Point of No Return (Part 3 of 4)

Core idea

The third part of Point of No Return continues Caro's accounting of the transit money decision. Caro reproduces the rhetorical defense Moses and his allies offered for choosing highways over transit: Get used to it. Accept that two or three hours of your day will be spent in a car. Accept that this is what modern life is. The defense was effective politically because it lined up with the postwar consumer preference for cars. The defense was also a lie about what alternatives were available.

Why it matters

Get used to it — the political defense of automobile dependence

Caro reproduces the rhetorical defense Moses and his allies offered for choosing highways over transit: Get used to it. Accept that two or three hours of your day will be spent in a car. Accept that this is what modern life is. The defense was effective politically because it lined up with the postwar consumer preference for cars. The defense was also a lie about what alternatives were available.

The irreversibility deepens

Each year Moses chose highways over transit, the transit alternative became more expensive to build later. Land prices rose; rights-of-way got built over; transit construction became harder. By 1965 the alternative that had cost $700M in 1955 would have cost three or four times that. Irreversibility compounds when alternatives are postponed.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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Practical application

Example

Climate-policy postponement from 1990 to 2020 made the 1990-era $1T solution into a $20T problem. The pattern is consistent with Moses-1952. Postponement of irreversible decisions is itself a choice whose cost compounds.

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