Roody

First of all, LCF is not a religion. Jesus didn't own a car, but the Pope does.

Second, the point is, that if the infrastructure and development of a region makes carfree living impossible, then residents will be forced to buy a car and its accompaniments. I would call that capitalism, but I would not say it has any resemblance to a free market. We need infrastructure that works for everybody, not just for car owners.

tandempower

Wasn't that the same with the company stores of the coal mines? Weren't people free to move elsewhere? Didn't they 'create jobs' and 'helping to keep the economic engine running?' Wasn't the only real problem with them that people didn't have alternatives to choose from when living/working in the area they were in? Isn't that the same with driving? That many people don't have alternative in the area where they live/work?

Machka 

Why not?

maxine

Housing expenses could sometimes be a factor -- in certain areas/cities of the U.S., the cost of safe, decent housing is too high for many workers to afford. Even giving up their cars would not put enough extra cash in their pockets to enable them to afford the rents/mortgages of close-in housing. Getting close enough to be able to do some sort of biking/public transportation combo (*assuming* that public transportation is even available), they would likely incur a rather large commute time penalty. Of course anyone is free to look for another job in a more bike-reachable locale, but those may be tough to find.

tandempower

When you live car free, people are always telling you they couldn't do it. Then when you say the government should do something to make it easier, they say it's just a matter of choice.

Automotive businesses profit from a relative monopoly on transportation because of the way cities are laid out and the norms that have evolved into driving-dependency. A simple fix for this would be to prohibit automotive business from cornering local transportation markets by limiting bike/transit unfriendly areas to people without children.

Any suggestion for policy that limits the automotive industry's ability to push in the direction of transportation monopoly is going to be labelled "fanatical," "totalitarian," etc. because eliminating any and all barriers to cornering markets is how the automotive culture undermines the free market that would make it possible for people to have transportation choice and stop paying into the automotive sector as a result.

Although many US people assert support for the free market superficially, they quietly prefer policies that secure jobs and revenues by suppressing the emergence of alternatives that cost less and therefore generate less spending and GDP. They only support 'the free market' when it's growing. When lower-cost alternatives emerge that threaten consumer spending, their economic-protection socialism shines through.

Walter S

So?

You're kidding right? What if a woman gets pregnant and decides to have a child? She has to move now? The point of all this is?

The vast majority don't give a rip about free markets. They're just driving their cars to go places. They dominate the scene because there's so many of them. They're not out to curtail your freedom. That's just how it turns out.

Machka 

No.



Go figure!

tandempower

Then they shouldn't lie and call it a free market. They should openly assert automotive/industrial socialism as a mandate for the sake of preventing lower-cost forms of living from undermining GDP and allow the constitutionality of it to be tested. By lying and doing it in a covert way, we end up with anti-LCF culture and public infrastructure policies that ignore and discourage LCF while always being told that we are free to LCF.

maxine

"Constitutionality" -- **********??

I-Like-To-Bike

"We" ??? "They" ??? -- Who dat**********???

tandempower

There are people who like to scream, "socialism" as political rallies, but there needs to be a more disciplined and systematic approach to identifying forms of socialism and determining their legality and/or constitutionality. I contend that the automotive culture becomes socialistic when it goes from being one transportation choice more-or-less on par with others to being a dependency for having more-or-less equal access to life and economic opportunities.

It's like the coal miners' company store. It's not that there weren't other stores but that those stores were far away and thus inconvenient to reach. The company store could have argued that they weren't a monopoly because people were free to travel to other stores, but the question is how far you can expect people to travel for daily errands, employment, etc. At some point, you're dealing with anti-competitive geography.

I-Like-To-Bike

Got it: Geography is anti-competitive and therefore unconstitutional!

jfowler85

Free market capitalism. You're missing that last part.

Tundra_Man 

Don't worry. I figured out this was tongue-in-cheek.

I-Like-To-Bike

You think so?