While I agree that each has their advantages and disadvantages, transportation is something many places in Europe have something to show us IMHO.

A small village would typically have a train station where you can quickly travel to a populated area and urban cores are often nearly completely restricted from cars excepting deliveries making for walkable daily life.

It’s true that having a personal vehicle is more convenient, but in my opinion that is a bit of a tragedy of the commons. If everyone decides to have one then we all pay the price in needing one to get anywhere.

I’m really not sure where class figures into these two different models honestly.

Having been born and raised in a typical small village in The Netherlands (population then ± 12000) with a lot of smaller and slightly larger villages around, there were no train station in sight for at least 30km. I had to travel to the big city to get to the nearest train station, which took about an hour by bus. And this is the norm rather than the exception.

The problem with trains is that the tracks are put in relatively straight between large cities. If your village is on that line between these cities, you're in luck and probably have a station close-by. Otherwise, you're out of luck and have to hope there is a reasonable frequent bus line going to your closest station.

Of course, because these bus lines tend to follow the more historical routes between cities, visiting each and every village in between, getting to the nearest big city by bus might take up to three times as long as just taking your own car.

Heck, if I'd not mind cycling fast (just over 20km/h) for an hour and a half I'd also be in the city. Just half an hour after the bus would get there. Actually, that was nice in summer as a poor high school student.

Trains work well when you have enough people to care to use the infrastructure. But if not, you might try buses. I saw a rural village in Hungary (~80 people) which has a bus stop to the nearest town. That's very nice, but the village center is a mile walk from the bus stop on the highway. My point is that a train may not automatically work. (Some rural communities in the USA do have similar bus routes.)

I'm curious: what is your example of a small European village with a train line? I'm asking because I just picked a random American town on the map: Spencer, Iowa. ~11k people, and it's about a two hour drive (~100 miles) in all directions to a larger city. A two hour drive is a decent drive, but it's not much overall, especially if you're comfortable driving. It's quite hard to find a similar scenario in Europe: these vast, sparsely-populated tracts of land. And that's my primary point: Europe's population is distributed more uniformly and densely than the USA. A blanket claim about how x transportation mode must be used in the USA ignores the stark regional variations.

Sure, in certain large cities, widespread car ownership may lead to a tragedy of the commons scenario, but it's on a per-city basis. The vast majority of cities in the USA will never encounter this problem because their "commons" are just so big, all cows still find a spot to graze. The cities that do encounter large traffic jams eventually build public transportation infrastructure to reduce the burden on roadways.

Playing out the maximal scenarios, I'd much rather live in a world where everyone drives cars than everyone rides trains. A mix of both is even better.

Walkable downtowns are great, and cities of all sizes should have them.

Huh? We have lots and lots of train lines, also passing through very small villages. But sure, not at all to every village, so there are also enough villages, where only a bus goes. And in some only sometimes. Maybe only on the weekend, maybe only weekdays.

So you also need a car in rural germany.

My understanding of rural Germany is that villages are usually are within 6 km of each other. Is this fairly accurate?

I remember seeing a video or article about how towns in rural USA are ~15 miles (24 km) away from each other because half this distance is what a person could walk in a day, handle in-town business, and be home by dark.

Density makes a big difference.

Pretty much. You have to search for places, where that distance is higher. But there is a increasingly number of ghost villages, where only some old people remain.

Most people do have a car so the pressure is high to get one, it is also cheapin rural areas of Sweden. Parking is free, always available, most of the infrastructure is slowly being erroded by car centric design. So yes soon you will be required to have a car in some rural areas to be able to travel anywhare ot get food.

And you had those conditions, while having a family? I doubt that can work out, my wife is pregnant, for example. She cannot walk or cycle 10 km to get anywhere.

Anyway, we had the choice and we live in a village with a supermarket and trainstation. But if we had to live in a place you describe, it would not work without a car.

While technically Severny Island is "in Europe" in the historical continental sense, Russian arctic islands aren't what anyone is referring to as a comparison point with the US in this discussion. Nor Russia in general for that matter.

"It's quite hard to find a similar scenario in Europe: these vast, sparsely-populated tracts of land."

Saying that a part of Europe should be excluded from debate about whether Europe has "sparsely-populated tracts of land" because it is remote and sparsely populated seems a bit circular.

A sizeable chunk of Russia is in Europe - not sure why that should be excluded?

Edit: If people mean the EU or Western Europe when they say "Europe" then that's fine - but it's arguably similar to people from Europe only regarding the US as the two coasts!

Yep, that's what I refer to. I imagine most Americans do as well. From my perspective, I don't expect Europeans to automatically include considerations of Alaska.

>it's arguably similar to people from Europe only regarding the US as the two coasts!

A well-known term in the USA is "fly-over country." That refers to all the land between the two coasts. Our own "coasties" already view the rest of the country as another world. We already do that to ourseleves!

Good god the "cool stuff" that the US has in no way shape or form compensates for the poor lives that the majority of the country leads.

If a train is the best solution for a USA community, by all means, make it happen! However, trains are optimal in the USA in far fewer scenarios than either automobiles, buses, or airplanes.

This sounds like the rhetoric around gun rights, where any amount of regulation on guns becomes an absolute seizure of the right to have any gun. No one is talking about an absolute zero automobile society; even societies that deprioritize the car still have cars available, just not as the first choice. Cars don't have to be dominant to be available and usable.

No disrepsect, but did any country? Trains were used extensively, but the double-whammy of automobiles and airplanes did do a number on the attractiveness of trains.

>And most rural towns today even have dead or dying Main Streets caused by the huge shift towards automobile dependent big box stores.

Mmm. I feel that's a case of "correlation != causation."

- The decades-long export of jobs (avoidable or not) depleted available capital in the community. With little money and work, supporting businesses (mostly those in town centers) greatly struggled, and many folded.

- Big box stores use economies of scale to undercut Main Street prices, which further accelerates the collapse of small business. Dollar General is an interesting example, where they (in my view) have tried to fill the gaps these collapses left.

- Big box stores are inherently large, so good luck finding a tract of land big enough in a rural downtown. If a rural community has a bus line, I'd wager good money that the Walmart has a stop.

>This sounds like the rhetoric around gun rights, where any amount of regulation on guns becomes an absolute seizure of the right to have any gun.

Gun rights are constitutionally protected, whereas no law says "the right to own vehicles, being necessary for the operation of a free society, shall not be infringed." Some people really, really love the law if it makes them feel more secure (and that's okay). Also, bear (heh) in mind gun rhetoric in today's age is manufactured for political purposes.

>Cars don't have to be dominant to be available and usable.

Agreed. If cars are less optimal than other transportation modes, people will chose otherwise. But in the vast majority of the USA, except for commuting, cars enable more liberty than trains at lower levels of efficiency. Not the worst thing, in my opinion.

This seems to be the point missed. It’s almost as if many commentators assume everyone is trying to optimize for the same thing in all cases. Some are talking about optimal access and freedom of movement, some for cost, some for efficiency etc.

Everyone has cool stuff, but there are bad things to say about every country in addition to good things.

As for high growth, Europe doesn’t have the space to engage in pump & dump real estate and the same scale of military subsidies that made the fortunes of many US industries.

American exceptionalism in one phrase.

That said, I will prefer to live in places that give me more choice - more economic choice, more living choices, more everything choices. I am by any global metric a wealthy person and my US tax rate is very low compared to every other western nation except for tax shelter countries. And I prefer to have less government mandating where my wealth is spent and retain more control over my life.

What’s so wonderful is that apparently anyone (just like yourself!) can so easily uproot their entire lives to experiment living in two different countries! Although research tells me that Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands, and France have very difficult requirements for immigration. I need to learn Dutch? Huh? In the USA it’s so much easier!

Are you one of those Californians who are desperate to escape California but then try to change all the rules of your new home to match what you had in California? Just so you know, this is very irritating to your new neighbors.

I live in the USA. I like it here. But you say it is better because it has lower taxes and doesn't make you learn Dutch. Others point out that your taxes + your health insurance premiums + doctor fees are not less than Netherland's taxes that include healthcare.

When I lived outside the USA I made a significant effort to learn the language. I've never understood why one would not.

If these are your main reasons for preferring the USA they seem pretty weak. Your first paragraph is a much stronger position.

Anyway, it sounds like you deserve all of the problems of the US since you're not actually interested in making anything better. As a result, you'd be a net negative to anywhere you move with that mindset.

When you look into the metrics, you'd see what kind of vapid bullshit this is.

Relief does exist. I know two close people who each had around $70k of medical debt wiped clean by hospitals.

But yes, healthcare costs need to drop. See this graph for a symptom of why healthcare is so expensive: http://www.ibj.com/ext/resources/blog/The-Dose/Physicians-Ad...