The suburban cycle which began a hundred years ago is nearly over. We are in for a period of contraction and economic hardship.

Of course, the toxic bullshit of incessant advertising and show biz for nearly a century has stripped us of cognitive abilities for dealing with reality that used to be part of the normal equipment of adulthood - for instance, knowing the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen. We bamboozled ourselves with too much magic.

It is true that we need a consensus to go forward with restoring passenger rail in America, and often a consensus is formed by political action, via government. That is all true. But we have no such consensus, and no one in government or politics these days has the will or the force of personality or perhaps even the understanding of the situation to get on with job of forming a consensus supporting rail.

Anything goes and nothing matters.

People don't like railroad tracks near them? We'll see how they feel when the percentage of U.S. citizens who can afford to drive a car goes way down, as it will.

I like to call it 'the national automobile slum.' You can call it suburban sprawl. I think it's appropriate to call it the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

I generally avoid over-population arguments. But there's no question we're in population overshoot. The catch is we're not going to do anything about it. There will be no policy. The usual suspects: starvation, war, disease, will drive the population down. There's little more to say about that really, and it's certainly an unappetizing discussion, but it's probably the truth. In any case, we're in overshoot and we face vast resource scarcities.