individual auto ownership

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu May 7 09:56:53 PDT 1998


At 11:47 AM 5/7/98 -0400, Les Schaffer wrote:
>At 11:34 AM 5/7/98 -0400, Comrade Wojtek Sokolowski opined:
>->There is no place
>->for individually owned autos in a socialist society (i.e. one without
>->conspicuous consumption, environmentally friendly, and based on meaningful
>->human interaction).
>
>what do you envision as a working alternative to individual auto ownership?
>
>has anyone laid out a 'near-realistic' prescription for a mix of urban and
>rural and suburban (you dont really believe in black and white do you?)
>living that utilizes some form of shared and efficient low-occupancy
>transport? i'd be curious to hear about it. has anyone looked at how life
>would be different under such a regime? for example, would louis p. have to
>see his mom less often in upstate NY as a result? do such scenarios require
>massive relocations of people and industries into better organized hubs?

As a good Marxist, I'd say that capitalism has already invented the technology for that, all we need to do is to subsume that technology into the socialist social organization.

Lest you wonder, such technology is... car rental. The 'busy' execs do not own cars they use for their business travel, they rent them. The basis of alloctaion is the ability to pay.

However, if we change that and use the social/environmental need as the basis of that alloactaion, as Lou suggested in one of his postings, we can eliminate car ownership altogether. If you need a car, you just swipe your card to make a reservation, and then pick up one at the point you need it -pretty much the same way it works today. Except that your driving mileage would be recorded, just as your 'frequent flyer' miles are today. If you exceed the socially/environmentally sound limits (as determined by the planning council), the rental price would go up exponentially. Of course, different quota could be established for different areas, so for example if I travel to upstate New York where population density is lower than in NYC, I can:

a) rent a car in NYC where quota are lower and drive upstate, depleting the "cheap" miles in my account; or

b) take a train to, say, Albany and pick up a car there, where not only the quota are higher, but I have less miles to drive.

regards,

WS



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