This has to be the dumbest argument against the automobile that I have yet read, and there have been many posted on HN over the years. The idea that the value and utility of the automobile is diminished because everybody has one is absurd. I’m sure this argument has some appeal to people living in large, congested cities, but that is going to be a very small percentage of commuters in the nation. For the remainder which we seldom hear from they are presumably quite happy with the freedom and utility a personal automobile provides.
> "The idea that the value and utility of the automobile is diminished because everybody has one is absurd."
You missed it entirely. The argument is that it is unreasonable and unsustainable to expect that everybody should own one. We have normalized many of the costs of near universal automobile ownership today, but in many ways it is unsustainable, particularly as urbanization increases and particularly as cities are the main economic drivers in the modern era. We're killing ourselves with the idea that everybody not only should own a beach house but has to own a beach house in order to function in society and the economy, and there just isn't enough beach front property for that to be realistic.
> Maybe you are saying, “But at least in this way you can escape the hell of the city once the workday is over.” There we are, now we know: “the city,” the great city which for generations was considered a marvel, the only place worth living, is now considered to be a “hell.”
