You're not getting pallets out the back of an R44, though.
"going where the Chinooks couldn't" I'm sorry, what? Where? How?!?!?!
We have not merely polarized, but violently radicalized politics based on equivalently small changes in tax incidence and GDP. You can try arguing that people are caring too much about the wrong things, but that's never going to be a winning argument.
*Very* much depends on where on the tech tree you are. In the 1950s, there were explicit calls for suburbanization specifically because sprawl was thought to be more survivable against fission bombs.
It may be a minority of US taxes, but it's the entire universe for the local (and to some extent, state) officials who have decision-making power over the issues that urbanists care about.
The best-selling car in California is the Tesla Y. It's a beefy 2000 kg, but can carry only 433 kg, or as much as two Tern GSDs. The Tern GSD, even equipped with carrying racks, weighs about 40 kg badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2023/02/were...
and they treat it as “well he couldn’t possibly really mean this because it would be insane” he means it! it’s insane! it’s evil! get that across to people!
Decades from now we'll be trying to convince the children that Allston wasn't built as a company town, and they'll refuse to believe us.