> I couldn't even afford a car until after graduating from university.
> I was walking or taking public transportation everywhere prior to finally getting a car.
I had to afford a car in order to be able to get to work when I got my first job. Taking public transport would be a 4 hour journey in each direction (assuming I get to each transit point on time, assuming everything arrives on time). I couldn't afford the car by a long shot. I ended up asking friends to lend me money and taking a loan that ended up with me paying like 3x the value by the time it was done. And the car I got was a total piece of shit which ended up costing multiples of its original price to keep operating, but that was the only way for me to keep the job and start climbing the life ladder, so I sucked it up.
You won the demographic lottery of being born in circumstances where you had the option to walk and take public transportation everywhere you need to. Most people have not won that lottery. I'm 0% SJW but I think you seriously have no idea of how privileged you are just through the random circumstances of how and when and to whom you were born, compared to the average person.
Having climbed from societal rock-bottom to a decent position in the tech industry, my mind is constantly blown by the fact that the average techie thinks their life is anything like what the vast majority of people on this planet are dealing with.
I'm not saying all this to win some victimhood points. I'm saying all this to try to get across to you that having the ability to catch PT or walk to everywhere you need to get to without it literally taking up 100% of your waking time is a huge privilege that you won in the random lottery of life. A privilege that you're not even acknowledging or aware of. Most people didn't roll as high as you in that lottery, so they take the 0.0000001% (or whatever) chance of death to drive to work in 1 hour each time they wake up tired, instead of the 100% chance of having a mental breakdown due to an 8hr commute time, etc.
And again, every state in every developed nation is fully aware of this, has researched this, and has crunched the numbers on this. And not a single one in the world has acted to prohibit it. Because they are all aware that doing so would result in more harm than good.