Car Evolution

It's very disturbing. It's designed to make people dependent, whereas older cars encouraged independence. You could learn to fix them yourself. And I don't think that's an accident.

I can't avoid the new ones, but I dislike them enough to reduce my use of them.

I don't think they realize how much they're shooting themselves in the crotch, though. It's not just the loss of repairs when people junk the cars. It's that more people are either unwilling or unable to have cars at all. In a country that has been designed for cars, that's a serious problem. But it's spreading rapidly. The younger generations are so strapped that they're not buying much at all. The sharing economy is a response to the collapse of the regular economy -- and it's not just sharing stuff for free among friends but also barter, all the rent-ish services, etc.

>>True... what they're doing is making it more expensive to keep a car running, which means that cars become disposable items. Except the price of a new car hasn't gotten any less, so users are only going to get bitten by that once or twice before they seriously question if it's worth it. It's also killing the second-hand market, because typically the more mileage a car has, the more maintenance it needs. [or will do].<<

That's part of a wider and equally disturbing trend of "you don't own what you buy." Generally speaking, if I'm not going to own a product, I won't pay for it. The exception is certain types of rentable service equipment that may need to be upgraded at unpredictable intervals, like ISP hardware. If it's not absolutely crucial, fuck it. If it's crucial, the company doesn't get my support, they get my very grudging endurance, and I always keep my eye out for better options. But I worry about things like TV going from a one-time expense to an ongoing one, and many computer programs the same way. It's a problem because it runs up the baseline of fixed monthly expenses in a household, at a time when real incomes are falling. Asking people to do more with less never ends well.

>> Younger buyers are the main-stay of the second-hand market, but with it being uneconomic to keep a beater running... well, like you say. It's a downwards spiral from there. Hence the rise of Uber I suppose. <<

Which is why people keep attacking all these alternatives; they don't want to lose their customer base. Except you can't have customers if people don't have money, and if people can't find some way to get shit done, then your whole society falls apart. Which is what's happening.

>>I'd imagine the end result will be the death of capitalism, the companies will either evolve away from consumer exploitation as their business model, or go under as the market collapses. <<

This would not surprise me. If a system doesn't meet people's needs, they will tear it apart and replace it with something they hope will do better. Capitalism is currently manifesting all the problems that socialists and communists predicted, which are as obvious as the failure modes capitalists pointed out for those systems.

>> Which is going to be problem though...at least in the states, because so much of your infrastructure and social structure is wedded to the status quo, it's going to be hard-to-impossible to do anything else, <<

That's true. There's a rising interest in walkable neighborhoods for people who can afford to move elsewhere. This is a good thing. But it doesn't help people who are in unwalkable neighborhoods or rural areas.

>> and that's where the vested interests don't make it down-right illegal. [e.g tiny homes and their illegality for example.] <<

It doesn't matter, honestly. You can't force people to do something they're incapable of doing no matter how much you abuse them. Making tiny houses illegal just makes people homeless. Making homelessness illegal just puts people in jail. And there's a limit to how much of a population can be supported as unproductive livestock. Prison inmates only enrich the elite; they do nothing to keep society going. The more that expands, the more trouble it causes.

You might as well just pour sugar in the gas tank.

The cars are only one symptom of how the American economy is coming apart at the seams.

I don't care if the companies self-destruct. I care that the decreasing availability and usability of private cars is not matched by an increase in public transportation, walkability, and ability to afford hiring a ride when necessary. This leaves many people with reduced ability to travel, including for necessities. Since neither the government nor the corporations care about citizens right now, I expect these problems to get worse instead of better.

Alternative transportation mostly consists of hybrid or electric cars, which are more expensive and less feasible to maintain, and only have the advantage of being smaller. Human-powered vehicles are primarily useful to those in good physical condition, not anyone with impaired health. While I'm in favor of these options, I don't expect them to solve the problems I raised regarding car evolution.

That looks insanely uncomfortable to me. Ah well, another haggis shortage averted.

>> The serious high-end luxury cars were the ones that changed most. <<

So did the jeep. Aside from retaining the shoebox shape it's nothing alike. It went from open to closed, lightweight to heavy, a lot more stuff on it to break, and now you can't fix it with a wrench in the middle of the desert.

>>I don't know if Dodge did or not, but I know Ford actually sent former owners surveys, "Does this look *to you* like the car you owned and loved?" They realised they really lost their way with the II in '76 and put a LOT of effort into bringing the old mystique back. <<

Very astute.