104 comments on My Year Without a Car - (Plus a Request)
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104 comments on My Year Without a Car - (Plus a Request)
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
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One of the points of the article was, in a boots-on-the-ground comparison between the Netherlands and Texas, was advantageous to go car-less in the former but better to keep one's car in the latter. The reason was because of the different way the cities were set up. I personally prefer a walking city, but sometimes life doesn't work out that way.
I don't get the impression that what you are preaching (the "rational" alternative to driving) is tempered with actual experience. For example, you can have a roommate but that interferes with one's privacy. Regardless of that, you can have roommate to save rent money either in the suburbs or in the city, so my point still stands about land use patterns, the price of real estate, and commuting.
Are you suggesting I've never had a house-mate and never not had a car in a place poorly-served by public transit?
You know sadly little of my life :) That's okay, how could you? I don't fault you for not knowing, only for not knowing and just making stuff up instead.
I say again: everyone has what are to them very good reasons for not changing their lifestyle in any way whatsoever. Everyone's got an excuse for themselves.
As Yoda said, do or no do, there is no whine.
I know nothing of your life, and have I no interest in learning more. You have tendency to dictate to others ("change their lifestyle"). Good luck with that: you need to get better to be effective.
Environmentalists have tried the gentle approach. It doesn't work.
What creates social change, both good and bad, is small groups of annoying people demanding change. The majority will never want change, but they'll go along with it to make the small group shut up. A majority of blacks did not march with MLK, nor a majority of Indians with Gandhi, and a majority of Germans did not support the Nazis - at least when they first came to power. All change, both good and bad, is created by small groups of annoying people demanding change.
I'm terribly sorry if our desire to have a tolerable lifestyle for future generations causes you some discomfort.
You are comparing me to the Nazis. I am invoking Godwin's law.
Oddly enough, he's comparing himself to the Nazis (and King and Gandhi).
And, he has his comparison wrong. King and Gandhi used non-violence, respect and communication, combined with a willingness to passively accept violence until their opponents could no longer look themselves in the mirror. They raised the level of the debate, and appealed to their opponents better selves (or their pre-frontal cortex, if you like the materialist approach).
The Nazis used fear, scapegoating, manipulation and violence to reduce everyone to thinking with their lizard brains - a completely different approach.
Kiashu sometimes makes the mistake of thinking that ridicule, a subtle form of intimidation, will help his cause. King and Gandhi would not have agreed.