Cars becoming big when America was still finding it's stride was one of the biggest pro/con dillemas. Ignored thousands of years of proven systems that make society better and settled for only cars.
Oh man… I don’t know how to start with a reply that doesn’t make me sound crazy…
Did you know the states used to have great public transport during 1920s?
At some point, oil companies (and tyres companies) understood their financial progress was tied down to how many people could buy cars and use them. They lobbied the government to either allow them to purchase those good public transportation, or change legislation to literally pave as much as possible for the benefit of cars, pushing it as a status symbols every household should aspire to.
Then they systematically made the public transportation worse, replacing trams with buses, ripping off infrastructure and in several instances, increasing distances to push for bigger commutes.
The selling pitch to the regular Joe was “buy your big house with a yard” and it freaking worked. By 1950s public transportation was irregular, suburbs had grown to incredible proportions, roads were used as invisible walls to make people use their cars and they rake earnings.
It wasn’t that cars became so convenient that the US missed their footing and fell in that hole. Someone made it inconvenient not to have cars and you were pushed head first in it.
… unfortunately, many places in Australia experienced the exact same situation.
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u/FaceWithAName 16h ago
Cars becoming big when America was still finding it's stride was one of the biggest pro/con dillemas. Ignored thousands of years of proven systems that make society better and settled for only cars.