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[–] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I like the car analogy. I never had a car, and the last time I called to use one, I had had eye surgery and needed to get home.

There are many aspects of the analogy that match quite well:

  • some types of motor vehicles like ambulances and trucks are clearly useful but most uses are not
  • cars have a massive negative environmental impact (220 grams of CO2 per every kilometer, not to speak of toxic air pollution, photochemical smog, and particulate matter that appears to cause dementia)
  • especially in cities, car feel much faster than they effectively are
  • cars destroy cities and walkable communities, to such a degree that European cities like Paris come to new life after restricting cars
  • cars are extremely convenient, such that they become an addiction quickly, and after a while you don't even believe you can't walk two miles on your feet. You even lose your sense of walking distances.
  • cars massively increase the daily distance you travel, because of Marchetti's constant (humans have a time budget of one hour travel a day), which changes your whole daily routines, leads to more distant work places, urban sprawl in housing, and after a while you are really physically dependent on them
  • using cars is bad for your own health because it leads to lack of exercise, which leads to multiple common and deadly diseases
  • cars do actually cost a lot of money which is sucked up by a corrupt industry and even more corrupt fossil fuel producers
  • source
  • parent