worth it?

In our struggles to figure out how to fix our cars and keep them on the road, i often wonder "is it worth it?"

Like this picture of my friend Dave, working on his engine, and struggling to figure out which part is broken, I often wonder why we spend so much of our time, money, and other resources on our cars.

Transportation in this society needs to be changed BADLY. I was talking with a woman last night at a halloween party (who was dressed as a sperm (from the woody allen movie "everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask), and she was telling me that she spends very little time in a car and most of her time on a bike.

Think about it:

A car costs a lot of money to buy.

A car costs a lot of money to insure.

Driving a car costs gas money. That gas had to come from somewhere abroad as the United States doesn't really have any domestic oil. We often get that oil from contries we have invaded or had some sort or political or violent turmoil with.

Driving cars also costs expensive repair money.

Cars are pollute the earth and probably cause global warming which is now probably causing catastrophic hurricane weather to kill people and damage things.

Cars also are made of not only many metal parts (which come from strip mining which damages the earth) but also from many plastic parts (which come from oil, and we already talked about how that is not a good thing).

Driving cars also makes us lazy and fat. Nobody gets any excercise from driving a car.

Driving cars are dangerous. The roads are full of accidents EVERY DAY.

ARE WE INSANE? the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and trying to get different results.

How about riding bikes?

Bikes don't cost as much as cars.

Bikes don't need to be insured.

The only fuel you need to put into a bike is what you would feed yourself...so you are killing two birds with one stone there.


Most people can fix a bike themselves for very cheap and with few extra parts.

Bikes don't pollute the earth, and the metal and plastic they use are very small compared to that of a car.

People get a lot of excercise from riding bikes and stay healthy this way.

Bikes are mostly dangerous because of the danger of them getting hit by cars. If there were no cars on the road and only bikes, it would be extremely rare for people to die from a bike to bike accident.

The only loss from riding a bike is the distance you are able to travel is dramatically reduced. But honestly, I believe that most people would benefit from traveling less distances every day. It would localize our lives, give us more incentive to create and invest in our immediate communities, and would enable us to actually say hi to people as we walked or biked down the paths.

Let's think about the opportunity cost of driving and move on towards something that is worth our time, energy, and health!