At a certain point, even with an ever-expanding number of lanes, everyone having their car becomes limiting not freeing. Because we’re all on the roads all at the same time all the time, it takes longer to get places and we have to spend more of our time planning on the off-chance there might be traffic because a short drive to Tacoma could be 30 minutes or 2 hours. It doesn’t make you feel free to do what you want, because everyone else is also using their freedom to the point that everything is clogged and backed up all the time and everyone is so tired of it all they’ve taken to driving like maniacs since the pandemic.

This is what toxic individualists don’t understand about collectivism: sacrificing a little bit of freedom can get you more freedom in the long run. I sacrifice the freedom to kill random people and in exchange I get freedom from most of the fear of being randomly murdered. I sacrifice the freedom to throw mercury in the garbage and I gain freedom from mercury poisoning. I sacrifice the freedom of driving straight out of my driveway onto a big ugly stroad and I gain the freedom to walk safely out of my front door onto a nice quiet street.