You need to distinguish between car as a machine and car as a form of capitalist way of life that entails not just machinery but ownership and all its entanglements (liability, insurance, payments etc.) as well as regimen imposed bu that ownership, such as the fact that driving is a privilege granted to you by the authority or the so called implied consent which basically means that you can throw your constitutional right to a due process through the window when you get into into a car. This of course does mean that cops are frequently using their power to search and seize without a warrant - but that they can if they want to and it is perfectly legal for them to do so.
The further problem with car as a form of capitalist way of life is that it displaces all alternatives - and if you cannot drive for whatever reason, e.g. because you are under age or impaired or your driving privilege has been withdrawn by the authority - your mobility is effectively restricted - perhaps even more than requirement to have an official travel permit (as they did in the USSR.)
If the capitalist authority decides to build roads instead of transit it makes your life de factor dependent on capitalist property rights (i.e. being able to own a car) and and restrictions and liabilties entailed by that ownership, while giving you and empty promise of freedom (akin to the freedom of living under the bridge.)
Wojtek
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Left-Wing Wacko <leftwingwacko at gmail.com>wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 7:01 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [WS:] It is also a life style. If you live in suburbs, car is a
> > necessity. If you live in a city - it is a burden. But even those who
> live
> > in the burbs and commute by car often resent the waste of time their
> commute
> > takes - time they could spend on other activities (friends, family, etc.)
>
> It is also a neccessity, but still a burden, in more rural and small
> town areas. And some of the freedom of the automobile is hardly an
> illusion, but very real. Try being stuck in a small town without
> adequate outlets for some consumer goods and being unable to get to
> the larger town to purchase some of those things. Or being stuck in
> the city without a car to get to some place out of the city (assuming
> you like the outdoors).
>
> And in no way am I making any argument against more public forms of
> transportation in any areas. Just saying it is not as simple as you
> portray it.
>
> Sheldon
>
>
> >
> > I think that a big part of automobilie appeal was the illusion of freedom
> > associated with it - an illusions nuirtured by Hollywood. I think that
> > illusion is finally starting to wear thin.
> >
> > Wojtek
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> ``..Part of the reason could be economic, the firm said. During the
> >> worst recession since the 1930s, the cost of owning and maintaining a
> >> car likely
> >> makes less sense than it did when gas was 30 cents a gallon and every
> >> red-blooded American teenager yearned for a Chevy Camaro or a Pontiac
> >> GTO.''
> >>
> >> -----------
> >>
> >> This passage opens up a whole iceberg of thoughts.
> >>
> >> I think economic is almost the whole of it. The combination of mandatory
> >> insurance, the cost of buying a car, and the fact that almost nobody can
> >> fix them except expensive professional mechanics pretty much covers it.
> >> You can toss in smog laws too.
> >>
> >> I kept my 83 Honda going for years to avoid buying another car. It was
> >> cheap enough to operate, and the registration fees stayed relative low.
> >> I still couldn't fix the engine, because I didn't have the time and
> >> lacked the more up-date skills. I paid a machine shop to rebuild the
> >> engine the first time it died. It died for good in June. So I had to
> >> replace it. I bought a used small truck.
> >>
> >> In the distant past I rebuild or help rebuilt about half a dozen engines
> >> as a kid. We hung out at each other's parents garage. It was a great
> >> social and learning scene. Two of our fathers were engineers
> >>
> >> The other interesting thing about kids and cars, is you can get a
> >> concrete insight into exactly how capital expropriation works. Part of
> >> that is containing the spread of skills and knowledge to within the
> >> capital sphere of domination and control, i.e. fewer and fewer backyard
> >> mechanics. With the design phase, the meticulous use of increasingly
> >> modular systems.
> >>
> >> This modularization process does a couple of capital friendly things.
> >> Operations that used to use (x) number of skilled workers, now requires
> >> (x-n) workers. The unrepairable module requires a full replacement.
> >>
> >> It was fascinating to watch de-skilling, speedup, and expropriation
> >> process repeat itself in the durable medical equipment industry. It was
> >> also a kind of fascination to watch my own demise as a case study of the
> >> destruction of the US middle class.
> >>
> >> CG
> >>
> >>
> >> ___________________________________
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> >>
> > ___________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> http://left-wingwacko.blogspot.com/
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