this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
1632 points (93.2% liked)

Fuck Cars

9807 readers
13 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Comparison left vs right for a craftsman who doesnt know which one he should buy:

  • l/r same bed size

  • r lower bed for way easier loading/unloading

  • r less likely to crash

  • r less fuel consumption and costs

  • r less expensive to repair

  • r easy to park

  • r easy to get around in narrow places like crowded construction sites or towns

  • r not participating in road arms race

  • l You get taken serious by your fellow carbrained americans because ""trucks"" are normalized and small handy cars are ridiculed.

So unless you are a fragile piece of human, choose the right one.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Look up manufactured scarcity. Great way to make money for shareholders without providing more to consumers. You charge them more for less. Notice any of that recently? Notice any record breaking profits in any industries? Notice any shortages of important things like IDK ... housing?!?!

I'll also give you another example of capitalists not giving a fuck about what consumers want: electric cars back in the 1990s. The auto manufacturers realized they would lose their parts and repair businesses, as electric vehicles have fewer moving parts, the oil companies got pissed, so they put some power together and used the federal government to overturn californias electric car act that consumers voted for. The also forcefully recalled electric cars from consumers and crushed them. They did not care if there was demand if they could make more money in the short term by staying the same.

Hell, the very existence of exxon mobile disproves your ideas that companies will innovate in response to demand because they spent their money lying to the public about climate change so they could avoid any innovation at all for as long as possible. So WTF do you mean they care about demand?

Your logic that capitalists only do what consumers want is whats basic and flawed. If thats true, WTF is advertising? You think it's just a fun hobby that doesn't work? If advertising doesn't create false demand, why do it? We have evidence advertising creates demand, therefore advertising works, therefore you need to adjust your worldview to allow for the fact that some amount of the shit that consumers buy is nothing more than light brainwashing. Including you dear.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The difference is that efficient demand incentivizes h switchover. You're blaming businesses for... Not leading with changes their customers don't want

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I guess I shouldn't have tried to talk about several concepts at once since your brain skipped past the manufactured scarcity concept, which is far more integral to capitalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity

Note that capitalists have been practicing the art of 'just burn the shit I can't sell so no one can have it' since the Dutch East India company burned islands full of spices to make them rarer. O such innovation