For some limited purposes, private car use will probably have to exist even under socialism, but with an intelligent planning (of not just transport systems but also patterns of investment in the capacities for production & social reproduction in general) -- which is not possible under capitalism but will become a possibility under socialism -- I'd expect people's preferences will change in favor of public transport/bicycles/etc. in many cases.
You wrote yourself of the beauty of an intelligent metropolis sadly buried under an ugly & stupid fare system: ***** Re: Planning, Market & Unemployment
Jim heartfield (jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk) Sat, 28 Aug 1999 19:25:02 +0100
In message <v04210105b3eda931c1c9@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>planning plain and simple
>
>What's plain and simple about planning?
Maybe the way to look at this is the wrong way around.
Rather than trying to think of planning as an addition to creative activity, we ought to ask how it was that the planning element of work is suppressed.
Work after all is conscious application of endeavour. Most work is already a combination of plan and force. Work processes are just as much rational processes as they are physical ones. How is it that planning, an intrinsic element of work, comes to be subverted into the organised stupidity that we call the market is the real question.
Take the London Underground as an example. In point of fact, what is taking place there? The few thousand drivers, clerks, cleaners and supervisors conspire to get several million people from home to work every day, from about 500 pick up points. Theirs' is not in the main an exercise in hard labour, but concentrated foresight and planning.
And then, dropped on top of this intelligent system, like a ton of rubbish is the fare system. What is in the main a system for getting people from one place to another is subverted to a system for slowing them down, stopping them at ticket barriers, funnelling them through turnstiles, and fining them for fulfilling the goal of the underground system, transport.
The fare mechanism - which is itself a ridiculous waste of money - is a great dead weight, a leash around this greyhound's neck. It is in fact a system of organised stupification of what ought to be an intrinsically intelligent process. Whereas simple counters would record what the real demand for transport is, this system frustrates the demand measure, by artificially limiting investment in rolling stock, track and staff.
A planned economy is already all around us in the intelligent systems that we call work. The market is just the daily lobotomy that we make upon that living brain that is the modern metropolis. *****
Take the market out of the intelligent systems, and the modern metropolis will become even more wonderous.
Yoshie