[blahedo]

> I am old enough to remember as a kid how people perceived automobiles in, say, the late 1950s, .... Even dissidents of the time, such as Jack Kerouac, .... Therefore, it did not take a secret plot by General Motors (or whomever) to get people to push widespread auto use. People wanted to....

This whole paragraph is missing the point---the purported "plot" was not a product of the 1950s, but of the 1920s. The evidence that you provide in this paragraph does not support the claim that there was no plot; it might actually just support the claim that the "plot", such as it was, succeeded!

(That's not to say there was definitely a plot, although I think it's clear there was. But counterevidence for this claim would need to come in the form of recollections and data from much earlier.)

[edj]

Exactly. Without a doubt there was a literal conspiracy to undermine urban mass transit during the 1930s and 1940s. Firestone, Phillips, Standard Oil, and GM were all convicted of conspiracy, for Pete's sake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...

[kahirsch]

They were convicted of trying to monopolize sales of buses and bus parts, not eliminate mass transit.

[loup-vaillant]

Bayesian evidence. Being convicted of a crime is strong evidence that you might have committed other related crimes.

If those companies where convicted of collusion, then it is very likely they conspired about more than a little monopoly.