alt Hacker NewsThe thing is, the Amish don't try to tell the rest of the world that their way is the "obviously correct" way and that everybody else is doing it wrong, the way anti-personal mobility advocates do.
Replies
It's the folks pushing cars that are both the most strident and the most successful at pushing their "obviously correct" way onto everyone, at least in the US.
“Anti-personal mobility” is beyond absurd, absolute loony-bin stuff.
“Anti-personal mobility advocates” do not exist. Transit advocates exist, and improvements in transit also massively benefit those who need to or prefer to drive.
I don't think a armonster was quite claiming it to be "obviously correct". But rather taking it for granted that this a valid hypothesis:
- We would have gotten most of the social utility of automobiles, without most of the social negatives, if personal vehicles had mostly never happened.
And implied from that, we should stop having them now.
Given the known ills of society, I think those negatives are pretty uncontroversial. To the point that personal car proponents have some burden to explain why we should keep it up.
THIS. But the car/oil companies did do bad things like work to undermine public transport & EVs back in day. Now we have sprawling burbs & social isolation. Phones, death of 3rd spaces & church going, etc. made it worse as people stopped having bigger families, leading to even more isolation.
Robustly advocating for your opinions is not an act of oppression.
The advocates of the automobile have been far, far more successful at shaping US society, laws, culture and our physical environment.
I imagine that’s also true in many other nations to a lesser extent.