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Comment by Auracle | Hacker News Reader

I can’t wait to bike 12 miles to the nearest town in -20 degree weather to catch a train that doesn’t exist so I can get groceries.

You might as well say, “Well, if we just invented teleporters…”

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I would suggest you try and see how countries that aren’t as car centered as the US operate. Trains, buses, trams all can make it very easy to lose the car addiction. And it can be done today, no teleportation required.

Those countries are usually heavily urbanized, though so is the USA. Those not living in urban areas generally have more dependence on cars (eg in Australia or New Zealand).

I’ve been to Japan (and NYC and…), so I have a pretty good idea. The system works great in Tokyo, and obviously the bullet train is amazing. In rural areas though, you’re dealing with long train rides and waiting on bus schedules. It can be done, but it seems like a lot of people in those areas just had cars.

It should be done where it’s practical, but in most of the US geographically it isn’t.

Most of the US lives in urban areas.

I don't suppose you are suggesting that nobody was able to live a decent life 12 miles out of town until we had cars, are you?

But I suppose your point is more like: we've built lots of completely car-dependent situations in which people live very far from core necessities in life with no way to get them except by car. And that's clearly true. But the answer isn't teleporters or biking in -20 to got 12 miles. The answer is to stop living so far from essential resources. And that doesn't have to mean everyone moving to crazy-dense living around existing resources like grocery stores. It could just as well (better really) mean modest density in mixed areas where we have more medium-size grocery stores so that more people are close to them.

I'm not suggesting individuals just live in car DEPENDENT contexts and then forgo the thing you DEPEND on. I'm suggesting we have drastically fewer car-dependent places.

I’m sorry, but I like that I basically don’t have neighbors and my little girl has 15 acres to play on and explore. A lot of other people feel the same way.

> A lot of other people feel the same way.

As a fact, a lot of people may feel that way, but not a large percentage. That's just a small percentage of a large number is still a large number. But tell me again why I have to subsidize your lifestyle by paying for your roads and inadequate federal gas laws recapturing the costs of pollution from your cars?

Meanwhile, most people raised like your little girl will end up moving to urban areas as an adult.

Presumably because you need to eat. Farmers are in the area. My wife does accounting for the food producer they sell to. I photograph their weddings. My wife’s mom helps run the healthcare for the area. My friend sells them equipment.

People generally don’t live where it doesn’t make at least some economic sense, and those farmers would probably stop farming if they didn’t have at least some basic necessities and amenities nearby.

Accounting and heathcare management can trivially be done remotely.

But it might not really matter. Do small farms produce a noticeable amount of food in our food supply? I thought it all was giant farms with giant machinery, not family farms, that actually produced food.

(Edited to try to make it more clear that was a real question. Maybe family farms are important for the food supply?)

Family farms large are “giant farms” nowadays, at least in my area. Nobody is farming 50 acres, they all have hundreds or even thousands. You can only really be born in to it when farmland is $10,000 an acre and the equipment will run you hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

And they’re all stupidly wealthy for the amount of work they do, but that’s another matter.

Note: that’s all for crops. Raising animals seems to be another matter with plenty of smaller farms - and they do more work too.

While all large farms are family farms as well, the total number of such large farms is, what, 10,000 in the USA? By a bunch of very rich people? The exact people who don't need their lifestyle subsidized by people in urban areas to keep living in the country otherwise they'll move away and stop growing our food.

I don't know what you're sorry about. There's nothing wrong with that idea. It just isn't feasible to have 8 billion people all living like that. If cars were only used by a sustainably small number of people who live like you, then it's fine enough.

The problem is the "lot of other people" issue. Your way of life works well only if most people forgo it. There's nothing inherently wrong with it in and of itself.

Then you would know what it looks like to live in the Alaskan bush (not many roads, so cars aren’t that useful).

Of course, where Alaska does have roads, they have a super high death rate. An uncle who I never knew being one of them (though in this case, and as usual, alcohol was also involved).

I don't own a car, neither does anyone around me. We all rely on public transport and bicycles. I live near the Artic circle and the temperature is routinely near -20º. If Aury knew what he was talking about, he'd know that weather is generally nice and sunny at that temperature and that snow and wind are more common when it's warmer.

I’m looking out my window at snow falling right now. You’re right that snow below 0 degrees in uncommon, but I’ve never noticed much of a difference in wind. That could be because where I live temperatures 20 below or worse aren’t common and are transient, so another front is probably nearby and creating wind.

I still wouldn’t want to bike in it, if only because of ice.

For the record I live in Minnesota, one of the coldest and snowiest states in the US.

You need spiked tires for your bike, just like for your car.

A larger percentage of the population lived in rural areas before mass production of cars.

Sure, and most of those people raised their own food and had a wife that could raise the children and cook all day. You could essentially live off of farming just what you needed, with maybe a little extra for spending money. That doesn’t work now unless you outlaw everything more advanced than a horse as farming equipment.

Most people don't live so far away from stores, or anything else. The vast majority of the population in any modern society is urban. And urban people can get by just fine on public transit anywhere that decides to put it in.

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