They're comparing on a single dimension and laughing at F-150 owners.
> This is more like r/vegan showing how a vegan meal is better than a steak meal along some dimension, say, environmental impact.
Not when evaluating a purchasing decision, overall utility, or customer demographics and needs. I'm showing that morally opposed parties inject themselves and their biases orthogonally.
> In fact I would say that you are the one being somewhat dishonest by (implicitly) claiming both the benefits of being able to use it as a utilitarian workhorse, and in an urban area.
Have you ever been to a city that's half an hour to the woods? Or perhaps somewhere it's typical to find people owning acres of their own land right next to a major metropolitan? Not everything is SF or NYC.
If you want to tax an externality, do so. Many state gas taxes tax vehicle weight via the proxy of gas mileage. Right now it's the heavy EVs doing the damage that are slipping through the taxation cracks.
> they should require being licensed as a commercial driver
Okay, now we're getting into yucking other people's yums.
If you want to regulate that negative externality, we should go all the way. Tax and regulate everything.
Let's start with sex. It spreads disease and causes all sorts of relationship drama. Kids can be a nightmare. Think about all the lost productivity! Who's paying for that? (I'm joking, of course!)
> potentially be banned from being operated on city roads due to the danger they pose to smaller vehicles and pedestrians
You can vote for that in your own district, and maybe that's correct, but other places and populations will feel differently about how they live their own lives.
> if you are driving a huge farm tractor, you cannot also bring said tractor into the city center. Not all heavy machinery needs to be allowed everywhere.
On the spectrum of farm tractor to kei car, the F-150 is tightly clustered in the middle with the rest of the "street legal" vehicles.
* The real farm families would have a pickup for pulling a horse trailer, moving mulch/manure/hay bales/equipment, but also have a regular sedan for, like, driving places.
* The suburban families would have a pickup or SUV as a daily driver.
A quick Google search seems to back my impresssion:
"According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less."
As you say, taxing the externality is reasonable (and currently imperfect, in a few dimensions). One reason to look especially hard at SUVs and light trucks is that they have externalities in a number of dimensions (road wear, emissions, accident safety for other cars) and seem to have very limited utility (most people who buy them aren't really using them for their supposed purpose).
The subreddit is specifically named 'fuck cars'. How exactly are they being dishonest? This is more like r/vegan showing how a vegan meal is better than a steak meal along some dimension, say, environmental impact.
> I live in an urban area close enough to the forest, lakes, and pastures to see all of these uses frequently.
In fact I would say that you are the one being somewhat dishonest by (implicitly) claiming both the benefits of being able to use it as a utilitarian workhorse, and in an urban area. If the trucks have the majority of their utility as contracting, construction, or towing, they should require being licensed as a commercial driver, and potentially be banned from being operated on city roads due to the danger they pose to smaller vehicles and pedestrians.
Think of the argument from that subreddit (and me) this way -- if you are driving a huge farm tractor, you cannot also bring said tractor into the city center. Not all heavy machinery needs to be allowed everywhere. Obviously you might not agree, but I think the argument is fundamentally honest.