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Comment by jdross | Hacker News Reader

The set of people who believe the automobile (or the Internet) are net negatives taken as a whole for society is extremely small, for good reason

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Is it? Do you include everyone that’s died or lost a loved one due to personal automobiles in that assessment?

We are so far post automobile that it’s hard to compare, but many of the benefits are illusionary when you consider how society has evolved with them as commutes for example used to be shorter. Similarly the air used to be far cleaner and that’s after we got rid of leaded gas and required catalytic converters decades ago.

How many people have lived or had a loved one saved due to automobiles?

We have the benefit of hindsight but we're also making judgment calls looking back on fuzzy recollections, forgetting just how the past used to be before an innovation came along.

I agree it’s difficult to do these calculations as society evolves with technology. Trains enable long distance evacuation from hurricanes. Street cars and subways allow for medical transportation but it looks very different than an ambulance. Similarly do we exclude helicopters assuming cars were simply banned rather than our failing to design IC engines or whatever.

That said, there are modern enclaves without cars mostly on islands or in very remote locations. They make due just fine without cars, it’s the low population density that’s at issue for medical care.

Let's refine terms - internal combustion engine driven automobiles have lead to lead poisoning, air pollution, and CO2 emissions.

The automobile on its own was actually far less polluting than the horse wrt. air quality. It's just that there's a whole lot more of the former than there ever was of the latter. Even wrt. climate change, it turns out that horses produce methane emissions which are far worse for the climate than carbon dioxide.

You are immensely discounting induced demand though.

induced demand is a good thing - it means there is more utility going around.

I would like to get actual numbers.

1. how many people died because of lead poisoning, air pollution?

2. how many people were saved and had qualitatively better lives because of automobiles?

1. Is a very hard question to answer, airborne lead pollution isn't fatal, but it does impact cognition. Perhaps ask yourself how many people lead lower quality lives because of it, and the flow-on effects from that lower cognition.

The people who did Freakonomics claimed that the drop in violent crime in the US in the 90s could be correlated to the phasing out of leaded fuel, but I'm not a statistician so can't speak to the accuracy of that correlation.

2. How would you even measure that? How would you define a better life thanks to a vehicle?

I feel like you're ice skating uphill a little given the deleterious effects of leaded fuels are well studied, but the question you're asking isn't.

That reason is along the lines of, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Coal miners will fight for coal mines, the oil industry will fight for dependence on oil, and so on. Sometimes they’re aware of what they’re doing, but in the case of a comment like the above, apparently not so much.

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