Comment by nasreddin

"Transportation, like software, is accumulated knowledge. The horse embodied centuries of breeding, training, and hard-won understanding about terrain, endurance, and failure. People learned from the horses they rode. Travel improved through incremental refinement, generation after generation. The automobile didn’t appear in a vacuum.

Building all your transportation yourself—whether by breeding horses or assembling a Model T—cuts you off from that accumulated experience. You lose the benefits of thousands of hours spent by others thinking carefully about the same problems.

I have no objection to Model Ts for personal use, but I wouldn’t be one-tenth the traveler I am without constant exposure to well-bred horses.

Some worry cars make horses obsolete—who needs breeders if anyone can buy an engine? I’m more optimistic. As cars proliferate, people will value good horses more. A Model T gets you the first 90%; it’s the last 90%—judgment, robustness, and adaptability—that differentiates."