And so it came to pass that the city imposed parking fees. Not just on the parking spots it owned directly, but all of them. The legalese was technical and involved, but it amounted to this very straightforward practice: if you parked anywhere for any length of time, you pay the fee. The more you parked, the higher the fee. No ifs, no buts, no refunds. Even if it happened to be your own parking spot at your own house.
At first, riots. This was not a popular move, by any measure, and discontent rose among the masses. But time went by, and everyone still had to go to work, and life moved on, and everyone got used to it. It made no sense, but as with so many other things in life that do not make sense, it would simply have to get in line.
Some years later, the city raised these parking fees. A lot. So much so that it became cheaper to just drive the car around. The price of gas, sure, but it would still amount to less than the parking fees. The math checked out, and eventually this too became a new state of normalcy.
A few years on, another increase. Suddenly, it became a sensible deal to hire others to drive your car around. Sophisticated ride-sharing schemes were developed, to ensure that the car was in motion at all times, never stopping for anything other than red lights or driver changes. Some of these arrangements approached levels of complexity only ever seen in advanced computer modelling or ecological systems, yet ordinary folks seemed to take to it. Traffic skyrocketed, but as usual, this too became the new status quo.
Science happened here, of course. A social scientist found that, when asked a representative sample of citizens if it would be possible to simply not have a car, the average response was a facial expression conveying that a brand new and profound chasm in ontological comprehension had suddenly been revealed, an abyss which was gazing right back at them. More often than not, this was the totality of the response, all thought ceasing upon the grand design of this cosmic incomprehensibility. On more than one occasion, specifically trained Kantian trauma teams had to be called in to suture the philosophical wounds.
More longer friend see that sky? 