> The car itself was a bad invention. Oh please. Methinks though dost generalize too much.
The car was a vast improvement over the horse, which it replaced, both in terms of self-reliance and range, not to mention public sanitation. The bad decisions along the way, especially in the US, involved tearing down large scale "public" infrastructure in favor of private vehicles and long-haul commercial trucking. When making these arguments, one has to recall the vast scale of the US compared to Europe. The ranchers in Nevada and Wyoming and Iowa who live 20 miles from the "main road" are never going to be served by a Postbus or train. Their kids commute 50 miles to high school. Don't get me wrong - I am by no means defending the widespread infestation of the one-person car in the US. But it's very important to keep in mind that "it's a scale thing". The last hundred years in the US have gone down a particular route such that the country's economy has been built on the assumption of subsidized oil for road-going vehicles, instead of, say, rail. Recovering from that without an intervening disaster may be impossible. Best, chris
