[jdross]

The set of people who believe the automobile (or the Internet) are net negatives taken as a whole for society is extremely small, for good reason

[Retric]

Is it? Do you include everyone that’s died or lost a loved one due to personal automobiles in that assessment?

We are so far post automobile that it’s hard to compare, but many of the benefits are illusionary when you consider how society has evolved with them as commutes for example used to be shorter. Similarly the air used to be far cleaner and that’s after we got rid of leaded gas and required catalytic converters decades ago.

[notanastronaut]

How many people have lived or had a loved one saved due to automobiles?

We have the benefit of hindsight but we're also making judgment calls looking back on fuzzy recollections, forgetting just how the past used to be before an innovation came along.

[EdwardDiego]

Let's refine terms - internal combustion engine driven automobiles have lead to lead poisoning, air pollution, and CO2 emissions.

[zozbot234]

The automobile on its own was actually far less polluting than the horse wrt. air quality. It's just that there's a whole lot more of the former than there ever was of the latter. Even wrt. climate change, it turns out that horses produce methane emissions which are far worse for the climate than carbon dioxide.

[simianwords]

I would like to get actual numbers.

1. how many people died because of lead poisoning, air pollution?

2. how many people were saved and had qualitatively better lives because of automobiles?

[antonvs]

That reason is along the lines of, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Coal miners will fight for coal mines, the oil industry will fight for dependence on oil, and so on. Sometimes they’re aware of what they’re doing, but in the case of a comment like the above, apparently not so much.