[kokotko]

I think more and more Gen Y people in advanced European countries see owning a car as a failure - you are a fool for wasting money, when transportation can be done cheaply and also often for free. You are basically penalized for owning a car by high taxes, and for those few occassions in a year when you need a car (moving stuff) it's easy enough to rent. Spending your life in traffic jams is just a plain fail.

Having to wear a nice suit is also a failure. I would never consider working anywhere where I have to wear a suit.

Edit: My overarching point being that attitudes are changing. The 'American dream' doesn't really apply anymore, and especially not everywhere.

[sk5t]

Agreed, the absolutely pervasive 1960s car culture in America seems to be vanishing, and it is on its way to becoming more of a quite-popular hobby. Traffic is worse, insurance is expensive and now may incorporate your credit score, and driving a car gives the police carte blanche to search and violate your civil rights under the flimsiest of excuses. More young people, other than those in very rural areas, are interested in re-urbanizing and riding a bicycle. As both a motorsports / driving enthusiast and bicyclist I think this is great.

[gaius]

I think you may need to recalibrate your idea of failure. I own a car specifically so I can load it up with gear at the weekends and go diving or camping. I know a few people who are rabidly anti-car and ride fixies. They spend their weekends bar-hopping and nursing hangovers. Fair enough, but that's not the lifestyle that particularly interests me.

Having to wear a nice suit is not failure either. Both cars and suits are just tools. It's what you use a tool for that matters. Also I'll note if you resent wearing a suit, you have never actually worn a nice one...

[kokotko]

Fair enough point of using a car for outdoor hobbies - I'd call it an exception to the rule, an appropriate use of technology. But let's face it, in most cases it isn't like that.

Regarding my suit comment, it's about looking into the mirror in the morning and thinking whether the person you see is really who you once aspired to be.

Some people like to wear suits. One of my friend's greatest days was when just off high school he got straight into finance and finally could wear a suit 24/7. It genuinely makes him happy, it's an extension of his personality. He wants to be the big-shot-80s-New-York-cocaine-snorting-penthouse-owner-investment-banker type of guy.

But for me and I guess many others, to walk the earth in a suit would be, I don't know...perhaps the antithesis of existence. I think most people never think about it and even enjoy the office culture in a perverse way. Perhaps it's some form of a groupthink empathy, a we're-all-in-this-together style of getting a kick out of this masked suffering. I remember being a small kid and swearing I'd never be like an office manager or the bankers I saw, all wearing the same suits and becoming an empty shell that just assumes whatever of a corporate idenitity, becoming an embodiment of a foreign entity. Really just a zombie or a host for a parasite until it chews you out.

Because it does chew you out exactly as stated in this Bukowski letter, you're not really getting out. All the prices, the whole economy is set upon this 40-hour workweek, wage slave reality. All value is derived from this standard. I saw this very clearly 20+ years ago without even knowing the proper vocabulary to understand it. It's surprising how simple and clear it is, yet it's collectively decided that we don't want to look at it, we don't want to face it. You want out? The only way is to become the embodiment of the hope of getting out - a well-known star that can sell us the dream. And we'll gladly pay for it!

But you're right, the binge-drinking, fixed-bike urbano hipster thing is also a joke. We're all a joke in the end. But at least we could maybe strive to be funnier than we are because the joke is getting old.

[_delirium]

Most of the SF people I know who use a car only on weekends just use Zipcar or a rental for that. Depends on precisely how often you use it, but if you're not driving the car daily for commute, the economics of owning vs. renting shift considerably.

[smsm42]

Try living in something like Silicon Valley and not owning a car. Shopping for groceries would probably take a whole day, if you're lucky, and you can forget about doing anything else.