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You're neglecting the decades of government policy that built out infrastructure for cars specifically, and neglected other modes of transportation. Of course people are going to drive if the government is pouring billions into making driving fast and convenient while transit, bike infrastructure, and dense housing are either neglected or actively undermined.

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I don’t think GP neglected that. They gave the example of bikes vs. horses in the 19th century. People preferred horses because they wanted to go far with little effort.

There was recently a thread on HN about why Europe had become so wealthy. Many opined that exploitation of other led to Europe’s wealth, but others observed that such exploitation was only possible because Europe was already wealthy. The same applies here. Yes, the government had many car-promoting policies, but those policies were tolerated because cars were already desired and that desire made the car lobby popular, not the other way around.

I mean, the bicycles they had throughout most of the 1800s were not at all as practical as today’s. The safety bicycle that you’d recognize as a modern bicycle wasn’t a thing until around the 1880s. I think the calculation would be different had people in the 1800s had modern bicycles.

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