@breadandcircuses Not everyone lives in a city. All those millions of people in towns and villages will always need private transport of some kind, unless one would rather try to forcibly depopulate the countryside like some modern-day version of the Highland Clearances.

@hughster
In less wealthy countries - say, much of Central America - there are indeed millions of people who live in rural villages, and very few of them own private cars. They live in those places because they're engaged in land-based subsistence activities and produce most of what they need locally. They often have a bus that periodically takes people to the nearest city, and usually bulkier supplies that are needed from a city are delivered occasionally by a cargo vehicle.
@breadandcircuses

@chrisblake @breadandcircuses Yes, I forgot to say, that's the other option: we forcibly drive the rural population back into the pre-industrial age, where the people are mostly subsistence farmers and extremely poor, have few prospects of decent education or success compared to those in cities, and many never leave the place they were born. That's why most Central American countries are not considered developed. Is that really your vision of the future?

@hughster Wow, there's a lot to unpack here. I don't understand in what sense communities that have routine access to things like buses, heavy goods vehicles, usually radios and TVs, often some computers, and increasingly even shared internet access are "pre-industrial". If people have regular opportunities to travel to large cities by bus or other public transportation, then it's obviously not the case that they would never have the option to leave the towns they grew up in. @breadandcircuses

I've personally known people who grew up in small Central American or South Asian villages, went to university, worked in a city or even overseas for some years before moving back home, speak 3 or more languages, and are some of the most worldly, broad-minded, and well-educated people I've ever met. All without ever owning or regularly driving a car.

Obviously there are many rural places where people don't have cars and also happen to be living in grinding poverty, but that's not what I was talking about. There are plenty of people in the world who lead rural lives without cars while also enjoying all the things they need and then some, because their societies are set up to facilitate that. They provide examples of how that's possible, which we in the "first world" should be trying a lot harder to learn from.

You're basically presenting a false dilemma in which the only options compatible with non-urban living are a high-impact car culture vs. abject poverty with almost no modern technology at all. There's a lot of space available in between those extremes. It all just seems unthinkably exotic to many of us in the "first world" because our societies for the most part no longer *allow* us any of those other options.