A Car Is A Scam
English

A Car Is A Scam

by

daily life
history
economics

Nobody had the right to own private property under the Soviet regime and no one gave a damn about it. For example, if you lived in an apartment building, you could build a garage or plant your own garden on the land near it without any documentation or taxes. Everyone in my apartment building, including my parents, built their own garages near it. When the authorities changed from socialism to capitalism, bureaucrats who wanted nothing more than to make money from anything they could get their hands on took over. The Soviet regime hadn't existed for many years, but our garages were still standing. However, Moscow was expanding and the authorities finally caught up with us and we were no longer under the authorities' radar. They told us, ''Since you don't have any documentation for your garages, you have to take them down or we'll take them down for you. My family had to sell our garage for scrap metal, and I had to leave my car outside. It was about eight years old, and leaving it outside meant exposing it to the elements and having it get rusty sooner. Before that, I had been thinking about selling it because I thought that having a car was a scam. A car pumps your money out of you. You always have to pay for insurance, taxes and fines. There's always something breaking down on it. Our authorities are always coming up with new ways to pump money out of us. I didn't need my car for work and figured out that it would be cheaper to get around by taxi. A car is a headache. It can break down, someone can scratch it or you can get into an accident. A bus or a taxi driver will do all the work for you - change the inner brake pads, oil and refill the gas tank. All that's left for you to do is take a seat and enjoy the ride. Plus, there are huge traffic jams these days, and you can't get around easily by car. A regular bus goes faster because it has a dedicated lane. Also, there's nowhere to park in Moscow. There used to be a lot of free parking lots, but now they're all paid. Having a car to drive only your ass is a really expensive pleasure. That's why I sold my car and I don't regret a thing.

There was a policy in place to promote public transportation instead of private in the Soviet times. Public transportation is better for the environment and saves natural resources. For instance, a bus can hold about 50 seated passengers aside from people who can stand. You can imagine how many resources it takes to produce one bus versus 50 individual cars. Resources don't fall out of the sky - you have to extract them and they're often non-renewable. The pursuit of personal comfort is self-serving and potentially damaging to our environment. That's why capitalism based on a consumer society is self-defeating.

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