The backlash against overtourism • Hacker News Board

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#131

Post by esotericn » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #81

esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

>We either eliminate these experiences, accept economic inequality, or watch the experiences be eliminated via attrition You're not thinking broad enough! It seems to me that you view the determination of what can be done as derived purely from economics. I have money so I can do what I want, you don't so you can't, and you view that as natural. But economic determination of our freedom is as unnatural as the world i…

It took me a while to interpret this, but I think I see what you're getting at here.

You're right that the competition dynamic doesn't have to be the one we choose.

So I suppose there's a fourth option which involves some sort of other distribution mechanism. You're still going to have a privileged group though, unless you choose to eliminate experiences (e.g. there's no way of fairly distributing private jets, they're not private any more if you do that).

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#132

Post by screye » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

> We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we > develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit > downtown. > > We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable > either.

You hit the nail in the head.

The only way for 7+ billions humans to live sustain-ably on planet earth, is to accept high density living and shared spaces.

High density living in the form of apartments with common gardening, grilling areas, shared yards and complete reliance on public transportation.

I would love to see card become an entirely rental / on demand thing.

It would take a lot to make such a massive cultural switch, but it is the best thing we can do for sustainable living.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#133

Post by ChristianBundy » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

chasingthewind wrote: post #111

jolesf wrote: post #3

“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience, It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction afte…

I personally hate travel and can identify with some of what he expressed here, but at a deeper level this throbs with a kind of elitism that really bothers me. I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the sentence almost reads like one of today's despicable screeds against the "alien" invader. Is there even any possible solution to the "problem" of some people living in or near a place that o…

> I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the sentence almost reads like one of today's despicable screeds against the "alien" invader.

FYI, it shouldn't be surprising that replacing critical words can change the meaning of a sentence.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#134

Post by rtkwe » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #102

the_af wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those other places, not so much Are you arguing those other, less known places are not beautiful? I can't agree with that. There are perfectly valid reasons why Florence and Venice are tourist bottlenecks: they are well known because they are historically important cities, featured in famous works of arts -- paintings, literature, etc -- all over the world. So of course I want to see Venice and cities like it: they…

> Are you arguing those other, less known places are not beautiful? I can't agree with that. Well, yes. Milan or Napoli or Brindisi or whatever, is no Florence or Venice or Rome. And there are nice cities like Verona that are nonetheless not in the league of the latter. You can find nice landscapes all around Italy, but if you want to visit cities, some are naturally more beautiful than others. Like how Santa Fe is n…

Yeah it's also that people can't really do grand tours any more so to get the most tourist bang for their tourist dollar people are naturally going to go for the most important/historic/beautiful sights. Up to a point it's probably also self reinforcing when everyone is going to one place it's has to be special so more people go there.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#135

Post by hueving » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

>We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either.

Why is this viewed as such a given that you state it without any evidence? Once people stop commuting for jobs, it's very feasible for everyone to spread out and live cheaper in smaller cities/towns and rural areas.

Someone who lives in the East Bay and commutes to Sunnyvale every morning has a much larger carbon footprint than someone working remotely from Yuma.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#136

Post by dx87 » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #97

zanny wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a few of those have evolving technical solutions. We can all travel in a more sustainable way if we can do full body VR immersion wherever we want to go. We don't need cars if we have fleets of autonomous vehicles to pick us up and drop us off wherever we want to be on a whim. We can all live in the country if you don't need to commute either yourself or property to and from where you live (the infrastructur…

We can all travel in a more sustainable way if we can do full body VR immersion wherever we want to go Will that include simulated human interaction?

Here's a company working on that by using robots that you connect to through VR and interact with things through their bodies.

https://tx-inc.com/

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#137

Post by friday99 » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

> We can't all eat high quality meat as often as we want. We'll boil the earth and it'll require too much farmland This is defeatist. Technology decoupled agricultural output from the natural fertility of farmland, thereby allowing less farmland to make more food; technology now looks close to decoupling animal meat from sentient animals.

Technology hasn't magically decoupled inputs from outputs. You should look into some of the analysis by Vaclav Smil. He has very well researched assessments of the limits of energy.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#138

Post by hueving » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #55

esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

> It sucks. But what's the alternative? It's perfectly reasonable to drag people out of poverty. But the idea that everyone should be able to do the same things implies a set of "things" very different from what, say, the middle class families on my suburban street do today. Exactly. The "eternal growing of the economic cake" which the majority of the related policies are based on, ignores limits to growth (e.g. ener…

Food is cheap enough we throw away a ton of it and energy could scale significantly further quite easily if there weren't an anti-science political barrier to nuclear.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#139

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

okal wrote: post #100

narag wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the two comments that touch the overpopulation side are being downvoted. Why? Does the people downvoting care to explain? There's a huge contradiction here. Either you do "something" to control population or else all the measures to control climate change are stillborn. We are struggling with the current population!

I didn't downvote the GP, but my impulse to disagree with population control is due to the likelihood that, in my experience, it's not the population groups that have the largest adverse impact on the planet (highly industrialised, middle to high income societies) that are generally the target of this sentiment.

I wrote "Ideally we would stop breeding" but I am aware that implementing any kind of population control will be extremely hard to impossible and has lot of potential for abuse. It's more like a dream where at some point in the future humanity as a whole will have some level of discipline and stay within the limits of the planet. This would also include respecting the environment.

I am aware that this probably won't happen in a harmonious way so my prediction is that we'll keep growing and exploiting the planet but hopefully technology will keep up. Ideally we'll load ourselves into computers and don't need the physical environment anymore.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#140

Post by CPLX » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #63

esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

At least a few of those have evolving technical solutions. We can all travel in a more sustainable way if we can do full body VR immersion wherever we want to go. We don't need cars if we have fleets of autonomous vehicles to pick us up and drop us off wherever we want to be on a whim. We can all live in the country if you don't need to commute either yourself or property to and from where you live (the infrastructur…

> We can all travel in a more sustainable way if we can do full body VR immersion wherever we want to go

You have a peculiar and non-standard definition of the word "travel"