You can see the effect even more when it comes to recreational hobbies and sports. Americans don't really just walk or bike around. Walking and biking/cycling are usually specific activities, so most Americans buy special exercise clothing or exercise gear to go (by car) to specific spots friendly for walking and cycling to perform their recreational activities and come back. Walking is still a popular casual activity in urban areas but in a lot of suburban areas there aren't even the sidewalks in place to make it safe to walk around. Most Americans only really dress/prepare for the walk from their house to the car and from the car to the store/office/destination, then back if they're not specifically out to perform their recreational athletic hobbies.
(One thing the narrator mentions is shade: Keep in mind that Houston is a hot city, with temperatures often above 30c during the summer.)
But that's not unusual at all. In fact, where I grew up in Pennsylvania many roads had literally no sidewalk.
Let's say I want to walk into town where my parents live. I'd be going down this road (you can follow along on street view):
https://maps.app.goo.gl/huqH4kcT3h667RZr7
That's a narrow road, but don't let it fool you. People there drive fast and they're in a hurry. They certainly do not expect to see someone trudging along the berm of the road. Or more likely in a muddy ditch beside the road, because Pennsylvania is wet and that's the safest way to not get hit by a car.
If you walk along into North Wales, PA, pay attention to the pedestrian infrastructure. Where are there sidewalks? Are there crossing signals? How would you know when it's safe to cross? Now imagine doing this in the evening (note: there are no streetlights).
And I live in a city where the zoning can be described as "we'll rubber stamp literally anything that isn't hazmat processing we're desperate for money". And this is a ~150yo neighrborhood in a multi-hundred year old city in the northeast, not some socal dump that was built out long after the advent of cars.
Yes, because the number of stores in that 30 minutes is so low. Most of them are also setup for cars, including selling quantities that assume a car to get home.
(Besides that, a 30 minute walk can be inconvenient- the stuff you're buying might not support being carried for 30 minutes. I tried to get a friend to consider giving up a car-based life and they asked me how they're going to move their stuff for LAN parties and gun hobby related activities.)
OK, but you need to first decide whether the state should require a license to drive in the first place. And if it requires a license, whether this license should be required to identify you or not. Because you are going to have a hard time with a licensing system in which the license cannot identify the holder.
Maybe it shouldn't. That's a useful and honest discussion to have.
What is not a useful or honest discussion is whether we should require it but not really enforce the requirement.
If you require it, then you should enforce it, and you should not refuse to enforce it because you think that enforcing it does more harm than good. If it's really true than enforcement does more harm than good, then don't require it.
But this idea that group X should meet some standard, but group Y can meet a lower standard, is lawless and discriminatory. It violates the principle of equal treatment before the law, and it destroys the willingness of society to abide by laws. It creates a population of lawbreakers that can be the victim of selective enforcement, e.g. to punish enemies, while it rewards friends by promising to not enforce the laws. This is basically institutionalized corruption in the sense of the old machines like Tammany Hall. It's when you get to a situation where government can destroy enemies by deciding to enforce laws against them, because there are so many laws whose enforcement is arbitrary.
That goes for every aspect of controlling our borders and deciding who can come here. If you want to make an argument for open borders, go ahead. There is legit intellectual case to make for that.
But don't say, well, for one group we should enforce things but for another group we shouldn't, because then law abiding people end up waiting for years (my parents waited for 10 years to be able to come to the U.S. legally) while others just overstay their tourist visa (my mother's relatives did that).
That's discriminatory and lawless, and sets you up for a system in which those who obey the law are recognized as suckers and forced to subsidize those who do not.
> If you require it, then you should enforce it, and you should not refuse to enforce it because you think that enforcing it does more harm than good.
There’s a third situation: that enforcement is difficult. The last time I was pulled over was 19 years ago. If that situation had resulted in my license being revoked, I could have continued driving without my license for the next 19 years with no consequences (maybe registering my car under a family member’s name). But regardless, how would this be enforced on a wide scale? The authorities don’t have the resources to check that every person behind a wheel is carrying a license. So, these checks generally occur after an infraction.
My point is simply that revoking a license doesn’t necessarily take those people off the road.
