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Lots about that life is now illegal or made impossible. Car needs to be fixed? Modern cars now transmit real-time diagnostic data wirelessly directly to the manufacturer. If you have an issue that needs to be fixed, you need to take it to an official shop because the manufacturer will not tell you what the diagnostic data says. Also, car electronics and machinery have been intentionally made difficult to repair without highly specialized knowledge.
How many fights broke out at your public school a week? My high school had about 3-5 fights a week in in the hallways and cafeteria. From my understanding, that number only goes up depending on where you live. And that was actually a pretty good school, where I was able to attend mostly AP classes and learn real things (though the graduating senior class was 2/3 the size of the freshman class due to dropouts.) A decent public school where your kids actually learn to read beyond a third grade level without being in physical danger is expensive. It costs a house that might be 2x the median home. Private school or homeschool is often cheaper these days.
It is hard to overstate the effects of enshittification on everything over the past 20 years. Would people have put up with a car that couldn't be repaired at home when you were a kid? But somehow today there are few options for cars without these electronic contraptions intentionally designed to make it hard to repair.
I fully acknowledge all of this, and I’m not suggesting that the world hasn’t become a more complex place than it was decades ago. What I’m saying is even back then, we weren’t a family that lived to the maximum of our income (and we could’ve lived quite a luxurious lifestyle in our immediate family alone). Not many people that I meet today who aren’t my age and don’t come from that kind of background assume the same mindset. Of course everyone’s case is unique, but the attendant, generational inflation in lifestyle is something that’s undeniable across the board.
I grew up in a place that was solidly middle upper class, with one side of my family who came from fairly rich and prestigious career driven background with a strong military footprint, and the other which came from grinding poverty but was extremely ambitious and self-educated, almost like something you’d see out of Good Will Hunting, and very unassuming from the eyes of other people. You’d never in a million years suspect they were that way, but they practically haunted the libraries every day of their lives. And when my father ultimately moved into the big cities, he climbed the career ladder during the dot com boom like it was a cakewalk. They just simply didn’t have money. But when our neighborhood defunded the local police stations due to budget cuts and we ultimately moved to the adjacent next city over (which still ended up being affected by things), there was a near instantaneous and overnight shift from an upscale community into one that’s made national headlines due to narcotics trafficking. I lived in a hood and on a cross street that was violently contested between two competing gangs, where there was violence almost every day and a reported murder practically every other week. My father was in a bind because he didn’t want to uproot my sibling and I from our deeply entrenched family connections and all the friends I had whilst at the same time, didn’t want us living in the kind of hood he grew up in.
I fully agree with most of what you’ve said here, but I’d implore most people who look at others who complain about their financial situation and just ask yourself, “Based on what I know about this person, how much of what they spend would I characterize for purposes someone should regard as desirable.” You’ll find for yourself they could downgrade and cut back on quite a bit.
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I think you either have a definition of 'modern' that's like ten years in the future, or are just wrong -- the newest car in my stable (wife's) is three years old and I can work on it just fine. In particular, engine-related jobs (eg. head gasket) are basically no different than they were in the sixties. (or the Grapes of Wrath, for that matter)
On-board diagnostic computers, while not without their foibles, actually tend to make life easier than in the past so long as you are prepared to spend fifty bucks on a scan-tool; furthermore Youtube + brand specific forums mean that the chances that someone somewhere has done the exact job you are contemplating and documented it in detail online are very near to 100%. (unless you are driving something really weird or it's been altered from the factory state previously)
On the whole, fixing your own car has never been easier -- and I've been doing that since high school in the 90s, dealing with vehicles produced ~1969-2023 and resources ranging from dusty manuals in the physical library to youtube and pirated factory literature from shady Russian sites. (most recently a full engine-out rebuild on my kid's 2016 -- precipitated by enshittification of engine design due to EPA fuel-efficiency standards, but I digress)
If you can get a scan tool it's not the same situation I'm describing. Lots of auto manufacturers now send data to their own servers instead of keep diagnostic information on the car. Then if an auto-repair shop wants to access it, they can't just scan the car, they need the auto manufacturer to provide it. EV manufacturers do not even have OBD ports. Other manufacturers like Nissan have blockers that keep you from clearing codes or running bi-directional tests. https://dobkinlaw.com/trapped-by-the-tech-why-congress-is-battling-automakers-over-your-right-to-self-repair/
I've also had a car where everything is poorly accessible, and that accessing certain parts of the engine require specialized tools or taking the whole thing apart. Increased safety measures have made crumple zones bigger and bigger, which means the engine, transmission, turbochargers, and emissions equipment need to be packed into a tinier and tinier footprint. The smaller the footprint becomes, the more things you have to remove between you and the alternator you're trying to replace. Audi designed many of its vehicles so that the entire front clip of the car must be unbolted and slid forward into a special "service position" before anything could be replaced up there.
"it’s the fast-approaching reality of vehicle ownership" (from the article) -- maybe, but I can't see anybody saying that this is happening now? (A quick google on "nissan blocks clearing codes" doesn't turn anything up, for instance)
A standard OBDC tool will still do most reasonable things on most cars -- whatsmore, it's actually way easier to get a factory-equivalent bidirectional tool than it used to be due to bootleg Chinese stuff that plugs into a laptop. For GM, you've needed a Tech2 for bidirectional communication for about 30 years -- these used to cost $10k, now you can get a $100 dongle from China.
Not sure this is true (a light googling seems to suggest that North American manufacturers use a standard port), but if so it's another good reason not to buy an EV (or that EV, if it's limited to (say) Tesla)!
This has been a common bitching point since sub-compact Japanese cars started replacing enormous American boats -- I don't love it, but the existence of drawling hillbillies on Youtube who show you the real way to do these jobs (as opposed to what the service manual tells you) has improved the situation immensely.
I'm going to display my ignorance for all to see but it serves a point. If this is so difficult for someone with the intellectual curiosity of the average Motte-goer, imagine how much harder it is for the the average schmuck.
About a year ago my 2017 Chrysler Pacifica started overheating after about 15 minutes of driving . We took an overheating problem pretty seriously so my husband brought it into the local mechanic. He's good, the best in my small town as far as everyone is concerned. He went over it, used a diagnostic thingy, did a couple tests, said it was one thing. Ok, he replaced that one thing and my husband drove it home. It worked ok for a while.
After about a week, it started overheating again. We took it back, mechanic did another look around, said something else needed to be replaced. That probably both things needed to be replaced to start, but the second thing didn't show up on the diagnostic tool until after the first one was replaced and the error cleared. Ok, we let him replace the second thing, all we had to pay was parts, he did the labor for free since he didn't get it right the first time. A week later, it started heating up again. We took it into the official dealership and a couple days later received back a car that hasn't acted up since.
Maybe we were taken for suckers by the most trusted and competent mechanic in town. That's a possibility. But the thing that seems more likely given the close-knit nature of our community is that the problem was too opaque and difficult to diagnose for someone in the top 1% of car mechanics in my town. And if that's the case, average schmucks have very little hope. Why should I bother trying to learning how to work on my car when someone who works on cars full time couldn't figure it out?
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