Cars are a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons. Everybody would personally benefit if everyone else drove less, as long as they themselves can keep d

Cars are a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons. Everybody would personally benefit if everyone else drove less, as long as they themselves can keep driving. Capitalism is exceedingly poor at accounting for negative externalities, and many armchair economists don't seem to even acknowledge negative externalities exist because they are a "hidden" cost not determined by the market and paid by third parties. Any economist worth their salt, of course, says that as a mechanism created specifically to solve coordination problems like this, it's the government's job to put a real price on negative externalities.