Cars are singularly amazing, and a collective pain in the arse.

In this (mercifully short) Fink Tank rant, Col and I bemoan the loss of amenity in cities designed entirely around cars.

It points to a frequently occurring tension in modern individualistic life:

Things that make MY day easier often make EVERYONE’S day worse. Including mine.

(Ha! I toyed with writing “make ONE’S day easier” for the inclusive feel, but it looks archaic. However I did just realise referring to oneself as “one” makes more sense when one considers the word “everyone”. Language eh?)

Anyway, this cost/benefit tension applies to lots of modern innovation. Smartphones, AI, capitalism.

The satirical American newspaper The Onion summed it up brilliantly in the year 2000:

98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others.