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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

    > We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now.

I assume "we" are Americans.

I keep writing this over and over again on HN: There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. Yes, literally, Japan, outside of a few large cities, is incredibly car centric. Sure, the cars are small and cute, but it is defintely car centric!

    > Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Yamaha, they've all been here a really long time.

They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.

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> There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities.

That's an argument. Lack of density means that public transportation is hard to have enough scale. But the US is uniquely bad at both density but also lack of transportation options. In countries like the UK and France (just because I'm familiar with them, I'm not claiming they're the only ones or it's something unique to them) even small towns have a regular bus or train connection to elsewhere. Might not be the best frequency, but it's there. In the US even multi hundred thousand people cities have literally nothing other than cars as an option.

So there are layers of car centricity. And considering most people live in cities, in countries like most of the developed world, the majority of the population has the option of at least decent transit. You know which countries are the exception.

Your response is excellent.

    > So there are layers of car centricity

Hat tip. I agree (and concede defeat). To be honsest, normally I am only replying to (anti-public-transit) fanatics. You are the first (in a long time) that provided a well-balanced reply!

>In the US even multi hundred thousand people cities have literally nothing other than cars as an option.

I'd be interested in hearing an example or two of cities in the U.S. with populations greater than 200,000 that don't have a bus system.

Arlington, Texas is an illustrious example. Almost 400k people and it has nothing.

Interesting. Thanks for the example.

https://arlingtonnetwork.com/arlington-mass-transit-rideshar...

There is also a distinction between "has a bus system" and "the bus system is actually usuable". Say you want to take the bus to jury duty, but calculate that you would need to wake up at something like three in the morning to catch the so-and-so to downtown, and then another bus out to where the jury place is (trip time: multiple hours, assuming all goes well), in addition to the usual playing Frogger across a stroad or two, or even more walking to maybe find legal road crossing facilities for humans, assuming they exist. And that was in a city with a relatively good (for America) bus system.

I think when people criticize America for being car centric, they mean that even urban and suburban areas often rely solely on car travel (e.g. Houston). Cars in rural/less developed areas are perfectly reasonable.

I think the criticism is misguided. In Japan, Saitama and Kanagawa prefectures (north and south of Tokyo -- the commuter belt), huge swaths have very poor mass transit. They drive a lot! Pick any mid-sized Japanese city: Most people are drivers. There might only be two train lines in the whole city. With the exception of the three (maybe five) biggest cities in Japan, people living in suburban areas are all mostly drivers.

> outside of a few large cities

Yeah and this is the exact reason why people call the US car-centric. Only in the US the large cities are car-centric too. You just proved the parent comment's point.

> They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.

You're hallucinating. There is zero romanticization in the parent comment about why they came to the US.

> They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.

Where did I suggest they came for any particular reason? I just said they got here first. They've had more time to become entrenched in people's lives than the Korean or Chinese companies that followed. That's all! Nothing "romantic" here!

At no point did I indicate any nostalgia for the idiosyncracies of the "GM patriarch" family. Is that what you're suggesting?

And yeah, "we" is Americans. As evidenced by the sentence that starts with "I grew up in middle America."

I genuinely don't understand this comment. It's like you saw "we're a car-centric society," stopped reading, and started typing.

What? All of these companies have been major importers to the USA since the 80s or earlier. I don't see how tariffs have anything to do with how embedded Japanese electronics and cars are embedded into American culture.

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