imomus

Oh, I'm very much with you on the bicycles issue. Of course I'd like to see popular support and government support for the bicycle. It's just that a theme I've been circling around quite a lot recently is that virtue is neither the result of freedom of individual choice nor of government legislation. Virtues like bicycle-riding, high-density living, communal living, bloat-free software, a bloat-free body-shape, organic food, slow life, ecologically-sustainable lifestyles, low-to-no emissions... these are better achieved by -- I won't say poverty, but by people finding their material affluence capped at a certain level, and adopting austerity measures. Some have suggested that the most virtuous income level is around $20,000 a year, and I tend to agree. That's exactly the right figure to make car ownership prohibitive, for instance.