When you can’t get what you want, you teach yourself to want what you can get and then preach to everyone else that they should want it too. This applies to many other things too beyond just cars.
It’s not that the criticism of private cars isn’t valid, but not having one because you can’t afford it isn’t virtuous. It’s only virtuous when you could easily have one but choose not to.
Well, I disagree.
In my experience it is quite the opposite:
The people who complain about all the private cars are mostly not the ones that can’t afford a car, but the ones that can afford not to have a car.
Typically those are people with higher income living in urban areas.
Yeah, you got me. I have a decent car that I like but I also like that I can walk a few places. I really miss when I lived downtown, and had the freedom to walk/subway anywhere without having to deal with traffic or parking. Unfortunately jobs in my field are in suburban office parks, and you can’t get there.
My current employers office is only 3.5 miles away. Too far to walk every day, even if there were sidewalks. Too hilly for bicycling with my bad knees. I’d consider an electric bicycle but can’t imagine surviving some of the roads to get there
Yeah that’s a fair point. Having the option to not have a car is a privilege in itself.
However, there are also those who can afford to live in a city and get by without a car but would get one if they could afford it but because they can’t, they resent the people who do. Those are the ones I’m referring to here. My criticism only applies to the actual hypocrites.
Never met any of those people.
Most of the people who can’t afford a car here have enough other stuff to worry about and also typically just want to own a car themselves one day.
This goes so far that many of the people who realistically can’t afford a car financially, own one nonetheless.
This is Germany, though. Many Germans have a “special” connection to cars, bordering on unhealthy…