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I'm not going to scold anyone for normal middle class consumptive behavior, and I share the general outlook expressed here about the democratization of access to life's minor luxuries, but it's worth interrogating whether car ownership in particular is a democratizable luxury. https://twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1329546171262652421
Today's socialists should dip into the back-catalogue of the French New Left from time to time. Gorz in particular is excellent on this question; one of the great lies we told ourselves in the 20th century is that cars are a democratizable good.
https://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/
https://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/
Cars, according to Gorz, are less like vacuum cleaners (we can all enjoy them, with no discernable diminished value from everyone enjoying them) and more like seaside villas (their use value is derived in large part from others not having them).
Sprawl and massive highway construction is part of a multigenerational effort to lie to ourselves about this, but at staggering costs. (Gorz calculates these costs in 1973, so he's not even including climate change.)
One key issue on which I side with the French New Left over the pro-car socialism is in the ideological effects of cars themselves:
Some conservatives also understand the ideological consequences of mass car ownership, but they find it cause to celebrate. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/james-wilson/cars-and-their-enemies-1/
The mention of Paris here is notable; that city is currently governed by a socialist politician who understands you need a diverse array of carrots and sticks when it comes to cars, avoiding the naivete of "no sticks until the carrots are perfect."
