this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
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By growing their own food since there wasn’t any supply routes….? Or you’re waiting months for something the next county over? What if it spoils on the way? Robbed? Weather takes it out?
You’re making stuff out to be way to simple of a thing, it’s not black and white. What if you want coffee? Options other than wheat.
Europe had coffeehouses in the 17th century, and it became a world-wide commodity by the end of the 18th century, about 200 years before the invention of cars.
(Reminds me of hearing Johann Sebastian Bach's Coffee Cantata not long ago.)
Roads go back to the Roman Empire and earlier. By the 17th century, road networks were highly developed.
Nobody was supplying coffee houses by hauling sacks of coffee beans on foot through forests, fields, and river fords. They had ships on the ocean, barges on canals, and wagons on roads.
Uhh… you mean the slaves back than…? And the slaves they continue to use in the coffee trade…?
It’s only affordable because of the slaves, still is, pay everyone an liveable wage along the way, and that’s not happening.
Sure, shipping is easy when you don’t need to pay and the lives of people don’t matter. But hey, you get your coffee, cheap too!
For sure. Know how much a cup of coffee was inflation adjusted? Roughly $10-15. On top of that those 'coffee houses' weren't remotely close to what you have today. They were bulk brewed diluted black coffee with no sugar or other condiments because those too were expensive. A cup of coffee for the common man in 1700 was roughly 10% of his daily wage. Not exactly sure what point you are even trying to make here though, especially considering the highest cost for getting coffee in the 1700s up to the invention of the car was you guessed it, transportation costs. Invention of the car and transportation networks, why look at that, the price of coffee and other non-local agriculture products plummeted.
That's bizarrely incorrect. According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, the cost for a cup in, 18th century Britain would be equivalent to £1.57 now.
But I'm glad you asked about the point, which is: A functioning, healthy society (with coffee shops, even) does not require everybody driving their private vehicle everywhere, for every function of daily life. In fact, the opposite appears to be true, given that we can draw some pretty direct lines from a car-dominated landscape to the affordability crisis. We could have good lives without streets and roads filled with high-speed traffic.
Considering coffee is only cheap because of slaved workers, you’re incredibly missing the point.
Coffee is only affordable because of mass transport, and that’s only after the slave work is done.
Somebody made a ridiculous claim that coffee shops can only occur in the presence of cars, when they predate cars by hundreds of years, but I'm missing the point?
There are lots of problems with the global coffee trade, and always have been. That doesn't change the fact that logistics and personal transport are two very different processes, and the OC was right, roads full of speeding traffic are bad.