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> we accept…. We accept… I’d like to point out that as individuals, our ‘acceptance’ is not required nor even checked for. As Americans (speaking for my own countrymen only) we accept it the same way we accept our air quality. We, in broad strokes, may choose only to drive, or to remain stationary - just as we can breathe the air, or just stop breathing. Other practical options only even exist in very specific exceptional places or situations (most of them require you to commit to stay in an urban core 100% of the time, and that space physically cannot contain all Americans at once, due to space constraints, which we perceive via cost signals). Of course, if the entire country were built out when NYC was built out, without cars even being hypothesized, things may have been very different today. But we shouldn’t pretend that most car-dependent people are choosing to be so, except maybe those who made an unforced decision to move from say, Manhattan to Phoenix. And even they may have accepted it only grudgingly in exchange for some other benefit such as weather, lower taxes, proximity to family, etc. Note: I personally would like to not be car dependent, so please don’t try to explain to me why cars are bad. I cringe every time i see 327 SUVs idling in the street waiting to drop off each student in a school, on a warm, dry morning in the ‘burbs. |