

The car-centric culture of many places (especially the US, but it does apply in basically all of the industrialised world to varying degrees) is due to infrastructural factors. If a country is designed to be navigated by car, then you need a car to participate in that society. That’s why people want cars.
Things like the freedom of having a car are also from social factors. A lot of people learn to drive as teenagers, and want to escape the patriarchal environment of the family, hence a car provides freedom. In a world where children are socially raised and the family is abolished, teenagers don’t seek to escape from the family. And, of course, a car can be a way of providing freedom because other means of freedom of movement don’t exist—a lack of accommodation for disabled people to get around, a lack of public transport and safe cycle routes, etc.
Most people wouldn’t want to give up their car for those reasons. If we just got rid of all cars without addressing any of these issues, I’m sure most people would be unhappy about it. So if that’s what you’re suggesting, plenty of people do stand to lose. But if we address the issues that make cars the only option for a lot of people, I don’t think the average person would care. Car enthusiasts can still have their cars, but it becomes a hobby or lifestyle choice, like people who have a boat. And car haters would most certainly be a lot happier too.


Nobody can defy the laws of thermodynamics, but some people can be genetically predisposed to being fatter, just as some people are genetically predisposed to being taller. Plenty of skinny people (myself included) can eat through loads of fatty fried foods and not put on a single kg. Meanwhile you see a fat person eating all salads and they get told maybe they should eat fewer salads.
And even if it were entirely down to what you eat, calling it an issue of willpower is just insulting. Do you think people struggling with drug addiction just have a willpower issue? If OP is in the US (which I’m assuming she is from the described healthcare system), the food there is designed to be practically addictive and unhealthy. I doubt OP has a diet of cheeseburgers and doritos—it wouldn’t make sense for someone trying to lose weight to eat like that—but if she did, that’s clearly a social issue of both fast food companies under capitalism, availability of healthy food, and a US food culture centred around destroying your arteries. Sure, a drug addict could simply physically not pick up the needle, but they can hardly be blamed for doing so when there is an obvious material reason for them doing so, ie a chemical addiction.