Originally Posted by
jon c.
Anecdotes are not evidence. You can find someone who believes and expounds on any opinion. That's fine, but it provides little valuable insight regarding society at large.
Nothing provides any insight about 'society at large.' There are only cultural patterns. Are you arguing that the conversation I overheard was uncommon and that it is a rare occurrence for something to get a job on the contingency of having 'reliable transportation,' or for that to be interpreted to mean they have to get a car?
We live in a wonderfully open and free society that allows a wide range of options among which we can choose. If an individual believes they must make certain decisions due to what they perceive as societal mandates, that's really a choice on their part. We can take or leave the whims of the social order at our own discretion. Groups will always develop norms. But the society in which we now live has far less enforcement of those norms than can be seen throughout most of human history.
Yes, that is the million dollar question: how is it that we value liberty so much, yet there are so many subtle ways that people pressure others into certain choices, and that people even sincerely believe that they are required to do things that they aren't actually required to do. It's an incredibly strange phenomenon. . . and yet I think it is the rule more than it is the exception for that to happen.
You are as free to make your own choices as you choose to be.
And yet there's this weird thing called the economy, where if everyone chooses not to be free to LCF, then the economy adjusts income norms so everyone can afford to drive. Then, because everyone is driving, people start expecting you to seek jobs 10+ miles away and if you refuse, it's considered economic suicide, not an economic conspiracy to force you into driving.