I'm glad you're feeling ornery.  You talk when you're ornery.  I think all the mutes on the net congregate here.

Driving is a privilege???  Who is the Dispenser Almighty of this privilege?  In my opinion, the state glommed on licensing, etc, as a source of revenue.   Also, if driving is a privilege, how about operating a printing press, or a cake mixer or a train?  Ah, you say, cars have the potential to kill.  So do wolves.  And lightning.

Otherwise I agree with you whole heartedly.  IF you read Chant's post on surviving the economic collapse, you noticed that the author suggests getting rid of your vehicle(s) now.  I will say that I am beyond making the ten mile walk or bike trek to town, but hey.  Use your head to save your heels, right?

Here's an interesting thing I read tonight.

The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan (16) simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers,(17) and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.