I think a better argument is that 'everyone' has a car, but in old cities, far from 'everyone' had a horse - they were for businesses or the wealthy only.
Out of curiosity, how many years was the transition between horse and automobile? I would bet this will be the same. I don't think it's driven by technology, I think it's driven by human sociocultural inertia or whatever the right term is to describe when we irrationally latch on to things.
I personally think horses are far more complicated to "own" (and operate) than a car; however, horses were freely available back when, and cars were not.
While I certainly tend more on your side of this discussion, I wonder to what degree your first point demonstrates a modern bias rather than an objective comparison.
Cars could only travel on roads, you couldn't go wherever you liked as on a horse. Narrow passages you could previously have ridden down were now inaccessible.
You need to put fuel in your car, which was probably even harder then than finding an electric car charger at the start of their existence. Providing food and drink for a horse was comparatively trivial.
Horses could easily be tied up outside of whatever store or destination you were visiting. What were the social costs of parking a great big machine outside of your local? To say nothing of parking as a town- or city-wide logistical problem.
you completely miss the point that for many, horses were for daily transportation.. to and from work, the store, school, supply houses, meeting halls, civic participation.. all kinds of things
People still ride horses and enjoy doing it, but I don't see anyone advocating using horses for their daily driver (the Amish excluded). Driving for pleasure doesn't have to go away.
I suppose people that were into horses felt the same way when automobiles were first introduced.
But nobody was told "you have five years to trade your horse in on a car, or send it to the glue factory". Horse are still legal and used to this day, they just mostly lost out to market forces... that is, cars are simply a better mode of transportation for most people most of the time.
But you can still ride a horse if you want to (albeit probably not on freeways, but certainly on country roads). Now, if the proposal was that certain limited access, high-speed highways are restricted to only self-driving cars, I might be able to accept that, even if somewhat grudgingly. But outlawing human driven cars completely, even on backroads? I just can't see it.
My parents, which represent an average person nowadays, do know how to ride a horse to get somewhere. What they don't know is how to drive a automobile, even more- for them gasoline=danger. Cars can be a nieche solution for some nieche ppl, but I don't see how it can become mainstream now, as a business you anyway need a classic horse barn bc too few ppl know what is a automobile and how to use it
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