We have 748 million people here in the EU, so I'm not sure what you're on about when it comes to scale. As for efficiency, I suppose that depends on how you define the numerator and denominator.
Having more people with about the same size as US (and mind you, not all europe is EU) means more population density and you have a land route to asia and close to africa.
In the US everything international (except americas) comes by ship and you have large distances between population centers. It isn't just the size and the amount of freeways but the way they are interconnected that allows all kinds of truck routes between ports and production centers (e.g.: veggies and fruit in cali or florida) to not just big cities but middle of nowhere montana or dakotas as remote and underpopulated as they may be, they all have easy access to the same interlink.
If this was networking, europe would be like a very large campus network but the US would be a metropolitan area network with a similar physical size but connecting all types of buildings.
Honestly, I think you just have to drive around and see what I mean. Many americans also don't get this. I don't mean just the roads but go to random walmarts or targete in the middle of the desert or mountains that get the same goods as big city stores and they're just as large. You can easily spend half a day shopping in a walmart.
I'm originally from the US, I understand how things work there well enough... but anyway after re-reading your original post I think we probably generally agree more than we disagree. Having lived in both continents I take issue with the idea that delivering goods via freight has anything to do with the density and walkability of cities. Tomatoes get shipped from Southern Spain to remote villages in Sweden just like they get shipped from Florida to North Dakota. There are many other factors to blame for how car centric the US is, and you point out several in your other posts.
badrabbit|2 years ago
In the US everything international (except americas) comes by ship and you have large distances between population centers. It isn't just the size and the amount of freeways but the way they are interconnected that allows all kinds of truck routes between ports and production centers (e.g.: veggies and fruit in cali or florida) to not just big cities but middle of nowhere montana or dakotas as remote and underpopulated as they may be, they all have easy access to the same interlink.
If this was networking, europe would be like a very large campus network but the US would be a metropolitan area network with a similar physical size but connecting all types of buildings.
Honestly, I think you just have to drive around and see what I mean. Many americans also don't get this. I don't mean just the roads but go to random walmarts or targete in the middle of the desert or mountains that get the same goods as big city stores and they're just as large. You can easily spend half a day shopping in a walmart.
throw_away1525|2 years ago