4 ms·
I agree people want cars, but people also want single-family detached homes & neither of these scale to big cities (where - corona notwithstanding - increasingl
by ido 6y ago
I agree people want cars, but people also want single-family detached homes & neither of these scale to big cities (where - corona notwithstanding - increasingly large portions of the population move to). IMO If you want to live in a big city you have to take a hit for the greater good and forgo some things you want.
There is no (reasonable) way to have cities like Tokyo, Delhi or Shanghai if each family lives in a detached home & people commute to work daily by private automobile.
And this is not even tackling having to alleviate climate change by reducing emissions.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoSo stop micromanaging what people build on their property and drive on the road and let the market decide. Get rid of zoning so people and build whatever they want and get rid of registration BS. If someone pays money to register something it shouldn't be the state's concern whether it's a car or a fork lift, moped or a bike, as long as it fits in the lanes and has the right lights they should be able to drive it on any road on which they can keep up with traffic. Nobody wants to do 40 on a moped on the interstate with traffic speeding by. Market solutions for both these problems have been proven to work well.
- ido 6y agoThe market does not on itself account for externalities: it can be better for the individual to drive a car even if it's better for all the road's users collectively if as many people as possible took the bus or rode a bike (less congestion). Likewise your personal air pollution doesn't make a perceptible difference but if everyone is driving cleaner vehicles it benefits everyone collectively with cleaner air (this was very noticable when e.g. Delhi required auto-rickshaws to convert to natural gas).