I am highly confident that a sufficient percentage of those whose cars are burned go on to buy another car that the net impact of the act you describe is negative on all counts.
That has little to do with the pollution or traffic, and more about the extreme actions of their manufacturer. It's symbolic, albeit largely ineffective and ignored by the target.
Ah yes, the joy of destroying your neighbor’s property just for fun. Is he a working-class guy, struggling to pay his bills? Too bad. Because nothing says “let’s build a better future” than a riot.
Sadly, that is mostly how it happens. Wars/riots and strikes are the only proven mechanism for effecting systemic change to power structures. It's how you got most of your freedoms.
The only reason Carnegie built 1500 public libraries is because he knew otherwise there was a good chance some vigilantes would take things into their own hands and he and his family would hang.
Yes, it sucks that the only way to reach the rich and powerful is to harm women, children and property. But at least the rich and powerful of old knew this, and preemptively prevented it.
New billionaires are far too cavalier. They believe themselves invisible, and it shows in their utter disrespect onto the average people. Where is our philanthropy? Why do you not fear for your life?
We have become too civilized, and allowed the evil to laugh in our faces.
> Yes, it sucks that the only way to reach the rich and powerful is to harm women, children
I would consider that evil, much as I want the current administration and it's allies to have some healthy respect (and thus restraint) for the power of the people.
Of course it's evil, it's just that historically that's what we've done and historically that's what effective.
It's largely good that we, as a people, have become more civilized and don't resort to that. The unexpected downside of that, though, is that we are much more susceptible to being exploited. It's a sort of naivety trade-off.
The comment you resond to is obviously a joke, and so is yours (in a way) but owning and driving a car in Paris almost certainly places you in the upper class. Most Parisians don't own cars, most don't use them to drive around the city.
Massive strikes that are hard to contain got use the 8 hour work day, weekends and a lot of labor rights. Civil right movements won only because a huge portion of them were militant (back then even the National Rifle Association supported banning guns).
A violent status quo necessitates violence to achieve change.
The suffrage movement in the UK also had a militant component:
> The tactics of the [Women’s Social and Political Union] included shouting down speakers, hunger strikes, stone-throwing, window-smashing, and arson of unoccupied churches and country houses. In Belfast, when in 1914 the Ulster Unionist Council appeared to renege on an earlier commitment to women's suffrage,[27] the WSPU's Dorothy Evans (a friend of the Pankhursts) declared an end to "the truce we have held in Ulster." In the months that followed WSPU militants (including Elizabeth Bell, the first woman in Ireland to qualify as a doctor and gynaecologist) were implicated in a series of arson attacks on Unionist-owned buildings and on male recreational and sports facilities.
This influenced the US suffrage movement, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_Unit... , even during WWI: "groups like the National Woman's Party that continued militant protests during wartime were criticized by other suffrage groups and the public, who viewed it as unpatriotic."
I will note that car burning is rare during protests. It mostly happen during riots, which are quite rare (i think 2005 were the big ones, and some light ones started last year). What can happen is a luxury car finding itself on its own roof (those racing cars are light).
During the yellow vest protest, "unsafe" property destruction started, destroying an apartment and putting in danger bystanders (the only death was due to a police grenade shot trough an open window, but the protesters put in danger bystanders too, and only luck prevented any deaths). Which triggered an interesting response from old punks/antifas (and also active ones): They joined facebook yellow vest protest groups to teach "how to" destroy property properly: spot danger points, how to find a target, how to avoid side effects, when to avoid using fire (99.9% of the time), when not to, how to deactivate teargas grenade (it is surprising, but a lot of people do not know how to), and instilled in some very theoritical points about secrecy and compartmentalization that were passed down from like the "groupe Barta", which, to be honest, is quite funny.
