4 ms·

Surely people feeling that way can be attributed to the industry?

by kubb 4mo ago

kortilla 4mo ago
It’s privacy vs not. It doesn’t really need special lobbying
- kubb 4mo ago
  I’m sure that isn’t the full answer. Otherwise car ads wouldn’t be necessary and more affordable cars would outcompete the expensive ones. There’s the utility component, the prestige factor and other things.
  - lan321 4mo ago
    Comfort, utility, fun, status. Every person has their own mixed requirement of those that then gets applied to their budget. Expensive for me is probably cheap for our CEO and cheap for me is probably expensive for our interns :)
  - somenameforme 4mo ago
    Oh man what a perfect example to be had here. So historically exactly what you're said is 100% what happened. By the time Ford really mastered manufacturing, he managed to get the price of the Model T down to $260 around 1925, about $4,600 in current terms for a premium car! Needless to say everybody was buying one and he was rocking it. Then came along General Motors and they were desperate to find any way to compete. They couldn't compete on price or quality, so their CEO is credited with inventing planned obsolescence, and turning cars into a fashion. They'd release a new style each year alongside plentiful marketing implying that the old styles were outdated, and it was wildly successful. So yeah, needless to say people have always genuinely wanted their own cars. But it's also true that companies have managed through advertising to create artificial demand for vehicles that don't objectively make sense. To some degree reality is catching up at least though. Aston Martin is on the verge of bankruptcy and BYD is the largest electric car company in the world, by a wide margin.
mdp2021 4mo ago
For hopefully most people, it should be attributed to the "Wait, now I have such a freedom and power?". Opposite to "before the invention of bicycle, people married within a radius in the order of the mile" (can't remember the exact stat right now).
- ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
  It's like that feeling of power you get from owning a gun that you only bought because you feared all the other people who owned guns.
  - mdp2021 4mo ago
    Comparing freedom of movement to a killing device is beyond any threshold of plausibility. And the whole sentence above is unintelligible here. No, it's really that the ability to move at ease is priceless.
    - ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
      Car crashes kill roughly as many Americans each year as guns. If you add pollution impacts, cars double the yearly deaths of guns.
      - mdp2021 4mo ago
        > Car[s...] kill And in a Cost/Risk/Benefit computation, cars remain incommensurately invaluable. Because one's Quality of Life without them would simply be destroyed, comparatively. The moving "castle" (legal term in the USA) can be more important than the house in crucial regards. The point attempted at post 48501189 remains unintelligible. That cars imply risks and externalities does not clarify it.
kakacik 4mo ago
No its much more straightforward, but I get it - there is no warm fuzzy feeling of discovering yet another global evil conspiracy out there set to get all of us. We are family of 4 with 2 small kids. Whenever we travel, its a series of backpacks, other bags, other stuff, and then some more. Heck, even if I travel alone its almost never just me - there are heaps of garbage to dispose, big shopping bags to bring back, big backpack with camping or climbing or skiing gear etc. It would have been absolute, utter nightmare to do this over public transport. This comes from European who has generally very good public transport (given rural area) and world's best train network specifically (Switzerland). Yet roads are choke full of cars and every year there is more. Public transport simply ain't cutting it for anything but the simplest use cases, ie just me and nothing or small backpack. Some routes I take would take 3-5x longer with public transport, or are just not possible at all. No industry massage required here, ever. Not everybody lives in some dense city and never leaves outside for evenings or weekends.
- CalRobert 4mo ago
  Switzerland does have roads choked full of cars. It also has pretty mediocre bike infrastructure. But this is kind of besides the point - even in the Netherlands I also would use a car if I were taking camping and skiing gear with the kids, and that's fine. But I can also take them in the bakfiets to the grocery store when I want, and that's also fine. Cars have their purpose, but you shouldn't _have_ to use one for basic trips.
  - kakacik 4mo ago
    Well, here is where we differ - what is basic trip for you may not be basic trip for me or next Joe. Maybe they don't even have walking path to their house. Maybe closest grocery store is 5km away on roads which are incompatible with safe cycling (many parents don't give a fck and just ride, throwing a tiny little dice with every truck passing centimeters from them and their young kids at high speed). Maybe XYZ. Don't judge others in some complex situation just because in your case there is some simple straightforward solution. Yes Netherland has top notch cycling infra but thats nowhere else to be seen and won't be seen for quite some time. And don't force your solution unto everybody regardless on fit, that doesn't work long term (aka EU approach to things or why much of eastern part hates it).
killerstorm 4mo ago
Cars were quite desirable in Soviet Union, where industry was not allowed to advertise. You had to get into a queue to buy a car, the state was not interested to make them in a quantity to satisfy the demand. Very few people actually _needed_ cars as soviets built adequate public transport system. But there are many situations where car can really help a lot. Perhaps that's more obvious in a society which has rather few cars. E.g. back in Soviet days and around that only one member of my extended family had a car. The rest of the family were really happy about opportunities it provides. E.g. with a car you can buy fresh produce directly from farmers with just few hours of driving. Doing the same without a car is so much hassle and effort people just won't do it, and then you're confined to what's available in a local grocery story (which was usually much worse than direct-from-farmer option). Do you think it has something to do with "car industry"?
- inigyou 4mo ago
  Nobody is complaining about cars existing but about mandatory-car cities and the mindset associated with that.

Surely people feeling that way can be attributed to the industry?

by kubb 4mo ago

Surely people feeling that way can be attributed to the industry?

kortilla 4mo ago

It’s privacy vs not. It doesn’t really need special lobbying

kubb 4mo ago
I’m sure that isn’t the full answer. Otherwise car ads wouldn’t be necessary and more affordable cars would outcompete the expensive ones. There’s the utility component, the prestige factor and other things.
- lan321 4mo ago
  Comfort, utility, fun, status. Every person has their own mixed requirement of those that then gets applied to their budget. Expensive for me is probably cheap for our CEO and cheap for me is probably expensive for our interns :)
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  Oh man what a perfect example to be had here. So historically exactly what you're said is 100% what happened. By the time Ford really mastered manufacturing, he managed to get the price of the Model T down to $260 around 1925, about $4,600 in current terms for a premium car! Needless to say everybody was buying one and he was rocking it. Then came along General Motors and they were desperate to find any way to compete. They couldn't compete on price or quality, so their CEO is credited with inventing planned obsolescence, and turning cars into a fashion. They'd release a new style each year alongside plentiful marketing implying that the old styles were outdated, and it was wildly successful. So yeah, needless to say people have always genuinely wanted their own cars. But it's also true that companies have managed through advertising to create artificial demand for vehicles that don't objectively make sense. To some degree reality is catching up at least though. Aston Martin is on the verge of bankruptcy and BYD is the largest electric car company in the world, by a wide margin.

mdp2021 4mo ago

For hopefully most people, it should be attributed to the "Wait, now I have such a freedom and power?". Opposite to "before the invention of bicycle, people married within a radius in the order of the mile" (can't remember the exact stat right now).

ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
It's like that feeling of power you get from owning a gun that you only bought because you feared all the other people who owned guns.
- mdp2021 4mo ago
  Comparing freedom of movement to a killing device is beyond any threshold of plausibility. And the whole sentence above is unintelligible here. No, it's really that the ability to move at ease is priceless.
  - ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
    Car crashes kill roughly as many Americans each year as guns. If you add pollution impacts, cars double the yearly deaths of guns.
    - mdp2021 4mo ago
      > Car[s...] kill And in a Cost/Risk/Benefit computation, cars remain incommensurately invaluable. Because one's Quality of Life without them would simply be destroyed, comparatively. The moving "castle" (legal term in the USA) can be more important than the house in crucial regards. The point attempted at post 48501189 remains unintelligible. That cars imply risks and externalities does not clarify it.

kakacik 4mo ago

No its much more straightforward, but I get it - there is no warm fuzzy feeling of discovering yet another global evil conspiracy out there set to get all of us. We are family of 4 with 2 small kids. Whenever we travel, its a series of backpacks, other bags, other stuff, and then some more. Heck, even if I travel alone its almost never just me - there are heaps of garbage to dispose, big shopping bags to bring back, big backpack with camping or climbing or skiing gear etc. It would have been absolute, utter nightmare to do this over public transport. This comes from European who has generally very good public transport (given rural area) and world's best train network specifically (Switzerland). Yet roads are choke full of cars and every year there is more. Public transport simply ain't cutting it for anything but the simplest use cases, ie just me and nothing or small backpack. Some routes I take would take 3-5x longer with public transport, or are just not possible at all. No industry massage required here, ever. Not everybody lives in some dense city and never leaves outside for evenings or weekends.

CalRobert 4mo ago
Switzerland does have roads choked full of cars. It also has pretty mediocre bike infrastructure. But this is kind of besides the point - even in the Netherlands I also would use a car if I were taking camping and skiing gear with the kids, and that's fine. But I can also take them in the bakfiets to the grocery store when I want, and that's also fine. Cars have their purpose, but you shouldn't _have_ to use one for basic trips.
- kakacik 4mo ago
  Well, here is where we differ - what is basic trip for you may not be basic trip for me or next Joe. Maybe they don't even have walking path to their house. Maybe closest grocery store is 5km away on roads which are incompatible with safe cycling (many parents don't give a fck and just ride, throwing a tiny little dice with every truck passing centimeters from them and their young kids at high speed). Maybe XYZ. Don't judge others in some complex situation just because in your case there is some simple straightforward solution. Yes Netherland has top notch cycling infra but thats nowhere else to be seen and won't be seen for quite some time. And don't force your solution unto everybody regardless on fit, that doesn't work long term (aka EU approach to things or why much of eastern part hates it).

killerstorm 4mo ago

Cars were quite desirable in Soviet Union, where industry was not allowed to advertise. You had to get into a queue to buy a car, the state was not interested to make them in a quantity to satisfy the demand. Very few people actually _needed_ cars as soviets built adequate public transport system. But there are many situations where car can really help a lot. Perhaps that's more obvious in a society which has rather few cars. E.g. back in Soviet days and around that only one member of my extended family had a car. The rest of the family were really happy about opportunities it provides. E.g. with a car you can buy fresh produce directly from farmers with just few hours of driving. Doing the same without a car is so much hassle and effort people just won't do it, and then you're confined to what's available in a local grocery story (which was usually much worse than direct-from-farmer option). Do you think it has something to do with "car industry"?

inigyou 4mo ago
Nobody is complaining about cars existing but about mandatory-car cities and the mindset associated with that.