Chalo said:
Abolitionists were extremists. They were also right.
If civilization survives what people are doing right now with cars and consumption-driven capitalism, we'll be regarded as worse than slavers.
Abolitionists are and were right ( morally ), but every advanced society built itself on slavery as an economic foundation. You either chose advanced society ( which polarizes it's citizens into winners and losers ), or you had a society where everyone is on equal ground, but everyone also lives a basic subsistence lifestyle. ( IE tribal or rural farm life )
The actual argument between abolitionists and those in favor of the institution of slavery was whether we have an advanced society or not. You might have noticed that pretty much every advanced society that built impressive infrastructure and also had embraced slavery to an extreme. You'll be very pressed to find an example on the contrary.
You will notice that slavery started to disappear globally when we invented machines and power sources to operate them. Oh yes, some people got to stand on a moral high ground and say they did something, but actually it was the technologists that were responsible for making ending the debate possible.
We are so far into advanced society that enslaving a human would cost quite a bit more than the robot that's going to do the human's boring and dangerous job. Arguing for human slavery with today's technology as an alternative is as impractical as arguing AGAINST slavery before we had machines and inexpensive energy.
We have this same problem with electric vehicles and alternative energy as well. It is obvious to at least 90% of the population that burning fossil fuels is a bad idea. Yet both Rick the Trump supporter, who thinks of his diesel emissions to be 'plant food', and Sally the Hillary supporter, who thinks burning gasoline is a hate crime both put petroleum products into their oversized 'murican cars so they can get to work, rejecting options such as public transport, bicycles, motorcycles, walking, electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, etc.
Why won't they give up their cars? are they just immoral people?
The reality is that Rick and Sally like living in the suburbs, where they have more personal space and peace to enjoy than any human throughout history. The suburb was made possible by the automobile. The suburban design is high speed roads, long distances, and lots of sprawl. It is an anti bicycle, anti car, anti public transport design.
Rick and Sally would prefer to not live in the urban area where there's more crime, more noise, more traffic, less peace, higher expenses, less social cohesion, less freedom, and less space.
Both Rick and Sally would probably buy an electric vehicle if it fit into their budget and the range limitation of today's batteries was acceptable to them. But they wouldn't buy a smaller kind of vehicle with lower impact because their roads are full of 4000+lb tanks and they would likely be killed for doing so. Nobody in the suburb has the guts to be this guy and buck the trend:
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( also, technically the above vehicle has questionable legal status and there is approximately zero infrastructure built with it in mind, and adding a motor to allow it to travel the speed of a car would be illegal. )
Jeffrey the urbanite who lives in 300 square feet and walks to work ( 2 blocks away ) can't understand why we can't just get rid of cars, but he also hates the rap music intruding into his apartment and the person above him who won't stop stomping, and the other neighbor with the loud baby. Eventually once he reaches his late 20's, he will buy an automobile and move to the suburbs as well. He also has no interest in being a pioneer and would only buy a low impact vehicle in a gasoline price squeeze. He'd like a Tesla, but cannot afford it because he is still paying off that $80k student loan debt.
He walked to work in the 'urbs because it was convenient. He drives a car in the suburbs because it is convenient. He may talk about how serious global warming is, but just like everyone else, he choses the most convenient and practical transport available to him, over which one is the best for the planet.
We cannot say it all comes down to morality. Technology, legal, and infrastructure problems stand in the way of choosing better options. As long as the cheap gas keeps flowing, it is less likely that anyone has interest in taking a less practical option than the 4000lb environment destroyer we have based all of our cities on.
We are facing the same practicality problem that abolitionists faced in the 1800's. The real heroes were the technologists which made an alternative practical. We also need people to start tipping the infrastructure away from the car dominated design which acts like a vendor lock-in for the entire country.
More courage, forward thinking, and practical solutions will get us out of this mess. Moralizing has a very bad track record of getting anything done. ( humans are amoral by nature and will virtue signal their ideal values but their actions speak louder than their words )
