[bluecalm]

People want big cars and people want everyone else to pay for them. Build big parking spaces for free. Widen roads for free. Not cover costs of accidents or otherwise the insurance would be too much. Not pay for all the polluting either.

It comes down to: "I want to drive big, loud, smelly, dangerous car free of any consequences for fraction of the cost". We don't tolerate such desires in other areas but cars somehow get free pass still.

[doe_eyes]

Huh? We tolerate it pretty much everywhere else. You can buy a 2,000 sq ft home, even though you could live in a 500 sq ft condo. You can buy a computer more powerful than needed for work. You can buy Apple instead of Dell, even though the extra money would be spent better on helping the homeless or preventing malaria in the developing world.

It's really not that black and white. There's a line between the government deciding the optimal allocation of all resources and you retaining some degree of personal freedom. Techies in the SF Bay Area are very quick to draw that line in a way that affects other people's lifestyles, but doesn't affect their own. Guess what - pickup drivers in Texas have critical opinions about your consumer choices too.

[dalyons]

None of your examples require other people to pay for your choices, like giant trucks needing wider roads do.

[marcus0x62]

Which giant trucks “need” wider roads? I see pickup trucks in the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 ton range drive on standard roads around me every day.

[throwaway7ahgb]

I don't know of any place that is creating larger roads just for these huge (personal) trucks.

Do you also have a problem with commercial trucks or just the people that chose personal trucks because they don't agree with your ideology?

[doe_eyes]

A computer or a home that uses more energy has externalities for others that certainly aren't covered by your electricity bills alone. Taxpayers pay for new power plants, everybody pays for emissions, etc. Almost everything has externalities that aren't fully accounted for in the sticker price, because it would be insanely complicated to do that kind of accounting, let alone do it in a way we can all agree on.

If you think the math for cars is uniquely bad, I think that's a reasonable position, although I suspect it's pretty myopic. The externalities of cheap consumer goods from China, or of a clothes dryer or an AC unit, are pretty terrible too.

The math aside, there is a huge risk to this sort of hyper-rational accounting. It's probably not cost-effective for the society to medically prolong the lives of people over the age of 50. There are many squishy, hard-to-parametrize overriding considerations for policy decisions, and if we accept it for our lifestyles, we should probably at least try to understand what they are for other lifestyles too.