> What I'm advocating for is to not depend on oneself owning a car just for the sake of the odd times where one can't use public transport. I spent much less money by hailing taxis when needed compared to if I had owned a car in the past 10 years.

In the not so far past where I was born district heating was sold as the present for some, the future for all, "you just need two pipes, no more furnace issues, entertainment, ..." and for a bit effectively those who have choose it have spared money and get the heat they need anyway. After the service became more and more expensive and those who have already chose district heating was trapped, going back would be really expensive, they have to restore a space for a furnace, change the heating system in the home and so on. Their economy ended in few years and they start to spend more to a point now in all condos having autonomous heating (any apartment heat itself) instead of a centralized solution no matter if local to the condo or district, is a big plus on resale value. So to say in the history anytime "not owning something" appear to be good after not much time those who have believed the "rent not own" model got screwed much. You see the same phenomenon everywhere from IT (cloud costs, lock-in etc) to politics passing through small things.

Now try to imaging a modern dense city, where people chose to cancel private ownership of cars, so erasing most of the parking space, transformed garages to something else etc where the "public" (collective, privately operated) transport start to be nightmarish, cutting lines and rising price "because of The Crisis". Are those people trapped or they still can choose? As long as you have slack, slack have a cost, but can pay back in the future, as long as you are lightweight you might feel free, but you are naked, tied to someone else services and sooner or later this will cost you much more than what you spared.

That's just my point. In cities car's can't have a future, there is too much density, so living in a big city and owning a car is anyway a dead end, living nearby will allow choice for some time, but you know the city grow, the suburb of today we will be part of the expanded city tomorrow. So again there will be not much choice for long either. In a spread society the density can vary, but as long as the model remain small buildings and single-family homes intermixed even if the density became too much private mobility remain, private ownership remain, if the density drop too much real estate might loose value but you can still be there thank to tech evolution or you still keep your asset for a long time because you have slack.

That's the story of century-old Japanese companies still alive today. The have accepted some costs long the way, but the always have had slack, while others have grown quickly than fall. Many times. So my point is that those who not live in cities can only escape before it's too late, those who live close to cities can wait a bit because their settlements likely gain more and more value for some years to come, but they should be vigilant because a bit more late in the future they will be trapped as well if they do not go away.