Meet the Sakura, the best-selling electric car in Japan. It has driver assistance, auto-parking, fast charging, bi-directional power, and acres of charm. The killer stat: It only costs $17,000.
How are deliveries going to work, exactly? If I order a computer, what, I can’t have it anymore because some dumb ecofash said so? And before you go all “hurr durr go 2 ze store” I can’t, I WFH, as should everyone who can, in part - to save the environment.
How am I meant to fuck off from work for an hour to go to the store? Even if grocery stores sold electronics which they don’t, everything closes at 6PM latest. On Saturdays it’s 3PM, even if I could carry enough to shop for an entire week ahead on my back.
That comment is a bad take to be sure, but it isn’t really about eliminating every vehicle in existence. We’d still need individual vehicles to serve for delivery and emergency services, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
The main thought is just that it’s a bit silly to have half the population driving a two tonne vehicle to the grocery store. There’s already communities where golf carts are used instead of cars.
The whole concept of ripping out every road and installing solar tramways is just as much a nonsensical extreme not worth taking seriously as ‘what do I do if I order a computer and I work from home’. I get your use of the example though, it is the equivalent counterpoint.
I mean, I don’t think my example is an extreme, like I work from home every single day and have always done so, there are no longer stores around me that sells any electronics, and as I don’t drive, I get it delivered, which is the primary and most of the time the only way of buying anything that isn’t groceries for me these days.
If anything my example is an extremely down to earth grass-touch-core argument built off explicitly literally what my life is in the most literal sense wholly about the basic material realities of it, and it highlights the problems with their their absolutist internet-extremist-silliness-core-ass rhetoric. I don’t get in any way how it’s “extreme” or “equivalent” to the other user’s batshit insane propositions.
Are you one of those “everything is equivalent both sides” type people?
Are you implying I in any way disagree with the actual rhetoric of “let’s have less car-centric infrastructure?” Because I don’t and I never stated that. Moreover I do agree with you though, I don’t drive and I hate cars anyway. I just don’t like that user’s rhetoric because it smells like degrowth ecofash type rhetoric, which is extremely harmful and leads to NIMBYism and as such worsening material conditions and issues like homelessness and poverty traps and enriches landlords.
Environment good because it makes things for people better, not as a thing unto itself. On that basis and only on that basis with that reasoning as the guiding and completely overriding principle - I agree, fuck cars. 👍
You aren’t in the fuck cars community, and the rest of us live in the real world where cars exist. Especially in the US. This isn’t some fantasy land where we can go back in time and change our entire infrastructure. We CAN however condense more, rely on trains in metro areas, and use electric vehicles. But you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
The entire infrastructure was changed towards cars within living memory. What makes you think the reverse isn’t possible or even likely in the next hundred years?
The “Fuck Cars” crowd basically just regurgitate what they hear a ridiculously rich youtuber who lives in one of the higher cost of living cities on the planet say. So take anything they say with a grain of salt.
What they ACTUALLY are saying is that the average person did not need a personal vehicle (whether it is a horse or a car) until (guesstimating) the 1950s/60s. Not because public transit was so much better but instead because people basically never left the couple mile radius of where they were born. Catching a bus To The City was a big deal and people who actually moved long distances away from family were 'strange".
Then, for whatever reason, people learned there was a big wide world and the cost of cars dropped drastically. So it became much more common to want to make that dream trip to The City a monthly or even weekly trip and people increasingly would move tens or even hundreds of miles away from where they grew up… in part to be able to buy a house and have their own family.
But it isn’t that infrastructure was “changed” so much as use cases were. And people stopped being willing to spend an entire day traveling to go visit their sibling one state over.
The aspect which HAS changed in “living memory” is the decline in “walkable cities”. The idea that you would have a corner grocery store every couple miles and would never even need a car. And… anyone who is even slightly aware of logistics and shipping can understand why that is also not really feasible. Because having pantry staples and “the basics” at Fred’s Grocery down the street? That is… depending on where you live that is feasible.
But… there is a reason fricking kei cars exist. Because you are not going to have a butcher or a giant produce stand or whatever on every street corner. You can’t. There will be MASSIVE food waste if you did. So people still tend to have to travel a bit even just a few times a month. Some people do that by public transit and are the people with five bags of groceries on the subway. Many people rapidly get that car for the weekend grocery trips and so forth.
At which point… if people are already going to drive to get groceries… why would they go to the corner store anyway?
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE a walkable city and I was probably the happiest for the five or so years I lived in The City and would hit up a medium sized grocery store while walking back to my apartment from the subway station. And getting GOOD meat was 30 minutes away by train. But I am also not privileged enough to ignore the existence of small towns or the tendency for the people who WORK in those grocery stores to live in said small town where it is an hour commute and having to stay late for 30 minutes adds another two hours to their day.
Which is why I REALLY dislike the “Fuck Cars” “movement”. Because, at best, it is a bunch of privileged people saying “fuck the poors”. And… the idea of never needing to travel more than 5 miles from where you live feels like some backdoor rightwing bullshit to isolate people and Make Xenophobia Great Again.
I mean… even in Japan (basically the mecca of public transit), you need a car for a lot of “last mile” transit to smaller towns. And you want a car for many (most?) towns because there might only be two or three buses per day.
Makoto Shinkai’s movies LOVE to focus on this as a way to build tension. Have one of the characters spend two or three days taking a long chain of trains and buses to reach the one that they love only to have to spend the night at a motel in a nowhere town where they can then have a heartfelt talk about what they are actually looking for.
And if you actually go there (or to “Western Europe”) and want to go somewhere other than the most touristy of places? You rapidly realize how true that is. Less so the “talk to the friend who is taking off work to help you check in on the girl you used to body swap with” part and more the idea of needing to transfer to three different trains and run to catch a bus because the alternative is you are waiting for 3 hours at a tiny 7-11 and then spending the night at the bus station when you arrive.
Sure, but even in the most orange-pilled places, there are still cars, and occasionally reasons to drive. And if individuals/small groups need to get somewhere inaccessible by bikes/public transit, etc., I’d rather they drive something like this instead of a vehicle that’s literally the size of a tank.
Fuck Cars means Fuck all cars.
Electrified trolleys and trains all the way
How are deliveries going to work, exactly? If I order a computer, what, I can’t have it anymore because some dumb ecofash said so? And before you go all “hurr durr go 2 ze store” I can’t, I WFH, as should everyone who can, in part - to save the environment.
I think I get the point you were originally going for, but this part is unhinged. You can’t go to a store because you work from home? What??
How am I meant to fuck off from work for an hour to go to the store? Even if grocery stores sold electronics which they don’t, everything closes at 6PM latest. On Saturdays it’s 3PM, even if I could carry enough to shop for an entire week ahead on my back.
That comment is a bad take to be sure, but it isn’t really about eliminating every vehicle in existence. We’d still need individual vehicles to serve for delivery and emergency services, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
The main thought is just that it’s a bit silly to have half the population driving a two tonne vehicle to the grocery store. There’s already communities where golf carts are used instead of cars.
The whole concept of ripping out every road and installing solar tramways is just as much a nonsensical extreme not worth taking seriously as ‘what do I do if I order a computer and I work from home’. I get your use of the example though, it is the equivalent counterpoint.
I mean, I don’t think my example is an extreme, like I work from home every single day and have always done so, there are no longer stores around me that sells any electronics, and as I don’t drive, I get it delivered, which is the primary and most of the time the only way of buying anything that isn’t groceries for me these days.
If anything my example is an extremely down to earth grass-touch-core argument built off explicitly literally what my life is in the most literal sense wholly about the basic material realities of it, and it highlights the problems with their their absolutist internet-extremist-silliness-core-ass rhetoric. I don’t get in any way how it’s “extreme” or “equivalent” to the other user’s batshit insane propositions.
Are you one of those “everything is equivalent both sides” type people?
Are you implying I in any way disagree with the actual rhetoric of “let’s have less car-centric infrastructure?” Because I don’t and I never stated that. Moreover I do agree with you though, I don’t drive and I hate cars anyway. I just don’t like that user’s rhetoric because it smells like degrowth ecofash type rhetoric, which is extremely harmful and leads to NIMBYism and as such worsening material conditions and issues like homelessness and poverty traps and enriches landlords.
Environment good because it makes things for people better, not as a thing unto itself. On that basis and only on that basis with that reasoning as the guiding and completely overriding principle - I agree, fuck cars. 👍
How do you build a railway?
Unless you live inside a major city in America, you can’t get to work without a vehicle. It’s either have a car or be homeless.
You aren’t in the fuck cars community, and the rest of us live in the real world where cars exist. Especially in the US. This isn’t some fantasy land where we can go back in time and change our entire infrastructure. We CAN however condense more, rely on trains in metro areas, and use electric vehicles. But you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
The entire infrastructure was changed towards cars within living memory. What makes you think the reverse isn’t possible or even likely in the next hundred years?
Where are you referring to? In North America, much of the infrastructure wasn’t changed, it was created for the first time to accommodate cars.
The “Fuck Cars” crowd basically just regurgitate what they hear a ridiculously rich youtuber who lives in one of the higher cost of living cities on the planet say. So take anything they say with a grain of salt.
What they ACTUALLY are saying is that the average person did not need a personal vehicle (whether it is a horse or a car) until (guesstimating) the 1950s/60s. Not because public transit was so much better but instead because people basically never left the couple mile radius of where they were born. Catching a bus To The City was a big deal and people who actually moved long distances away from family were 'strange".
Then, for whatever reason, people learned there was a big wide world and the cost of cars dropped drastically. So it became much more common to want to make that dream trip to The City a monthly or even weekly trip and people increasingly would move tens or even hundreds of miles away from where they grew up… in part to be able to buy a house and have their own family.
But it isn’t that infrastructure was “changed” so much as use cases were. And people stopped being willing to spend an entire day traveling to go visit their sibling one state over.
The aspect which HAS changed in “living memory” is the decline in “walkable cities”. The idea that you would have a corner grocery store every couple miles and would never even need a car. And… anyone who is even slightly aware of logistics and shipping can understand why that is also not really feasible. Because having pantry staples and “the basics” at Fred’s Grocery down the street? That is… depending on where you live that is feasible.
But… there is a reason fricking kei cars exist. Because you are not going to have a butcher or a giant produce stand or whatever on every street corner. You can’t. There will be MASSIVE food waste if you did. So people still tend to have to travel a bit even just a few times a month. Some people do that by public transit and are the people with five bags of groceries on the subway. Many people rapidly get that car for the weekend grocery trips and so forth.
At which point… if people are already going to drive to get groceries… why would they go to the corner store anyway?
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE a walkable city and I was probably the happiest for the five or so years I lived in The City and would hit up a medium sized grocery store while walking back to my apartment from the subway station. And getting GOOD meat was 30 minutes away by train. But I am also not privileged enough to ignore the existence of small towns or the tendency for the people who WORK in those grocery stores to live in said small town where it is an hour commute and having to stay late for 30 minutes adds another two hours to their day.
Which is why I REALLY dislike the “Fuck Cars” “movement”. Because, at best, it is a bunch of privileged people saying “fuck the poors”. And… the idea of never needing to travel more than 5 miles from where you live feels like some backdoor rightwing bullshit to isolate people and Make Xenophobia Great Again.
I mean… even in Japan (basically the mecca of public transit), you need a car for a lot of “last mile” transit to smaller towns. And you want a car for many (most?) towns because there might only be two or three buses per day.
Makoto Shinkai’s movies LOVE to focus on this as a way to build tension. Have one of the characters spend two or three days taking a long chain of trains and buses to reach the one that they love only to have to spend the night at a motel in a nowhere town where they can then have a heartfelt talk about what they are actually looking for.
And if you actually go there (or to “Western Europe”) and want to go somewhere other than the most touristy of places? You rapidly realize how true that is. Less so the “talk to the friend who is taking off work to help you check in on the girl you used to body swap with” part and more the idea of needing to transfer to three different trains and run to catch a bus because the alternative is you are waiting for 3 hours at a tiny 7-11 and then spending the night at the bus station when you arrive.
Sure, but even in the most orange-pilled places, there are still cars, and occasionally reasons to drive. And if individuals/small groups need to get somewhere inaccessible by bikes/public transit, etc., I’d rather they drive something like this instead of a vehicle that’s literally the size of a tank.
An entirely impossible dream world you live in, bud