/int/ - International

I disagree, they mean I can easily go to the shops to do my shopping and bring it back.

>>6152 >webp

>>6155 You could easily go to the shops before cars because the shops were closer. Cars only made the shops go further away which forces you to have a car to go to the shops.

There are cars parked outside in the street for free right now while I pay over 40% of my income to live in an apartment smaller than 8 parked cars, lmao.

>>6205 Cities giving public space to cars for free is the most insane shit ever. Well, maybe the second most insane shit, the most insane shit is rental scooters that are scattered across sidewalks.

>>6192 The shop is quite close and I do have to walk there right now because I broke my car... It's a pain though and it means I can't get things that are too big like furniture or other stuff and also I can't go exploring or to visit my mum and such.

>>6211 Before cars, you'd live closer to your mum without social stigma or -relatively- losing out on many job opportunities or spending as much on rent or a mortgage, and you could go exploring on bike, or going on long hiking adventures with your friends, which you would have because society would be less atomized. What does it mean to go "exploring" on a car anyway? Once you're behind the wheel you can't watch the scenery or observe your surroundings much, you mostly only focus on the road ahead and survive. Only when you arrive at your destination and get off the vehicle can you truly do any exploring, at which point you basically missed the whole journey. That's not exploring, that's just traveling.You can travel even better on trains and trolleys. Most cars also offer not much help with furniture, and how often do you need to do move them anyway? You wouldn't believe the things I've seen people carry around on hand trucks. And still, "the shops" were even closer than that, they just weren't called "the shops". And the weather was nicer, so even walking wasn't much of a pain either. Dirt or stone or even ceramic tile roads were a lot softer than the thick layers of cement and asphalt we have today. You'd have stronger legs from walking more, too. >>6206 A million scooters still take less space away from you than a single car does.

>>6218 I don't care about social stigma or j*bs... I don't want friends either, I also disagree that cars make society less social, Australia and the US are quite social countries whereas Europe and Japan are less so, which makes sense, if you have a car you can visit your friends whenever you want and go wherever you want. Exploring on foot or a bike is better in some ways but worse in others, yes you are closer to the environment but you also have far less range and can't travel to points of interest on a whim. So for an example, there is an island with Penguins on it that I won't to visit but it's a 1 hour drive away. Clearly that would take far longer on a bike to the point where it wouldn't be feasible. Trains have their own issues, they only go to set places at set times and you have to be in them with other random people. Cars do help with furniture and many other large objects and actually I fairly regularly do need to move large things, maybe not furniture but TV's, PC's and other large things. The foot path could be made of whatever it wanted to be made of, that has nothing to do with cars... It's a cost thing.

>>6218 >A million scooters still take less space away from you than a single car does. At least the car is use someone's personal item. The scooters are a way for a private company to make a profit from the public space they rent for free.

>>6222 > which makes sense, if you have a car you can visit your friends whenever you want and go wherever you want That only makes sense if you assume that these countries need cars but people can't buy them. But the opposite is true: people don't own cars because they don't need them. I can visit most of my friends by bicycle and the rest by public transport. A car would change nothing about my social life.

>>6225 That's still more effort than a car and limits the places you can go. Also car's enable suburban life and I think it's suburban life that more so fosters socialization. As everybody has much more space to entertain and such.

>>6226 I'm not sure if you understand that countries can have different geographies and public transport. There's not a single place of interest I can't visit by public transport. And if there was, because all my friends are hermits living in the middle of nowhere, I could always buy a car.

>>6227 There are many places that you can't get to with public transport. Public transport can only get you to places that it would be economically viable to operate a route too. In a geographic sense that's actually a very small area. Exactly, so you can see that cars can be useful.

>>6228 >There are many places that you can't get to with public transport Yes. However, how does being able to drive to a random potato field improve my (social) life?

>>6229 Maybe your friend becomes a potato farmer and you want to visit him? Maybe you and the boys want to visit a potato field? The possibilities are endless but with no car they are all denied to you.

>>6230 I can always buy a car though.

>>6231 Exactly. So you see it can be useful and there are reasons to have one. I am not saying absolutely everybody needs a car to do everything but that there are plenty of people who benefit from having a car. Ultimately it's based on individual circumstances and preferences and if people want a car they should be allowed to have one.

>>6232 Can you point me to where I was saying that there are no reasons for anyone or that people shouldn't be allowed to have cars?

>>6233 >>6225 >That only makes sense if you assume that these countries need cars but people can't buy them. But the opposite is true: people don't own cars because they don't need them >>6227 >There's not a single place of interest I can't visit by public transport >>6229 >However, how does being able to drive to a random potato field improve my (social) life?

>>6236 >But the opposite is true: people don't own cars because they don't need them (People who don't own cars) don't need cars. Do you think that not a single person in Switzerland owns a car? The other comments were about me specifically as a single example of someone whose social life would not improve by buying a car. Also, why did you feel the need to write >they should be allowed to have one. No one said they shouldn't. This wasn't the topic.

>>6152 nigger. Get a motorcycle. Live in a walkable neighborhood, and not in friggin Berlin Martzahn, or some Nazidorf in Ostdeutschland.

>>6241 >nigger in nazi ostdeutschland Realize yourself, wa?

Having a horse or if more wealthy horses and a cart would have been pretty awesome but going long distances meant staying at pubs which would have blown travel costs up. I can fill up my trugg for less than a night at a pub.

>>6224 Unlike car makers, gas stations, parking lots, and road builders? >>6222 >Australia and the US are quite social countries pffft. Not true. Australia, UK, USA, Canada all places are facade countries. You act friendly because of protestant work ethic and toxic positivity: your culture is built around acts not of friendliness but of submission. Submission of self to the collective, to normality, to conformity, authority, etc. you wear your smiles and kind greetings on one hand and a knife on the other. And thanks to US hegemony we're all becoming more like that too. Every white anglo I've met irl is basically schmoozing 24/7, and I love not letting out I can speak english because then they'll turn around to another english speaker and almost immediately start shit talking me to gain favor with their new conversation partner. Just because Finns or Germans aren't ready all the time to make small talk with total strangers, specially tourists, randomly, doesn't mean they can't turn genuinely warm the second there's a real potential for an actual relationship to form. Many peoples prefer by far dense housing with tight communities than the sparsely populated, gated suburbs that you worship. multi-use multi-family housing units? Shared spaces like kitchens or bathrooms or living rooms? Illegal in many Anglo settlements. >I don't want friends either >You have to be in them with other random people. ... >there is an island with Penguins on it >that I won't to visit And if you wanted to visit and didn't have a car, that wouldn't stop you. Again, the only reason it seems "unfeasible" to go to this island (that you don't want to go anyway) in any method other than cars is that you already live in a society built around cars. If your country didn't worship the car as much you'd have other options, public transport, cheaper lodging, other travel services like horse rentals;... surely your imagination isn't so limited... and that's not even touching on all the other social changes like the collective psychotic need for immediacy. When he was 16, my dad would grab a backpack, meet with friends and travel all the major beach destinations in the mexican west coast. It'd be like going from adelaide to sydney for you, visiting a bunch of towns in the process. These days many of these towns are going to shit because people demand bigger, more linear highways between the big cities to make shorter car trips, disconnecting these towns from the rest of the economy The problem is that you're only thinking about the negatives and positives of cars alone, but you're not considering what cars, by virtue of existing and being everywhere, take away from you: public space, land for development, air quality, freedom from noise, workplace expectations... >>6228 You're only half right, the economic relation is two-sided. Because building public transport to a place induces demand to travel to that place. With cars, your rando potato farm is not a worthy destination among all the other places you can go, with a train station for example, the potato farmer will see people coming in and out of the train and start offering amenities to the travelers, suddenly there's people going to that potato farm specifically for what it offers. GDP and land value tends to explode around urban light rail projects.

>>6424 I don't really disagree with that. But while they may be gossipy and passive aggressive they still do frequently go out and socialize. Not having a working car does stop me.. The easiest way to explain this principle and many others relating to having a car(or even principles of life in general) is through a binary of reward and effort. How much reward do I get for the effort I put in to something? How much effort is it to dry somewhere on a whim? Not much. How much effort is it to walk, ride a bike, arrange and wait for public transport, hire a horse etc? Far, more. So the reward to effort cost is worth it with a car but not without one. Cars also enable suburban life which actually offers a better standard of living and one with less noise and better air quality. >You're only half right, the economic relation is two-sided. Because building public transport to a place induces demand to travel to that place. With cars, your rando potato farm is not a worthy destination among all the other places you can go, with a train station for example, the potato farmer will see people coming in and out of the train and start offering amenities to the travelers, suddenly there's people going to that potato farm specifically for what it offers. GDP and land value tends to explode around urban light rail projects. That works to a degree but only to a degree. It's never going to be financially viable to set up and run a train track just to go to some random guys potato field. You are never going to get the traffic to warrant it. Even many urban routes are heavily subsidized, let alone routes to potato fields in the middle of nowhere.

>>6424 >Unlike car makers, gas stations, parking lots, They all do business on private land, not on public roads or sidewalks. It's not like a gas station just pops up in the middle of the road and now you have to drive around it just like you have to walk around those rental scooters. >and road builders? They get government contracts to build public infrastructure and then put their machines back on their lots or move them to the next construction site. I don't see how that's even remotely comparable to putting your stuff on a public sidewalk. The most comparable thing would be car rental companies. But they have private lots here. One I rented from has an open lot they own for their trucks and they rent a section of a parking garage for their cars. There is car sharing and the cars are placed "in public", but on dedicated lots that the companies rent from the city. The car sharing cars can only be parked on the marked spots paid for by the company. The scooters are just left wherever.

Actually, let me extend that to all motorized vehicles. They are soulless af.

Cars were a massive improvement over horses in every aspect, specially on safety issues. Horses fucked up your spine regardless of whether you were a prudent rider. Still, speeding up to tens of km/hour something that usually weights at least a ton near other people is a retarded idea intrinsically. Cars did their part by making horses outdated, but they should also be put aside eventually.

>>6443 And yet you have to walk around roads, and parked cars, and around parking lots, and so on. What used to be space for you to walk freely in was decreed, under pressure from car manufacturers, to not belong you anymore. Sidewalks were built after as an amendment, and even in your country not always required. If these laws didn't exist there would be far more space for those scooters and you to coexist. Even without anti-jaywalking laws like those that exist in the US, it's still generally a danger to step off the sidewalk or cross the street outside the designated spot (and even in the designated spot, there's no guarantee you'll be safe). Yet you complain about the scooter taking less than a square meter of your space and not about the car who has literally rebuilt the city to take hectares away from you, again, by virtue of existing. Not to mention, of course, all the other social and environmental consequences that have been pointed out in this thread. At least no serious bodily harm will come to you if you decide to step over the scooter (which isn't hard to do), or accidentally bump into it. Hell, it seems they only bother you when they're not being used; a car is a nuisance, and a source of danger, whether it's parked on the street, or moving in transit. Even our own homes, at least for many of us, having a car is a potential necessity that developers have to account for when building houses and reserve enough space for a garage. Only added pic in case I'm not being clear enough.