randomProducer

I think that's fair but I think the amount of people that think they're into cars is far more than the amount of people that are actually into cars.

Not trying to be a gatekeeper but if I think about myself I know I "felt social pressure" (grew up in a culture that glorifies this material item and sets an expect ion of success/fulfillment) to get a car. I guess you could argue that social pressures like this can grow naturally and I suppose I agree that they can but I don't think this one grew naturally and for some people promotes values that they may not hold.

Cars as status symbols, I think, is troubling at the scale they're at. If you enjoy to ride around or appreciate their engineering then by all means.

Even as I type this I think if you want to splurge on a Car that you will just take social media pictures with to make you feel good and show others then I think you should, more power to you, do what makes you happy.

I guess my problem is that "what makes you happy" .. "is a fancy car" (you can go in debt to get) is a message that is "loud" and unlike a house (arguably the other functional yet status symbol) is within reach of people who it isn't in their best interest to get.

I think it's a nuanced subject because as most things in life it's mixed up in all aspects of human life like financial education and personal responsibility but what I'm saying is that current "car culture" (to sweep away all the nuance) doesn't feel right to me right now and I think causes a lot of harm.

You're right it's not 100% but I made that comment to admittedly "get a reaction". I think it's good to remind people of this dynamic, the way you think about your workplace is just half the story.

> Human emotions are real and managers aren't just blindly following game theory

Absolutely, which means this isn't guaranteed. This isn't part of a companies DNA ( you could argue good people always get hired?). This isn't true for all work places. The truth is it depends on the people that work there and just like you mentioned that you could have caring emotional humans as managers, you can also have not-caring emotional humans as managers.

If I had to make a grand generalization about most workplaces then I think it's safer to say they would care more about money (for profit/staying in business) than I would say they care about making me, an employee, happy.

Having said that I've worked in great places where I don't feel it's 100% about the money. I know some of that feeling is genuine because of the people I work with. I also know that feeling is intended and is the primary focus of some departments in companies. I know that I'm in a field that has enjoys greater privileges than other workers.

I try to remind myself about this and I think I'm ok with saying that "it's 99% about the money for the employer". A bit cynical (or realist depending on your view).

I feel the same. The amount of poor neighborhoods with brand new cars rolling around really depresses me. As someone who grew up pretty poor it always fascinated me that my family and neighbors would buy cars worth 20k - 30k which would be enough to provide a very basic/safe way of living for the foreseeable future. I would take the peace of mind I would of had over having a status symbol that random people on the highway could look at for a few seconds on a trip.

Also driving is such a waste of human potential, I don't think the amount of attention needed to drive safely is worth the monotony/tediousness of driving. It's wasted time on a large scale.

> It's not always 100% about the money. ... for the employee