[notacoward]

Many people love to make rules for other people. Those who through no initiative of their own can afford to walk/bike everywhere they need to, or wait for public transportation because their schedules are flexible, won't be affected by rules making car ownership and use more onerous. They see only the broad or long-term or in-theory effects and not the impact on real living people right now. It's the exact same phenomenon as - possibly even a reaction to - older people who just happen to have lived in an era of stable jobs and cheap houses criticizing young people for not behaving "professionally" or saving enough. See also: non-drinkers happy to ban drinking, non-smokers happy to ban smoking, traditionalists happy to legislate others' sexual or reproductive lives. It all comes down to lack of empathy.

Here's the thing: good (to the extent that the concept has any meaning at all) lies in decisions requiring effort. Being born into a particular circumstance confers no virtue. Other people are born into different circumstances, facing different choices, and those should be respected. Someone born into a US suburb is in a different situation than someone born into a European or Japanese city. Millions of people who control politics in thousands of towns aren't suddenly going to act against their own economic self interest (as home owners) to turn modern suburbs into something better. That's going to take a lot of work, most of it incremental and having to do with incentives or power structures rather than specific issues.

Getting to a less car-centric culture would be absolutely fantastic, but people who dismiss the means of getting there with a hand-wave, or propose paths that are convenient for them but burdensome to others, aren't really engaged in problem solving. It's just idle musing at best, more often an old-fashioned display of group affiliation or (unearned/imaginary) dominance. The irony is that such anti-cooperative behavior is exactly what got us where we are now.

[GaryNumanVevo]

I'm a bit disappointing I didn't read this reply before replying to your other reply in earnest. Honestly, this comment reads as more as a personal projection about the kinds of people who want to have more transportation options, than anything actually constructive.

It's hilarious to actually _blame_ the anti-car stance as the thing that got us in to this situation in the first place. Like it wasn't a fight won in heartfelt debates, rather a systemic lobbying by the auto industry to fundamentally rebuild the post war US into one where automobiles are absolutely necessary for most people.

I've left a bunch of actionable advice in the other thread hopefully you'll read up on it, overall this kind of intellectual dead-ending is dreadfully sad to see on HN

[notacoward]

Nowhere did I blame anti-car people for the current situation. That's a total strawman, and - as you say - sad to see on HN. But not surprising. I'm also well aware of strongtowns and missingmiddle and so on, and often draw my arguments from them. If you look back in my history, as you already seem to have done but only to cherry-pick and escalate, you should be able to see that.

I do want more transportation options. I grew up in a city where there were more (overseas) and have traveled to many more. But I also see a continuing role for cars, and better for them to be EV than ICE. And I'm sick to death of people who sit around and kibitz, as if we can quantum-leap from one state to another - whether it exists elsewhere or not - instead of doing the work to get there through the incremental paths still available to us. That's the real intellectual dead end. Intellect should be employed for understanding and planning and problem solving, not merely wishing problems away and throwing fallacies at anyone who disagrees with that approach.

[GaryNumanVevo]

This is a deeply strange way to complain about a group of people you don't like.