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?

  • @dnickEnglish
    4•2 months ago

    I think you are stretching the semantics pretty far…the US is primarily rural geographically and urban only in very sparsely spaced cities…where Europe is urban in more condensed areas. The US doesn’t make everything ‘more inconvenient’ for the most part, most things are simple more inconvenient by nature.

    On the other hand, within cities themselves, the US does shoot itself in the foot with it’s policies and what it subsidizes. Overall, though, most people don’t realize how really big the US is, space vs population-wise, compared to Europe or Japan.