Once again, Gen Z is destroying the [world destroying product] industry.
I wrote out a whole rant in this comment detailing why they are horrible, but honestly, everybody knows at this point. The real problem is convincing people that they don't need cars or to drive everywhere. (You don't, by the way. No, cars are not essential even where you, the reader, live).
My gripe is the article is acting like there's some great cultural mystery here. Suggesting anxiety and rideshares and screen time are "the problem." What about the basic arithmetic?
Outside of a handful of legacy pre-war metros / urban cores, North American development has continued to double down on the automobile. While at the same time, the costs to carry a car have exploded.
Young people today are being stranded in an environment that physically requires an automobile while also economically locking them out of even owning one.
There was another article on why young people are unemployed that I commented on yesterday. It went on to explore every possibility before it reached the most likely one. They get paid to write intricate nonsense so we can all nod along and be like 'yup everything is fine' or 'must be those damn screens again' while the economy implodes and more people vote for whatever is currently furthest to the left/right.
I spent the first half of my life in rural America in a town your size. I think I understand.
What I think you don't understand is just how far our infrastructure has crumbled since the introduction of cars. At the risk of mildly doxxing myself, the town that I grew up in is literally the exact same size as yours, and had a train station, that is now unoperated.
We can support transit. We choose not to, because we expect it to have constant occupancy (unlike the roads we maintain and the cars people drive with near zero occupancy most of the time).
This "things can't improve because they are the way they are" attitude is exactly why America is falling behind by so many metrics.
Yes, I would take transit to the grocery store if I needed to get somewhere that I could not reasonably walk or bike. You can actually leave the station once you get there, and even come back later.
> (You don't, by the way. No, cars are not essential even where you, the reader, live).
That is really such a dumb, shortsighted comment. I've lived in a rural area where the closest highway was a 45 minutes drive and where the closest village (not town, village) was a 10 minutes drive.
No, you're not ordering food there to then have people from fourth-world country (on ebikes, driving on sidewalks, modified so that they don't need to cycle, which is illegal btw for they're closer to motorcylce than bicycle at that point) at all delivering food at your doorstep there.
Now, granted, you can kinda sorta live with Amazon deliveries (which wasn't an option in the past). A visit to the hardware store is one hour of driving (30 minutes both ways): you better buy everything you need or it's two hours of driving.
This insane delusion from city-dwellers that "nobody needs a car" is really crazy.
A friend of mine is a plumber. Another an electrician. Another a cardiologist who regularly has emergency for he needs to install stents. They live in cities.
And, yes, they all do need cars.
People who grow the vegetables and fruits and raise the animals that you eat all need cars.
>"About 20% of Americans (66.3 million people) live in Census-defined rural areas."
> "Within rural America, though, most people are not extremely far from stores. USDA data found that the median rural resident was only about 3–4 miles from the nearest supermarket and 90–95% lived within 10 miles"
I spent the first half of my life in rural America where the nearest food options (the grocery store, restaurants) were 20 minutes away by car. I 100% understood and meant what I said.
Your problem is that you cannot imagine a society with functional transit, because you have not left your bubble to see what that looks like.
Did you know that humans existed before cars? Or am I really dumb and short-sighted for believing that could have ever happened?
https://archive.ph/GwuyD
Once again, Gen Z is destroying the [world destroying product] industry.
I wrote out a whole rant in this comment detailing why they are horrible, but honestly, everybody knows at this point. The real problem is convincing people that they don't need cars or to drive everywhere. (You don't, by the way. No, cars are not essential even where you, the reader, live).
My gripe is the article is acting like there's some great cultural mystery here. Suggesting anxiety and rideshares and screen time are "the problem." What about the basic arithmetic?
Outside of a handful of legacy pre-war metros / urban cores, North American development has continued to double down on the automobile. While at the same time, the costs to carry a car have exploded.
Young people today are being stranded in an environment that physically requires an automobile while also economically locking them out of even owning one.
There was another article on why young people are unemployed that I commented on yesterday. It went on to explore every possibility before it reached the most likely one. They get paid to write intricate nonsense so we can all nod along and be like 'yup everything is fine' or 'must be those damn screens again' while the economy implodes and more people vote for whatever is currently furthest to the left/right.
> (You don't, by the way. No, cars are not essential even where you, the reader, live).
I live a half an hour drive from the closest grocery store. That's a long bike ride, bud.
Isn't it? If only there were other options.
Like what, a bus? I don't think my town of 800 could support one.
I don't think Europeans really understand how rural most of America is compared to Europe.
I spent the first half of my life in rural America in a town your size. I think I understand.
What I think you don't understand is just how far our infrastructure has crumbled since the introduction of cars. At the risk of mildly doxxing myself, the town that I grew up in is literally the exact same size as yours, and had a train station, that is now unoperated.
https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm10Q2N_Train_Station_Ne...
https://relocationgenius.net/location/New-Woodstock/NY/
We can support transit. We choose not to, because we expect it to have constant occupancy (unlike the roads we maintain and the cars people drive with near zero occupancy most of the time).
Are you taking the train to the grocery store?
My area still has functioning train station and it ain't getting me anywhere but to another train station.
This "things can't improve because they are the way they are" attitude is exactly why America is falling behind by so many metrics.
Yes, I would take transit to the grocery store if I needed to get somewhere that I could not reasonably walk or bike. You can actually leave the station once you get there, and even come back later.
> (You don't, by the way. No, cars are not essential even where you, the reader, live).
That is really such a dumb, shortsighted comment. I've lived in a rural area where the closest highway was a 45 minutes drive and where the closest village (not town, village) was a 10 minutes drive.
No, you're not ordering food there to then have people from fourth-world country (on ebikes, driving on sidewalks, modified so that they don't need to cycle, which is illegal btw for they're closer to motorcylce than bicycle at that point) at all delivering food at your doorstep there.
Now, granted, you can kinda sorta live with Amazon deliveries (which wasn't an option in the past). A visit to the hardware store is one hour of driving (30 minutes both ways): you better buy everything you need or it's two hours of driving.
This insane delusion from city-dwellers that "nobody needs a car" is really crazy.
A friend of mine is a plumber. Another an electrician. Another a cardiologist who regularly has emergency for he needs to install stents. They live in cities.
And, yes, they all do need cars.
People who grow the vegetables and fruits and raise the animals that you eat all need cars.
>"About 20% of Americans (66.3 million people) live in Census-defined rural areas."
> "Within rural America, though, most people are not extremely far from stores. USDA data found that the median rural resident was only about 3–4 miles from the nearest supermarket and 90–95% lived within 10 miles"
I spent the first half of my life in rural America where the nearest food options (the grocery store, restaurants) were 20 minutes away by car. I 100% understood and meant what I said.
Your problem is that you cannot imagine a society with functional transit, because you have not left your bubble to see what that looks like.
Did you know that humans existed before cars? Or am I really dumb and short-sighted for believing that could have ever happened?