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The people of Singapore pay a minimum of 100K for the privilege of owning a bottom tier car and the demand for cars there is overwhelming and insatiable, despit
by Der_Einzige 3y ago
The people of Singapore pay a minimum of 100K for the privilege of owning a bottom tier car and the demand for cars there is overwhelming and insatiable, despite the world class and extremely clean mass transit systems.
The reality is that cars are freedom and still superior from a continence and comfort standpoint. Americans are insanely privileged to have cheap, powerful cars.
- seanp2k2 3y ago>The reality is that cars are freedom and still superior from a continence and comfort standpoint. Ask any Amazon driver; they much prefer peeing in bottles in the comfort of their own delivery trucks vs on trains.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thejazzman 3y agoAmazon delivery drivers use vans in my location
- acdha 3y ago> The reality is that cars are freedom and still superior from a continence and comfort standpoint. If you have them when other people don't, yes. The problem is that by the time this is no longer true, you likely have a large sunk cost fallacy and political leaders firmly committed to the model and will struggle to realize that all of the time in traffic, countless deaths, and lowered quality of life for everyone around are in fact not actually inevitable.
- csomar 3y agoCars are freedom, I kinda agree. But you picked the worst place for your comparison. A small, packed island where if everyone had a car, there won’t be enough parking. Another thing: you can have both (ie: Europe). You use public transit to get to places and you use your car when you need space for luggage or taking the family.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoThe Singapore thing is about status, not freedom. For the last 15 years I've lived in various places around the world, and for all of them a private car is the most frustrating, least enabling method of transport available. Finding parking is a nightmare, traffic is a nightmare, having to concentrate on the idiots around me is a nightmare, not being able to drink when I go out is a nightmare, dealing with the mechanical problems of the vehicle itself is a nightmare, dealing with the bureaucracy of owning a car is a nightmare. This isn't what freedom looks like. Most freeing? Riding a motorbike in Phnom Penh. Berlin's 5 different public transport systems. Walking everywhere in Bristol (UK). Mexico City's excellent underground.
- Erratic6576 3y ago[dead]
- omnimus 3y agoAdd riding a bike (or electric bike) in most of Dutch cities. It can be even fun.
- j4yav 3y agoI have a car and a bike in the Netherlands. Most everyone I know has both. Both are nice to have at different times, and I've never experienced any of the nightmares GP is describing. I was curious so I just checked, and the number of cars is just shy of the number of people of driving age, even in the bicycle paradise of the Netherlands.
- Symbiote 3y agoA difference is most Dutch families have one car, whereas the majority of American families have two or more.
- cheschire 3y agoAt least three of my neighbors I can see from my front door here in America have 5 to 8 cars. But that’s also because they have to be multigenerational to afford a SFH these days.
- fifilura 3y agoI alwas thought that the Singapore car thing was a reason for dads to get a break from a crowded appartment. Sleeping-car-dads-under-newspaper was a common thing to see when I was there 25 years ago...
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> The reality is that cars are freedom You are not allowed to run a small business out of your house in US, so i dont think you have any freedom. Private jets are freedom. like actual freedom.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoYou can do private business out of your house for food at least in California. Or you can just ignore whatever podunk laws they’re supposed to enforce because in the PNW, the cops are too lazy to enforce anti heroin laws let alone anti small business laws