An argument that getting rid of slavery would ruin a lot local economies in the ante-bellum South would not be a valid argument against abolishing slavery. Ditto for abolishing car-based transportation.
Wojtek
^^^^^^^
CB: Here's an old thread on whether we should get rid of cars.
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2005/2005-November/024774.html
[lbo-talk] War on the car-driver boddi satva lbo.boddi at gmail.com Wed Nov 16 12:42:51 PST 2005
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To all,
Let me echo Comrade Heartfield's comments and say that demonising the car is just damned silly. Better demonize the knife, the arc welder, the pneumatic jackhammer. I know it's a popular lefty sentiment to think that the very act of getting into a car is selfish and destructive, but it's not. You simply don't have the right to judge whether a person has a "good enough" reason to get into his or her own car. It's just none of your damn business.
People want to do the right thing. The voters of Seattle taxed their own cars, wasted a couple hundred million dollars and three popular votes supporting a Monorail concept they themselves subsequently rejected unworkable and absurdly expensive. People will try.
Do better for them. Come up with something that makes their lives better, not some new form of discipline based on an ecological righteousness. Motor scooters are cool. Electric motor scooters are cooler. Change the laws in cities to favor scooters over cars. How about that?
Forget these totalizing, Utopian notions and figure out something you can sell to the public. If people will spend money on something as stupid as the Seattle Monorail, they will give anything a chance.
peace
boddi
On 11/16/05, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Doug writes:
> "Well of course. This [my argument that we are substantially dependent on
> motorisation]
> is hardly news to anyone, even the most avid
> car-hater. But that's not to address the point whether being so
> car-centered makes for a good society, or is ecologically
> sustainable."
> These are just idle speculations, it seems to me.
> If you really think that the car is a problem, then the obligation is on
> you to propose how we might live without it.
> And to address that challenge seriously, you need to explain how the
> distribution of food, goods, labour, leisure could be achieved without
> motorisation.
> None of the projections for climate change indicate anything like the
> accelerated risk to human life that the abolition of the car (and I
> appreciate that is putting words in your mouth) would entail.
> The daily reproduction of the American (as the European) population relies
> upon motorisation.
> Take the car away, and sentence your fellow citizens to slow starvation,
> within the year.
> No solution to the problem of CO2 emissions that fails to substitute an
> equivalent to gasoline-powered engines would meet the demands of developed
> societies.
> Saying get the train, or cycle (speaking as a London cyclist of 20 years)
> simply makes no sense.
> On British statistics, around 85 per cent of all journeys are by car.
> Around ten per cent by train.
> For the train network to reduce car journeys by one seventh, it would have
> to double in capacity.
> To halve car journeys, it would have to multiply five times.
> Seriously, who thinks that is going to happen? Even after a soicalist
> revolution.
> Or is it enough just to say things that mean nothing.
>
> "Moore's position on the evacuation of New Orleans is demented. The
> major reason the city couldn't be evacuated quickly is that the plan,
> such as it was, was so auto-centric. A more collective system would
> have gotten more people out more quickly."
> It seems to me that a lot of New Orleanites owe their lives to their
> cars.
> I'm not sure what you mean by a "collective system".
> If you mean Soviet Communism, or even West European Socialism, all I can
> say is that they too demonstrated a callous disregard of human life.
> My youthful experience of 'collectivism' taught me that a system that
> imposes planning irrespective of the opinions of its individual citizens
> rarely achieves results.
>
> "I will concede he has a point on the car = individualistic and public
> transit = collectivist argument. So you've completely gone over to
> the individualist/libertarian view of things, James?"
> Engels mocked those German socialists who thought that public ownership
> was socialism, saying that they must think that the Prussian Government's
> tobacco factories were the workers' republic.
> Public transit is not socialism, whether it is the London Underground or
> the train to Auschwitz. Will there be cars under communism. I suspect so.
> But in any event, a social system that refuses to engage the individual
> voluntarism of the mass of its citizens will end in barbarism.
>
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