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Comment by pwthornton | Hacker News Reader

The Internet is not as bad as cars. That's harsh!

Cars kill more than 1 million people a year, and are actively cooking our planet. On balance, cars -- at least our ability to use them -- has been a huge negative.

The Internet is a lot more balanced, but both show how a lack of foresight and system design can lead to a lot of negative consequences. We could drastically cut down on the number of road deaths if we took it more seriously and made some big system design changes, but we haven't. We can also make the Internet a better place, but there will always be issue with all massive systems.

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> On balance, cars -- at least our ability to use them -- has been a huge negative.

Honestly there's no way this is true. How many people would die if they couldn't use an ambulance? How many people are surviving on goods shipped to them via trucks?

Of course things can be improved, but there's no way the automobile was a net negative on humanity.

What if the larger story of the industrialization enabled by that trucking warms the planet to the point that humanity goes extinct? Something to at least consider; unintended consequences are still consequences.

Humanity is not at risk of going extinct from global warming.

"There's no way". What a compelling argument.

There's "no way" that 60 million people would have died in the 20th century if there was no such thing as an ambulance. I'm positive we would have invented a workable replacement.

Shipment of food / water / medicine might.

"I'm positive we would have invented a workable replacement." is also not a compelling argument :)

It's actually rather absurd to suggest automobiles were a net negative. They are one of the greatest inventions in the history of humanity. It's like saying electricity is a net negative.

You could have ambulances without personal cars. But a huge amount of ambulance rides are due to car accidents.

Also, our shipping system is backboned by freight rail and ocean shipping, not trucks. In particular, the US has a really robust freight rail system for moving massive amounts of goods across the country.

Might be more accurate to say "contribute to cooking our planet" because if there were 0 cars, we'd still be cooking this planet, since all of transportation including planes, boats and cars is only 29% of total carbon emissions (US 2017 data)

Even in transportation, only 60% is due to light duty vehicle, the other 40% being trucks and planes mostly.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...

> On balance, cars [...] has been a huge negative.

That's a ridiculous hyperbole. Cars have had a huge impact on mobility and availability of goods.

It's easy to just see the downsides since all those benefits can be taken for granted nowadays, especially when living in a city where cars are less important for personal use.

At the turn of the last century most people rode bikes - a healthier activity than riding in cars. Around the same time, most cities developed extensive electric trolley systems which were largely destroyed after the automobile took over. People were mobile prior to the automobile. Cities were developed by necessity to be human-scale in the pre-automobile era. After the automobile they were developed (in the US especially) for the automobile which meant that it was very difficult to get around without a car.

So your argument is that because cars have upsides, the downsides can't be greater? The downsides of making cars central are huge, and because of that large progressive cities are removing them. That doesn't sound like hyperbole, that sounds like the pendulum swinging the other way because on balance, they are negative.

The Internet effect cannot be measured.

Those hoaxes, those political ideas, those agendas, arab springs. You can't measure the fallout of that.

Arab springs that mostly went nowhere - or worse. There was a lot of hope for the middle east a mere 7 or 8 years ago. And now? It worked out for Tunisia, but it didn't turn out well for most other countries in the region.

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