[Closed] Simple Solutions to Big Problems

The electric car thing has been worried to death repeatedly on here recently. In summary, it wouldn't always be appropriate and requires much larger societal changes.

My simple/radical solution for the world ills would be an expert system that read forum posts and found duplicates.

The reason it won't work is that people have become used to personal liberty. So they don't want to be told they can't do something. Therefore, due to democracy, that idea would never happen.

You described yourself as liberal in an earlier thread.. Surely this kind of compulsion is incompatible with liberalism?

...because it might be raining, or cold, or windy?

Also, ... bag chatter makes it hard to listen to Radio Four.

Also, also...... There is a secret worldwide conspiracy of golf course car park barons to protect their market.

People should wear proper hats more often.
More journeys by hovercraft.

Hey presto, better world.

A naughty step for politicians/world leaders exclusive use.

we have the environment and congestion to worry about.. tell us about your own 'simple, radical solutions' to any of the worlds problems.

All buses, trains, underground, trams, and cycle hire schemes to be state-owned and completely free at the point of use.

All buses, trains, underground, trams, and cycle hire schemes to be state-owned and completely free at the point of use

I have often thought of that. If nothing but an interesting experiment into what it would take for people to use their cars less.

Even if buses were free I can't see many more people using them instead of their cars. I wouldn't, for one.

Ban privately owned motor vehicles. Business use only.

[quote=GrahamS ]All buses, trains, underground, trams, and cycle hire schemes to be state-owned and completely free at the point of use.And be available exactly when the user needed them to be - at any time day or night, regardless of journey length and vehicle occupancy and able to go direct to the users destination without stopping en route.

what about requiring that all motorised personal urban movement be undertaken by golf cart? Would that work? If not, why not?

You live in a democracy. Most people won't like your ideas. If you're serious, run for parliament and persuade people that you have solutions.

Ban privately owned motor vehicles. Business use only.

😆

Free, secure bike parking facilities in town and city centres.

Surely this kind of compulsion is incompatible with liberalism?

I wouldn't think it was any more incompatible with liberalism than speed limits, or pedestrianised areas of city centres. I am not suggesting the banning of proper vehicles, and suggest no draconian criteria for establishing the need to use one; only saying that within urban environments, and in light of the use so many people actually make of their cars, a clear limit on size/power/functionality could be applied. And if a government simply said 'only golf carts permitted within certain zones', it would massively reduce congestion and pollution.

I still can't believe that it's legal to sell products in packaging that cannot be recycled. That's as easy a law to create as I've ever seen.

Along the Algarve Coast there are loads of golf carts used for zipping around on short journeys
For many people, particularly the young, this may even remove the need for a proper car ( Borrow Dads now and again )

Excellent Idea. - given that most emissions are at engine start from cold -

[quote=SaxonRider ]if a government simply said 'only golf carts permitted within certain zones', it would massively reduce congestion

Hmm..... replacing one single user, four wheeled vehicle with another won't have a huge effect on congestion.

All new build houses to have solar panels and an electric car charging port.

I was on a cycle tour through France over the summer and the cities were hooching with electric scooters. Not the small motorbike type, but larger versions of the kick scooters kids play with. These had a twist grip throttle and required no "kicking"

These scooters seemed to cost a couple of hundred euro's and travel roughly at jogging speed on pavements. They folded up for hopping on and off trains / taking into you house / sticking under you desk at work

It seemed like a brilliant solution for getting to and fro your work or other small journeys - efficient and easy to charge, don't take up parking space outside, no congestion and easy to integrate into normal public transport.

As the current UK law lies, I suspect they would be deemed motorbikes, require testing, MOT's and insurance, having to use the road and general blockers put in place to retard their uptake.

And if a government simply said 'only golf carts permitted within certain zones'

It's a great idea, but then I'm not a Liberal 🙂 I'd enforce loads of things like this for the sake of the planet and our own selves. But it would have to be carefully thought out as part of an integrated transport network, and that would cost money and require expertise. And money requires taxation. So not popular.

And be available exactly when the user needed them to be - at any time day or night, regardless of journey length and vehicle occupancy and able to go direct to the users destination without stopping en route.

Well that would [i]help[/i] obviously, but no. 🙂

I'm not suggesting it would completely replace all car use - just that it would have a decent impact and reduce the reliance on cars.

If we wanted to take it further and address your points then we'd need to also make taxis free at the point of use 😀 and maybe also remove the right to just abandon private vehicles on the public highway 😈

That might be a step too far for some 😆

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Simple Solutions to Big Problems

Hmm..... replacing one single user, four wheeled vehicle with another won't have a huge effect on congestion.

Now we have the environment and congestion to worry about, so what about requiring that all motorised personal urban movement be undertaken by golf cart? Would that work? If not, why not?

because golf carts use batteries, and there are some massive environmental issues with that.

1.Current battery technologies use rare earth elements, as in there aren't very many of them, extraction is massively energy intensive and highly polluting, for example with lithium about 0.2% of extracted material actually containing lithium and the other 99.8% is repeatedly washed in acid and then dumped in toxic lagoons as part of the extraction process. The battery recycling process is again very energy intensive and not particularly efficient either and still liberates large quantities of substances hazardous to health

2. until such time as we can generate electricity for charging battery vehicles from sources other than setting fire to compressed dinosaurs all we are doing is moving from a localized source of pollution to a larger one down the road. Even with clever carbon capture technology its still bloody filthy and the emission limits are not health based but based on what is economically acceptable to the energy lobby groups

3. charging time and space. Even if we got clean battery technology, and managed to generate electricity in a fully sustainable way, the sheer volume of vehicles (even little golf carts) that would need to be left somewhere for a period of time for charging, would mean that we would need to create acres of hard standing charging fields to cope.

crap example coming up with loads of gaps, but purely as an illustration

If you look at the traffic figures for say Westminster on its own, there were over 345000 vehicle miles in 2014 (gov figures)

based on a renault Zoe as being a good example of an electric car, with an average charging time of between 8 hours to 16 hours for a full charge dependant upon the type of delivery system and a best book figure "virtual mpg of 251 miles" we'd be looking at about 450 days of charging time needed per year. Its easy to spread that out into the number of actual cars, partial charges etc so it becomes muchmore reasonable per vehicle per journey .... but all of that still needs huge areas of land and development to leave them somewhere for the hours at a time for a "fill up".

There are no

Simple Solutions to Big Problems

that's why they are big problems.

Involuntary euthanasia of about 2/3rds of the world would solve most problems.. deciding on the criteria might be a little problematic however...

I wouldn't think it was any more incompatible with liberalism than speed limits, or pedestrianised areas of city centres.

Which have majority support though debate about details. Golf carts? Struggle to get widespread support I think.

Plus rather than replace cars many would have a golf cart for local use and a car for other uses.

As for the free buses idea? Wouldn't make me use them more. My last two bus experiences were waiting 30m for one that didn't come - an hourly service so down to every two hours, or the bus taking 45 mins for a 20m car journey after standing in the rain at the bus stop.

because golf carts use batteries, and there are some massive environmental issues with that.

Well, golf carts use lead acid batteries which aren't really environmentally unfriendly. They would work nicely for city centres which I think the OP is talking about. We don't need Zoes and charging infrastructure for that.

As for the free buses idea? Wouldn't make me use them more. My last two bus experiences were waiting 30m for one that didn't come - an hourly service so down to every two hours, or the bus taking 45 mins for a 20m car journey after standing in the rain at the bus stop.

So let's make busses better.

lead acid batteries which aren't really environmentally unfriendly

erm.....

do you want to perhaps rephrase that given that each lead acid car battery contains over 20lbs of lead (hmmm lovely toxic metal with its very own control regulations for the poor buggers having to work with it and recycle it) and not forgetting the highly corrosive sulfuric acid and limited life span of the batteries 3-5 years

although lead acid batteries are some of the more successful recyclable materials the figures have been skewed by the reclassification of "portable batteries" in the reccyling figures being those less than 4kg so vehicle batteries are no longer in the EA figures and local authority targets

so no, there are no current commercial used vehicle batteries than can be anywhere near green or not environmentally damaging.

lets just ride bikes instead 😀

It wouldn't have to be electric golf carts...

Just stricter limits on vehicles for urban use in terms of size power and speed might have a huge impact.

like smart cars, but more so, ie: fixed maximum size, no more than Xbhp (20 enough for urban use?) and speed limited to 30mph. Source of the go-go power is open for debate...

Just the speed limitation and reduced size would mean a massive reduction in pollution even if they still used ICE. Localised air quality is at least as important (more so?) than the overall pollution figures.

Nobody could reasonably argue against the speed limiter for an urban vehicle that would only be used on 20mph or 30mph roads. And even if you did have some intra-urban 40mph DCs since this is clearly a "pie in the sky" wonderland we just have RFID or equivalent de-limiting when you join the DC.

The problem is persuading people that a vehicle suitable for 362 days a year is OK, they'll always worry about the other 3 days edge-case.

But since this would be enforced we don't have to persuade them 😈

Oh, and the above about actually having a decent public mass-transit system in place, that'd be handy too 😀

I'm still of the opinion that far too many people spend a huge amount of time, money and global resources to travel from home to an office to stare at a monitor all day just so they can 'prove' to their boss that they're working.

Honestly, if we judged workers on output and not input, the world would be a far, far better place - sadly it's the middle managers who would suffer when we finally work out that most people don't need to be told how to do their job and most managers only create work to justify their own existence.

Let people work when they want, where they want to create a targeted amount of end result, not force everyone to all arrive at the same place, at the same time and pretend to be busy for 8 hours and bugger off home again.

do you want to perhaps rephrase that

I dunno.. as you say it's easily recyclable and there are already loads in existence. The arguments about rare earth mining aren't appropriate. Of course lots of materials can be mined without respecting the environment, but that goes for just about everything. Controls need to be put in place.

Just ban all cars and put in a decent local public transport system. Simple. Not cheap or popular though, but it's the best way.

Oh, but I agree with P-Jay more. Transport will always bring us down, so the best thing is to simply remove the need for it where we can. I've driven, flown or been on trains for probably millions of miles just to show my face at a client to make them feel better. What a complete waste of potentially productive time.

Simple Solutions to Big Problems

Forced mixed race marriages....... racism dies in a few generations

Reversible sterilization at birth. To have it reversed in later life you have to convince a panel of police, health, education and social workers that you have the skills, finance and ability to look after a child.

Reversible sterilization at birth. To have it reversed in later life you have to convince a panel of police, health, education and social workers that you have the skills, finance and ability to look after a child.

And which simple problem are suggesting this complex solution will fix?

Put all the world leaders in a room with their translators, give them all a quality pill and put some dance music on.

And which simple problem are suggesting this complex solution will fix?

Will fix a large chunk of Social Work and crime issues. I spent many years working with really challenging kids, all third or fourth generation social work kids

*it may also be possible I am not being entirely serious.

We spent a few days on Ambergris Caye off Belize (Madonna's Isla Bonita) and golf carts are the only vehicles allowed. It seems to work fine there so why wouldn't it in the UK? I think the elimination of petrol and diesel engines is the main reason they have such a perfect climate. Spread a few trillion tons of sand over the M6 and you'd never tell the difference.

Blow up the planet and replace it with an intergalactic highway. Far more useful.

Involuntary euthanasia of about 2/3rds of the world would solve most problems..

Hmmm.. current world population ~7.5 billion.

We were at 2.5 billion in the early 1950s and I don't think things were markedly better than they are now.

Saw a program about soil on BBC 4 which was stating how agricultural land is being drastically eroded by rain fall and due to the planting in rows all the rain is being sent down the channel between rows and once it pick up speed it's not draining any more and causing considerable erosion....this has been going on for along time now and has caused many farms to abandon certain fields as they now have no nutrients left in the soil ( or something)..... the answer for this was provided by an engineer and was simply to line between the rows with straw. The rain was diffused by the straw and then had time to drain and not turn into a running torrent. This is about as simple a solution as you could wish I would imagine, both cheap and possibly eco friendly.