4 ms·

From my experience, your anecdote generalizes very well across most of the EU. You're being downvoted because HN has a particularly loud car hating bubble. Luck

From my experience, your anecdote generalizes very well across most of the EU. You're being downvoted because HN has a particularly loud car hating bubble. Luckily, there are very few places these people have any meaningful chance of imposing their views on the rest of us.

glofish 7y ago
What does it mean to "impose" their views? Do you mean that car ownership is disincentivized by making people bear more of the cost of their car ownership?
- keldaris 7y ago
  No, the two questions you ask have very little to do with each other. There's a perfectly reasonable debate to be had about the externalities of different modes of transportation, but that is not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to a relatively small (but very vocal) segment of almost uniformly young and able bodied city dwellers with a fairly narrow and very strongly held set of views about what city life should look like. These people seem to want to hijack urban planning and tax policy to legislate in the exclusive interest of their preferred lifestyle without regard (and often with outright contempt) for the views of their fellow citizens. That's what it means to "impose" their views. My prediction is that if and when any of this makes its way into mainstream discourse and actual policy, the backlash will be severe and rather ugly. This is particularly unfortunate, since there are plenty of real issues with urban planning and transportation, but instead of real debate we have polarized flamewars over trivialized strawmen (essentially "ban cars, maximize density" vs. "freedom and country living").
  - admax88q 7y ago
    Lol. Yeah it's those damn millenials that are ruining public debate again. There's is an equally loud segment of older car drivers who complain about the so called "war on cars" everytime somebody wants an alternative to driving.
    - keldaris 7y ago
      > Lol. Yeah it's those damn millenials that are ruining public debate again. I didn't assert that. As far as I can tell it's a tiny minority of millenials. > There's is an equally loud segment of older car drivers who complain about the so called "war on cars" everytime somebody wants an alternative to driving. They might be equally loud somewhere, but certainly not on HN. Also not in most EU countries as far as I can tell, but I don't presume to speak more broadly than that.

glofish 7y ago

What does it mean to "impose" their views? Do you mean that car ownership is disincentivized by making people bear more of the cost of their car ownership?

keldaris 7y ago
No, the two questions you ask have very little to do with each other. There's a perfectly reasonable debate to be had about the externalities of different modes of transportation, but that is not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to a relatively small (but very vocal) segment of almost uniformly young and able bodied city dwellers with a fairly narrow and very strongly held set of views about what city life should look like. These people seem to want to hijack urban planning and tax policy to legislate in the exclusive interest of their preferred lifestyle without regard (and often with outright contempt) for the views of their fellow citizens. That's what it means to "impose" their views. My prediction is that if and when any of this makes its way into mainstream discourse and actual policy, the backlash will be severe and rather ugly. This is particularly unfortunate, since there are plenty of real issues with urban planning and transportation, but instead of real debate we have polarized flamewars over trivialized strawmen (essentially "ban cars, maximize density" vs. "freedom and country living").
- admax88q 7y ago
  Lol. Yeah it's those damn millenials that are ruining public debate again. There's is an equally loud segment of older car drivers who complain about the so called "war on cars" everytime somebody wants an alternative to driving.
  - keldaris 7y ago
    > Lol. Yeah it's those damn millenials that are ruining public debate again. I didn't assert that. As far as I can tell it's a tiny minority of millenials. > There's is an equally loud segment of older car drivers who complain about the so called "war on cars" everytime somebody wants an alternative to driving. They might be equally loud somewhere, but certainly not on HN. Also not in most EU countries as far as I can tell, but I don't presume to speak more broadly than that.