Walking in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

Then it’s just a coincidence that the only cars they are selling these days are higher margin monstrosities, spurred along by “consumer choice” in the highway mad max arms race.

Many manufacturers still make sedans, hatchbacks, and other lower, smaller cars (although wagons are almost extinct here). Without total cooperation from every vehicle brand there can't be a conspiracy to simply remove them as an option from the consumer. The ones who dropped those types of vehicles simply decided it's not worth competing in that segment, but the segment still exists. Even more so outside of North America.

That's not the say they couldn't be achieving a similar end by means of advertisement, regulatory capture, and lobbying.

Yes, nobody is saying that sedans don't exist anymore...in the Netherlands...they're still very much the norm (although I did have a large F-150 pickup--it is nice that an unmodified F-150 is large here--come flying out of a side street in my neighbourhood the other day, so this is a growing problem). But in North America, advertising by the auto industry has been largely successful in changing the culture towards larger less safe vehicles. This isn't driven by inherent demand of people, this is clearly a policy choice by the auto industry with the goal of boosting profits (as all corporate policies are).

Now, I'm not saying that they are any more evil villain than any other corporation, they have been allowed to do this by the failure of regulators (or the capture of regulators). I very much believe that all corporations are inherently evil villains, because if they could boost profit by being villainous they would. It's not even controversial, it's literally the law (or at least civil law). Now, you might argue that they don't care if they hurt people, that isn't their intention, it's just incidental, and I'd agree with that...but now we're pedantically arguing between "cartoon evil villain" and "monstrously indifferent to human suffering".

What I think is missed much of the time though, is just how much control these large corporations have over our collective culture and social narrative. We are products of our experience, and our experiences are more and more consumed by advertising. I'm not saying people have no agency, but we have much less than we believe ourselves to have. I've made a conscious effort to remove as much advertising from my life as I can, and whenever I visit my family, I am shocked by just how much advertising there is. But it is subliminal to my parents and inlaws...they don't even notice it.