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between ice cream consumption and violence. An unsettling fact at first glance. Yet researchers tend to be hard-workers and in this case discovered the one factor making some sense of such seemingly preposterousness; heat. As seasons change and summer approaches, hemispheres witness an increase in mean temperature. Being hot can certainly be unpleasant. Some people resort to ice cream as a means of cooling, others simply become more aggressive, and surely a few do both. I suppose global warming means good business for Baskin Robins and defense lawyers alike. Something to keep in mind, minus that previous sentence.
The past 150 years have witnessed a correlating increase among grid implementation and capitalism. To act wise like researchers, we might propose the existence of an alternate factor that is aiding the increase of both. This model, in conjunction with the producer/product paradigm, might make explaining such a seemingly simple trend too complex a job for a mere statistician. For example; Product A might influence Producer B which is responsible for Product C who of course produced product A in the first place. All of which might also be pure coincidence any who. Nevertheless, the third player in our triangle of cause; the automobile. At the onset, the grid was a product of capitalism. Whether farm acres or city blocks, the grid provides a quantifiable guideline of land division intended to turn real estate into a more efficient and prosperous business. And thus has been the case. Like war and politics, grids exist as both product and producer of capitalism. |
The automobile is a product and producer of both. The spread of urban grids made transportation (which before 1900 was done by either horse and buggy or primitive trolley cars) more simple, accessible, and thus widespread. In many ways the grid quite literally laid the tracks for commuting. Density dispersions fueled the need for more efficient means of travel, i.e. the car. Businessmen and inventors alike took note of such needs as enterprising opportunities. Like the VHS, the tennis shoe, and most technological breakthroughs, the car was produced largely by capitalist motives.
For all practical purposes, automobile production was too costly a practice as to allow for mass consumption. That is, pre-Henry Ford. Perhaps influenced by the linearity and efficiency of the grid itself, Mr. Ford championed the new standard for factory production; the assembly-line. A model that rivals the creation of currencies and stock markets alike with regards to creating modern capitalism. For a variety of reasons. Most directly, Henry Ford lowered the price tag as to where buying and owing a car was more reasonable for more people. He thus opened the door for car culture. The effects of which, continuing to this day, are responsible for the creation of new enterprises, businesses, and money generating corporations. Outskirt developers and eventual suburb planners, road and highway construction crews (and thus concrete producers), bridge and tunnel authorities, the tourism sector (mostly roadside motels and truck stops), as well as the steel, the rubber, and the oil industries can all be thankful for how liberating an increase in mobility was for most Americans. |
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