It's always surprised me, when talking to Americans online, how many people seem to feel they don't have access to the secondary car market.
Perhaps it's because I grew up around people who were good with their hands, but in my mind buying a used car isn't a scary matter - you visit the private seller, you look at the vehicle, you check for the things one needs to check for, and you know if it has problems or not. And if you can't do this, you've got a cousin or uncle who can.
But speaking to Americans, they make it sound like this kind of traditional working-class knowledge has been lost? A lot of folks seem positively scared of the second-hand market, and say that a $50,000 brand new car is going to save them money on maintenance.
Crazy high standards of living, in a sense!
Could it be that, as we moved most of our consumption online the idea of visiting a dealer, garage or direct-seller, has become unnatural and intimidating ?
Suddenly you are confronted with the messy, material and mechanical reality rather than the clean product pages, specifications and marketing pictures.
- macOS is kind of crapifying, with Liquid Glass UI, iCloud services pushed down your throat… - Windows 11… - (some) Europeans are getting concerned about their complete lack of sovereignty on the tech stack, and Linux is one way to reclaim a small part of it. - LLM agents like Claude code have lowered the bar so much for any setup operation and bash commands.
All in all, it seems like a good time for Linux to broaden a bit its adoption.