My manifesto starts with Facebook Marketplace.
I’ve been shopping for a used car and the chaotic cyber bazaar has revealed some sad realities about the state of our economy, at least in comparison to skyrocketing stock market. This virtual shopping adventure has also intensified my deep misgivings about America in general, and has further radicalized me to the point of wanting to pen my own manifesto. However as a thoroughly unserious person, my manifesto starts with the search for used cars.
Facebook often triggers existential dread and debilitating introspection for people who pay attention to anything at all, but I think Marketplace serves as temperature check for the economy and generally how broke people are. Sure, it’s probably easier and more accurate to just google economic data and statistics, but those flat charts and graphs feel so far removed from the reality of worn tires, fading paint, and long oil change intervals.
I’ve been a car nerd forever. Played with Matchbox and Hot Wheels, memorized every car model I saw, idolized Italian sports cars, learned every detail of every new technological advancement in automobiles. I used to test drive cars for fun, much to the chagrin of many new and used-car salesmen in the Fairfield-Vacaville suburban area. Both my dad and my stepdad were also auto mechanics out of necessity, and I spent some time rebuilding drum brakes on a ’55 Chevy and watching driveway head gasket replacements. I later became that annoying guy who changes his own oil to save $5 and washes his car every weekend. Later I worked in a transmission shop doing all the shit jobs the owner didn’t want to do and pushing a broom around the shop floor. All this is to say that I’m really into cars and I pay way more attention to them than I probably should.
Most of my adult life I’ve owned cheap Japanese cars that I doted over like they were my own children. Then I went German because I apparently wanted more mechanical challenges in my life. Thanks to my chosen profession of journalist and other poor life and financial decisions, I rarely had money for a new car and stuck mostly to sub-$10k vehicles. After a long string of cheap but needy Audis and VWs, I got fed up and plunked down a huge down payment (for me) on a three-year-old VW GTI. At the time, in 2020, the $20k purchase price felt astronomical, but my living expenses were cheap so I went for it and got a loan. Over the next few years I moved to a much more expensive place (Southern California) and suddenly this car and its payment became a financial anchor and a thorn in my brain.
Living expenses rose and so did my credit car debt. Then I landed a mostly remote job and the GTI sat. Whenever I looked at it I saw a huge pile of cash just sitting there that could be used to pay off debt. It felt like an incredible waste of money. After my partner moved in with her car, I sold the GTI. It was a great relief and, frankly privilege, to be able to sell it and still have a vehicle for the household. Lots of people can’t and get stuck in a downward spiral of debt and despair.
Then my partner got a job that requires her to be in the office five days a week, so I was left without a car in Southern California. I ordered an e-bike kit for my bike and I’ve been riding it the 24-mile round trip to my office a few days a week and also to the shops, but still the allure of a convenient car calls to me like a siren in deep, dark waters. So I spend a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace panning for gold: A good, cheap used car.
During the pandemic everything shut down, as we know. Despite there being 1.475 billion cars in the world and apparently thousands of cars just sitting on the street in my neighborhood, there was a shortage of new cars thanks to shipping delays and factory interruptions. Because new car production was restrained and thanks to general inflation, used car prices also soared. They nearly doubled by 2022 and haven’t really decreased.
So people are hanging onto their cars longer. US drivers are keeping their cars for a record 12.5 years on average, which is simply unheard of. Cars are also lasting longer than they used to, many not conking out until well into the 200k mile age range. That’s about double what we used to consider “extremely high mileage” just a few decades ago.
Auto repair prices have also increased substantially, meaning that many of us are foregoing routine maintenance and buying new tires. The White House says that wages have kept up with inflation since the pandemic, but the data isn’t clear. Data specialists have found that wages may have only just kept up with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), but they definitely have not kept up with housing costs here in California. What does this all mean? More expensive, higher-mileage used cars on Facebook Marketplace.
These cars are thoroughly ran through, and are nearly twice the cost as they would’ve been just a few years ago. Yes, old man yells at cloud, but also my four months of informal and highly imprecise Facebook Marketplace data collection has found that many used cars have had infrequent maintenance and are rolling on old or extremely cheap tires. It seems like a lot of people can barely afford to keep their cars on the road and they are desperately trying to get every penny out of them when they sell. At the same time I quite frequently see brand-new $80k-plus off-road Ineos Grenadier SUVs trundling from elementary school to soccer practice in my neighborhood.
It all feels incredibly insane. This stupid search for a cheap used car has pried my eyes open even more and allowed me to see how ridiculous it all is.
The inequality, the rising prices, the need for a car at all. I feel like an alien who speaks an unintelligible language, who sees with different eyes, who thinks with a different brain. I inhabit this paradise where the temperature never dips below freezing, where it’s sunny most of the time, where it’s relatively flat. A place where it would be delightful and natural to simply stroll a few blocks to a market, or hop on an open-air trolly for a leisurely trip through ocean breezes to a square with fountains and palm trees. Or to jump on a bike and pedal down a tree-covered path to a park. Instead there are unbroken acres blacktop stretching out in every direction, smothering the earth like a mat of toxic black mold. And it teems with two-ton roaring metal contraptions that spew carbon and microscopic bits of rubber. These are murder machines that are often piloted by a single person, ready to plow through pedestrians and bikers alike.
It could all be so much more efficient, safe, and communal. Our cities could be wonderful places built for people, not cars. Instead I’m forced to spend a tremendous amount of money on an extremely wasteful mode of personal transportation, a living thing that needs maintenance and expensive new tires and eats gas or electricity like ravenous beast. It’s completely and utterly bonkers. Unless you’re after profit.
Because there’s a lot more profit in everyone driving around individual cars. There’s not a lot of profit in public transportation and compact walkable communities. There’s not a lot of profit in slow, easy-going life. And as long as we let profit drive us, we’ll get highly individualistic solutions to our problems and super-expensive shitty used cars.