I have heard this story multiple times. But if it's true, then why are roads pretty much the same, as concerns walking vs driving, wherever you go in the world?

If things would have naturally been different if only it weren't for some lobbyists, how come things aren't that way at least somewhere?

Well roads do vary in their physical form and the social norms that govern their use in different parts of the world based on a lot of factors.

But I would say roads in developed areas are pretty much the same everywhere because cars are only made one way. The social consensus I mentioned was moving towards requiring a governor on cars that would shut their engines off if they exceeded 25 mph. If that had succeeded and endured, roads would look very different. But the economic effects that cars produce in accelerating the free flow of commodities, labor, and capital necessitated a rupture with the established order so that automobiles could continue to develop to be bigger, faster, and more powerful.

The similarities in road form and norms around the world represent an equilibrium between the current level of car technology and the amount of injury and death resulting from their use that society can metabolize.

I too wish roads could somehow be shared spaces again.

But let's not fall into these simplistic black and white anti-establishment narratives. The automobile massively expanded personal liberty and employment options. Some of these effects were very pro-worker, like reducing the power of the dominant employers of localities, by letting workers more easily pull up stakes and find a new home in a different locality, or simply commute to a more distant employer.

No conversation about the impact of the car is complete without mentioning the benefits it provided to society.

Labor market fluidity isn't pro-worker, it's an essential component of the commodification of labor. It simply means the shape of a person's life is more fully suborned to the demands of the market. It means competing on a national and often international market for wages. A workforce full of transplants is much less likely to organize and resist the agenda of capital than one with deep community roots and support structures.

In any case, I wasn't attempting to present a complete analysis of the societal effects of the automobile. I was only pointing out that this is another case of corporations explicitly dictating the terms of our society and using a massive outlay of cash to facilitate that and market it to us.

You're once again framing a nuanced phenomenon in terms of a simplistic oppressor/oppressed narrative. The fluidity of labor does not imply the commodification of labor. It implies a wider market for it, which has benefits like increasing the liquidity accessible to those with labor to sell. This marketization of labor was partially responsible for wages increasing over 20 fold, in inflation adjusted terms, since 1820.

Increasing the market for a product/service provides greater than zero sum gains for society. For instance, creating a global market for fine art doesn't make fine art less valuable. It leads to more capital being deployed to the art market, because more people are able to acquire art that they personally appreciate.

Romantacizing the pre-market past, and taking for granted the accumulated gains brought about by non centrally planned, private-sector driven processes, is a mistake.

>>In any case, I wasn't attempting to present a complete analysis of the societal effects of the automobile.

You were definitely implying that the overall impact was negative, and that's what I was responding to.

> This marketization of labor was partially responsible for wages increasing over 20 fold, in inflation adjusted terms, since 1820.

What's your evidence for this claim?

Market reforms, including expansions of contracting rights for employers and employees, have as a rule been followed by increases in per capita GDP and wages. The positive impact of a reduction in restrictions on the labor market, in favor of contract rights, has been widely observed and studied by economists.

Course in the US wages have been stagnant for 40 years now.

Wage growth has slowed, but hasn't ceased altogether. Statistics showing wages not growing or diverging from productivity are due to a misapplication of the inflation index:

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stag...

Anyway, the US has embarked on a massive social democracy course since 1965, so a slowdown in the rate of development is what you would expect.

This is a well-established fact in Economics.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-...

Annual spending growth (inflation adjusted) on various components of social welfare spending (1972 - 2011):

>Pensions and retirement: 4.4%

>Healthcare: 5.7%

>Welfare: 4.1%

Annual economic growth over the time frame:

>2.7%

This is annual growth, over a course of 40 years, resulting a massive increase in social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP.

I was implying that it doesn't really matter what the nature of the impact is if common people aren't the ones controlling the levers of power. I'm not romanticizing anything. I'm simply trying to draw attention to the nature of the power dynamics at play.

And I didn't say the fluidity of labor implied the commodification of labor. It's the complete opposite. The motive force of the capitalist system is the growth of capital. The commodification of labor is absolutely essential to that process.

If you want to talk about oversimplification let's talk about summing up the effects of globalization as "wages increasing 20 fold […] since 1820".