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Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

Parasite? My car is an important part of my life and the lives of most people I know. The alternative is that I would spend significantly more time shuttling humans, getting my weekly shopping done, getting to/from work, and so on. All the infrastructure and amenities that you are suggesting be casually tossed aside, improve my family's life significantly in a way that other modes of transportation simply cannot match. The sheer time savings are worth much more to me than the alleged noise pollution from cars, which isn't really even noticeable.

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I hope you can realise that the issue pointed out here is that the surburban development pattern essentially forces you to take your car to do something as basic as grocery shopping or going to the park.

If your neighborhood was walkable and you had access to shops within walking/cycling distance, you would not need your car for this. It might even be more enjoyable for your family than sitting in a car, stuck in traffic.

Heck, your children could—gasp!—go get ice cream at the corner shop by themselves!

Carless grocery shopping for a family sounds awful. If the kids are too young to ride a bike, you lose cargo space on your bike to haul a kid, or need the other parent to be available to take care of the children while one shops. You can't actually buy as much per trip, so you have to go more often, which means more time per week getting groceries. Bulk buying is basically impossible, so things get more expensive. Maybe you can get bulk delivered, but that means more delivery vehicles and is generally always more expensive, unless you live in an area with venture capital money to burn.

It’s hard to unpack this comment because it’s so completely car centered.

The simplest thing to do here is to point out that the overwhelming majority of the world does not shop for groceries the way Americans do. And they have families. Heck, many of them have bigger families than Americans.

As someone who grew up in Edmonton but live in a big city with lots of local stores now, I will never go back to car centric life if I can help it. I don’t have a car but neither does anyone else. There’s no less than 6 grocery stores within a 500m radius of me with the closest being about 100m away.

Yeah having a pantry full of food is convenient in a way, but local stores in every neighborhood seems more convenient to me and picking up a few things on your way home, a few times a week is less of a chore than one big trip.

Its really not that bad. Part of the reason it sounds rough is because, the way American neighborhoods and cities are set up, grocery shopping is an ordeal, which why most of us restrict it do a once a week thing, and try to buy in bulk. When your grocery store is within walking distance of where you live, it isn't a big deal to pick up some food a couple times a week, buying just what you need for a couple of days. This was my experience living in Japan for a few years, and I'd love to go back to that over my current American setup where I do need a car to buy my groceries every week.

I happen to live a block away from a supermarket. I still don't see how I could do without a car - it just doesn't carry all the items I buy. No shop does.

Those benefits come at a cost, and you're only paying for some of it. If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite. Instead the costs are obfuscated and forced onto people.

If you're driving around somewhere that land is at less of a premium, have fun.

> If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite.

These are amenities that residents and local governments have elected to have, to the benefit of all. Your claim that I'm only paying for some of it is false. I'm paying exactly the required amount for it, because my taxes fund the city and have done so for a long time. Costs are also not "forced" onto people - the newcomers who don't like my car-centric city are the ones forcing themselves upon the city, demanding density beyond what can be reasonably supplied just so they can have the exact price point they want. These same people can just as well live elsewhere and form their own city instead of trying to simultaneously benefit from the community and economy current residents (and infrastructure policies) have built up over years and decades, while they also insist that things be altered drastically to their desire. Who exactly is the parasite in this picture? Hint: not the long-time residents.

> have elected to have, to the benefit of all

Laws about required parking spaces were put into place many years ago, by different people, with incomplete information about the future.

When that information changes, the laws should change too, yes?

For example, as the Boomers age, fewer will be able to drive, making their current independent life in the suburbs unsupportable. Many elderly are able to walk even if they can't drive. But if mandatory minimum parking laws prevent the construction of walkable areas then fewer options are available to them.

These laws, often put into place in the post-war boom, don't reflect current life, so must change.

Hint: retired Boomers are long-time residents.

> I'm paying exactly the required amount for it,

Unless you have metered or paid permit parking set by free market rates, I have a hard time understanding how you can be so certain.

Cities change their tax levels and fee structures often. Surely you don't think that roads and parking happens to be perfectly funded.

BTW, many cities have gone into debt to fund their growth. What you see is "a modest, short term illusion of wealth in exchange for enormous, long term liabilities" - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ . The current residents are not "paying exactly the required amount for it"; it's been pushed off to future residents.

Rather like parking minimum laws.

> My car is an important part of my life and the lives of most people I know.

Meth is an important part of my life and the lives of other people I know.

You know we're fucked when being slave to a machine is viewed as an immutable fact of life

Except a car has dramatically more useful functionality than meth, so this is a completely disingenuous comment. Nobody is claiming that cars don't have an associated cost, but one side of this discussion constantly glosses over the benefits of a personal car and only talks about the downsides.

The utility of cars would plummet if they were not so subsidized by the government and society itself shrugs off externalities. People casually accept needless death from cars because it's seen as a fact of life. How do you talk about the positives of cars after realizing all of that?

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