of course Americans like single family homes. I'm sure most people throughout the world would love the option. They are appealing by definition. But are single family homes good for society? They use space so much more inefficiently. They encourage more electricity usage, along with other resources. They forcibly maintain the wastefulness of American car culture. They are ludicrously profligate yet have been normalized in this country. It's not that some "nefarious organization" hoodwinked people - they are a devil's bargain that nobody had the foreknowledge to contain.
> I'm sure most people throughout the world would love the option. ... But are single family homes good for society?
Is not the ultimate goal of society to enable people to pursue and hopefully attain what they love?
> They use space so much more inefficiently. They encourage more electricity usage, along with other resources. They forcibly maintain the wastefulness of American car culture. They are ludicrously profligate yet have been normalized in this country.
Efficiency is not a first-order goal of society. The maximally efficient society would kill all of its citizens. Everyone walks into the oceans. Plenty of free food for the fish and no human consumption whatsoever.
The goal of society is to provide meaningful happiness to its members efficiently. It doesn't strictly increase efficiency to simply take away things people want.
Drunk driving hurts innocent people, thus preventing them from attaining what they love.
If heroin use leads to crime then maybe it could be forbidden for similar reasons. Or if the government can determine that people don't love heroin and instead only use it as an escape or due to addiction, then forbidding it might help those people to attain what they actually love.
if everyone in the world was living in a single family home, American style, we'd be completely doomed. There's no justifying the waste of our lifestyles. Is there any evidence people in Asia or Europe, where single family homes were not allowed to run rampant, are less "meaningfully happy" than Americans?
Our inefficiency is unsustainable and is on pace to destroy the climate, how can that possibly be construed as providing maximal happiness? Short-term happiness for lucky US citizens, maybe.
