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Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

I don't see how that in any way suggests what you are saying. There are a lot of people who currently feel forced into long commutes who hate them. There are a lot of people who are trapped in the situation of they need a car to get to work, they need a job to afford a car because a car is often the second biggest household expense after housing itself.

I am talking about opening up options, not putting a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to give up their car. We currently have many people who feel they have a gun to their head in terms of being forced into needing a car they don't want. Where is your sympathy for their right to choose?

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They have right to choose to limit their standard of living, as you have done, and move to an urban core and be completely dependent on transit for transportation.

Only one of us wants to "change this substantially."

Many people are genuinely trapped. Just because I have been able to pull this off does not mean other people are simply free to choose.

Urban cores are often insanely expensive and not necessarily where someone wants to live just because they don't want a car. I am wholly unimpressed with your hypocritical comments here that boil down to "Don't tread on ME or interfere with my right to own a car and drive all over the place while the world bends over backwards to make that convenient, but your lifestyle preferences? Oh, fuck you."

You're replying to a comment where I made clear that I want you to be able to make your own lifestyle preferences.

They have right to choose to limit their standard of living, as you have done, and move to an urban core and be completely dependent on transit for transportation.

This is dismissive, insulting of my preference to live without a car and rather hostile. If you were intending to say that you support my right to choose, you failed to communicate that. It came across as contemptuous and is in no way sympathetic to the fact that walkable neighborhoods and public transit are not hostile to drivers the way the current car centric American landscape is hostile to pedestrians.

Only a minority of the country lives without children where a car is necessary. And who's rich enough to live in an urban centre with 2 children? More importantly who would!

I wish. Then I wouldn't get woken up by little brats every Saturday morning. I live in one of the densest, most expensive neighborhood in the US outside of SF, and there's still a bazillion little kids and screaming babies all over the place living in lofts with no green area in sight, and even though the nearby schools are terrible.

People can't really though, because of zoning and government planning. Like even if you wanted to make an area more walkable by inviting, say, a corner grocery store to set up shop in your neighborhood, usually you can't, because of single-use zoning.

And before you say, "well then just move to the city center!" perhaps you should consider that we're talking about a very common urban form across the world that is strikingly uncommon in the US due to government forces? Not exactly "people making their lifestyle preferences", more like "government imposing lifestyle preferences", and it's mostly just due to cultural momentum at this point.

Is your argument against "forcing others to live how you see fit" as in your original comment, or against change from the status quo as in these follow on comments? These are not the same thing.

>They have right to choose to limit their standard of living, as you have done, and move to an urban core and be completely dependent on transit for transportation.

As opposed to being completely dependent on public roads for transportation? Or out away from the "urban core" do you just get around on four-wheelers and snowmobiles? If so, maybe we can stop spending so much of our taxes building roads out to wherever you want to live.

They don't have that freedom now because of zoning that restricts the development of urban-core-like development and because of subsidies that favor sparsely populated suburbs over the urban core.

Have you tried carrying 10 shopping bags a couple of miles with screaming toddlers and young kids?

I used to walk to the grocery store in Germany six days a week with a toddler and an infant and a backpack for my groceries. I was in American military housing.

After I moved to Kansas, I ran into a soldier I did not remember, but he clearly remembered me. The soldiers who knew what it was like to carry a 60 pound ruck sack had all kinds of respect for me.

It can be done. Not by everyone and I am not saying you are required to live that way. But giving other people options doesn't preclude you from driving everywhere. And that's the entire fucking point here.

Feel free to drive. But I like walking. I liked walking even when I was carrying groceries home in a backpack with an infant strapped to my chest and a toddler sitting on my shoulders.

Yes, just like we can live by subsistence farming with manual labor, living in huts.

It can be done, but most of us want to progress.

There you go, insulting me again.

Preferring to walk in no way makes me some undeveloped savage. Maybe you haven't noticed, but I am online. I spend a lot of time online. I make my earned income online.

For the last time: My desire to see more walkable environments and better public transit in the U.S. in no way bars people from driving. Busses use the same roads that cars use. This is in no way whatsoever a situation where we must choose one or the other.

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