MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘15-Minute Cities’

From Boom To Bust: Doug Casey on Fading Enthusiasm for Electric Vehicles

Posted by M. C. on March 25, 2024

They forgot that Tesla is run by a genius who designed an electric car from the ground up with lots of technical innovations. GM, Ford, and the other legacy companies are run by ESG-oriented suits whose first consideration is kowtowing to their HR and compliance departments.

Doug Casey: The shareholders and customers take a back seat to legislators and regulators. It’s perverse.

From Boom To Bust: Doug Casey on Fading Enthusiasm for Electric Vehicles

by Doug Casey

International Man: Outside of Tesla, fewer and fewer people want electric vehicles (EVs). Other car companies have spent billions producing EVs that buyers don’t trust. Why are they developing products their customers clearly don’t want?

Doug Casey: Perhaps they thought that if Tesla, an undercapitalized start-up run by an eccentric with no auto manufacturing experience, could become a trillion-dollar company, then how hard could it be? They forgot that Tesla is run by a genius who designed an electric car from the ground up with lots of technical innovations. GM, Ford, and the other legacy companies are run by ESG-oriented suits whose first consideration is kowtowing to their HR and compliance departments.

Apple was working on an EV, but they just pulled the plug on it after dropping US $10 billion. Building a good EV isn’t as easy as Elon made it look.

There’s nothing wrong with the concept of electric vehicles. The problem—as with most economic problems in today’s world—is the State. The government has basically decided that fossil fuels are evil, and so are the vehicles that burn them. They hate fossil fuels for all kinds of specious and hysterical reasons that mostly revolve around “saving” the planet. Most of which are nonsensical, at least if you want to have an industrial civilization.

The kind of people who go into government hate cars and the freedom that they give the common man.

That’s why they want to put everybody in 15-minute cities, where you presumably won’t need real cars, just EV golf carts.

The federal government has lots of legal mandates designating what kind of cars manufacturers can and cannot make. Average fleet mileage specifications are a major factor in determining what kind of cars we have. But governments are going farther, essentially trying to ban most conventional ICE (internal combustion engine) cars by 2035 or even 2030. Their mandates against ICEs have skewed production towards electronic vehicles.

At the same time, they’ve offered large tax advantages to consumers, getting them to buy EVs that they’d otherwise avoid. So, although EVs have merit for certain places and conditions and have a place in the automotive world, government pushing and pulling creates huge distortions in how people act.

International Man: Last year, Ford lost $4.7 billion on its EV models, and it’s projected that this year, it could lose up to $5.5 billion.

The Wall Street Journal estimates that Ford could actually boost its profits by 50% by ditching EVs altogether. It seems Ford and other companies could care less about serving their shareholders or their customers.

What is really going on here?

Doug Casey: The shareholders and customers take a back seat to legislators and regulators. It’s perverse.

See the rest here

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Here’s What’s Really Behind the Global Reset and Sustainable Development Agenda 2030

Posted by M. C. on July 7, 2023

The answer is that the sociopaths at the UN and in Washington have no real intent for the peasants to continue with their current standard of living. They intend for us all to live in our 15-minute cities, eating bugs, immersed in the metaverse, and hooked up to a neverending feed of pharmaceuticals, which we’ll be forced to take, otherwise your UBI (universal basic income) gets cut off.

Here’s What’s Really Behind the Global Reset and Sustainable Development Agenda 2030

by Chris MacIntosh

Global Reset and Sustainable Development Agenda 2030

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Captive in the so-called 15-minute cities, eat bugs and no meat, immerse in the metaverse, and a never ending feed of pharmaceuticals, and all that by force, otherwise your universal basic income (UBI) gets cut off.

Energy? Dirty.

Lower motorway speeds and driving ban in plan to tackle oil reliance. Here’s an extract from Daily Echo article

Lowering motorway speed limits and introducing driving bans on Sunday are ideas being suggested to cut Britain’s reliance on oil.

The ideas are part of a ten-point plan proposed by the International Energy Agency in a bid to reduce global oil demand by 2.7 million barrels per day.

Motorway speed limits would be reduced by 6 mph across the country under the proposals, while the plan also suggests a ban on driving in cities every Sunday.

This is horseshit! It has nothing to do with “reducing reliance on oil” and everything to do with the WEF and UN “sustainable development Agenda 2030.”

You know what’s going to happen? The existing stream of folks leaving countries implementing these policies will turn into a flood (more on this in a minute). With it will come capital controls, because the sociopaths driving this agenda will never see their own policies as the problem. No, it’s always those silly peasants who are the problem.

In case you’re wondering… that’s you.

Meat? Dirty.

Irish considering massive cattle culling. We are flabbergasted that killing 200,000 head of cattle is even a consideration…

Wasn’t Ireland “famous” for its potato famine? You would think that people would learn from history. I am coming to the view that little/nothing is learnt by studying history.

When will folks wake up to this delusional stuff going on? Perhaps when their living standards take a bat to the knees.

See the rest here

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Doug Casey on “15-Minute Cities” and Penning You In for the Next Lockdown

Posted by M. C. on March 25, 2023

Doug Casey: It’s social engineering taken to a new level—trying to reform the way humans act and live.

Doug Casey: It’s all about control, but it won’t be sold as a military “you must do this” type of control. It will be a soft, “do it for your own good” type of control. And, of course, it’s part of the general climate insanity for the supposed good of Mother Earth. The idea is to get people to stay out of their cars and, for that matter, stay off of planes and even public transportation.

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-15-minute-cities-and-penning-you-in-for-the-next-lockdown/

by Doug Casey

15-Minute City

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International Man: The “15-minute city” is an urban planning concept rapidly spreading in North America and Europe. They aim to make everything—where people work, shop, get their education, healthcare, and leisure activities—just 15 minutes away.

The idea is for bureaucrats to restrict—and eventually prohibit—car use because everything is within walking or biking distance. Phasing out hydrocarbons, in general, and cars with internal combustion engines, in particular, is a primary goal of the carbon hysterics.

Critics also argue that 15-minute cities will eventually allow for total surveillance and control of people’s lives, as governments will inevitably pair them with an ESG social credit system and central bank digital currencies.

What is your take on the 15-minute city concept?

Doug Casey: It’s social engineering taken to a new level—trying to reform the way humans act and live. In fact, it’s social engineering that’s expressed in the form of civil engineering, putting people in the kind of houses, environments, and locales that the elites—strike that, I mean parasites—prefer.

It’s as if the whole human race is taking a role in the Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show. But that’s way too benign. The way they’re trying to reform the cities and force people to stay in place in certain areas, it’s more like the panopticon, which was a type of prison where all people could be observed easily by the guards at all times.

Of course, keeping everybody within a 15-minute radius of their home sounds convenient, homey, and small town-like. But it just makes things much more convenient for artificial intelligence to monitor where everybody is. Not just in their vehicles, either, because the next step along this path will be to make it desirable for everybody to have a chip implanted so individual bodies can be monitored. The 15-minute city concept is just a step on the way to something much more dystopian.

International Man: 15-minute cities received a big boost from the Covid hysteria as many city councils and mayors sought to redesign city spaces amid the lockdowns.

The concept has spread to many areas in North America and Europe, with plans to transform parts of the biggest cities into numerous 15-minute city zones. We have already seen this happen in Ottawa, Oxford, and other large cities.

What is really going on here?

Doug Casey: It’s all about control, but it won’t be sold as a military “you must do this” type of control. It will be a soft, “do it for your own good” type of control. And, of course, it’s part of the general climate insanity for the supposed good of Mother Earth. The idea is to get people to stay out of their cars and, for that matter, stay off of planes and even public transportation.

See the rest here

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