comment above is news to you. It just seems like it's worth addressing why the frame of the people who promote import substitution is wrong, rather than just why it's wrong for you.
Having more retirees around is not a good idea. Retirees = nursing homes = Medicaid.
Megan, granting that increased productivity simply is the source of wealth, I don't see how that conflicts with this:
Besides, lots of cyclists on the street make for a lively, inviting community -- the kind of place where families want to live, where business owners and retirees want to stay. And those things make a huge difference to local economies.
A place where people "want to stay" could also be expressed as a place people will spend more to live in -- in other words, one which attracts more prosperous residents. Communities compete against other communities to attract prosperous residents and transitory consumers. This is true even at the level of countries, these days. You can increase your productivity by attracting more productive people, as well as by enhancing the productivity of those who are already there. The productivity of Brooklyn relative to the Bronx has no doubt risen in recent years as Brooklyn has become more livable and attracted skilled refugees from Manhattan (not to mention Africa). The productivity of Great Barrington, MA has risen relative to the productivity of Hudson, NY as Great Barrington's civic development has attracted prosperous creative types, while Hudson hasn't.
That would be 'seamster' thankyou, unless there are some secrets Matt Y has not revealed.
...keeping a retiree in the community doesn't create any jobs; what that retiree spends would, to a rough approximateion, have been spent by whoever lived in his house.
Huh? A retiree deciding to stay in the community -> greater demand for housing in the community. The extra house gets built because both the retiree AND the person who would have bought his house when he moved to Florida now both live in the community.
Of course, adding population to a community doesn't necessary mean more wealth and income per-capita. But overall, it's probably better to hold on to one's retirees than pack them off to Florida -- they do tend to have money and don't tend to produce kids needing expensive schooling. And although they generally don't pay much in the way of income taxes (which go to the state), they do pay local property taxes.
Megan's entire argument about "productivity" versus "local consumption" fails when you look at the economy from a larger perspective. Ultimately, we are all part of a large, closed community with finite resources, i.e. the planet Earth (please, no hand-waving about space resources; we don't have access to them, so it's useless to consider them until we do). All of what we produce is consumed by others in this community, and all of what we consume was produced within this community.
Because the planet Earth is a closed community, it is finite in terms of resources. This means that we cannot simply keep "producing" more and more "product" without running out of those finite resources. An economic model that requires unlimited expansion for continued success will fail, because unlimited expansion is not possible. Yes, I know that we have a virtually unlimited supply of energy from the Sun, but unrestrained use of that energy within the otherwise closed planetary framework is demonstrably a recipe for disaster.
This means that in order to have a long-term viable society, we must have a sustainable economic model. That means strong local communities that are self-sustaining to the greatest extent possible, which ideally only import non-essentials, but which trade a fair value for those imported items. That is, in part, what fair-trade is about.
In reality, of course, some communities will have an excess of some essentials (like lumber, or leather) and can trade those at a fair value for the excess essentials produced by some other community (like cloth, or fish). The important point to remember is that it has to be a fair trade, not one rooted in the concept of "growing wealth", otherwise the system will break down (as it is doing now).
In a sustainable economy, there would be no extremely wealthy individuals, because the hoarding of resources would be anathema to the economic model. If done properly, however, there would also be no extremely impoverished individuals, which strikes me as an overall improvement.
Bicycles would contribute to a sustainable local economy because they are a form of transportation that can be created locally (after having imported the necessary raw materials) without an expensive infrastructure as would be necessary to produce automobiles. One skilled welder with basic tools and some specialized knowledge can produce a high-quality bicycle frame, and a skilled home mechanic with access to the relatively few components needed (most of which could be created by a local machinist) can assemble a bicycle in a day or two. This is in no way true of an automobile. It may be true of, say, horse-drawn carriages. Skilled local craftsmen can create carriages. Local horse farms can produce the horses. It also creates a useful job for someone, collecting all that horse manure and distributing it to local farmers. In a sustainable economic model, automobiles would of necessity be luxury items.
Megan's argument about being "productive" versus creating objects for local consumption just puts off the basic question: Who consumes what you produce, and where do they obtain the wealth with which to compensate you for what you produce?
Any discussion of economics that doesn't address this most basic question, and also ask the question, "Is this sustainable?" is just intellectual posturing.
Bicycles would contribute to a sustainable local economy because they are a form of transportation that can be created locally (after having imported the necessary raw materials) without an expensive infrastructure as would be necessary to produce automobiles.
Whuh? It's far more environmentally sustainable to import the finished bicycle than to import a whole bunch of chrome-moly tubing, rubber, etc. and have a mechanic dedicated to trying to produce a bike on site. That's just silly. Local production can be more environmentally sustainable, but for consumable items, not for durable items like bicycles.
"It's no slower, in DC, than driving a car, and it's considerably cheaper and healthier"
I have been a bicycle commuter for more than 28 years. 8 miles one way. Probably close to 100,000 miles in commutting by now... As I get older, I can see the benefits or riding more and more.
Besides, it is just great pedaling the bike no matter what the weather!
Don't worry, you younguns....you will be geezers in just a few minutes...just remember, we never figured we would get older either!
MikeJ,
By your logic, the only sustainable model is everyone growing their own food, making their own items of consumption. Any development beyond that point involves the division of labor- growth.
Now, it may very well be true that the finiteness of the planet itself will put an upper limit on this growth in productivity, but the entire slant of your short essay seems to be comprised of coercing people into not only stopping this growth now, but actually returning to a more primitive state of development. Everything you write seems to be a desire to restrict people's rights to interact with others, all cloaked in the terminology of "fair trade", along with the other items from the socialist/communist playbook. You are certainly free to gather others like you into whatever community you wish, but the moment you start trying to coerce me into your way of life, I start shooting.
Yancey Ward wrote:
By your logic, the only sustainable model is everyone growing their own food, making their own items of consumption. Any development beyond that point involves the division of labor- growth.
Now, it may very well be true that the finiteness of the planet itself will put an upper limit on this growth in productivity, but the entire slant of your short essay seems to be comprised of coercing people into not only stopping this growth now, but actually returning to a more primitive state of development.
That is close to being correct. Your comments about coercion are, however, off the mark. No where in my "short essay" did I advocate coercing anyone into doing anything.
It's not about communism (I'm not advocating forced redistribution of goods and labor), it's about building strong communities around acceptance of the reality that we live in a finite world, and repudiating and rejecting the idea that the concentration of wealth is in any way good or desirable. It's not. The end result of wealth concentration is a small class of extremely wealthy and the vast majority of the population living in abject poverty. We're most of the way there now, and the whole house of cards is starting to fall down. It's not sustainable, and it's failing.
Many people are fundamentally unable to accept that wealth concentration is inherently bad (usually because they are clinging to the illusion that if they just work hard enough, they too can be among the wealthy). It's sad, but not surprising, that you end your remarks by threatening violence.
MikeJ,
Then how are you going to restrict inequality in outcomes? How are you going to enforce "fair trade"?
Everything you are writing has the undertone of violence and coercion itself, which is what I was responding to in the last comment.
If all you are doing is advocating a different lifestyle by voluntary associations, then have at it- you will get no interference from me. I just expect reciprocation.
Bob R cites P.J. O'Rourke. I'm a big fan myself and I always get a laugh out of that piece. I can't help noting, though, that he ends his 1987 rant by saying that the "bicycle will be extinct within the decade." Last laugh for us.
Peter wrote: In response to Megan & anony-mouse ... in regards to methane, CO2, etc. ... I find this Ecovangelism obsessed with the minute iniquities that result from civilized living atavistic and a waste of the time at hand. I can't imagine what must inspire people to flagellate themselves so, that this hyper-vigilant marshaling of some future pastoral utopia comes only if we all resign to asceticism.
Actually, I generally feel the same way. The most amusing aspect of the evangelical environmental movement is their insistence that we've got to save the earth for future generations who are, at present, fictitious. To do so, it is apparently necessary to harrass, agravate, inconvenience, tax, and otherwise nag and bother non-fictitious present generations over sins which basically amount to reasonable daily living.
It's one thing to tell people how much pleasure can be had from commuting to work via bicycle. Maybe they'll observe your fine example in practice, and decide to give it a shot. However, it's quite another thing to crack the whip over people prefer to drive. For my part, I live about 5-8 driving minutes from my job. This allows me to do things like get up later in the morning, split-shift my day after the core hours end at 4pm, go home for lunch and save a few bucks, and do business-hours errands during my lunch break.
Sure, I could bike to work. But to take the driving route on my bike would mean regular encounters with death, since it involves an intersection two very busy four-lane roads merge at a 30 degree angle, and are otherwise separated from each other by a mixture of impassable geography, a third major highway running tangentially, and fenced private property. The next feasible crossing points require a detour of several miles, making the trip take a half-hour or more, and I didn't move to a place five minutes from my job for the purpose of maintaining a 30-minute commute. Lunch would have to be backpackable, or taken at moderately expensive restaurants with the daily office lunch carpool.
This doesn't even touch upon the wide and wild range of weather that Colorado can experience during any season. This past week alone we had two cool days with very cold nights, 36 straight hours of cold wind, two warm days...and now there's rain falling, with snow predicted by morning.
So, I take my car to work, and I don't really care if an ignorant bystander can point to my allleged carbon decadence and complain about it. Let the Gaia-worshipers cry if they must; I have the bike option as a fallback if the car breaks down, but otherwise, I use it for recreational rides after work.
This means that we cannot simply keep "producing" more and more "product" without running out of those finite resources. An economic model that requires unlimited expansion for continued success will fail, because unlimited expansion is not possible.
You assume that expansion has to be material.
In a sustainable economy, there would be no extremely wealthy individuals, because the hoarding of resources would be anathema to the economic model. If done properly, however, there would also be no extremely impoverished individuals, which strikes me as an overall improvement.
Ah, I recognise this story.
1. We all agree to create a sustainable economy.
2. ?
3. Utopia!
Where do I sign up?
Gene,
You're right that non-tradable goods exist, but that in no way contradicts what Megan is arguing. She said that what we care about is productivity, not consuming a greater fraction locally. Your point is that some stuff can be made more productively if produced locally, which is true, but the goal is still to maximize productivity not to maximize local production.
Kyle
I agree about productivity. Actually the point I was trying to make was that some types of goods that can only be produced and consumed locally (such as cafes), are likely to have higher levels of local consumption if the neighborhood is a pleasant place. If my neighborhood is nice, I go out and spend time and my money in it. If my neighborhood sucks, I stay homne and spend my money on a plasma TV imorted from somewhere else. Which I think is consistent with what Gristmill wrote.
So what you are saying is that a biking neighbourhood is more pleasant, and so biking increases the value of a neighbourhood. Thus biking makes people more productive, as it increases wealth.
And who else has noticed that the plasma-tv has assumed the position in leftist symbolism that the latte has assumed in rightist symbolism. A symbol of all that is bad.
(Me, I like watching pirate videos on my plasma while sipping a chai latte.)
"no more fractional hours wasted looking for parking when every lamppost and street sign offers a spot"
This assumes, of course, that there are relatively few bike commuters. Come the revolution, when all commuters ride bikes, the local Committee for Parking Bikes will have serious issues to resolve, otherwise the bike riders will suffer "fractional hours wasted looking for parking."
Bicycling, in the main, will always be recreation. The few commuters are exception, not a disproof.
Bicycling, in the main, will always be recreation. The few commuters are exception, not a disproof.
You're going to need some evidence for that. The reverse point is supported by cities like Amsterdam, that see something like a third of trips by bike. Also, there are trips other than recreation and commute (short shopping, visiting friends, etc). Also, what happens as the line between powered and unpowered bikes gets blurrier, such as with motorized bikes that give people help up hills and with quick starts?
Dr Pat: Actually no. What I am saying is that a pleasant neighborhood might influence some people to spend more of their disposable income on locally produced & consumed non-tradable goods than to spend that same portion of their disposable income on non-locally produced tradable goods.
I made no suggestion that this was related in any way to productivity and I don't see how you draw that inference. And I don't get the plasma TV leftist symbolism stuff either. These two items sound like you reading your own biases into a post rather than reading what the writer actually wrote.
Gene,
It wasn't just your comments I was responding to. While you are concentrating on the difference between local and non-local production, other people are looking at total wealth maximization. And making an environment more pleasant maximizes wealth (without using more resources). It even does so in a way that shows up in the statistics. (House and land values).
The plasma TV thing is based on the comments of dozens of people, over dozens of websites, blog comments, and even dead-tree opinion pieces. It was just an impression I've got, but it seems that whenever anyone wants to complain about the way people use their money, they refer to "McMansions, SUVs and Plasma TVs).