Douglas Adams said it all- cars NOT shoes

“Many years ago, this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more car showrooms than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these car showrooms were increasing. It’s a well known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more car showrooms there were, the more cars they had to make and the bigger, environmentally worse and economically unbearable they became. And the harder they were to buy and use, the more people had to buy to keep themselves mobile, and the more the car showrooms proliferated until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is the termed the Car Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than car showrooms. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into fish - who cursed their legs, cursed ground transport, and vowed that none should drive on it again. Unhappy lot.”Modified - using car showrooms instead of shoes - from The Restaurant at the end of the universe"