I wanted to take a moment to flesh out what I think is an inconsistency in how people think they apply logic and reason to their beliefs. Some ideas by their very nature are unreasonable, or should warrant a great deal of skepticism, even if their details appear to be grounded in evidence. A good illustration of this is the idea that we should ban cars.
One thing I love about the YIMBY movement is that it is generally grounded in empiricism. People have studied housing and can now quantify the welfare benefits of building more of it. We can say with a high degree of confidence that making cities more abundant and livable is compatible with density and development. It is in part an aesthetic preference on the part of YIMBY types, but the evidence is there.
One thing you do hear among some hard core YIMBY types though, is that we should ban cars (which I take to mean private autos generally). This is an extreme version of the goal of making cities more livable. The idea is that cars are polluting and dangerous and create an unsafe urban space for cycling and walking. More extreme versions, which I have written about before, paint people who drive cars as part of a culture of wreckless assholes. Roads and parking take up a lot of unproductive land that could be put to better use. A lot of people can’t walk or bike, and public transit cannot take you point to point, but I don’t ever hear how we solve these problems if we ban cars. Maybe there are proposed solutions that I just haven’t been made aware of.
Let’s be clear: banning cars is a utopian idea. Our society desires having access to cars. Cars are a convenient way to travel point to point because there is a large network or roads that make it possible. Our urban spaces and the surrounding suburbs and rural areas exist as they do in part because the idea of the car exists. And again, it’s worth emphasizing that our society desires having access to cars.
Cars are great example of something that emerged organically and changed the world. Not all world upending ideas are bad. But often the ones that work are the ones that gained mass adoption organically rather than being imposed by fiat. Cars were useful, and our society adapted to make them even more useful and ingrained in our lives.
There seems to be a great deal of risk in utopian thinking. Empirically, utopian ventures have not fared well, so there is no rational reason to believe there is a high probability of success. This is what I mean when I say ideas by their every nature can be unreasonable. They are aesthetics masquerading as reason. There are a lot of negative externalities caused by cars, some of which we have solved and others we are actively solving. Reason should direct us to find evidence-based solutions to improve cars, make people less reliant on them when more useful alternatives exist, and free up land for better use when practical.
But the leap from “cars have harms” to “ban cars” is a leap from reason to unreason. It’s empirically true that the top-down imposition of norms required for creating this social upheaval often fails to grasp second order impacts and has poor results. Banning cars has a lower risk-adjusted return than lots of technological and social improvements in how we use cars that stop well short of banning them.
Evidence and reason are what YIMBYs and other pro-growth advocates have on their side. Anyone who suggests banning cars would be unambiguously good or who exhibits anything less than a high degree of uncertainty and epistemic humility is not advancing the best parts of YIMBYism.
One thing I love about the YIMBY movement is that it is generally grounded in empiricism. People have studied housing and can now quantify the welfare benefits of building more of it. We can say with a high degree of confidence that making cities more abundant and livable is compatible with density and development. It is in part an aesthetic preference on the part of YIMBY types, but the evidence is there.
One thing you do hear among some hard core YIMBY types though, is that we should ban cars (which I take to mean private autos generally). This is an extreme version of the goal of making cities more livable. The idea is that cars are polluting and dangerous and create an unsafe urban space for cycling and walking. More extreme versions, which I have written about before, paint people who drive cars as part of a culture of wreckless assholes. Roads and parking take up a lot of unproductive land that could be put to better use. A lot of people can’t walk or bike, and public transit cannot take you point to point, but I don’t ever hear how we solve these problems if we ban cars. Maybe there are proposed solutions that I just haven’t been made aware of.
Let’s be clear: banning cars is a utopian idea. Our society desires having access to cars. Cars are a convenient way to travel point to point because there is a large network or roads that make it possible. Our urban spaces and the surrounding suburbs and rural areas exist as they do in part because the idea of the car exists. And again, it’s worth emphasizing that our society desires having access to cars.
Cars are great example of something that emerged organically and changed the world. Not all world upending ideas are bad. But often the ones that work are the ones that gained mass adoption organically rather than being imposed by fiat. Cars were useful, and our society adapted to make them even more useful and ingrained in our lives.
There seems to be a great deal of risk in utopian thinking. Empirically, utopian ventures have not fared well, so there is no rational reason to believe there is a high probability of success. This is what I mean when I say ideas by their every nature can be unreasonable. They are aesthetics masquerading as reason. There are a lot of negative externalities caused by cars, some of which we have solved and others we are actively solving. Reason should direct us to find evidence-based solutions to improve cars, make people less reliant on them when more useful alternatives exist, and free up land for better use when practical.
But the leap from “cars have harms” to “ban cars” is a leap from reason to unreason. It’s empirically true that the top-down imposition of norms required for creating this social upheaval often fails to grasp second order impacts and has poor results. Banning cars has a lower risk-adjusted return than lots of technological and social improvements in how we use cars that stop well short of banning them.
Evidence and reason are what YIMBYs and other pro-growth advocates have on their side. Anyone who suggests banning cars would be unambiguously good or who exhibits anything less than a high degree of uncertainty and epistemic humility is not advancing the best parts of YIMBYism.