[farisjarrah]

Conversely, I been seeing more people then ever riding, building and modifying electric and motorized bicycles. You can modify a regular $200 mountain bike with a $200 motor kit from amazon and have a $400 motorcycle that you don’t need a motorcycle license for. If you really don’t want to burn fossil fuels, a $1000 bafang mid drive ebike kit can turn a regular bicycle into a hill crushing monster and can be installed with almost no specialized tools.

The housing crisis is definitely a tougher nut to crack, but I don’t believe the auto manufacturers have quite the same leverage over the American population long term, especially if gas prices and electric vehicle prices keep skyrocketing significantly faster then inflation.

[ClumsyPilot]

> If you really don’t want to burn fossil fuels, a $1000 bafang mid drive ebike kit can turn a regular bicycle into a hill crushing monster and can be installed with almost no specialized tools.

I love electric bikes and want to install the bafang kit myself, but lets keep things in perspective - it's not gonna get my pregnant wife to the hospital.

[PaywallBuster]

you keep a car for something that will happen once per ~ 4 years?

[oblio]

This is not new tech, we've had this tech for over 100 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw

Some modern takes:

https://www.vanraam.com/en-gb/advice-inspiration/news/van-ra...

[mkl95]

That's not going to shrink your target demographic too much in the Western world. Birth rates are low and declining.

[akudha]

more people then ever

More people than ever maybe, but that is a tiny fraction of the number of cars, at least in the U.S. It is like saying more people than ever are turning vegetarian/vegan. Yes, it is true, but it is still a miniscule number in the grand scheme of things, and the the change is way too slow/small to have any real impact, at least in my life time.

I love Jetbrains products, it was irritating when they went subscription model. Tableau did the same. I guess it is just a matter of time before everyone started doing it, both in digital and real world. Next would be what? 10 bucks for my washing machine that I own, $10 for my fridge, $10 for my air conditioning, stove, vacuum cleaner...

I don't know how we can fight back. They will keep pushing and pushing trying to eek out every possible cent. There are products we can simply stop using, but cars (at least in the U.S) are much difficult to avoid, outside of cities like NYC. Much of the country is built for cars

[NeoTar]

I thought the JetBrains subscription was actually a good example of a subscription - when you buy an annual subscription, you get a 'perpetual fallback license' for the version at the time of purchase - i.e. you can continue to use that version forever without further payment.

Isn't that basically a traditional (90's style) software purchase?

[tm-guimaraes]

> Next would be what? 10 bucks for my washing machine that I own, $10 for my fridge, $10 for my air conditioning, stove, vacuum cleaner...

This was already happening with planned obsolescence. The EU fought that by implementing a new law that requires big home electronics to have a 10year warrant. I guess the next step for vendors is bundling “service” features for subs

[midhhhthrow]

I stopped using jet brains because they went to subscription

[countvonbalzac]

The built environment in most of the US is based entirely around the idea that you get in your car whenever you want to go anywhere. It's going to take a massive re-engineering of society to fix that, but it's totally worth it.

[lghh]

I would love to live somewhere where an electric bike is an option, but for many of us it is a non-starter.