>>As to the politics of sprawl, Americans traded democracy ownership for home ownership. They stopped paying for democracy through engaged citizenship and started paying for compulsive consumption. True citizenship was replaced by social isolation and loss of social capital as people cocooned themselves in their private space where they could gratify themselves with more and bigger possessions.<<
Two points:
1. I dumped TV ten years ago. One of the unexpected consequences was that I was cured (for the most part) of consumerism. I now realize that television is the engine which powers demand. If the american people were to wein themselves of all commercial TV, our economy would completely collapse in a year.
2. We, as a culture, have become noting more than zoo animals with comfortable cages. But we must constantly work and fret at paying the debt for those comforts and are, in reality, to tired to really enjoy them.
I am flabergasted as I drive through some dumpy neigborhoods and see boats, jet skis and motorhomes parked next to homes at various levels of disrepair. The "toys", all of which NEED LICENSES (fees!!!), sit there most of the year unused, while the owner works and works to pay for them. It would be funny if it were not so sad.
My wife and I want to take up kayaking on the lake. We were going to get one of those $400 ones at costco. We decided it would be MUCH easier to rent them by the hour. Sure, if we become fanatical kayakers we could buy them, but not until. We don't have to store them, repair them or transport them. It is just too easy!
Meaning?
You can't Kayak when the class is "Half Empty"?
Very good point. I remember reading somewhere that John Mellencamp's 1980s-vintage song "Pink Houses" was based on this very point. He was driving across the Midwest through small towns along the road, and he couldn't help but notice that the crappiest pastel-colored homes (the "little pink houses") all had satellite dishes on the roof and big new cars parked in the driveway.