I’m getting a lot of ‘but my car is more convenient’ arguments lately, and I’m struggling to convey why that doesn’t make sense.
Specifically how to explain to people that: Sure, if you are able to drive, and can afford it, and your city is designed to, and subsidizes making it easy to drive and park, then it’s convenient. But if everyone does it then it quickly becomes a tragedy of the commons situation.
I thought of one analogy that is: It would be ‘more convenient’ if I just threw my trash out the window, but if we all started doing that then we’d quickly end up in a mess.
But I feel like that doesn’t quite get at the essence of it. Any other ideas?
When you live in the suburbs or country (America) the distances to go anywhere relevant get too large to be able to go without a car. Everything is designed around the need for one, has been since the post-WW2 era. Nobody then thought of the disaster they were creating, and the auto companies elbowing out mad transit were too greedy to care.