--- On Wed, 7/23/08, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
>
> What's this magic bullet? Progressive income taxes in
> the place of
> "user fees" -- the urban BMW driver is affluent
> and can afford a higher
> income tax rate; the rural car-dependent citizen could pass
> less at the
> pump. The higher-income person _by definition_ spends
[ws:] You accuse me of false dichotomies, so let me repay the favor and say that the changes that you propose will make things stay the same :). Your solution seems to assume that there will alway be the Amerikan-style land use: vast land areas sparsely populated with barely making it working class who jneed vast amnount of energy and other consummables to stay afloat.
My vision is very different - a more collectivistic society - a la kibbutz but more urban than rural - in which a lion share of consumption is public or cooperative rather than private - public/cooperative housing, public transportation, public health care, puboic schools, public child care - you get the drift. Such a society would improve efficiency in energy use by a combination of measures, such as more rational land use (instead of suburban sprawl), economies of scale and reduction of unnecessary consupmtion (instead of redundant individual consuption.) In such a society, rewarding the poor for ineffcient individualistic measures (such as solo driving to suburban sprawl) - just because they "need it" or prathe want to - would indeed be unnecessary and even deterimental.
Far from falling into false dichotomies, I am trying to look beyond the current framework that pits the interests of the working class against that of the environment and humanity in general. This framework itself is a product of monopoly capitalism - a framework designed to maximize consumption for a profit, extraction of natural resources backed by military coercion, and commodification of everyday life (i.e,. forcing everyone pay through thenose for basic life experiences like communicationg with others, or enjoyment of life pleasures.) This framewotk is unsustainable nighmare and every step that moves us away from it is good, and everything that prolongs it (even for seemingly "noble" reasosn like "helping the less fortunate") is bad. This is why when I am forced to choose between protecting driving privileges of the working poor and protecting the habitat of the spotted wol, I go for the spotted owl. (it is a metaphor, lest someone misinterprets
it.)
And I also think that breaking away from that framework is far more realistic than staying within it. It is already happening around the world - despite what the Amerikan propaganda machine is telling us. After all, the wasteful Amerikan-style monopoly capitalism is not sustainable and its failing is only a matter of time. The only question is what vision we (or our children) will use to built something in its stead. Keeping one's head in the exhaust of one's automobile will certainly NOT provide such a vision.
BTW, after Al Gore's energy speech http://www.wecansolveit.org/ which if it does not provide a vision for a post-capitalist society it certainly moves in that direction, I feel much closer proximity to the liberal wing of the Democrat party than to the populist Left.
Wojtek