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Comment by eveningcoffee | Hacker News Reader

There is one additional property that many people tend to overlook:

e) freedom: you are not told by anybody other if you are allowed to travel or not.

I think this is a fundamental property of personal cars.

At least in the United States, driving a car on public roads is a privilege doled out by the states. There is no right to drive a motor vehicle here.

While true, it's hardly a practical barrier. Anyone who isn't disabled can easily pass a driving test and get a license. It's not like you have to justify a need to drive, and it will only be taken away if you demonstrate severe incompetence or recklessness.

Note: You also need to be able to afford a car, insurance, gas.

If you're white. Otherwise it's the easiest way to break a law and get questioned by a cop in America.

That's true for white people too, there's just less chance that any given instance of breaking the law will get you questioned.

It's not clear how you're any more free driving (engaging in a heavily regulated activity) versus taking a bus (availing yourself of a public accommodation).

Your route and destination are less constricted in possibility in a car, obviously.

That was (d) flexibility/directness. OP is making a different argument.

This argument ignores other vehicles that aren't cars that operate on non-fixed routes. Bikes and e-skateboards jump to mind. Maybe even scooters (as in many southern European cities).

You can not really cover any long distance by these vehicles.

One historic method of controlling protests is by shutting off public transportation to the area.

A fundamental property?! Karl Benz built the first car and believe me, it was utterly useless in its time. It is only through the many trillions in tax dollars invested into building dedicated streets that it has become possible to drive any sort of distance.

I think you will find that if you take the infrastructure away, your land-locked "freedom car" is now totally impractical junk.

Nice straw-man. If you take the infrastructure away, you would not go anywhere. Period. Because you can not pass that swamp, river, canyon, and so on. By bicycle or horse or by foot.

Not a straw-man at all. The point is: there was a choice. You can build infrastructure for cars, for bicycles, for trains, for rail, for lightrail, for pedestrians, for horses. Some of these are more or less useful without, cars are definitely in the less useful category.

It is not a fundamental property. It is not god-given. You were born into a world where car roads are ubiquitous and now your thinking stops slightly after linear extrapolation. That's not the case for everyone.

From all these options only cars satisfy the freedom property.

Like I told, this is fundamental to the cars and can be to an extent only compared to the horses.

It is no surprise that this freedom comes with the price. I did not argue that it is not the case.

Nothing we have is god-given. All we have has been fought with somebodies blood.

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