I wrote that internal combustion engines were a means of living, pointing out that all of our food and other consumption goods are delivered by vans and lorries. To Wojtek replies:
"Similar arguments were, no doubt, advanced to defend slavery in the US South - it would be the end of civilization."
Which parallel defeats me, I have to say. Is Wojtek aiming to free the combustion engines from servitude to the human species? Keep them enslaved, I say.
Then he goes on
"If you engage enough spin doctors you can prove anything - that tobacco is good for your health, lead is harmless, and the 6 thousand year old flat earth sits in the center of the universe around which everything else revolves."
Well, no, you can't prove anything no matter how many spin doctors you engage. (I engage precisely none, by the way.) All propositions are open to dispute, but Wojtek prefers not to, just hiding behind the blather 'lies and statistics'. But evidence makes an argument stronger, not weaker. If you have no counter-evidence, that's fine.
Grumpily, Wojtek continues:
"It is amazing how far the human mind can go on the road of self-justiciation of one's "way of life.""
But it's not my way of life, its that of the 60 million or so people who live here, and no doubt it is pretty similar to that of the 280 million who live over there. If you want to slash their wages, or put them on ration books, or take their driving licenses away, you should come out and say it.
Wojtek
"To paraphrase Karl Marx, "way of life" is like religion - everyone else's is "man-made" i.e. artifical, ours is "god-given " i.e. the only true one. I guess the iron Lady taught you right - there is no alternative, so shut up and keep consuming."
Well, OK then, why don't you stop consuming, and we'll come back to this question in two months or so, to see how you fare. If you want some tips on how, just have a look in your fridge and cupboard. Anything you bought there from a shop was almost certainly delivered by van or lorry (nobody yet has suggested railway lines to shops). Those are the things that you think you can live without.
I am all for alternatives, but in the UK we have had enough austerity, and I prefer the modest growth of the last seven years to the bitter misery of spending cuts, wage restraint, power cuts, council estates, and 'getting on your bike' that preceded it in the early nineties, eighties and seventies (let alone the post war misery of rationing my parents had to put up with when they were growing up).
It seems to me that it is incumbent on those who think that the alternative is to reduce mobility to explain how that is to be done.
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