Car bans vs planning for freedom
The authorities can’t stop passing laws and beating up the citizens; it’s an OCD thing for them. Increasingly, whatever isn’t compulsory is forbidden; eventually the two will meet in the middle with a bang and that will be the end of freedom.
Today’s theme: cars.
Officialdom just loves them: so many chances to push you around. And just wait until AI takes over: the mess-ups will be faster and less correctable - the PTB will be WFH with the phone off the hook. Imagine a Dalek issuing orders in that grating voice:
ADMINISTRATE! ADMINISTRATE! SWITCH TO DIESEL NO NOT DIESEL BACK TO PETROL NO NOT PETROL ELECTRIC OH DEAR GRID WON’T COPE NO SPEEDING NO KERB CRAWLING NO STOPPING CLEAN AIR ZONE 15 MINUTE CITIES SPEEDING FINES PARKING FINES EMISSION FINES REGULATE! REGULATE!
There is an alternative to bugging the schmucks, as I showed some days ago: investment in public transport. Do it right and most people won’t need cars.
For, let’s face it, cars are a pain in the ass.
They are lethal: they kill twice as many British people as die from homicide. In the USA the picture is roughly similar despite the higher murder rate there.
They are expensive: on average, running a car costs £3,500 a year net of basic rate tax and NIC, equal to over £5,000 gross; and 9 million households have two cars! How else might we spend - or invest - that money?
They are wasteful: parked 95% of the time. Until the late 1960s, most UK households didn’t have a car at all; how ever did we manage?
They are unhealthy: driving is stressful, the air pollution in-car is worse than outside and reliance on cars makes us unfit. The children decanted at schools may not appear obese but they could be TOFI (thin outside, fat inside); childhood used to involve much more physical activity.
They mislead us with status appeal: it is a truth universally acknowledged that someone who owns a house is a more attractive proposition than one who only possesses a car. Forty years ago I had to choose; fortunately I opted for a mortgage.
They are not as convenient as you think: society adapts to the car. Governments permitted the growth of out-of-area supermarkets, putting local shops out of business and making driving necessary. Governments have also progressively allowed alcohol to be bought almost anywhere, so pubs are shutting and many of us have to travel to a bar, where the driver can’t drink! School playing fields are sold off, park budgets are cut; often you have to drive to a gym for some exercise.
They alter land use, making themselves indispensable. Many want ‘a house in the country’; result, less country and a three-mile trip to buy a pint of milk.
They can compromise pleasure. Walk through urban streets and visualise them without traffic and parked vehicles: how spacious and airy! Drive out to the country and when you walk in the lanes, you find yourself dodging speeders and choking in exhaust fumes trapped between the hedges. Go to popular tourist towns like St Ives and beware stepping off the pavements.
Like cuckoos, they push rivals out of the nest. In the 1960s Ernest Marples, the Conservative Minister for Transport oversaw the closure of thousands of miles of railways; before then people could go on day trips from Wales to the East Coast; and from Birmingham to Tintern in the Wye Valley. At the same time he promoted the development of motorways, often built by construction companies in which he had an interest.
This is why I now have a car: the alternatives have been reduced. It shows that freedom isn’t simply a matter of personal initiative.
We have to get together to challenge the powerful. Instead of authoritarian measures to crack down on citizens, government should rein in the power of corporations; it is not only the State that tyrannises. Liberty for alcohol distributors, for massive retailers, for the automobile lobby look like convenience for the people, yet paradoxically also cramp our lifestyles.
Freedom is a collective decision to widen the gap between you-must and you-can’t.