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Just because they're annoying doesn't mean they're wrong - a meta-discussion
A few months ago a wild vegan appeared. He was almost self-parodically stereotypical: short, mid thirties, college-educated, and into endurance sports. He posted a reasonably well-argued case that veganism was not harmful to sporting performance, with the usual smug boasting of his numbers in endurance sports. At the end of his post, he finished with "what's your excuse?"
The entirety of his well-reasoned post was ignored, and he was dogpiled for that one final sentence.
Mottizens could immediately detect what was going on - he actually found the killing and eating of animals to be immoral, but didn't think that would be a convincing argument, so he tried to achieve his goal with another argument.
Both positions are actually worth considering. I'm open to the possibility that killing animals for food is wrong, and I'm open to the possibility that a vegan diet is not harmful to athletic performance. Hiding behind one to advance another, however, is deceitful.
I've actually tried to engage seriously with these ideas, and in my desire to see their own steelmen, I have tried to read some vegan sites. Usually I give up quickly, as they are full of the above argumentation - shifting goalposts, emotional appeals, hiding behind one argument to advance another, etc.
I wish I could say I have rejected vegetarianism because I engaged with their best arguments and found them wanting. Instead, I found their argumentation so annoying I ceased to engage with them.
I've had similar experiences with people who hate cars. Like anyone else who can do math, I have often found it absurd to use two tons of car and two liters of fuel to get two bags of groceries. I've also tried to mitigate some of these by moving to a New Urbanist development (with an unpleasant HOA, sadly), and I've got an electric car and solar panels on my roof. Sadly, this doesn't lead to any productive discussion, as I've discussed before.
Years ago, I remember a similar circular argumentative style among supporters of the ACA. They would say that people are afraid to start companies because they won't have health care, to which I'd reply "sure, how about two years of subsidized COBRA?". Then they'd point to catastrophic expenses, to which I'd say "sure, how about a subsidized backstop for all 1MM+ expenses for anyone who has a 1MM plan?", to which they'd change the argument again.
Of course, there's a pattern here. From what I can tell, many vegetarians have an (understandable) response to the raising, killing, and eating of animals. Some people seem to be terrified of owning and operating large machines, and they find private cars and single family housing to be socially alienating. Some people are emotionally disturbed by other people suffering from the health consequences of a lifetime of bad choices.
What these groups all have in common is a strong ability to signal these things emotionally to people similar to them and form a consensus, but also a generally terrible ability to discuss these things reasonably.
We don't have many vegans, anti-car people, or socialists here at The Motte - but that's not because their arguments are invalid, it's because the people attracted to those ideologies don't fit well with our particular discursive style. On the flip side, we have plenty of white nationalists, who seem to be able to adapt.
I'm confident that white nationalists are wrong. I have engaged with their best arguments, and found them wanting.
I'm only confident that vegans are annoying, because they are so annoying that I find it hard to engage with their arguments.
I think that's a blind spot for The Motte.
We’ve had a number of pro-car vs. anti-car arguments here on the Motte, in which both sides have made well-argued and not at all annoying arguments. I’m on the anti-car side in the sense that I personally hate driving and would strongly prefer to live in a place where owning and operating a motor vehicle is not only unnecessary but actually discouraged. Many others here are similarly disposed toward urbanism and against cars, and are far more adept at making practical/technical arguments in favor of that position than I am. The main topics of discussion in such arguments always seem to circle back to 1. Is it feasible/desirable to convert cities built for cars into cities built for walking/transit, and 2. Is a car-free lifestyle feasible for people who have multiple children. People on both sides muster the best arguments at their disposal, and few of the participants resort to cheap emotional argumentation or goalpost-shifting.
I think that perhaps you just personally find one side of that argument annoying for idiosyncratic reasons, and have convinced yourself that it’s impossible for people who disagree with you on the issue to do so for non-annoying reasons. I won’t gainsay any personal experiences you’ve had when discussing the issue in other spaces, but I can assure you that here at the Motte we are in fact perfectly capable of conducting ourselves in a dignified and intellectually-honest matter as it regards cars, and have demonstrated this capability multiple times since I’ve been here.
I think you're right, and I'll walk that one back for The Motte.
I just want to get where I am going. I've been to Singapore many times for work, and I've never rented a car there. When I get sent to our sprawling exurban facility, I rent a car every time. If you want to live someplace without cars, good for you, I hope it makes you happy. I think cars are overused, but the places with lower car use have low European salaries, American blue city crime, or Asian conformity, so I end up in car places.
I must confess my frustration comes from the broader internet. When I look at ways to swap out short-range car use for more efficient modes, I get bullshit evasive argument people, not rational arguments. There seems to be a consensus among them that operating large machines is scary and gives them anxiety, and they want rich/functional people to be forced to travel and live with poor/dysfunctional people, so that the rich/functional people will be forced to fix things for the benefit of the poor/dysfunctional (hence the hatred of the private house/car). They seem to beat around the bush and make emotional arguments though.
As I've mentioned before, they talk about the carbon costs. I have solar panels, a Tesla, and an ebike, I live(d) in an upscale New Urbanist development, and I have the direct carbon footprint of a sunflower. Mentioning that seems to enrage them more, because I'm making it even easier for the functional to escape the dysfunctional, and harder for the anxious to get around.
So, I largely agree with your assessment that anti-car advocates do make evasive and disingenuous arguments for their position. I have certainly been guilty of this in the past. My real objection to cars is “driving makes me very anxious, and I would prefer to live around other people who feel similarly, and that way people wouldn’t think I’m a neurotic man-child because I’m not good at driving.” All of the other anti-car arguments, about carbon footprints and air pollution and fatality risks from car accidents, are tools I can deploy when trying to argue my case in front of people who do not share my visceral aversion to driving. They are not my actual reasons, but they do seem to be substantially more rhetorically successful than my actual reasons, which is why I have deployed them in the past.
This is presumably what is motivating so much of the extremely poor argumentation you’re noticing. However, I believe that a lot of the same cynicism and evasion is typical of most pro-car people as well. It all comes down to basic aesthetic personal preferences, to which people deploy various disingenuous but superficially-public-spirited practical arguments in order to lend the veneer of intellectual respectability.
Now, in terms of your accusation that many anti-car people want to force rich people to interact with poor people, that is probably an argument that is deployed by many anti-car commentators - and in fairness, there is probably a substantial overlap between anti-car people and socialists - but I do want to point out that at least in America we have a long and storied history of conservative/right-wing urbanism, typified by publications such as City Journal, and that the polarization that has caused conservatism to lurch in the direction of rural/suburban populism is very recent and could easily be reversed. For us right-wing urbanists, a massive crackdown on vagrancy and crime - this making transit more appealing to rich people by removing all the visibly poor/dysfunctional people - is a necessary precondition to the fulfillment of our vision.
Fair enough, and I applaud you for your honesty. As I said, I don't really care if you want to make your life and town different than mine. It bothers me when others want to change my lifestyle from far away because it gives them feelings.
If I want to live in a safe, convenient, family-oriented place in America at a middle-class price point, I am limited to car-centric places. I know this is path-dependent, and the experience of the Japanese is quite different.
That's entirely true, and East Asia is the perfect example of that. The functional, rich and poor alike, can enjoy public parks and clean, safe mass transit, because there are so few dysfunctional, and those few are rapidly removed from the public.
That requires pragmatic and authoritarian East Asian morality and culture though. That's not possible in the West, where the Blue Tribe hides behind the motte of helping the poor and functional, in order to farm the bailey of increasing the dysfunctional so they can thumb their nose at the Red Tribe.
Seeing how El Salvador went from being a crime-ridden hellhole to being safer than almost anywhere in America in the span of a few years would seem to invalidate the notion that such measures are impossible. Maybe blue tribe liberals won't be the ones to do it, but their hold on power is not eternal, and they are doing their best to empower nonwhite immigrant groups that have fewer qualms about the methods necessary to clean the place up.
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