My Rant About Why Cars are Dumb
I need to get this out of my system every so often, so here it goes…
If you talk to me for long enough, and the subject of a car/cars come up, you’ll probably see me tense up.
“Matt what’s wrong, do you not like cars?”
“Don’t even get me started…” And then I launch into a rant about how stupid they are.
I have my list of reasons and I’ll get to it.
You probably think “Matt, how else am I supposed to get around?” Well… you have two legs don’t you? Or a bike?
“But Matt, I live 2 hours away from my job!”
“Well, move?”
Back in 2016 I bought a car. I bought a Chevrolet Volt because I wanted something good for the environment and wanted to be a big boy with a car.
But I dislike cars for lots of reasons. Buying one was a good way to solidify that for me, and I resold the thing within a couple of years. Here’s some of the reasons I ditched my Chevy.
They Are a Terrible Investment
The average American spends $5000 on cars a year. This is not an investment like in the stock market that grows, this is basically the cost you pay to own and drive a car.
If you bought a car and have a car loan, you’re paying interest (that’s just money the bank keeps for lending you money), and the loan that you pay down is worth way more than the car will be at the end of your loan term. After ~5 years, your car is worth less than half what you paid for it.
I compared this with something like my DC metro-pass, $130 a month, or $1560 a year. Sounds like a lot, but considering it was basically 1/4 the price of owning a car (I remember my car payment + insurance was $600+ a month), seems a lot more reasonable cost to get around.
So if you’re losing out and someone’s winning, then what’s the deal? Well…
They Are The Best Way To Serve Your Corporate Overlords
When you buy a new car from Ford, or Nissan, you’re giving the car companies a nice chunk of change for something that won’t be worth anything.
Sure, they have state of the art safety systems, loud speakers, nice sleek bodies. But are you a kid or an adult? If you like playing with toys, that is essentially what you’re paying for. But a toy that could have been the down payment on a house, or a trip to a country you’ve always wanted to visit.
Instead, you get a depreciating asset that you have to pay to have the oil changed and filled up with gas (yay gas companies), or better yet, you can have a fancy electric car (yay Tesla). The truth is, their bottom line grows but yours does not. You didn’t invest, you spent. You and your descendents will never see that money again (unless you are part owner of a car company).
The dealers also love to sell you on crap you don’t need, like extended warranties or some other things that make the dealership loads of money and make you pay more. Take my money, please!
After all the corporate folks make bank, you have a shiny toy you can enjoy traffic in. Whoopee. And what is the deal with the “coolness” that all these companies are selling you on… well I’d say it’s that —
They Trick You With Their Cool Factor
Car commercials, shows like Top Gear, that jerk you went to school with who drives a Ferrari. Heck even Transformers is basically a commercial for cars. All these things keep telling you “cars are cool.”
I think this cool factor thing is just like men comparing their “you know what” size. It’s a proxy for how successful and cool you are, how expensive a car/toy you can afford.
But it is a trick, much like Casinos trick you with “free drinks.” (See how free they are if you don’t sit down at a table and play.)
Cars are cool because people benefit financially from them being cool, just like how cigarettes are cool, or how music artists are cool. Cool == $$$
Just like cigarettes, cars are expensive AND they kill you. They kill you outright in motor vehicle accidents, or they kill you more slowly because…
They Make You Fat
The heaviest I ever was post college was when I lived in Fairfax, VA and drove to Reston, VA for a year in my car. Just sitting my fat butt in my front seat, complaining about traffic. Totally sucked. I was frustrated and getting fatter. So I moved and started walking to work; one of the best decisions I ever made. And I sold my stupid car.
And there’s data to back up my anecdotal experience. If you only take a few hundred steps a day (bed to car, car to desk, and vice-versa), you’re going to back on the pounds pretty easily.
What I also found interesting about this slowly-growing-fat experience is that, inside my own car, things were pretty sound proof. But if you’re a person or an animal outside, you’ll notice —
They Are So Loud
Ever live near a highway? And you just hear that constant roar of semis and cars flying by at 60 miles an hour?
Or in a city, with car alarms going off and people laying on the horn? Or some jagoff who speeds between stop signs and has the loudest muffler known to humankind?
Loud noises are supposed to be an indication of imminent danger, not a constant terror. They tap into your lizard brain and stress you out. Not good for people or anything living.
This loudness brings me to my last point:
They Make America Suck Overall
Most American cities are built for cars suck (i.e., 90% of them).
Parking is crazy expensive, traffic is horrible during rush hour, and weirdly all the highways go through poor neighborhoods? The car makes these cities objectively worse than their European counterparts that are more people friendly. (Notice Chicago and NYC, two cities with decent walkability, are the only ones on the list.)
Car companies will sell you the propaganda that “they built this country and made it great,” but that’s horse s — t. They got rid of horses in cities, which was nice, but then conspired to make the cities centered around the car. And those car based cities stink in their own way.
Americans working their butts off to make those stupid things are what made the country so rich. People working in steel, oil, construction and manufacturing, all so corporations could sell what would become exorbitantly priced toys to people.
And we built our cities and suburbs to support this inefficient and sucky way to get around, so now it’s almost a requirement to own one. But you can fight back, and should, for your sake and your kids’ sake.
So what should you do?
Move somewhere where you don’t have to drive.
Ride a bike. Walk!
Buy a used car if you need one. It won’t depreciate nearly as much.
Remember: A new car is a toy. A really expensive toy. If you like toys, then enjoy them.
But you’re not saving the environment, and you’re certainly not making America (or any country) a better place by owning one. You’re just a good little pawn on the corporate chessboard.
