The typical American buys unnecessarily large cars, lives nowhere near mixed zoning and uses AC in inefficient housing. It amounts to huge amounts of wasted ene

The typical American buys unnecessarily large cars, lives nowhere near mixed zoning and uses AC in inefficient housing. It amounts to huge amounts of wasted energy. That's not someone to emulate. There are correct ways that are correct because they're effective and incorrect ways that aren't. Those ways should be imposed on people in tragedy of the commons type market failures. It follows from the social contract.