“How will we travel in the Solarpunk utopia?” Smooth brains at r/solarpunk imagine a world without planes

My impression (from knowing a few of these) is that they are blind to their privilege.

I know this chick in her mid-40s who is an "artist" and still acts like she's in her late-teens/early-twenties. She is largely supported by her mother and step-father (mom is a successful academic, step-dad made his money in the tech industry in the 90s), yet she thinks she's one of the downtrodden masses since her step-father will only pay for a 2-bedroom apartment instead of the kinds of places the PMCs in our social circle can afford. Constantly going on about capitalism and gentrification and arts funding and minorities and the whole progressive smorgasbord.

She does that because she literally does not see all the ways she's being supported. When daddy pays the rent directly to the landlord, she's not seeing the $2500 changing hands. When he buys her car, or pays for the insurance, or pays for her phone and phone plan, whatever, she doesn't see the amount of money he's lavishing on her. When mommy got her into university, she didn't see the ranking of her application relative to the others, so she never got to question if she got into a separate queue. She's a queer bisexual pansexual who has only dated dudes but totally finds women so attractive, and she's 1/64^th BIPOC so she's definitely oppressed.

It's more that despite being somewhat wealthy and affluent, lower upper class usually, they're not at the tippy top of the pyramid. They feel like they can imagine themselves as "Head central planner" ticking boxes rather than a man in a coal mine. There's also the hidden motivation of having financial superiority secure, so they spend their time signalling status by wasting time on social causes so they can be considered morally superior as well.

I think Steinbeck above is a bit naive about the dangers these types pose. Just because someone appears incompetent, middling or petty when the party is still trifles, doesn't mean they don't switch to sadistic boardroom backstabbers when the party starts gaining power.

luxury beliefs

Yes. It's not that the "working class rightoids" think they might get rich but just haven't yet, it's that they are "well-to-do socialists" embarrassed by their economic class.

Kurt Vonnegut also had a line about most Americans thinking they were "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"

>And housing is a human right, so the government can just provide everyone a beach house since there won't be any landlords to artificially restrict the supply of beachfront property.

I like to remind them that if housing is a human right, what about house maintenance? Living in an overgrown room with no power or water is hardly what they meant, right? So are the roofers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and other professions that maintain houses suddenly going to work for free?

We just need to power cars with hydrogen. I saw a youtube video about this guy named Dr. Billings who had it all figured out.